How to write a song and other mysteries

June 19, 2008 9:27 AM

Andrew Bird dishes on recording in the Wilco Loft. Roseanne Cash discusses the songwriting process, and follows up a bit later. Darrell Brown talks about everything, and Suzanne Vega laments being a two-hit wonder. They are all part of the wonderful Measure for Measure blog from the New York Times.
posted by timsteil (11 comments total)

I've been enjoying that blog as well, it was subscribe at first sight.

Although I'd posit that Suzanne Vega is lamenting the tools that describe her as a two-hit wonder, not actually being one.
posted by kingbenny at 9:44 AM on June 19, 2008

Jim White is over here talking songwriting and whatnot and it is good. There are one, two posts. This don't have nothing to do with New York Times, but songwriting made me think of this.
posted by kylefreund at 9:47 AM on June 19, 2008

Andrew Bird post was just what I needed right now, having spent the last couple months in the studio losing my mind. Thank you.
posted by rooftop secrets at 9:48 AM on June 19, 2008

This is great--just got through the Andrew Bird one and am looking forward to more.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:50 AM on June 19, 2008

Nice find. Thank you.
posted by washburn at 10:31 AM on June 19, 2008

Yes, this is great.
posted by Bearman at 10:40 AM on June 19, 2008

It's kind of funny she put in so much work crafting Luka into a radio-friendly unit shifter and then three bratty kids Boston made their bones by banging out a lo-fi cover in one take.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 11:46 AM on June 19, 2008

The best part about this post is that, by following the Suzanne Vega link, and then searching for Tom's Diner and going to Wikipedia, I learned:
"An article in the now defunct magazine Business 2.0 revealed that "Tom's Diner" was also used by Karlheinz Brandenburg to develop the audio compression scheme known as MP3 at what is now the Fraunhofer Society....

Brandenburg adopted the song for testing purposes, listening to it again and again each time he refined the scheme, making sure it did not adversely affect the subtlety of Vega's voice. Thus, it is not an exaggeration to say that the MP3 compression format is specifically tuned to play the song "Tom's Diner". Among some audio engineers, this has earned Vega the informal title "The Mother of the MP3"."


Fascinating stuff.
posted by inigo2 at 1:55 PM on June 19, 2008 [2 favorites]

Unfortunately, it's a double.
posted by revfitz at 4:56 AM on June 20, 2008

But that's a great anecdote, inigo.
posted by revfitz at 4:57 AM on June 20, 2008

RATS!

preview said none of the links were found.

my bad.

get out the double zapper
posted by timsteil at 5:59 AM on June 20, 2008