This week, the community of jazz saxophone players lost a prodigious peer.  Leroi Moore, a founding member of the Dave Matthews Band, passed away unexpectedly due to complications stemming from an ATV accident earlier this year.  Read more on the band’s website or on any number of other news sites.

I feel that I must offer some thoughts on this untimely passing.  I did not know Leroi personally, and have nothing to offer regarding his life as a man; I did however know him very deeply in a musical sense.  In the midst of a decade-old summer, I was introduced to his musical group, and was immediately drawn to their unique style.  As a budding saxophonist, one of the big draws for me was the jazz influence which was brought to the music, in part, by Leroi.  I was infatuated, and in the past ten years I have been enriched by the Dave Matthews Band through listening to studio and live albums, as well as attending several concerts.

Losing Leroi is most certainly a tragedy for his family and friends; the unexpected loss of a loved one is always painful, especially when survived by a parent.  But since Leroi had pursued a career humbly making music in his stage-left comfort zone, his life touched many more from a professional standpoint.  And his death represents an irrecoverable loss for his musical peers.  The band will not be the same without the man who added color and texture to their music with his saxophones and other winds.

My heart and prayers go out to Leroi’s family, former fiance, and friends.  I think I speak for the entire DMB community in saying that we mourn with you, and will continue to do so anytime we hear a recording of Leroi doing what he loved.

So I haven’t had much time for musing lately, seeing as my wife and I just closed on a house and we’ve been working on painting and fixing it up in every spare moment we’ve got.  But today I took the evening off and find myself catching up on computer-related items.  Which leads me to my mini-muse topic: my awesome squeezebox.

In the past I have wanted to listen to music via headphones while sitting at my computer.  Ordinarily I would be using my Audiophile 2496 sound card to run my PC audio through a halfway decent stereo, which I then either plug my headphones into or pipe through some halfway decent bookshelf speakers.  Well, in connection with the aforementioned house purchase, we are currently living in a temporary apartment, and in an effort to bring only the “necessities” I’m running my “simplified” PC setup – see below (no, I didn’t just sketch this up for the blog, I actually was trying to plan for how many power outlets I needed and whether I could get away with one power strip).

Anyway, my simplified setup is basically the same as my regular setup except I’m using the dinky speakers that came with the PC plugged into the factory sound card.  (Also, in the sketch note the “HD” and “Other HD” – my massive audio repository and backup drive, but still smaller than a breadbox.)  So, when I go to listen to my favorite losslessly compressed tunes via headphones, I get tons of PC noise in the background.  My workaround is to place the squeezebox directly next to the computer and listen to it, which is funny because the reason it’s cool is you don’t have to be chained to your PC.  But, I get crisp refreshing music for hours on end, so what could be better?

Currently playing: Guster’s Ruby Falls (love that mellow outro), plus had a surprising visit from Mike Gordon’s The Beltless Buckler earlier – how does he sing so low?

Maybe you’ve heard of the band Wilco. I originally heard about these guys from my brother in law, and quickly fell in love with their music. It was one of my typical overnight obsessions, where within a short period I procured their entire catalog. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that I embraced their music, since the name Wilco is short for “Will Comply,” and I am a somewhat compliant person (remember, my name is Matt, which means that I let people walk all over me).

At any rate, their latest album Sky Blue Sky is very nice. I recommend listening all the way through on headphones. In doing so, I really feel like I’m in the room as they’re recording it, which I love. Here are some highlights in case you didn’t believe that I listen really closely.

• The upbeat part of You Are My Face is great, especially the first couple bars. I love the piano native-american-ish lick at 1:33 (just listen for it and you’ll understand). And what’s not to love about a song that uses the word “happenstance” in its lyrics.
• After some rather laid-back and interesting verses, Side With The Seeds gets heated up on a two-over-three 6/8 feel (giving guitarist Nels Cline a chance to arpeggiate nicely, as he does so well). And who hasn’t stopped to ponder before if they’ll side with the leaves, or the seeds? Seriously, where do they come up with this stuff?
• After the subdued intro, Shake It Off rolls into a very groovy G groove which then gives way to some vibrato laden guitar licks. This song also includes my second-favorite part of the album: the fleeting dissonance as the guitar walks downward while maintaining the F on top (happens twice at 2:32 and 4:36). And don’t forget the tasteful use of cowbell as a demarcation in the stop-time chorus; Blue Oyster Cult could have certainly taken a page from that playbook (based purely on the impression SNL has given me).
• I love Hate It Here. If I ever get around to making another “Matt’s Mix” this one’ll probably be on there (and if I ever get around to blogging about “Matt’s Mix” then you might know what I’m talking about). From a thematic standpoint, the verses may seem too upbeat for the subject matter (a man lamenting his loneliness); their simple chord progressions are intermingled by fun and refreshing keyboard flourishes, and Tweedy’s vocals are somewhat hopeful. But the chorus lets the anger and frustration rip in the form of a heavy unison blues progression alternated by shouting vocals and raging drum fills to fill the gaps.
• If you like major sevenths and ninths (and who doesn’t), then Leave Me (Like You Found Me) is right up your alley. That’s all I’ve got for that one.
• Lastly, in a surprising twist, the title of the song whose lyrics speak of walking along is spelled Walken (see my reference to the infamous cowbell sketch above). And like Christopher, I’ve got a fever, and the only prescription is more Walken. [Not to beat a dead horse, but note also that Wilco played Walken live on SNL earlier this year.] Anyway, the fun with Walken starts when the group drops out leaving only a lone guitar sustaining a single note in a repetitive rhythm. The rest of the group gradually joins back in, but the original pedal tone and rhythm stays constant until, finally, the entire group lands on that same underlying theme for the conclusion of the song. And it’s within this building finish that I found my favorite part of the album: the first member to rejoin after the dropout is the drummer, and he does so with a fill that is so simple but also so cool, starting with straight eighth notes but gradually allowing them to swing as the rest of the song does (starting at 3:18). I just can’t get enough.

Although I didn’t cover all the songs, these highlights are what keep me coming back for more. The entire album is full of great nuances that you can’t pick out if you’re listening on your iPod while running through a busy city, so get yourself an actual CD or lossless copy, plug in, and enjoy!

… I love my Squeezebox more and more with each passing day.

[just downloaded "SqueezeCenter" (aka SlimServer v7.0) with glee]

OK, maybe it isn’t the straws themselves that suck.  But the way they’re packaged is pretty annoying.  If you’re not sure what I mean, basically the plastic wrap on the straw is too tight or something and they’re impossible to get out.  The typical way to remove a straw would be to hold the entire package and bang one end on a table; the ability of the straw to slide within the packaging allows it to pierce the end and emerge for your drinking pleasure.  The Subway people have decided it would be a good idea to make the plastic either too tight, or somewhat sticky (causing friction which prevents sliding), but either way the net result is a straw that’s impossible to unsheathe.  And I’m stuck doing the same basic method but only like an inch-worm (like Bob would say, baby steps).  And the plastic is pretty tough to tear, making the alternate method of ripping the middle and pulling from both ends (or shooting at your lunchmate) nearly impossible as well.

This might be the longest anyone’s ever put into ranting about a straw wrapper.  I feel better, almost good enough to go get another turkey and american on wheat with an undrinkable drink.

The story of my squeeze begins in the cold of winter around early January 2007. I had begun thinking that maybe it was time to buy an iPod, but wasn’t quite ready to take the plunge. Being a bit of an audiophile (or at least a novice/wanna-be audiophile), I was curious as to the lossless compression support of an iPod. So I googled “iPod audiophile” and eventually discovered a product called a Squeezebox, by a company called Slim Devices. It appeared to be a rather sexy looking, audiophile quality, music player, but with functionality not quite identical to an iPod. Rather than having onboard storage space, the squeezebox wirelessly (or wire-ly if you don’t have a wireless router) streams music from a computer. OK, I thought, interesting find but not exactly what I’m looking for.

Over the next several months, I would occasionally revisit the Slim Devices website, and I eventually built up a bit of an appetite for this Squeezebox. I crawled around the web a bit more, and found a very interesting blog post which discussed the item. And I discussed the item with a tech-savvy friend at work who agreed it was worth consideration. Then, for my birthday in September ‘07, I had some cash given to me which I needed to spend. It wasn’t enough to go for something huge, like say a nice musical instrument or a TV wider than I am tall. But it was too much to blow on CDs or books or bubble gum. Turns out it was the perfect amount to buy a squeezebox. So, without hesitation, I placed my order and anxiously awaited its arrival.

For the record, I bought a “Squeezebox version 3″, not the “Squeezebox duet” which has recently debuted. See picture below. The SB3, as it is called on the slimdevices forums, is a small unit with only a display; the accompanying remote provides the buttons for interface. I was able to immediately connect it to my computer using my wireless network (note that a software installation on the computer is required, which can be accomplished with a free download prior to receiving the unit) and to my receiver using a optical cable. And with shear joy, I browsed through a music folder and found some .flac files of a compilation CD I had burned called “Matt’s Mix 2005,” and was immediately immersed in Wilco’s “Can’t Stand It” from their album Summer Teeth. With my Athena subwoofer cranked, I melted at the amazing sound quality which was produced through my low-end Sony speakers.

Let me offer a quick sidebar about the file format I alluded to, .flac. This extension stands for “Free Lossless Audio Codec,” and is a commonly used lossless format which has taken the place of the format .shn (“shorten”) which had originally permeated the internet for the purpose of trading live concert recordings in the earlier part of the decade. Both formats are lossless, meaning a raw wave file is compressed without losing any information, and both offer a decent amount of storage savings (maybe 35-45%). Although some people say MP3 files can provide “CD quality” sound, this can’t possibly be true because the MP3 file removes some of the information from the original CD recording. Listening to FLAC files is truly CD quality. Since I’m only a novice audiophile, I won’t go into much more. Also, I do admit that many higher-bitrate MP3s are tough to distinguish from the original CD. But the whole point of using your computer to store the music is to have lots of space to keep large files, right? That way there’s no question.

So anyway, that leads me to my next point – ripping my CD collection. The slim devices wiki offers great instructions for getting CDs into an organized FLAC library with relative ease (i.e., as much ease as any repetitive process can have). I began by ripping my favorite CDs onto my decently-sized [secondary] internal hard drive [of 200GB]. However, I was presented with a problem. When ripping to FLAC, a good rule of thumb is that you can fit about three CDs per gigabyte of storage space. So, with only about half my 200GB drive free, I would only have room for roughly 300 CDs. For many people this would be enough space, but being a compulsive CD collector this wasn’t sufficient. Fortunately I could move forward with ripping CDs to the space I did have, and I began formulating a plan to expand my space.

I eventually determined that I needed an external hard drive. A big one. With Christmas approaching I began eying the Best Buy ads and dropping hints. Sure enough, my wife was good enough to buy me a 500GB external firewire drive. And with my cash gifts I decided to buy a second 500GB drive to allow me to back up the collection. Now I could rip 1500 CDs, and if that wasn’t enough I could forfeit my backup and go up to 3000 CDs.

It’s now been ~2.5 months since Christmas, and I have only filled about 20% of that 500GB drive, or about 100GB (that is to say, about 100 billion bytes – Windows tells me it’s 91GB, but that’s under the definition that 1GB is 1024MB, 1MB is 1024KB, and so on). With 100 billion bytes full, I have a total of 311 CDs on the drive. Pretty close to that rough number of 3CDs per 1GB. If anything that estimation is a bit conservative.

But the bottom line is (and yes, I have spoken these words out loud before), I love my Squeezebox more and more with each passing day. My most favorite thing to do is to put the entire collection on shuffle and see what comes up. It sure is fun to re-discover music I used to listen to a ton but have since forgotten. I love having the effect of a 500-disc changer on shuffle without the bulky size and sluggishness between tracks.  And the dependable wireless connection, painstakingly accurate FLAC files, and audiophile-quality hardware in the squeezebox make the experience a great one.

In choosing my settings and template and whatnot (by the way, wordpress gets an “A” for customizability), I opted for the hit counter in my sidebar. Just to set the record straight, I did this because I think it will be interesting to see how low it will stay.

And that will be the last time I comment on my assumed lack of traffic to this blog. Certainly I can find other things to write about besides how no one is reading what I’m writing. If not I’d better find a new hobby.

I’ve decided to start a new blog, mostly because I just wanted a place to write about anything and everything. A secondary reason is that the internet really needed one more blog, especially from someone with such an interesting name.

And that’s all I have to say about that.