A Million Little Pieces Of My Mind

Music

By: Paul S Cilwa Page Views: 16,969
Hashtags: #Music
All about the music I make, listen to, and love.
Music

Music is my life, or at least its backdrop—and sometimes its foreground as well…

I enjoy composing, performing and recording music. I also enjoy playing it, attending concerts where it's played, and collecting odd and interesting pieces of music.

…and this is the section where you may explore it with me.

My Music Library

By: Paul S Cilwa Posted: 3/1/2019 Page Views: 66,160
Hashtags: #Music #PersonalMusicCollections
All the albums and tracks from my not inconsiderable music collection.
Estimated reading time: 1 minute(s) (48 words)

I have a really large record collection, and I'd like to share it with you. I can't share the actual music, of course—that would be wrong!—but here is the list of my current holdings, all digital or digitized.

How to Compose, Arrange, and Record Music

By: Paul S Cilwa Page Views: 4,826
Hashtags: #Music #Recording
All you need to know to produce your own album!
Estimated reading time: 1 minute(s) (105 words)

Putting together an original album takes a lot of work, of course. To create a decent product takes a number of very different skills. The artist/producer must be able to compose music, create MIDI files of that music, and render studio-quality audio files of that music. Singing may also be required. And then there's mixing the various audio tracks to produce a final product, not to mention artwork for the album cover, prose for the album jacket, and a thick skin—because not everyone will adore your result.

Concerts

By: Paul S Cilwa Page Views: 6,162
Hashtags: #Music #Concerts
All about concerts and operas and musical plays I've attended.
Estimated reading time: 1 minute(s) (62 words)

I have friends who've been to hundreds of concerts. I, on the other hand, have been to enough to count on the fingers of two hands (with a few fingers left over). But that doesn't mean I don't like to attend. It just means I can't usually afford the price of modern concert tickets!

The History Of Sound Recording

By: Paul S Cilwa Page Views: 4,336
Hashtags: #Science #History #Music #SoundRecording
How humanity learned to find immortality...for its voices, in any case.

We've been told for at least three decades, with increasing stridency, that "intellectual property" is entitled to government protection; that corporations are entitled to hoard ideas, and that promoting this concept is the only path to innovation and prosperity that can be enjoyed by all. However, the story of the invention of sound recording tells quite a different story.

The Paul S Cilwa Project

By: Paul S Cilwa Page Views: 6,468
Hashtags: #Music #Composition
Music written and/or recorded by me.

With the dawn of Artificial Intelligence, a new tool has become available to the savvy composer/musician. Sure, it allows people who don't know a thing about music to nevertheless create something they, themselves will enjoy, even if no one else does. The same can be said of the kazoo, the bagpipes, and, dare I say it, the accordian? If a purist wants to create music without tools—another word for "instrument"—they are limited to singing, whistling, beatboxing, or armpit farts. The rest of us choose to use instruments, whether it's a rock, a banjo, a synthesizer, or an A.I. music generator.

Recorded Music

By: Paul S Cilwa Page Views: 5,510
All about the recorded music I love.
Estimated reading time: 1 minute(s) (49 words)

I have always been fascinated by audio recording: Both the technology and techniques, but also the material that has been recorded. We now have over a century's worth of recorded voices, speeches, books, and, of course, music. And each decade in that century has its own treasures worth unearthing.

Your Own Digital Music Library

By: Paul S Cilwa Page Views: 4,639
Hashtags: #Music #Ripping
How to convert your record, tape and CD library to a digital format you can use on your MP3 player or cellphone or other digital device. (Yes, it's legal, and easy, too!)
Estimated reading time: 1 minute(s) (218 words)

Ripping is the term for digitizing tracks from CDs or tapes or vinyl (or even shellac) records, as I recently did with my rather large library of CDs, LPs and tapes and have gotten well past 10,000 MP3 files. Unless you were, literally, born in the last ten years, you probably have a sizable CD library of your own; and if you were born prior to 1990 you probably own a few dozen or hundred vinyl LPs, as well. But fewer cars come equipped to play CDs, these days; and the ones that can, can play a CD loaded with MP3 files as well (traditional CDs just contain uncompressed audio files).