Apple enthusiasts are often quick to point out that the iPhone would run out of batteries too quickly or the processor would not be strong enough to support snappy use of multiple applications.  This proves true in testing a jailbroken iPhone.  But the iPad Apple tablet does not get the same defense.  The carefully touted A4 chip should have no problem running a sophisticated 3rd party application and the native mail client at the same time.

This is big trouble as more complex games for the device are introduced.  For example Grand Theft Auto, The China Town Wars, is a complex 3D game recently released for the iPhone and iPod Touch. GTA: CTW has the potential to lose mission progress by dropping you back to your apartment every time the game is left unexpectedly.  While this clearly negatively affects the gamer experience, imagine how frequent push notifications begging gamers to leave for just a moment will affect more persistent, longer-session games like World of Warcraft.

The A4 is pretty tough chip and conceivably should have the ability to safely run multiple iPhone and iPod Touch applications, if not the more weighty future iPad-specfic titles.  So why isn’t multitasking being allowed?

Apple does not want people to use streaming music services like Pandora and Last.fm until it is ready with its own cloud-based, Genius-powered streaming music recommendation engine a seamless listening experience through the iPod application and iTunes.

Currently, the only ways to play back audio while running another application (crippled multitasking) are:

• Using the iPod application
• Downloading an mp3 or other audio attachment from an email and hitting play. (Plays back from within the mail application)
• Downloading an mp3 or other audio from the web. (Safari plays it back)

Similarly, the only way to playback streaming audio is using the Last.fm application, the Pandora application or a few other apps that use a recommendation engine to create lists of songs you do not own and stream them to you.  If Apple were to allow you to playback Pandora today on the iPad and work with the iLife suite to author documents they will be training you not to use iTunes!

“But they can’t get away with that!” That’s right, they can’t.  That’s why Apple will introduce its cloud-based iTunes offering either before or in tandem with the release of the next generation iPhone this coming around June. Using the brains acquired in the purchase of Lala, Apple will be introducing a mixed-mode local and cloudbased listening experience where any iTunes music collection can be played back in part on the locally stored disk or streamed from the cloud using an iPad.

Apple will use Genius to identify and stream audio to iPad users in its own competitive play against Pandora and Last.fm.  Once a strong streaming, Genius-powered solution is available to iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users future devices will be able to multi-task all applications, including the most threatening, streaming audio services.

Jobs made it a point to illustrate Apple has 125 million credit cards on file through iTunes.  Every streaming audio selection that is in turn bought by the user can be facilitated using that payment information.  Not the case with Pandora or Last.fm!  Denying these applications the ability to gain traction gives the iTunes ecosystem time to evolve to include their services.  This will make the future allowance of multitasking apps delivering this music less impactful in pulling users away from greatest cash cow in software’s history: iTunes.

I showed Dave a print of an owl in a suit I bought at  Crafty Wonderland barely touching on variety in the vendors and size of the crowds out that day to explore the local fare.  I remember walking among the booths, looking at a velvet painting of Michael Jackson and hearing The Thermals playing overhead.  It was Portland art celebrating Portland art.

Something I’ve noticed through an array of networking and business meetings I’ve set up is that Portland has attracted a powerhouse of technological and artistic talent.  There aren’t a lot of jobs, but there is a creative class of people ambitious to combine creativity with entrepreneurial behavior to produce amazing things. This is starting to attract publicity.

James Mercer, The Shins and Broken Bells

What does all this have to do with Broken Bells? Let’s take a look at the context around the release.  James Mercer, frontman for The Shins, decided to move to Portland a few years back. Recently keyboardist Marty Crandall and Drummer Jesse Sandoval were replaced by by Fruit Bats’ bassist Ron Lewis and Modest Mouse’s Joe Plummer.

Mercer suggested in May that a new Shins album could come in early 2010, but then in September announced a collaborative project with Brian Joseph Burton aka Dangermouse titled Broken Bells. The release of the first single off Broken Bells, “The High Road” on the 21st of this month was quickly overshadowed by what some are calling the “best Christmas present ever,” the complete leak of the album.

One listen and it is clear that Mercer aimed for and delivered a dashing mix of phonics and verse, doing well to combine his creative style with a bang up set of instrumentation from Burton.  When the album makes its official debut it is certain to be a hit.

In light of this new work it seems hard to believe a new Shins album will be dropping any time soon.  And to celebrate Broken Bells as a Portland achievement hold less water than to simply say it is heavily in association with the city.  The idea that Portland would influence the creation of an effort like Broken Bells seems to jive with what I’m seeing on the ground.  There are no doubt wonderful things yet to come from this city and I’m excited to see what else shakes out.

The less you need to carry around, the more you can focus on the music and artistic displays at Bonnaroo.  I put together two sets of Bonnaroo schedules formatted for the iPhone.  

 Download the 2009 Bonnaroo Schedule Formatted for the iPhone

Set one is meant to be saved as a athe following five jpeg images formatted for the iPhone in 480×320. The schedules are taken from Mizary’s printable schedule.  

It is pretty hard to read, you have to hold it close–but if you already know the band names and are already familiar with the schedule you’re fine.  

Set two is a set of larger, portrait-oriented daily festival schedules that you can just view from your photo gallary.  Here’s Friday (I included the inforoo brunch):

Here are two ways to get these onto your iphone / ipod touch:

A:

1. Download the zip of images at the bottom of this post.
2. Attach a set of the images to an email, send it to yourself.
3. Open the email on your iPhone, then tap to open each of the five images.
4. Tap and hold one of the images.
5. Select Save all 5 Images.

B:

1. Download the zip of images at the bottom of this post.
2. Add them to your photo library in iTunes and sync.

– For Wallpapers: Go to image gallery chose the action button and tap Save as Wallpaper. Change for each day of the festival For Portrait images: Just view through them in the photo gallery. 

 Download the 2009 Bonnaroo Schedule Formatted for the iPhone

I struggled with April’s song of the month, “Gifted,” which appears on the album  Spirit of Apollo by N.A.S.A.  N.A.S.A (North America / South America) is a project of Sam Spiegel aka Squeak E. Clean and  Brazilian DJ Zego spent five years assembling a gang of artists spilling across genres.

Performers on this record include:  George Clinton, David Byrne, Cee-Lo, Seu Jorge, Sean Lennon, RHCP, Tom Waits, Ol’ Dirty, RZA, Method Man, oh and Kanye West.

The struggle with choosing “Gifted” was that Kanye is on the track.  I was into Kanye before he failed his Bonnaroo performance so miserably in 2008.  Since then, I’ve felt the inclination to leave a room where his music is playing at a party.

Then South Park came and swatted Kanye down this past week.  It was a public thrashing that no one else could deliver, because he admitted to bad behavior and said “I need to just get past myself.  Drop the bravado and just make dope product.”

Speaking of the astounding effect of animation, the music video forGifted is an awesome work by Three Legged Legs.  Done in just three weeks, they put together a story of a crashlanded spaceman stuck on a deserted planet.  It has a sort of a Heavy Metal feel only scarier.  A full writeup on the video is available on their website.  They also have a full HD version available for download.

Congrats to everyone who went into creating Gifted and for Kanye for just barely not screwing it up for everyone.

People were going nuts.When I saw that the band had put together a mix of dance tracks for a new album,  Tapes (!K7), I had to check it out.  There are a lot of great sounding cuts on the record, but the stand out track is “Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll” which was originally released in my birth year of 1980 by Vaughn Mason & Crew.

The track is unchanged, but cheers to The Rapture for the back-of-the-crate selection.  I was a fan before I hit up Oak’s Park Jam Skate this past week.Here are some handy links to pick these up:

• Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll / Complete !K7 Tapes album
• Out Of The Races And Onto The Tracks 

Some friends on Facebook noticed that for a few days this past week Britney Spears was on my list of ‘favorite music.’  The music section of the Info Tab on my profile is usually limited to a select group of artists I would feel comfortable having a clear argument for recommending them to a stranger.

Example artists include:  Beirut, Cat Power, David Byrne, Jandek, Kraftwerk, Thom Yorke, Wilco, Joanna Newsom, and Lupe Fiasco.  Each of those artists makes list through a combination of the following:

• Songwriting
• Performance
• Influence on their genre or music in general
• Personal character and mystique

David Byrne is a four star example.  He still writes some fun songs and his work with the Talking Heads has had an undeniable influence on bands from Phish to Radiohead.  Having seen him perform at the Oregon Zoo, and knowing he tagged his last blog entry with “Anthropology/Sociology, and Current Affairs” is enough to convince me that his performance and personal character are well in order.

Britney Spears suffers in all categories.  She has songwriting credit on two of the sixteen songs on her newest album, Circus. A cadre of talent created the rest, including Arnthor Birgisson, Wayne Hector and Shelly Peiken.  Her past performance ability is probably her strongest suit today. My friend Zakiya toured as a backup dancer with Britney and has described her as very hard working in this regard.

But it is difficult to say that Spears herself has been influential because most if not all of her artistry is the work of other people’s efforts.  Ann Powers of the LA Times said explicitly:  “Musically, she turned a corner with 2004′s “Toxic,” when she fully matured into her role as a vehicle for other people’s experiments.”

Her lack of personal character and mystique are probably her biggest downfalls.  Her public behavior and dim interviews leave her without much.  All of this points to why she should never have made it  onto my Facebook profile.  Packaged assets for the Jive Records are not my “favorite music.”

<Fun side note: I was at a holiday / 30th birthday party last night and spoke with someone working at the photography company with a division specializing on photoshop.  Their company processed photo of Britney on the album cover for Circus.

I was told that normally the editing group does three to four review cycles before the client signs off on the work.  Apparently there were fourteen review cycles before the label would sign off on the editing of Britney for the album cover. />

On with the Guitar Tab

“Britney’s” songs can still be fun and the phonics can still be addictive.  I’ve taken particular interest in the song “Out From Under,” and decided to have a hand at producing an acoustic rendition of it for the guitar.  As long as my interest holds, I’ll improve the following guitar tabs and chords, updating the blog entry as appropriate.

If you can help me improve the guitar tab and chord list for Spears’ Out From Under, please post in the comments and I’ll incorporate your changes and give you proper credit.  Thank you.

“Out From Under” from the album Circus (credits)

Lead Vocals: Briney Spears
Written by: Arnthor Birgisson, Wayne Hector, Shelly Peiken
Produced by: Guy Sigsworth  (Seal, Alanis, Madonna, Bjork)
Guitar: Andy Page
Keyboards: Guy Sigsworth
Strings: Guy Sigsworth
Background vocals: Haywood, Leah

Guitar 1:
——————————–
——————————–
——————————–
——8——8——8———–
–13—–13—–13————-
——————————–
Breathe you out, Breathe you in…

Guitar 2:
———————————
———————————
———————————
———————————
—6–8–9—-9—6————
———————————
Breathe you out, Breathe you in…

Chord to Chorus
—6——————————
—7——————————
—6——————————
—8——————————
—x——————————
—x——————————
…I try to put it in the past…

Chorus
———————————
—7-7—6-6–4-4————–
—-8-8—8-8–8-8————-
———————————
———————————
———————————
I don’t wanna dream about

This is just a start at this point on tabbing this.  I think that the chorus needs the two guitar parts separated still, although I’d like to create a rendition for a guitar soloist.

Anyhow, three cheers for Saul Williams and his management for connecting with Musicane on the pre-order of his new album Niggy Tardust. (Yes, that is a racially charged album title. This guy has some pretty serious stuff to say to you.)

Musicane’s system for doing the pre-order was the slickest I’ve seen yet, offering a pre-order download of the 192kbps version for free or you could pay $5 and have access to 192kbps, 300kbps, or FLAC. I paid the $5 and it was worth it!

I received the notification email with the special link to download the new album this evening and once I arrived at the site it gave me an easy download of the FLAC which came to nearly 500 megs. Inside the Zip package was a folder with the album name on it, the album in FLAC, a cuesheet cue file to burn the disc, a playlist m3u file, a high res version of the album cover and a high-res version of the thirteen page booklet for the album in pdf!

Plus, I had all of the tunes in lossless. I fired up FLAC frontend and went to work getting the mp3′s into my library for my junky Zune.

Anyhow, I have to commend Saul Williams for hooking up with whoever coached him into this. Whoever put this digital download package together understands what music fans want and understands the technology through and through.

The difference is clear. Musicane and Saul Williams know the future of music. Radiohead’s management knows how to get a lot hype and deliver a crappy digital deliverable.