Monday, June 25, 2012

Episode 6: Gypsy Jazz


Hi, and welcome to the Open Licensed Music Podcast, the show where we highlight music from artists who let you share their music.  I'm Ralph Wacksworth, and today's episode is featuring gypsy jazz and a few other songs I think go really well with it.

Gypsy Queen (4:23)
Avalon (2:10)
Demain je change dchangee vie (4:06)

That was a shortened version of Gypsy Queen by Avi Rosenfeld, which is available from Jamendo and is licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license. After that was a slightly edited version of Avalon by pantoum, which is available from SoundCloud and is licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial license.  Finishing up was Demain je change de vie by Löhstana David, which is available from Jamendo and is licensed under an Attribution license.

You may have noticed as you've listened to this podcast that I usually refer to music in "categories" rather than "genres".  That's because I don't always listen to them by any recognized genre per se.  I like to listen to them by what I think fits together well.  Take, for example, this next track.  It's probably not exactly classifiable as gypsy jazz, but to me it has about the same feel, so it's in the same playlist as the gypsy jazz stuff.  I don't like to dilute the term "genre" with my non-deterministic categorization, therefor I call them "categories" unless it's a truly strict enough categorization for them all to fit in one normal "genre".  So, with that quirk aside, let's listen to some gypsy jazz and similar.

Mad Squirrel March (4:25)
La Minor Improv (3:21)
Bearded_Gypsy_Band__Bearded_Gypsy_Band (4:25)
Madame Haricots Takes Afternoon Tea (1:10)

That was Mad Squirrel March by ARTSomerville.  ARTSomerville seems to record a bunch of bands, and the two this week are from Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band at The Nave.  From what I hear, Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band is quite a hoot to listen to live and with all of them together are very loud in a "Boy, that's kind of cool.  I can still hear them through multiple walls." kind of way.  Anyway, after that was La Minor Improv by Balkan Balagan and Bearded_Gypsy_Band__Bearded_Gypsy_Band by Kiah.  All three of them are available from Jamendo and are licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license.  Finishing up was Madame Haricots Takes Afternoon Tea by P4-810 and Dixie McBass, which is available from SoundCloud and is licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial license.

SoundCloud, by the way, is awesome.  More really good music to be found there, and they make it incredibly easy to filter by license so I don't run into so many license incompatibility problems when I put together an episode.  A bunch of this week's music is from there.  And there's enough of it, I'm going to continue, because otherwise this episode's going to get quite long.

Bella Ciao (5:19)
Troublant Bolero (4:26)
Drunkard's Blues (3:25)
The More it Changes (2:23)

That was Bella Ciao by ARTSomerville again, followed by Troublant Bolero by ALÓ DJANGO, both of which are available from Jamendo and are licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license.  After that was Drunkard's Blues by tje[amacjeprcjestra.  My goodness that's an odd one to read off.  It's available from SoundCloud and is licensed under an Attribution license.  Finishing up was The More it Changes by P4-810 and Dixie McBass, which is available from SoundCloud and is licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial license.

Today's app-of-the-day is LibreOffice.  It's not so much a single app as a full office suite.  It has a word processor, spreadsheet app, slideshow app, a database app, and a couple others.  Often times I've found it's an easier upgrade path for users than to try to migrate to newer versions of commercial competitors since the interface, with its menus and toolbars, is closer to what people are used to than all the fancy new-style rearranging that everybody seems to like to do nowadays.  At any rate, it's free, it opens and saves to a ton of different formats, and it runs on at least Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows.  Download it today at libreoffice.org

Now for a short noncommercial from one of our nonsponsors followed by more music.  As with many if not most old books, it has a few morally grating spots, but the story is one of the better books I've read and was the basis for a bunch of stories and even recent movies and TV shows.  Although it rarely gets credited, if you read it you'll recognize the story very very quickly.  In fact, the book even shares its name with a few of its derivatives.  But I won't give away which one it is just yet.  Anyway, after the noncommercial will be more music.

The Lost World
Les Deux Guitares (2:32)
Take Me Back To Tesla (3:45) (Edit 2015-03-08: previous address)
Baila con rita (3:50)

That was Les Deux Guitares by Hedgehog Swing, which is available from SoundCloud and is licensed under an Attribution license.  After that was Take Me Back To Tesla by Nick Gerow, which is also available from SoundCloud but is licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license.  Finishing up was Baila con rita by Pepe Frías, which is available from Jamendo and is licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license.

So, that's all for today.  Remember - piracy of commercial music only proves your dependence on that model and justifies further censorship and restriction.  So don't pirate it - replace it with something better.  Listen to open licensed music, donate to the artists behind it, go to concerts, and buy music from artists whose record labels don't see you as their enemies.  Support artists where your support actually counts.

This episode was made using Xubuntu Linux, Gentoo Linux, Audacity, Audacious for organizing playlists, and Leafpad for notes, and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license.  Feel free to give it to your friends, or if you didn't like it, your enemies.  Links to the songs in this podcast are available on the website.  Listen in next time for some mystery and spy music!  See 'ya!

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Edits:
2015-03-08: Updated link.

Monday, June 18, 2012

Episode 5: Action/Adventure Music


Hi, and welcome to the Open Licensed Music Podcast, the show where we highlight music from artists who let you share their music.  I'm Ralph Wacksworth, and today's episode is featuring action/adventure music.

RISING LEGENDS (1:51)
ACTION - Human vs Machines (3:12)
Prelude and Action (1:38)

That was RISING LEGENDS by Epic Soul Factory, followed by ACTION - Human vs Machines by Gregoire Lourme, which are both available from Jamendo and are licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license.  After that was Prelude and Action by Kevin MacLeod, which is available from incompetech.com and is licensed under an Attribution license.

So, action/adventure music this time.  Sadly, as much as I've been successful in switching over to open licensed music, I have not been able to do the same for movies and TV shows.  There doesn't seem to be nearly as big of a push for open licensed movies and shows as there is for music.  But, that doesn't mean there aren't any out there.  I have very little time for watching movies and TV shows anyway, and spend even less checking out new ones, but I've run across a few open licensed videos that are actually quite good.  Big Buck Bunny's a good one that really could use a few sequels.  Classic cartoon sort of humor.  I used to work as an animator, so I very much like good animated films.  Sintel, another animated one from the same people, is also quite good.  In the TV show department, check out Pioneer One.  The quality's about on-par if not better than most recent primetime TV shows I've seen.  All three of these are open licensed.  I'm sure I'll discover more as time goes on, and I plan on doing a few more soundtrack episodes in various genres, so I'll try and let you know if I find something good.  If you have any other recommendations, let me know in the comments for this episode.

So, let's get back to music.

TITAN (2:31)
Epic Unease (0:39)
AMAZONA (1:43)
Five Armies (2:35)
EPIC - Crusaders (2:24)

That was TITAN by Epic Soul Factory, which is available from Jamendo and is licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license.  After that was Epic Unease by Kevin MacLeod, which is available from incompetech.com and is licensed under an Attribution license.  Next up was AMAZONA, again by Epic Soul Factory, available from Jamendo, and licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license.  The fourth song in the set was Five Armies by Kevin MacLeod, which is available from incompetech.com and is licensed under an Attribution license.  Finishing up was EPIC - Crusaders by Gregoire Lourme, which is available from Jamendo and is licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license.

Another thing I should mention that you could and should go watch is some of the old stuff that's fallen into the public domain and has been added to archive.org.  Classic cartoons, classic silent films, old TV shows, you name it.  I would not be at all surprised if a lot of the budget DVDs by checkout counters at grocery
stores are getting their original footage from the archive.org website now instead of copying old films or video tapes.  Wikimedia Commons also has some very good old video as well as open-licensed newer stuff.  They have a lot of other open licensed media as well, such as pictures and sounds, so it's generally just kind of a neat thing to check out.

Anyway, to get back to the audio category, here's some more music.

Asian Dream (3:36)
Asian Wonders (5:15)
La búsqueda de Ianna (2:39)
The Night of The Faeries (4:50)

That was Asian Dream and Asian Wonders, both by Butteryfly Tea, followed by La búsqueda de Ianna by Epic Soul Factory, and finally The Night of The Faeries by Butteryfly Tea.  All four of them are available from Jamendo and licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license.

Today's app-of-the-day is Blender.  Blender is a 3D modelling, animation, rendering, compositing, and editing suite that does actually get used for big-budget movies.  Believe it or not, it very much rivals commercial programs and in many cases surpasses them.  Organic modelling functionality is top-of-the-line, and it has long been one of the better fluid simulators on the market.  The main downside is that the learning curve on it is incredibly steep, and you'd better be good with the keyboard if you want to work in it efficiently.  Version 2.5 really helped the ease of use quite a bit, but despite gracefully handling all kinds of cool advanced functionality, I still struggle to do some simple tasks in it.  Once you figure it out, working in it can be incredibly fast and easy, but it's not at all intuitive.  The great thing is that it's free, and it runs on Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows.  Download it today at blender.org

Now for a short noncommercial break from one of our nonsponsors followed by more music.

Librivox
Movement Proposition (2:21)
Before the Battle (1:22)
The Chase (1:38)

That was Movement Proposition by Kevin MacLeod, which is available from incompetech.com and is licensed under an Attribution license.  After that was Before the Battle by Mattias Westlund, which is available from Jamendo and is licensed under an Attribution license.  Finally, we had The Chase by Marc Teichert, which is available from Jamendo and is licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial license.

So, that's all for today.  Remember - piracy of commercial music only proves your dependence on that model and justifies further censorship and restriction.  So don't pirate it - replace it with something better.  Listen to open licensed music, donate to the artists behind it, go to concerts, and buy music from artists whose record labels don't see you as their enemies.  Support artists where your support actually counts.

This episode was made using Xubuntu Linux, Gentoo Linux, Audacity, Audacious for organizing playlists, and Leafpad for notes, and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license.  The other episodes' playlists were also put together in Audacious, and although it wasn't directly involved in the construction of the episode, I figure it's a cool enough program to mention.  Anyway, feel free to give this episode to your friends, or if you didn't like it, your enemies.  Links to the songs in this podcast are available on the website.  Listen in next time for some gypsy jazz!  See 'ya!

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Monday, June 11, 2012

Episode 4: Xylophone and Marimba Music

Hi, and welcome to the Open Licensed Music Podcast, the show where we highlight music from artists who let you share their music.  I'm Ralph Wacksworth, and today's episode is featuring xylophone and marimba music.

The Annual New England Xylophone Symposium (ft. spinning merkaba) (3:18)
Mushroom Dance (1:22)
Dubakupado (3:32)

That was The Annual New England Xylophone Symposium (ft. spinning merkaba) by DoKashiteru, which is available from ccMixter and is licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial license.  After that, we had Mushroom Dance by bart, which is available from OpenGameArt.org and is licensed under an Attribution license.  And finishing up was Dubakupado by Kevin MacLeod, which is available from his website incompetech.com and is licensed under an Attribution license.

Which brings me to an interesting thing I found in the process of rounding out this episode.  To back up, most of these episodes are based on playlists I've put together for my own listening enjoyment, which I end up organizing and publishing as this podcast.  The problem I've run into is that I've discovered that a bunch of the music I've got is under either an Attribution Share-Alike license or some form of a No Derivatives license, neither of which combine nicely with other licenses. If you remember, I ran into that quite badly with the chiptune episode.  Well, this one was another one.  But I found a new site that is quite awesome for just general instrumental music - the aforementioned incompetech.com from Kevin MacLeod.  A bunch of the songs this week are from his site.  In fact, I dropped a few other songs I had on the list because his just generally fit the feel really well.  Basically, he's got it set up where the songs on the site are, by default, under an Attribution license unless specified differently, and I have yet to see *any* that are specified differently.  So, you'll probably hear more of his stuff played on here in the coming weeks.

Also, fair warning: this episode has a couple songs with lyrics.  If that bothers you, feel free to download the alternate all-instrumental version available on the website.  That'll be after this next set, though.

So, with that said, let's continue:

The Long Goodbye (2:14)
Night Cave (1:53)
gentle marimba (1:44)
Invariance (3:36)

That was The Long Goodbye by John Pazdan, which is available from ccMixter.  After that was Night Cave by Kevin MacLeod, which is available from incompetech.com, then gentle marimba by Alastair Cameron which is available from Free Music Archive, and finally Invariance by Kevin MacLeod, which is again available from incompetech.com.  All four of them are licensed under an Attribution license.

Did you know you can build a marimba yourself with scrounged parts?  That's what an Instructables user named RocketScientist did.  He built his because he wanted to be able to practice at home without spending multiple thousands of dollars to purchase one, so he built one using largely scrounged materials including a bunch of wood from a tree that was struck by lightning.  It looks and sounds awesome.  His instructions are available at http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-Your-Own-Marimba/

Now for the two songs that have vocals but are cool enough I figured I'd include them anyway:

And Broken Again (5:27)
Straight To The Light (ft. Snowflake) (4:58)

That was And Broken Again by Psychotropic Circle and Straight To The Light (ft. Snowflake) by Zep Hurme.  Both are available from ccMixter and are licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial license.

You want to hear something cool?  This is a neat little instrument a picked up a while back.  I'm not exactly sure what it's called, but it's essentially a resonant
wooden box with panels on the top you can hit with mallets to play different tones.  I figured it fits this episode pretty well.  Take a listen.

(Recording of wood box instrument)

Isn't that cool?

Now for a bit more music:

Infados (3:46)
Kalimba experience (2:40)
Constance (2:20)
Yusupov (8:49)
Marimba interlude II (1:02)

That was Infados by Kevin MacLeod, which is available from incompetech.com and is licensed under an Attribution license.  After that, we had Kalimba experience by mmb digidesigns, which is available from Jamendo and is licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license.  Following that was Constance by Kevin MacLeod, which is available from incompetech.com and is licensed under an Attribution license.  The long song after that was Yusupov by Zimbalista, which is available from Jamendo and is licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license.  The last song, which was very much freeform, was Marimba interlude II by Hammer of Hathor, which is available from Free Music Archive and is licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial license.

Yusupov and Kalimba experience are the only two songs in this episode with the Share-Alike term, and as such, they're the only reason this episode isn't just Attribution Noncommercial.  If you'd like a version of this episode that's just Attribution Noncommercial, let me know, and I'd be happy to put one together.  Don't know if anyone else finds that important - I'd be happy to hear your thoughts on the subject in the comments section on the website.

Today's app-of-the-day is Battle for Wesnoth, a turn-based strategy game for just about every platform you can think of.  Travel to a fantasy world, recruit, forge alliances, and battle shared enemies while taking into account terrain and the speed, strengths, and weaknesses of your troops.  It has both single-player, network, and single-computer multiplayer modes, with both competitive and coop.  The included campaigns provide hours upon hours of gameplay, with tunable difficulty, and if you beat
all of them, they have many more available on the website.  As is, it's a fun game to play with friends with laptops for a couple hours.  And to give you an idea of the platform compatibility, and having done programming for years I find this admirable mixed with a bit of insanity, but it's available for Linux, BSD, OpenPandora, Solaris and OpenIndiana, AmigaOS and MorphOS, Syllable, BeOS and Haiku, RISC OS, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, and it's been ported to and is available for purchase in the HP webOS, Android, and Apple app stores.  There are probably more platforms than that, but that's just a quick run-down.  Anyway, since basically if you're listening to this, your device is probably capable of running it, you should download it and try it out from wesnoth.org.

Now for a short noncommercial break from one of our non-sponsors.  And for anyone listening to this - please consider putting together a commercial for something you like.  There are not nearly enough commercials for open content or open source projects out there, and there are even fewer which are licensed under an open license that I can legally include in this podcast.  I'm sure a number of you can think of something cool that you use that could use some recognition.  Send it in to them, post it online, or just send them to me at openlicensedmusic (take out all of this and put an @ in instead) gmail.com.  There are lots of good open music podcasts and open source review and info podcasts out there, and I'm sure a number of them would love to help you promote your project.

Anyway, after the noncommercial, we'll have a couple more songs.

Nonsense Novels
Feel good island (1:52)
Chee Zee Beach (3:23)

That was Feel good island by Brandon75689, which is available from OpenGameArt.org.  After that was Chee Zee Beach by Kevin Macleod, which is available from incompetech.com.  Both of them are licensed under an Attribution license.

So, that's all for today.  Remember - piracy of commercial music only proves your dependence on that model and justifies further censorship and restriction.  So don't pirate it - replace it with something better.  Listen to open licensed music, donate to the artists behind it, go to concerts, and buy music from artists whose record labels don't see you as their enemies.  Support artists where your support actually counts.

This episode was made using Xubuntu Linux, Gentoo Linux, Audacity, and Leafpad for notes, and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license.  Feel free to give it to your friends, or if you didn't like it, your enemies.  Links to the songs in this podcast are available on the website.  Listen in next time for some action/adventure music!  See 'ya!

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(Instrumental version coming soon)

Monday, June 4, 2012

Episode 3: Cartoon music


Hi, and welcome to the Open Licensed Music Podcast, the show where we highlight music from artists who let you share their music.  I'm Ralph Wacksworth, and today's episode is featuring cartoon music.

The Barber of Seville Overture (7:49)
Strauss Waltz Medley (4:55)

That was The Barber of Seville Overture by Gioacchino Rossini and performed by the Davis High School Symphony Orchestra, and after that we had Strauss Waltz Medley by Johann Strauss Sr. and performed by the US Air Force Band, so it's not exactly just one song but a number of recognizable parts of Strauss songs.  Both of them are available from musopen.org and are licensed under a Public Domain license.

So, with that said, from a license compliance standpoint, I didn't need to say it.  Why?  Because each of the artists in this episode have graciously dropped just about any kind of restriction from this music.  I still want to make sure they're credited though - I feel they deserve it even more for not forcing people to do so.  It's a pretty awesome thing to do, and a lot of the music from musopen.org is licensed that way.  As always, it's a good idea to check the license before redistributing them, but the music on musopen.org has on average the least amount of restrictions of any of the sites I get music from.

So, is it classical music?  Of course not!  It's cartoon music.  And for those of you who watched cartoons as much as I did when I was little, you're probably seeing characters hitting each other over the head with giant hammers, running over each other with steam rollers, or falling off cliffs while listening to this.  Many of these will be different cartoons to different listeners due to the number of different cartoons that used a number of these songs.  The nice thing is that you can listen to this and actually know what the songs you know so well are really called and/or who they were composed by.  You, too, can learn to be a classical music fan through watching cartoons from the comfort of your own living room!

There will not be nearly as many songs in this episode as there usually are due to how long some of these are.  So, to get back to things, here are a few more of them.

Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67 - I. Allegro con brio (7:54)
Minuet in G (2:23)
Fur Elise (2:50)

That was Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Opus 67, First Movement performed by the Skidmore College Orchestra followed by Minuet in G performed by Peter J.  And finally we had Fur Elise, also performed by Peter J.  All of them are by Ludwig van Beethoven and are available from musopen.org under a Public Domain license.

Today's app-of-the-day is Linux MultiMedia Studio, which contrary to its name is also available for Microsoft Windows and from what I can tell BSD as well.  It's a music-making program, and supports piano roll style sequencer editing as well as loop-based editing.  It comes with a few loops, but it's also compatible with many commercially-available loop libraries as well as many free ones.  They have a bunch of demos on their site if you want to hear what it's capable of.  I've only used this program a little to try it out, but it seemed like a very capable program.  As powerful or moreso than commercial loop-based editing software I've bought, though with that power comes a slight drop in simplicity, in my opinion.  Couple it with some sounds and loops from freesound.org and a bit of creativity, and you could easily put together a cool song in an hour.  All in all, definitely worth trying out.  You can download it from their website at lmms.sourceforge.net.  Now get out there and make
some cool music!

Now for a short noncommercial break from one of our non-sponsors.  And to be perfectly honest, this is mainly due to my fandom of the original Sherlock Holmes stories.  The pre-Moriarty ones are really, really great.  After the noncommercial, we'll have some more music.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Liberty Bell (3:41)
Hungarian Rhapsody No 2 (9:04)

That was The Liberty Bell by John Phillip Sousa and performed by the United States Marine Band.  After that was Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 by Franz Liszt which was performed by the National Military Band.  Both are available from musopen.org and are licensed under a Public Domain license.

So, that's all for today.  I fully intend to do another cartoon music episode in the future - I do have more music lined up for it.  Remember - piracy of commercial music only proves your dependence on that model and justifies further censorship and restriction.  So don't pirate it - replace it with something better.

This episode was made using Xubuntu Linux, Gentoo Linux, Audacity, and gedit for notes, and is licensed under the Creative Commons Public Domain license, thanks to all of the music being available under Public Domain licenses from musopen.org.  I would much rather distribute these episodes under more permissive licenses and will be doing so when I can.  At any rate, feel free to give it to your friends, or if you didn't like it, your enemies.  Listen in next time for some xylophone and marimba music!  See 'ya!

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