Category: Uncategorized

By the name of the site “intellectualmusician.com,” I began to think about what this site could be about. I imagine a site where music is taken to another level – thought. I would imagine that the owner of the site is probably either a musician or someone in an academic world. I expect to see music from the eyes of the mind instead of the ear. I hope to see this take place. Hopefully someone can help the world understand the thought behind putting a music piece or composition together displaying the musicians thought behind the music rather than a catchy tune that all of us seem to enjoy as we turn on the radio today.

The site has a simple interface. It does not render well in IE 7.0, but there is a disclaimer on the site stating to use Firefox. I am not sure if this is done on purpose for kickbacks based on downloads of Firefox from the site or not, but since the majority of the world does use IE, I don’t feel this is a good thing. It is easy on the eyes and can clearly be placed into different categories. There is an area devoted to forums. These forums could be of use to many musicians. It provides a means by which musicians can discuss their opinions of music, and how to develop new music.

The site is, as expected, about teaching music and brining a new level of music to listeners. The site has 4 authors, Henderson, Mylotte, Gerson, and Oakleaf. Oakleaf appears to be the reason why intellectualmusician.com is currently in existence. The authors wanted a place for musicians to work together and grow as an organization – a group of musicians. All of them have extensive bios in music and education.

The site takes on a new meaning for beginners on the web. If you want to learn about playing an instrument, I would recommend you to check out intellectualmusician.com. It appears they have the knowledge and the professional skills to take a beginner with no knowledge and get them playing quickly. They focus on not just telling you what keys or strokes of the instrument to play, but they actually inform you about the instrument itself. They want the beginner to not understand music, but understand how to create music through the instrument. I feel their skills would be beneficial on any college music program. Their skills are not only growing together as a group of musicians, but they are providing information to help the world grow into music.
If you want to learn how to play the guitar any beginner should check out their articles on the composition of the guitar. I am sure that more instruments will be coming as releases on this site as it grows. They are currently trying to build their reader base and their membership so that intellectualmusician.com can be a centerpiece pushing the music industry to new levels.

This is a good site for any musician. Currently it is probably more geared toward beginner musicians, but as the site develops, I think the concepts will develop. I am sure the authors of the site would love for more advanced players to subscribe to their forums and offer up their personal advice as well. This site is highly recommended for the beginner musician.

I rate this site at a 3.75 for 2 reasons: the first is for a good site to be used it must be able to be viewed with many different browsers and the second is that it is still in the growing stages and is geared toward beginners and not the advanced musicians. I do believe that this is a good starting point and that it will grow with time to truly become the “intellectual musician”.
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First things first — I feel suddenly very, very old.

I’m 40. Should I be reviewing a site that focuses strictly on music that I am not listening to? I mean, I like to think I’m slightly more in tune with what is going on musically than the average 40 year old housewife who thinks Kenny Chesney is just so effin’ HOTTTTT in his wifebeater Ts, straw cowboy hat, pookah shell necklace, flip flops and swim trunks (insert swoony noise here).

I feel almost guilty giving this one a go. But that’s not going to stop me.

Kids Pushing Kids as a site has a decent layout. The colors are interesting and reminded me of the very first layout I had for my very first blog entry in 2001. The greens, the white, the overall simplicity. Nice.

The site has an “about” page (and I always head there first to gain thoughtful understanding of the mission the writer/s have in mind) and was happy to realize that I just read about Danielson in Rolling Stone recently… and I went to iTunes to get some of their music… so I didn’t feel too incredibly out of touch and felt somewhat at ease going through the site.

Kids Pushing Kids hopes to share mp3s of bands the author/s enjoy/s and I have to say that it is nice to be exposed to some new music. There are embedded YouTube videos, and embedded links to songs so the reader can listen while looking at the review. The site writer/s don’t let on where they are located geographically, so I am not sure if there is a specific local scene that they are into, or if they are trying to build an national audience.

I liked the mp3s and absolutely loved the music player, similar to the one I play when I listen to Guster concerts on Archive.org (yes, I am unbearably lame but proud of it, shut up) to help make the pain of my undeniably horrible workday lessen. But hated that when I went from page to page to read the archives in the sit the music stops. Feh. A standalone player to listen to the ten items on the playlist while flitting around the site would be a great improvement.

And I knew three of the ten artists on the playlist. You go ahead and guess which three. Be proud of my nineteen sixties born ass.

As for entries, mostly they focus on a band with an mp3 and an opinion. As I write this I am listening to Pterodactyl’s debut on Brah Records — “Esses.” It’s not bad, but I feel it falls apart at the end and bores me.

Other entries are “Shortlist” content which consist of a series of links and pack a few news items in for a punchy entry. (I love Human Giant too, so it was fun to read the little blurb about them taking over MTV). There are industry links and news items and not every entry is an opinion piece on a song or a band. So that’s nice. And unlike other mp3 sites, this one hasn’t had a lot of time to develop into a really heavy duty “oh we’re too smart for YOU and YOUR pedestrian allegedly indie tastes” kind of sites, where they discard the music of anyone other than their friends and mock mock mock like Paris drives drunk. But they do link out to those sites (Pitchfork was mean to Guster back in the day!!! and I’ll never forgive them!!!) so it is good to get a lot of different portal-esque coverage of the music scene.

Two criticisms. First — there are sadly not a lot of archives. I enjoyed the visit to the site, but felt like it should be reviewed in about a year. Perhaps a re-review will be necessary as the site grows beyond May and June archives.

Secondly, I immediately cringed at the Ads by Google at the top of the page(s) and the Amazon videos on the right navigation area.

It is hard to look at a site that focuses on up and coming music with a big fat ad at the top calling out for 2007 cutest kid of the year and 3d educational games.

Everyone needs to make money but … feh.

Now, my favorite indie bands are Dealership out of California, and The Knockout Drops out of Brooklyn NY… The Knockout Drops are as of this moment doing a kick ass Off Broadway show called Escape From Bellevue. Check them out! Consider me a kid pushing kids. I went to high school with lead singer Chris Campion. He rocks harder than any 20 something I’ve ever seen… and that’s saying a lot for a 41 year old man from Long Island.

I wish this site well, good growth, great success, and have added it to my personal blogroll.
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With a name of Tessellar > Blog I wasn’t quiet sure what to expect. Did this guy think he was better than a blog? If so what is his blog about? The only thing I did expect was that it would be a personal blog.

The first thing I noticed was that it was hosted by blogspot. Now I am not knocking them, but for a name of “I am greater than blog” maybe your own domain name would be slightly better. To top it off the blog has a slightly modified blogspot template that I have seen many times before. Unfortunately the template does nothing for the blog.

I quickly browsed the main page of the site for any indication of what I might actually be reading. I found a small blurb about the author and a couple of his sites. He is an architect in Malaysia and likes to talk about people and the houses and what not.

Now going through the blog I quickly discovered that I was very bored with it. The information provided is written as if it is for a history book. I was quickly reminded of all the boring little detailed things I was forced to memorize in high school just to pass a class. That isn’t to say the information is not well written, it is just not written to entertain.

The blog is about different houses and families and that sort of thing all through out the world. I must give the author some points for a unique blog, because I don’t think anyone else has quite done this before. The highlights of the blog were the personal stories about where he grew up. While these still read more like a history lesson than a blog, these at least had some grasp of outside readers’ attention spans.

Overall this is not a blog I would recommend. The topic is very narrow in who it will entertain. The author tries which is of course a big part of the blog. I do not wish this review to discourage the author from continuing his work. Merely I hope that this review helps him focus his attention towards the specific group of readers that would enjoy his site.
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I’m always looking for a new weblog to add to my list of daily must-reads/distractions. When I read the about section of catsandbeer.com, I had a good feeling I might be visiting it again and again: “Catsandbeer.com began as a pet project of Superbad co-creators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg and evolved into a humor website that has nothing to do with either of them.”. If you’ve seen Superbad (or watched any of Da Ali G Show), then this tells you exactly the sense of humor relayed through this site. If you haven’t seen Superbad, well, you’re dead to me.

Just last week, a friend of mine sent me the link to a recent entry called “The Top 10 Rap Songs White People Love”. I’m only black when I’m singing Kanye West in my car, and the rest of the time, the ten songs that were listed turned me into the best cliché rapper in all the land. One hundred and fifty one comments on that entry alone give readers a view into the type of crowd following along at catsandbeer.com – raucous, opinionated, and, according to the commenters, better qualified to choose that list of rap songs.

Some people Live Blog things like the MTV Video Music Awards, but not catsandbeer.com – they live blog a caterpillar that’s found its way to one of the authors’ front porch. Instead of deleting spam, the same author analyzes line-by-line the bulk email sent to him from the Penis Enlargement Patch factory’s marketing department. While it may not be humor to all, it’s damn funny to me.

Aside from the fact that this weblog matches my sense of humor, there’s more to see. There’s an occasional poll that seems to be most popular when it’s either picking between killing Frenchie Stewart and Chris Kattan, or deciding which notorious rap song was erroneously left off the aforementioned Top 10 list.

The layout’s a simple three-column layout, and the authors have filled the sidebars with a poll, and various ways first-time visitors can navigate around the site – the most popular articles, most recent comments, and various ways of archiving the entries. It’s a clean design and works well with the site as a whole.

I loved catsandbeer.com, but I don’t think everyone will. I wish everyone would, because it’d clearly make the world a much happier place.
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It seems to me there are not enough instructional sites on blogging catering specifically to people who are new to blogging. If you know your way around different CMSs or you’re very familiar with WordPress for instance but would like to be made aware of the latest helpful plug-in or theme, there are plenty of places where you can find this information.

I’ve talked to a lot of people who express interest in blogging but sound overwhelmed at the thought of what they would have to learn to get their own blog up and running. And while it doesn’t require a college degree, let’s face it, there is a learning curve.

BigBlogTool.com looks like a site geared specifically towards people who are tempted to start a blog and create a web presence for themselves, but really don’t have a clue where to begin. There are reviews of blog tools obviously, and pointers to tutorials and various tips from all around the web. There are also posts with general thoughts on blogging, where blogging is going as a medium, and what you probably do and do not want your blog to be. All good things to keep in mind as one gets their blog started.

It’s a good looking site using WordPress and the Thesis theme. It looks pretty informative and I found a couple plug-ins for WordPress that I didn’t know about. I would say that if you have a friend or relative who asks you where to look on the Internet to get started in blogging, BigBlogTool.com would be a pretty good site to suggest to them.NULL