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The title of this post comes from Nietzsche, while the video below comes from YouTube. This one-man band uses a looping pedal (if someone can tell me which pedal, that would be great) and is amazing. As one person commented on the video:

it’s so sad that rebecca blacks bullshit has 30 million something views, and this which is amazing only has 65,000 someone needs to fix popular culture

Yeah, well, as Nietzsche said, “Success has always been a great liar.”

I’ve been a fan of Diego Stocco’s since I saw his Experibass video a couple years ago. He’s up to new tricks with the Bassoforte:

I started thinking about how I could re-purpose the keyboard of the dismantled piano I keep in the garden, so I thought to build a new instrument by combining it with some other parts I had laying around. I ended up with this mechanical hybrid thing I thought to call “Bassoforte” (bass + pianoforte).

The neck is from a broken electric bass, as a bridge I used a cabinet handle, the pickups are from a guitar, and the part at the top where the strings are attached is a chimney cap, which works as resonator as well as percussive sound.

Susan Elizabeth Rotolo (November 20, 1943 – February 24, 2011), known as Suze Rotolo (pronounced Soo-zee), was an American artist, but is perhaps best known as Bob Dylan’s girlfriend between 1961 and 1964. She is the woman walking with him on the cover of his album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, a ground-breaking street image by the CBS studio photographer, Don Hunstein. In her book, A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties, Rotolo describes her time with Dylan and other figures in the folk music scene in Greenwich Village, New York. She also discusses her upbringing as a “red diaper” baby—a child of radicals during the McCarthy Era. Later as an artist Rotolo specialized in artists’ books and taught at the Parsons School of Design in New York City.

via Suze Rotolo – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

I keep telling my wife she has the rhythm to be a great drummer. She thinks I just need a drummer and that, anyway, we don’t have room in our house for a drum set. Maybe not — unless we get this kit.

Homemade acoustic panels. Why pay more?

I really like this idea for managing the acoustics in the the combined music-project room KJ and I are scheming on.

Acoustic treatments are often used to help improve the acoustics of a room by taming “flutter echoes,” “room modes,” and other problems which arise from a room’s dimensions and construction.

Although a variety of treatments are available for commercial use, they tend to be quite expensive. After some research both online and in print, we came across several sources for DIY acoustic treatments using rigid fiberglass panels and simple frames. These are often referred to as “bass traps,” although the ones that we’re focusing on have a fairly wide rage of absorption. While commercial versions are available for almost $100, we were able to make these panels for about $24 each.

For more information, check out the good folks in the acoustics forum at recording.org

via Make acoustic panels for your recording studio or home theater.

Here’s a slick and quick take on the banjo classic.

Devon Michelle Photography did a fantastic job of creating beautiful, memorable images for my friends Josh and Jill’s wedding. In addition to some great photos of the bride and her krewe, Devon Michelle took a couple cool ones of the band I was in for the occasion.

The Gile Wedding Best Band -- from right: Ted, Eric, the drummer from Richland, Ken, me

Captain, o my captain. Captain Beefheart in Toronto

Don Van Vliet — the iconic experimental musician known as Captain Beefheart — died today due to complications from multiple sclerosis at a hospital in Northern California, according to reports. He was 69.

From 1967 through the early ’80s, Van Vliet released some of the most challenging rock albums ever, which showed off his quirky knack for free-form experimental rhythms, avant-garde melodies, and his gruff, smoky howl.

via Captain Beefheart Dies at 69 | SPIN.com.

From Wikipedia: He began performing with his Captain Beefheart persona in 1964 and joined the original Magic Band in 1965. The group drew acclaim with their first album in 1967 on Buddah Records, Safe as Milk. After being dropped by two consecutive record labels, they signed to Frank Zappa’s newly formed Straight Records. Zappa as producer granted Beefheart the unrestrained artistic freedom to create and release 1969′s Trout Mask Replica, ranked fifty-eighth in Rolling Stone magazine’s 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band Live in Cannes, 1968:

This is so beautiful…. I love Playing for Change and the work they are doing. They’ve started several music schools in Nepal, Mali, Rwanda, Ghana, and elsewhere. You can help — make a small donation and direct toward a drum, a stringed instrument or, hell, just lay some bread on these folks.