The Old Double Melman

Three years in the making, this is the official release of The Old Double Melman Adventures in QuickTime Musical Instruments, a CD now on sale at lulu.com.

This is in the tradition of music boxes and Raymond Scott. Gryltose is my answer to Scott's Powerhouse.



Many of the tracks are also available in lower-fidelity versions, here, free.

Among other software used in the making of this album are RedMoon's maxWerk, Motu's Digital Performer and Audacity. Graphics by Bryce, mostly.

History of General MIDI and QMI

The General MIDI spec was formalized in 1991. General MIDI (GM) implementations consisted of simulations of standard instruments like pianos, guitars, drums, fiddles and oboes, as well as sound effects like helicopters and birds. This gave the computer musician a built-in orchestra that was heir to those "consumer electronics" keyboards that Casio and others were selling. Once you had GM installed on your computer, you could create hours and hours of MIDI files and still be able to fit those files on the 2.8 meg diskettes of the day. If you fed the MIDI data from your computer to a different device, such as a Roland keyboard, the resulting music would sound similar.

QuickTime Musical Instruments was Apple's version of GM, first introduced in version 2 of QuickTime, their multimedia playing and editing software suite.

What we're talking about here is something meant to be the living room piano, a parlour orchestra to accompany the odd video game or slide show. The individual instruments often sounded like bits from 1970s vintage television show themes.

And so this became a folk instrument of the 1990s.

The Old Double Melman is the name I give to my technique of taking two identical (or NEARLY identical) tracks of music, processing them separately and then recombining them in a process I also call Brute Force Additive Synthesis.

Most of these tracks were created using Redmoon's maxWerk software (I think of it as being similar to a fabric loom.) Motu's Digital Performer was used for some arpeggiations and other tweakage. Apple's QuickTime Musical Instruments created the actual sounds, often two or more versions that were then individually tweaked and then recombined using Audacity.

_{(also available online, at archive.org)}

Flash-Embedded Players

I'm not a fan of profligate Flash usage, but a few sites that carry my stuff do let you play it that way. So here's a collection of those. Play them all at once for maximum confusion!

This plays my SoundClick stuff:

Medium-bitrate streaming from archive.org:

Higher-bitrate streaming from archive.org:

And here's YouTube's copy of the video "Haunts of Molly Zumwalt:

jj on archive.org

My albums are now available at archive.org in their full glorious fidelity FOR FREE, with graphics of the whole CD packages, if you feel like printing 'em up.

The Old Double Melman,
Cubeworld Vacation,
Ayatollah of Understatement.

Site offers downloads in various formats, as well as streaming. On the other hand, the site's also often very busy, so if things don't work out on your first visit, consider trying again.

Lumiere Brothers mp3s

Here are some Lumiere Brothers mp3s, available for downloading, put here with Brother Shireen's permission, since the band's official site is semi-offline at the time of this writing. I hope it comes back, 'cuz it was nifty.
The files are in mp3 format, and are each less than 3 meg in size. So get them all!

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Waves Of Our Own Making
Monday
I Blame The Scenery
Cotton Mather's Wooden Horse

Dino DiMuro mp3s

Dino DiMuro has been making music for decades and has released dozens of albums, first on audio cassette and now on CD. With his consent, I've mp3-encoded and uploaded the albums and tracks on this page. Enjoy!

To retrieve mp3s, use your favorite download maneuver. (Often, it's right-clicking and selecting "Save as ...")

And for even more enjoyment, here is a link to where you can buy some of his other stuff, here might be another page about him (it vanishes sometimes,) and here's his SoundClick page.

Adults Are Just Children with Longer Legs			1983
Track	Title	Bytes
1	Manic Outrage	2300576	mp3
2	Aside	2538387	mp3
3	Louie Saliva	1976239	mp3
4	Kaupher	2903269	mp3
5	Join the Seminary / Longshades	6068529	mp3
6	How Slick is Your Witness?	3847917	mp3
7	Bill Randalson's College Days	2265964	mp3
8	The Room	2336980	mp3
9	Encyclical	3230140	mp3
10	Raised as an Adult	2879066	mp3
11	Dylan's off the Train	2712722	mp3
Please Do Not Exit Through Playland			1984
Track	Title	Bytes
1	Kitty On The City Council	5325328	mp3
2	I Was Frightened Too	1298287	mp3
3	If I Had To Choose, I'd Pick Wash 'n' Wear	4006684	mp3
4	Voluntary Target (Kottke)
5	The Death Of Mr. Man	2123756	mp3
6	Simian Romp	2378729	mp3
7	Juanto	2220291	mp3
8	Please Do Not Exit Through Playland	5244672	mp3
Snoutburger Suite - The Song Masters			1986
Track	Title	Bytes
1	Snoutburger Theme	1142013	mp3
2	Jaunty Snout	1628095	mp3
3	The Voice of Moderation	2433513	mp3
4	Synth Passage 1	1503128	mp3
5	Snout Theme Reprise	2310629	mp3
6	Snout Secondary Theme	2175212	mp3
7	Snout Madness Theme	1139507	mp3
8	Intro to Chris	1462585	mp3
9	Chris	2346140	mp3
10	Synth Passage 2	1644818	mp3
11	Synth Passage 3	952678	mp3
12	Snout Madness Theme Conclusion	527210	mp3
13	Snout Theme Final Reprise	2163515	mp3
14	Chris Instrumental Version	1244424	mp3
15	Snoutburger Finale	2729007	mp3
I Have a Purpose			1988
Track	Title	Bytes
1	Introduction	1154503	mp3
2	Robot Margeret	4003733	mp3
3	Nicotine Lounge, Nevada	1136960	mp3
4	I Have a Purpose - Germinator	5333694	mp3
5	I Am The Bee	2132945	mp3
6	Home To A Misdeed	2593541	mp3
7	Playback	2159273	mp3
8	Fanfare - Laid Off Again	2127106	mp3
9	They Burned Up The Evidence - Monterey Guitar	3826967	mp3
10	The Berth Suite (Lost In The Sun - Barnsmore Gap - Sentinel)	9948415	mp3
11	Finale - Marie Anne	6866760	mp3
Sleeping Highway			2005
Track	Title	Bytes
1	Introduction	156457	mp3
2	My Other Marriage	3553635	mp3
3	My Name is Debbie	549344	mp3
4	The Lady of the House	3335882	mp3
5	My Name is Julie	958107	mp3
6	Highway Patrolled by Aircraft	3799824	mp3
7	Morley Street @ Dusk	928436	mp3
8	Gerard Wrote Tears of a Clown	4553405	mp3
9	My Name is Print	1891828	mp3
10	What RU Doing in my Life	4235753	mp3
11	Don't Do What?	238799	mp3
12	Fuzzy Grandpa	4464782	mp3
13	Regrets	2531716	mp3
Outtakes Universe			2005
Track	Title	Bytes
1	Suzanne In The Morning	1582201	mp3
2	My Notebook	2649240	mp3
3	My Name Is Print	1251171	mp3
4	We're Not The Rockefellers	1858894	mp3
5	Variations On Ringfinger	2014373	mp3
6	Castle Park Unused Intro	785155	mp3
7	I'm Alright For Tonight	2653431	mp3
8	Famous Paramount Backlot Blaze	1535816	mp3
9	Lonely Old Man	2109658	mp3
10	Sleeping Beauty	3103566	mp3
11	When It Blows Its Stacks (Beefheart)
12	Suzanne Yer Outta Site	2513834	mp3
13	Intermess Guitar Solo	2860321	mp3
14	Grassy Knoll Variations	3762697	mp3
15	Monsters In The Night	3878470	mp3
16	I've Been An Asshole In My Time	5420749	mp3
17	Terri Schiavo	4365384	mp3

Caleb Bullen

Caleb Bullen has graciously consented to my posting of several of his songs on this site. Files are in mp3 format, and may be obtained via your favorite "Save File" maneuver.

Creamed By a Bus 2.3 MB
Coffee Blues 1.7 MB
Cold In Here 3.0 MB
Emperor 4.3 MB
End of the World 4.0 MB
Mermaid 5.2 MB
Nevada 2.5 MB
Nevada (Gothic Version) 2.8 MB
Pedantic Panda 2.7 MB
Schmarab 4.5 MB
The Squirrel Song 4.2 MB
Who Doesn't Like Tits 2.4 MB

Caleb's now doing podcasts and other such things at his Black Tie Martini Club site. Go look and listen!