ken zirkel » Music

Daughter’s band concert

Ken Zirkel — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 22:18:20 +0000

Daughter played a flute solo of The Star Spangled Banner to open her fifth grade band concert.

Star Spangled Banner from Kenneth Zirkel on Vimeo.

Musical evening

Ken Zirkel — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 02:09:52 +0000

Daughter has been taking up the flute. She practices regularly, and she’s getting pretty good. She knows some good Xmas tunes, and tonight we sat together and sang and played. Son has taken guitar and drum lessons in the past, but he hasn’t stuck with it. However, here he picked up the mandolin and pretended to play along.

Adding lyrics to songs in iTunes

Ken Zirkel — Tue, 19 May 2009 01:44:34 +0000

I’ve used PearLyrics to add lyrics to my iTunes songs for years (even after the program was withdrawn). PearLyrics was a widget that would automatically search the Web for song lyrics when a song was playing in iTunes, then add the lyrics to the song metadata. This was a pretty good system when I had a few songs, and played them a lot in iTunes.

Now my habits are significantly different. I have loads of songs, and I hardly ever play them in iTunes. I mostly play them on my iPod, but I still want lyrics in the songs. I needed a better system, and it was looking like PearLyrics was failing to work, anyhow. Here is what I figured out after doing some research:

1) I found an AppleScript called No Lyrics to Playlist. It examines your iTunes library and creates a NO LYRICS playlist, which will contain all songs that lack lyrics. This is a necessary first step: now I have one comprehensive set of songs which need lyrics.

2) I installed an application called Gimme Some Tune. Gimme Some Tune will seek out lyrics to the currently playing iTunes song (and album art, as well), and copy it to the song metadata. It has some nifty features PearLyrics does not.

3) I installed an AppleScript called Needle Drop. Needle Drop will allow you to sample each song in a playlist for just a few seconds each. It will play a song just long enough for Gimme Some Tune to find the lyrics to each song. No need to play through the whole song.

So there, after some configuration, I just ran Needle Drop on my No Lyrics playlist. After a short time, my whole iTunes library is set with lyrics and album art. Actually, Gimme Some Tune could not find lyrics for about 580 songs (out of 3900 total), for various reasons. But it was pretty good.

Dan Zanes

Ken Zirkel — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 01:57:21 +0000

Dan Zanes played a free concert in our town, so of course we had to be there. He doesn’t seem to mind cameras at his concerts, so of course I took my big camera and my big lens.

Afterward, Dan signed autographs and posed for pictures. The kids were too shy, so The Wife posed for one:

Flaming Lips

Ken Zirkel — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 01:13:44 +0000

Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, performing at an outdoor concert at the local university.

How did I get that spectacular angle? Why, it’s the old “put the camera on a monopod and hold it over your head” trick.

The concert itself was spectacular. I had never heard the Flaming Lips before. After the concert, I think I have a new favorite band. More photos from the concert.

Sufjan Stevens links

Ken Zirkel — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 14:44:58 +0000

For the past few weeks I’ve been, um, just a little bit obsessed with the melodies and lyrics of Sufjan Stevens. Here are two cool free Sufjan links I’ve found:

Interview on KPBS radio in which he explains the meanings of some of the songs from Illinoise
Lord God Bird, a song he recorded for NPR

Both links are downloadable MP3′s.