Posts

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The state of the internet, according to YT/Google

Are you logged into Youtube, like me? Do you get personalized recommendations, and does your browser filter out ads and other unwanted stuff? Wondering what might be hiding behind all of that? Read on…

My browser (ESR versions of Firefox, mostly – the only more or less “free” one of the big browsers) doesn’t have many plugins installed, but one I couldn’t live without is ublock origin. It gets most of the unwanted crap out of my view, and sites which even try to circumvent this won’t be on my daily list of sites to visit.

But one thing it did as I just found out is to also reduce the opening (self-) ads from Youtube – you saw a short flickering, then the usual list of new videos comes up. Wondering what might be behind that blocked content, I decided to dig out another browser which I rarely use, and which isn’t personalized (means me not being logged into anything), and which also doesn’t have any plugins installed. At work this morning that was Epiphany.

So let’s see what was flashing away from my eyes this morning:

Youtube opening screen, unfiltered

Aha. “Youtube Originals”, yeah I remember, had seen some of these announcements before – looks like they’re trying to become more of a real content provider (to monetize that of course). Ok. Not for me, thanks.

Under it, “Trending”, which I also never see normally. The state of mankind is a poor one if these are the topics of interest, frankly. Don’t want to be reminded of that each day, thanks. So let’s scroll down a bit more…

… where it becomes even worse:

The infamous Googe / Youtube “Topics”

“Topics” – yeah, these I see as well, and these are frankly a pain in your lower end. Ok, I get it – Google / Youtube knows nothing about me at this point, because I’m not logged in, so they show me the topics of most clicks or views or whatever their algorithm might be – and oh man, is this really the world we’re living in? What a strange species we must be…

I closed that browser after this, sorry, but cannot stand it. Google / Youtube is mostly wrong about getting my interest, but at least I don’t see crap like that when I’m being logged in. Instead of that, I see the umpteenth recommendation of old Miles Davis stuff, or Ella Fitzgerald just because I listened to *one* of her songs lately – but that is still worlds apart from… THIS (there was no other word coming to my mind, sorry).

It’s not only Youtube and Google – Vimeo or DailyMotion or all of the daily news aggregators aren’t much better, no one really has any kind of “artificial intelligence” which might be even worth that description of its own. Computers are thick (“Computer sind doof”), as a German pop song of the eighties used to state. Mostly of course, it’s *us* who are programming them. And we want self-driving cars, really? Robots in medicine? Thanks but no thanks.

Ok – enough of brutal truths of reality for one morning – now hand me that blue pill again, thanksverymuch…

Other news, for my/our German readers: in case you didn’t notice it yet, the German Wikipedia will be switched off tomorrow for 24 hours. Their form of protest:

Protest…

So read all about it today while you can – tomorrow you’ll have to do with English or other languages.

And as always, thanks for reading.

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The way home

A fun jam with Martin and Shi:

https://www.wikiloops.com/backingtrack-jam-160088.php

List of musicians, so far:

As always, thanks for listening.

And as always, if you’re a musician yourself, consider joining and playing with us – it’s fun! 🙂

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For Muriel (feat. Offfocus)

Here’s a fun track from fanne, Shi, Offfocus, and me:

https://www.wikiloops.com/backingtrack-jam-160016.php

Hope you like it as much as I do. And as always, thanks for listening.

If you’re a musician yourself: please join us and have fun at Wikiloops!

P.S.: a bit of background to this song:

For fanne, Muriel was his crush in high school, with unbelievably clear green eyes as he wrote in his template track. For others, it was the most beautiful girl in their grade school class (read all of this on fanne’s template track). Then Shi came and took it to the next level with her awesome story-telling lyrics. For me? Yes, there were Muriels in each school grade, in my class in primary school I had even two of them in the same class, one blonde, one with dark hair. I never took notice of them until my parents and teachers found out that I’m short-sighted. So I got a prescription and my first glasses – and fell in love with both girls.

Maybe it’s these stories which make the track so lovely… and of course Shi, and fanne’s wonderful composition, with Pat (Offfocus) on top 🙂

Thanks for reading.

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Installing and testing Joe’s Wikiloops plugin

Today I was reading the Wikiloops Howto and Forum sections again to see how one can contribute back, and promote Wikiloops a bit.

And sometimes it’s interesting to do just that and to see what others have done already. I found for instance Joe’s (jmrukkers) WordPress plugin that way – so I downloaded and installed it right away.

Joe describes two ways it should work, like with a single line, or the id in brackets.

So let’s test that with his latest two tracks here. For “Fun Time Funk”, I’ll try his method 1:

https://www.wikiloops.com/backingtrack-jam-159899.php

Hey, that looks cool – I now see the Wikiloops player embedded in the new “Gutenberg” editor. Wow.

Ok, his second method, with the track number in a bracketed ID now:

Hmmm ok – that doesn’t update itself in the editor, but then it wasn’t tested in WP 5.x and its “Gutenberg” editor – the plugin page says:

Tested up to: 4.9.10

(and I’m on WordPress 5.1.1)

So I’ll see after saving the thing as draft, or after refreshing the page… and yes, that worked as well, tho the first method is maybe both easier to remember and more direct in its result – showing you the track right away.

Anyway, great work from my friend and fellow musician Joe; thanks a lot for that, man!

In case you want to see us playing together, we did that already, in one of last year’s video collaborations – see here:

Reggae Town – wikiloops.com video collaboration series 2018

So that’s Joe and me together with a few more friends, some of which – including Joe – I have met shortly after this at last year’s members’ meeting.

Again, thanks Joe, and thanks to you for reading, viewing, and listening.

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Two photos of me

Here’s one from ca. 1976:

Wolfgang and a band, ca. 1976 Cologne (scan from a bad postcard-sized print)

And here’s one from ca. 42 years later:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/46675031664/
Wolfgang, 2018 Steinfeld

As always, thanks for looking.

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Listen to the bass…

Stumbled upon some videos with killer bass lines again lately – and here are two three of them. First, a cute one (and females seem to like it because of the man depicted there) of singer/bassist/professor Esperanza Spalding, with herself as main actress:

Esperanza Spalding – I Can’t Help It

Then, a duo. One of the greatest guitar players of all time, Joe Pass, but listen to Red Mitchell on bass on this one (which is again one of my most favourite songs ever):

Joe Pass & Red Mitchell – Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise (live)

Oh, and you probably knew already that Michael League from Snarky Puppy is a killer bass player also, didn’t you? Here’s some ‘making of’ of one of the songs from their latest album “Immigrance” which should be out right now:

Snarky Puppy – Xavi (Behind The Scenes)

Love that African polyrhythmic vibe of this one – the drums, the handclaps, everything. Oh, and the cats of course!

That’s all for now folks – and it’s all on my wishlist at the big dealer’s place…

As always, thanks for reading / watching / listening.

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Mari Boine

A thread over at talkbass.com asked about favourite vocalists. I gave three answers (#27, #59, and #229) so far, naming a few which came to my mind.

As you can probably guess in case you know me or read these pages since a while, my answers were almost all more or less not very mainstream. And one of my most favourite still living artists besides my friends from Wikiloops is Marie Boine. I first heard her on Jan Garbarek‘s album “Visible World” with a song they called “Evening Land” (Jan Garbarek, Mari Boine) – but she had that before, and named it “Goaskinviellja / Eagle Brother”. Here she performed it some 10 years ago in Oslo:

Mari Boine – Goaskinviellja / Eagle Brother (Oslo Opera House, 2009)

So totally not from this world, hm? And at the same time this Sami singing somehow reminds me of American Indians, so maybe we could call those Sami the European Indians?

Anyway – when Youn Sun Nah was once asked about influences, she not only named Tom Waits but also Mari Boine. Who is awesome.

As always, thanks for reading / viewing / listening.

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A song, older than me. And a new one.

I recently discovered “Cry me a river”, a song composed and first published in 1953 by Arthur Hamilton (see the song’s Wikipedia and JazzStandards pages).

And since Mr. Hamilton originally wrote this for Ella (yes, *the* Ella Fitzgerald!), here is her version of it:

In 1955, it was recorded by Julie London – and even if you’re younger, you might know her version from a movie (“V for Vendetta”):

Some friends of mine from Wikiloops, French guitarist OliVBee and also French singer marmotte also recorded a very beautiful version of it and uploaded it to Youtube:

Chord progressions cannot be copyrighted (for a bit of background in formation (in German) on copyright, cover versions, and so on, see an article in Sound & Recording for instance), so a bit later OliVBee uploaded a slightly changed version of it as “Tears Made Of Silver” onto the loops for people to get creative with these chords.

And then came Shi (from England), and she developed a story not about herself being sad like in the original, but about a missing girl called “Emily”. And then Wade (from New Zealand) played a beautiful sax onto it, finally making it irresistible for me (to not jump in).

I’ve shown it before on these pages, but here it’s again for comparison: “Looking for Emily”:

This track is embedded with the friendly permission by the creatives on wikiloops.com.

And the list of musicians on this is:

As always, thanks for reading, viewing, and listening.

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Take a rest (video)

Made a short video of my latest collaboration on Wikiloops:

Wikiloops collaboration #159026 – Take a rest

It shows that I haven’t used many effects, just a bit of eq and compression. It also shows the Wikiloops page of the track, and our cat who took a rest (which is what cats do best) 🙂

Enjoy…

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Take a rest

What a nice track from Offfocus (Pat) – and today I could finally play along a bit, and re-upload it:

This track is embedded with the friendly permission by the creatives on wikiloops.com.

And that’s just him and me in this version, until now:

As always. thanks for listening.

Update, from the same evening: got a first remix already, some keys from “ecsponger”. And he also renamed the track to “Tranquility Base”:

This track is embedded with the friendly permission by the creatives on wikiloops.com.

That makes it the following list of musicians so far:

And thanks again for listening 🙂