November was a big month for hip-hop and R&B music. The first hot release was Cee-Lo Green's new album, "The Lady Killer."
In reviewing this album, I spent a lot of time listening to the album. I quickly uploaded all the music onto my iPod, so that I could listen to it while I was doing other things. I actually repeated it a few times, just to let the sound soak into my brain.
I liked the album, but I had a tough time putting those feelings into words. After writing everything to the end, I only had about 300 words. I then thought that there were quite a few things that I really wanted from the album.
Cee-Lo decided to go completely Motown for this album. Every song seemed to have a similar sound of soul music. However, Cee-Lo's solo performance still couldn't match the magic he had when he jammed in his side project band, Gnarls Barkley.
That band threw in every creative mish-mash imaginable. For instance, their song "Feng Shui," was a cool rap song to some funky mix of kung-fu-styled keyboards and string arrangements. To make matters even more interesting, Cee-Lo was rapping about how he perfected the art of Feng Shui whenever he produces music. It was the weirdest cross between Shaolin monk music and R&B. It was completely original.
I just didn't hear this funky influences in Cee-Lo's new album. Sure, the "F*** You" single on the album was pretty funny, but it just lacked that extra special spark. He needs his old partner in Gnarls Barkley. He needs DJ Danger Mouse.
Of course, Danger Mouse can't stay with him forever. After all, Danger Mouse often produces multiple albums for musicians. Right now, he's promoting an album with James Mercer in a new side band, Broken Bells. As much as I like Danger Mouse's projects, Broken Bells just isn't as interest as Gnarls Barkley. I wish Danger Mouse would stick with Gnarls Barkley, beccause they were the group that truly reinvented a new brand of hip-hop with Motown and psychedelic rock.
With all that said, it's been a while since I've listened to a good album. Cee-Lo Green always produces great music. I just hope that he gets together with Danger Mouse someday.
Read my review here.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Soundslide journal: The Muslim Student Association (Part 2)
The soundslides for the Muslim Student Association's Hijab Day took longer than expected, because of frustrating technical issues with the Mac programs.
At first, the project seemed like a simple matter of editing sound files with Garage Band. When Risa and I first used the program, it would easily cut and paste all the portions of our sounds. It took some time to figure out how to properly add the recordings into iTunes, but from that point on, we easily cut our recordings down to two minutes and 30 seconds.
Then everything started to malfunction.
When I finished my edits on Nov. 3, I gave my Garage Band mp3 to Risa so that she could organize all the pictures to the sound file. I left campus for the day. Then Risa texted me.
"The soundslides won't open up!"
I drove back to the newsroom and tried to fix the file. Unfortunately, Garage Band had issues with the recording files we were trying to convert into a mp3. We didn't know if we had the recording files in the fight place, but nothing was working.
After what seemed to count up to one hundred program crashes, we decided to edit our recordings by using Audacity. I edited the sound files and sent them to Risa.
From that point on, we were unable to finish all our edits that week, because the newsroom closed much earlier than we expected. We had to budget our time wisely so that we could finish the presentation on time.
We finished almost everything on the Mac for Nov. 9. The next day, Risa had even more issues with the Mac.
"Im so mad!! The file i edited is longer there," Risa said in her text message. "And now im starting all over again with garage band."
Thankfully, she was able to find the file after hunting for it. We finished everything on Nov. 10. After all that aggravation with the Mac programs, we really didn't want to use a Mac anymore.
Overall, I really like how the soundslide turned out. However, Apple definitely should give their customers a free Garage Band update. The old version is riddled with bugs. Our program crashed almost every 10 seconds. It couldn't handle large audio files.
Even the Soundslides program is a trial-by-error process. Sometimes we had to rename our photo files. If we edited the photo, we had to rename it. Otherwise, it would only bring up the previous, unedited version. No matter what, we couldn't remove the previous photo with the same name from the program's memory.
I'm sure that an actual newsroom has a more up-to-date program lineup. However, even new programs cost thousands of dollars. Even if this is the way of the future, somebody should lower their prices to make matters easier. That's just my opinion, though.
At first, the project seemed like a simple matter of editing sound files with Garage Band. When Risa and I first used the program, it would easily cut and paste all the portions of our sounds. It took some time to figure out how to properly add the recordings into iTunes, but from that point on, we easily cut our recordings down to two minutes and 30 seconds.
Then everything started to malfunction.
When I finished my edits on Nov. 3, I gave my Garage Band mp3 to Risa so that she could organize all the pictures to the sound file. I left campus for the day. Then Risa texted me.
"The soundslides won't open up!"
I drove back to the newsroom and tried to fix the file. Unfortunately, Garage Band had issues with the recording files we were trying to convert into a mp3. We didn't know if we had the recording files in the fight place, but nothing was working.
After what seemed to count up to one hundred program crashes, we decided to edit our recordings by using Audacity. I edited the sound files and sent them to Risa.
From that point on, we were unable to finish all our edits that week, because the newsroom closed much earlier than we expected. We had to budget our time wisely so that we could finish the presentation on time.
We finished almost everything on the Mac for Nov. 9. The next day, Risa had even more issues with the Mac.
"Im so mad!! The file i edited is longer there," Risa said in her text message. "And now im starting all over again with garage band."
Thankfully, she was able to find the file after hunting for it. We finished everything on Nov. 10. After all that aggravation with the Mac programs, we really didn't want to use a Mac anymore.
Overall, I really like how the soundslide turned out. However, Apple definitely should give their customers a free Garage Band update. The old version is riddled with bugs. Our program crashed almost every 10 seconds. It couldn't handle large audio files.
Even the Soundslides program is a trial-by-error process. Sometimes we had to rename our photo files. If we edited the photo, we had to rename it. Otherwise, it would only bring up the previous, unedited version. No matter what, we couldn't remove the previous photo with the same name from the program's memory.
I'm sure that an actual newsroom has a more up-to-date program lineup. However, even new programs cost thousands of dollars. Even if this is the way of the future, somebody should lower their prices to make matters easier. That's just my opinion, though.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Soundslide journal: The Muslim Student Association (part one)
For much of the last three weeks, I spent lots of time editing a Muslim Student Association soundslide with Risa Chuman. She dedicated plenty of time to work on the edits, so I really owe her for a lot of the work she did.
In this project, we took photo and audio recordings from the Muslim group's Hijab Day event. For this occasion, the group posted a desk with hijabs for women to wear on Tuesday, Oct. 26. The participants would borrow a hijab (head scarf) and wear it for the whole day on Oct. 27. Then they would talk about their experience at the Muslim Student Association's meeting on Oct. 28.
The photo shoots were the easiest part of the entire project. Risa was having some technical problems with her camera, so most of the photos were from my camera. I'm still nervous whenever I take photos, so I really have to get used to taking photos at public events.
I thought part of the project would end up as a photo journal of Risa's experience in taking the Hijab Day challenge, so I took some pretty funny photos of Risa. She smiles and laughs a lot, so she was very photogenic for the occasion.
By the time we were finishing the story, though, Risa wanted to focus more on the other students who participants. I would have liked to publish her photos, but the decision really helped us focus more on everyone else's perspective.
The last part of the soundslides project was a recording from the Muslim Student Association meeting. The recording actually was the least useful part our project for the entire week. I was upset that I couldn't include some of these interesting discussions about religious rights for women.
In many ways, the Muslims at the meeting were much more progressive than many other Americans were. The Muslim Student Association president, Zakiya Khalil, especially had some interesting discussions about how the hijab actually liberates women.
"When you're covered up, you don't have to please anyone else," Khalil said. "You are how you are. You don't have to please that person or that person, because you should be content with how your body is. You should respect yourself and honor yourself and be a dignified human being."
Khalil also spoke about how women without a hijab have to constantly worry about how their hair looks. In some ways, a hijab helps to teach women that they don't have to set themselves apart from everyone else just to be dignified.
"Today, we see people doing crazy things," Khalil said. "Like, they're wearing the worst clothes and they're being constantly uncovered. So I don't know if that means they're being liberated. In Islam, if you're covered up, you're liberated, because you don't have to please anyone else. You just do whatever you want because you want to do it."
The discussion actually counteracts many American perceptions of Islam. American television is almost constantly obsessed with showing how the hijab imprisons women to live in impoverished communities under the scrutiny of all the men in the country. I've seen this awful misconception all the time on CNN and various other news networks, reported by people such as Christiane Amanpour.
Ironically, Amanpour held an even more racist debate on the October 24 program of "This Week" on ABC. It involved people who are presumably members of the Muslim community in New York. Her big question was probably the stupidest question: "Is Islam dangerous?"
Of course, it isn't a dangerous religion. It is focused on pleasing Allah, who cares for all living things. However, her panel consisted of a few moderate Muslims and lot of lunatic radical Muslims. The entire program was rigged to make us think that the Muslim community is divided by extreme tension between fundamentalists and moderates.
I couldn't help but wonder if these people were paid by ABC to act this way. Then again, the Muslim communities in other Southern California cities vary from place to place. For example, the Muslim Student Association at Cal State Long Beach often had guest speakers who spoke out in public about how the U.S. government is a bunch of hypocrites.
I wonder if it's even possible for anyone to act sane at a time when America is at war with the Middle East. Whatever the case, I'm glad that El Camino's Muslims are truly acting with the spirit of Allah.
War stinks.
In this project, we took photo and audio recordings from the Muslim group's Hijab Day event. For this occasion, the group posted a desk with hijabs for women to wear on Tuesday, Oct. 26. The participants would borrow a hijab (head scarf) and wear it for the whole day on Oct. 27. Then they would talk about their experience at the Muslim Student Association's meeting on Oct. 28.
The photo shoots were the easiest part of the entire project. Risa was having some technical problems with her camera, so most of the photos were from my camera. I'm still nervous whenever I take photos, so I really have to get used to taking photos at public events.
I thought part of the project would end up as a photo journal of Risa's experience in taking the Hijab Day challenge, so I took some pretty funny photos of Risa. She smiles and laughs a lot, so she was very photogenic for the occasion.By the time we were finishing the story, though, Risa wanted to focus more on the other students who participants. I would have liked to publish her photos, but the decision really helped us focus more on everyone else's perspective.
The last part of the soundslides project was a recording from the Muslim Student Association meeting. The recording actually was the least useful part our project for the entire week. I was upset that I couldn't include some of these interesting discussions about religious rights for women.
In many ways, the Muslims at the meeting were much more progressive than many other Americans were. The Muslim Student Association president, Zakiya Khalil, especially had some interesting discussions about how the hijab actually liberates women.
"When you're covered up, you don't have to please anyone else," Khalil said. "You are how you are. You don't have to please that person or that person, because you should be content with how your body is. You should respect yourself and honor yourself and be a dignified human being."
Khalil also spoke about how women without a hijab have to constantly worry about how their hair looks. In some ways, a hijab helps to teach women that they don't have to set themselves apart from everyone else just to be dignified.
"Today, we see people doing crazy things," Khalil said. "Like, they're wearing the worst clothes and they're being constantly uncovered. So I don't know if that means they're being liberated. In Islam, if you're covered up, you're liberated, because you don't have to please anyone else. You just do whatever you want because you want to do it."
The discussion actually counteracts many American perceptions of Islam. American television is almost constantly obsessed with showing how the hijab imprisons women to live in impoverished communities under the scrutiny of all the men in the country. I've seen this awful misconception all the time on CNN and various other news networks, reported by people such as Christiane Amanpour.
Ironically, Amanpour held an even more racist debate on the October 24 program of "This Week" on ABC. It involved people who are presumably members of the Muslim community in New York. Her big question was probably the stupidest question: "Is Islam dangerous?"
Of course, it isn't a dangerous religion. It is focused on pleasing Allah, who cares for all living things. However, her panel consisted of a few moderate Muslims and lot of lunatic radical Muslims. The entire program was rigged to make us think that the Muslim community is divided by extreme tension between fundamentalists and moderates.
I couldn't help but wonder if these people were paid by ABC to act this way. Then again, the Muslim communities in other Southern California cities vary from place to place. For example, the Muslim Student Association at Cal State Long Beach often had guest speakers who spoke out in public about how the U.S. government is a bunch of hypocrites.
I wonder if it's even possible for anyone to act sane at a time when America is at war with the Middle East. Whatever the case, I'm glad that El Camino's Muslims are truly acting with the spirit of Allah.
War stinks.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Tired and busy
For most of the week, I was worried that I couldn't find all of the camera equipment to return to the journalism professors.
I had lost the SD card reader that came with the video camera. It was painted in a tacky silver color that made it look really cheap. It also looked very much like my card reader for my old Palm PDA device. Thankfully, I found everything.
The rest of the week was much more enlightening. I took pictures of the Muslim Student Association's Hijab Day. The club decided to hold an event where women could borrow one of the group's hijabs to wear all day on Wednesday. Me and my partner, Risa, were working to produce a soundslide out of all the pictures and audio recordings.
I wasn't sure how the event would turn out at first, but many people visited the club's desk in front of the Library. They were really interested in living life as a Muslim woman would.
The club meeting gave me and my partner a fascinating perspective on why they prefer to wear hijabs. The president, Zakiya, said that Muslim women don't have to worry as much about what they have to wear. They don't even need to think about styling their hair, because the hijab covers it up.
A hijab really makes women more modest. I just hope that everything will match up with the audio. I also have to find this old receipt on which I wrote some of the members' names. I hope I find the names soon. Otherwise, I won't be able to write quotes for those people.
Well, I'd better look for it.
I had lost the SD card reader that came with the video camera. It was painted in a tacky silver color that made it look really cheap. It also looked very much like my card reader for my old Palm PDA device. Thankfully, I found everything.
The rest of the week was much more enlightening. I took pictures of the Muslim Student Association's Hijab Day. The club decided to hold an event where women could borrow one of the group's hijabs to wear all day on Wednesday. Me and my partner, Risa, were working to produce a soundslide out of all the pictures and audio recordings.
I wasn't sure how the event would turn out at first, but many people visited the club's desk in front of the Library. They were really interested in living life as a Muslim woman would.
The club meeting gave me and my partner a fascinating perspective on why they prefer to wear hijabs. The president, Zakiya, said that Muslim women don't have to worry as much about what they have to wear. They don't even need to think about styling their hair, because the hijab covers it up.
A hijab really makes women more modest. I just hope that everything will match up with the audio. I also have to find this old receipt on which I wrote some of the members' names. I hope I find the names soon. Otherwise, I won't be able to write quotes for those people.
Well, I'd better look for it.
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