What does it mean to be a Singer Songwriter?

I was pondering what is the difference might between a singer/songwriter and a group. Obviously in the former the recording contract is in an individual’s name and for the egos a name up in lights and perhaps a different award category to groupd (yes another month or so and we’ll be thinking about Album of the year etc). But is that it?

You may jump up and, you fool its obvious, the song writing credits, but then very few groups collectively write lyrics; nine times out of ten the singer is also the lyrist – sensible really he has got to get his mouth around the words. Not convinced, lets look at some example – U2 – Bono; Coldplay – Chris Martin; Radiohead – Thom York. Yes some groups have multiple contributors lyrically, but they’re in the minority.

So is it the music? This stands a bit better to closer scrutiny but not by much, many singer/songwriters have had the same musicians working with them for years and contributing to the music composition process, for example Tom McRae and Jamie Cullum. At the other end you have bands where one on individual has been the common factor, and often extremely strong in their vision that the music is heavily based on their input, for example The Fall (Mark E Smith is the only common factor on all albums) and Yes (Chris Squire is the only common thread).

So next time you’re tempted to pigeon hole someone as a singer/songwriter think about it.

Project Mag

I was browsing through this month’s hot and popular apps in iTunes store and came across Project Magazine which claims to be the 1st magazine dedicated to be published only via the iPad.

The magazine has got some creditable names working on the magazine and backed by Virgin Digital Media – so far so good. So I thought I’d download the app see if I can see any of the magazines’ writing – the electronic equivalent of leafing through the magazine on the stand before buying. Sensibly the app offers an issue preview option before buying at £1.99 (not bad when you think Esquire, FHM etc cost best part of £5 per issue).

So I thought I’d preview the latest issue, what you get is a full screen view of the current issue’s cover, something you can read and see without asking for a preview. Talk about fall down on the final hurdle. Even the web offering of the major press allow you to see some of their writing before subscribing. A key buying incentive is seeing the magazine and getting the feel of what will be like.

Perhaps Project Mag will realise this quickly and soon, otherwise they’re going to be missing sales, and probably lots of them.

Einstein for the Masses | Open Culture

Einstein for the Masses | Open Culture.

Tappers website

I’ve been looking after the Basingstoke Tapper’s web site for some was now. I ave to admit that the site was starting to get a bit stale. But now I’ve handed on the domain to new blood. I’m kind of sad to be passing it on, but time for new blood and probably a relaunch.

Jac Holzman’s Elektra records

I’ve finally finishers reading the weighty volume on Jac Holzman’s and Elektra records. Elektra as you probably know was probably one of the most influential indie labels thought brought us the likes of The Doors. But as a label it had more humble beginnings with a lot of Folk and dare I say world music (long before we called it that).

Reading of the book is a little slow to start with – probably because I’m not so familiar with early New York folk (pre Dylan) and trying to place things into the context of what I do know. But as things move on the book becomes more and more engrossing. It is amazing to see what Elektra and Jac achieved putting the artist and music before all else (rather the than manufactured X Factor world).

having finished one substantial music book, I’ve jumped straight in with another – The Man Who Recorded The World, A Biography of Alan Lomax. Unlike Elektra, I only know the smallest amount about Lomax, namely his contribution to music history for recording original African American music. I’ve not read all the book yet, but it’s a very engaging start.  If you want to know more about the author and the book then go to http://www.johnszwed.com/about-the-book

Mixed in with this is the reading technical books such as parts of Thomas Erl’s SOA Book series, and some light reading with the like of Iain M Bank’s Surface Detail.

Boxer Rebellion

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Peter Kay at the O2

Peter Kay at the O2, a photo by Phil & Catherine Wilkins on Flickr.

A couple of pics from Peter Kay at the O2

Monkey shows us how to deal with Boss

OSGi In Depth – A Review

OSGi In Depth

When I first came across OSGI In Depth (was originally called Enterprise OSGi In Action during its Manning draft stages) I had to ask myself whether the same publishing house could justify another book on OSGi when they had already published OSGi In Action a year or so before.

Having now read both I have to say that there is a case for both, yes there is a degree of overlap – but that is necessary to set background.  The In Depth book is very much geared up for architects and looks at the technology from a architecture and design consideration with some very honest insights and good practices.  The In Action is better suited to developers that need to know about all the different interfaces.  The two books are very complimentary, where to start obviously depends upon where you’re approaching OSGi from.

In Depth can at times feel feel a little be discouraging read, but upon reflection what  you’re reading is actually very honest worts and all set of insights. Lets be honest how many J2EE books go into the challenges, and headaches of getting entity EJBs to be highly performant, not to mention the deployment challenges that could be faced with versioning of the underlying database if your selling production solutions that should be easy to upgrade.

When you get past this, there are some seriously valuable insights into possible dead ends that you could go down or catch you out later on if you don’t do that up front thinking about how you want to package, deploy and upgrade during the earlier phases of a development programme.

The book illustrates the way to address a number of these, and provides a number of design patterns. The book does miss a trick of providing these patterns as an appendix where they can be easily referred to for reference only.

Over all this is a valuable read, particularly you’re looking at OSGi from an architectural perspective (as I am).  Rather than try and review each chapter I have developed a mind map to help show content of each part of the book  (of course this means I have a memory jog if I need to come back to specific issues).  The mind map of this can be found at http://www.mp3monster.org/new/techie/MindMaps/OSGi-In-Depth.shtml

Beyond Software Architecture

I’ve been reading Beyond Software Architecture – although there is nothing particularly new here, it was useful in helping me distill all the different things that as an Architect I try to take into account.  Given the process of distilling thoughts I ended up choosing to mind map my thoughts.  The maps can be found at:

• Beyond Software Architecture – Part 1
• Beyond software Architecture – Part 2

These use a freemind flash renderer, so aren’t very i<something> friendly, so here are the native freemind links:

• Beyond Software Architecture – Part 1
• Beyond software Architecture – Part 2

I hope these help.