Deeper Into Music Blog

Cumbia Beat Vol 1

I discovered this one while randomly searching through some new releases at an online retailer of mp3s.  It struck me immediately as a fetching, welcomed addition to the history of Western guitar-centric rock rhythms filtered though Peruvian tastes, sensibilities and musical flair. It’s a collision of cultures – shocking at the time, but now seen as an important catalyst.

In 1968 a few select folk-oriented bands began introducing electric guitars and effects: wah-wahs, delays, over-driven fuzz-tones into what was until then a primarily acoustic Southern hemisphere tradition: Cumbia, drum-based with folk guitars, sometimes an accordion and other percussive instruments. It must have been like Dylan plugging in at Newport.

Cumbia, according to Wikipedia, “ is a Colombian musical style and folk dance that is considered to be representative of Colombia, along with Vallenato. Cumbia originated from the Caribbean coast of eastern Colombia, with folkloric variants in Panama.”  It conjures tropical jungles and ritual celebrations in its intricate poly-rhythms.

Tunes by Los Beta 5, Los Mirlos, Los Orientales de Paramonga, Los Sander’s de Ñaña, and Los Wembler’s de Iquitos, recorded between 1968 and 1976, were added to the Deeper Into Music playlist and will pop up throughout the regular playlist.  This is trilling, pulsating music that even 40 years after its recording still throbs with life and passion.

The example below begins with La danza de la tortuga by Los Beta 5, a rather conventional entry, followed by the more psychedelic Lobos al escape by Los Orientales de Paramonga.

Cumbia Examples

What do you think?  Should Deeper feature more “world music”?

Q Can you tell me how the music is selected?

A I could be politically incorrect and say a 70s catch-phrase like “ancient Chinese secret”, but I won’t.  However, it is complicated.  Let’s see if I can give you some idea.

Part of time I’m sitting in front of the computer arranging music in the order that make sense to me.  Part of the time a series of complex routines helps me pick music.

Songs are assigned “weights” and “rotations” ranging from 1-100 and rare, light, medium, heavy, or power, respectively.  Heavy & medium songs play more frequently than the others and songs with weights greater than 40 play more frequently than songs with weights of a lesser amount. (There are also some songs that are available only during special shows, like the Sunday Spice Rack, etc.)

How is weight determined?  Well, I initiate the weight based on several hard-to- explain personal assumptions.  Each time a song is played its weight is reduced by 1. When a song is requested, the weight is increased either by 1 or 2, varying by frequency of request.  Votes and ratings affect song weight and rotation using a complicated formula that re-balances the weights based on several factors, including request frequency, previous weight and weight & rotation history.

Your requests and votes make a huge difference in the sound of DIM over time. Votes of 4 & 5 increase a song’s weight proportionally, votes of 3 slightly increases the rotation but decreases the weight and votes of 1 & 2 decrease a song’s weight proportionally.  A no-star “dump it” really hurts both a song’s weight and rotation setting.

Periodically, I go in to the database and re-balance all the songs by hand, resetting ones that seem to be playing too often to lower weights, etc.

Finally, all songs are put into a range of categories and songs are picked from these categories based on weight and rotation.

It works something like this in order of selection:

1. Category 2. Frequency of airplay 3. Rotation partially determined by votes 4. Weight 5. Other factors like requests

These factors are sometimes shuffled for a few days and then re-set to that order, giving a (I hope) satisfying varying mix to the sound.

Whew.  Told you it was complicated.

Q How much does it cost to keep Deeper Into Music on-the-air?

A See this blog post

Q What are the Deeper Into Music Tech Specs?

A Dude! I get asked from time to time about the technical specs about DIM and so here’s a listing of most of them. Computer:

Computer:

• AMD Opteron 144
• 1024 MB DDR-RAM
• 2x 80 GB Hard Drive Raid1
• 3000 GB Bandwidth

Software:
SAM from Spacial Audio Systems rotates & helps mix the songs (http://www.spacialaudio.com)

Audio Processing:
Breakaway Live from http://www.claessonedwards.com/index.php with following plug-in enhancements:
1. Helium Spartacus Stereo Enhancement
2. Claesson Clunk/Slam & Bass Enhancement

Encoding: Base mp3s are encoded at 320 kBs using current LAME codec set at Very High with Joint Stereo and then processed through MP3Gain to bring them to a standard 89dB reference point.

Stream Encoder: EdCast LAME streaming at 128 kBs to a standard SHOUTcast server.

Random:
Time it takes to rip ONE song, encode it, and enter it into SAM and properly tag it w/picture, etc: about 10 mins. PER SONG.

BackUp:
Daily back up of all music & SAM code and settings. Twice daily back up of mySQL database.

Q Who runs Deeper Into Music?

A. I do. By my lonesome.

Q What types of streams are offered by Deeper Into Music?
A DIM offers two basic types that can be received by various types of players.  Most users will find that they already have a player installed that will play the mp3 streams.  The AAC/AAC+ streams require specialized players and in some cases require a few steps to initialize and make them available.  However, generally speaking, the AAC/AAC+ streams have a higher sound quality than the standard mp3 stream, making the extra futzing worth your while.

Better yet, the newer versions of iTunes (version 9.0 and greater) now offer full support for AAC streams, so you can listen via iTunes and hear the extra richness in the sound.

Q How do I configure my MAC to play DIM using the AAC/AAC+ streams?
A You can use iTunes 9.0 or greater.  The new versions of iTunes come equipped with AAC support (finally!)  Otherwise it’s a bit of a hassle to get AAC/AAC+ to play on a MAC, you’ll find that it’s worth it in the long run. First, download VLC from this site. Open the .dmg file that you downloaded, then open the VLC disk image on your desktop and drag the orange traffic cone object into your applications folder.  Then right-click (or control-click if you don’t have a 2-button mouse) one of the AAC link on the Deeper Into Music Listen page, and select “Save Link as…”. Save the link to your desktop. Then right-click (or control-click) on that file (aac.pls or something similar) and choose “Get Info”. In the info window go to “Open with:” and select VLC from the list of programs. Click the “Change All” button.  Now all pls links will open in VLC rather than iTunes. You’ll find that VLC is more reliable than iTunes for playing radio streams. It’ll also play our AAC & AAC+ links (which iTunes won’t play).  The 128k AAC link gives the best sound quality of any of our streams, and our 64k AAC+ link gives quality equal to 128k MP3 at half the bandwidth.

Q What players do you recommend for listening to Deeper Into Music?
A The choice of player is a personal decision, but here’s a look at the ones that tend to give the best success to most people:

• Windows: Winamp
• MacOS iTunes or to hear the higher quality AAC/+ streams, use VLC
• Linux/Unix: XMMS or to hear the higher quality AAC/+ streams, use VLC

Thanks to Morten Udsen for these helpful notes to listen on Unix based sytems with Firefox browser:

1. Install MediaPlayerConnectivity (MPC)[more info]
2. Install VLC
3. Configure Firefox via MPC to open MS formats in VLC

Q Why does the sound keep cutting in and out?

A There can be several reasons. Sometimes the Internet gets congested and there’s nothing you can do but wait a bit.

But, in some case you may not have enough bandwidth, especially if you’re on a really slow DSL or dial-up connection. You want to try one of the 64 or 32 kBs streams listed on the Listen page.

You can also try to increase the playback buffer size of the software you’re using to listen. The method for doing this varies widely between the listening agents. You should consult your software’s help file. For your convenience, here are links to two solutions that work for some users who have periodic buffering issues:

For Winamp: go here

For iTunes: try this

Q Can I listen with my smartphone, PDA, iPhone, Blackberry, Droid, etc?

A Yup.  See the links on the listen page for some free players that you can install and use with various phones and devices.  At the moment DIM does not have a custom iPhone app, but we’d like to.  Know how to make one?  Get in touch!