Someone posted a nice instrumental piano cover on YouTube of “Best Song Ever” by One Direction:
Tag: youtube
Here’s a really good cover of The Lemonheads’ song “Paid to Smile” by a guy named Jeremy Sparrow.
I wouldn’t say that it’s better than the original, but it does offer more layered and textured guitar work than the original. This cover also lacks Juliana Hatfield’s backing vocals, which are a bit too shrill in the original song.
YouTube is definitely the most popular video website, but Vimeo is steadily gaining fans.
Compared to YouTube’s cluttered comments section and increasing number of advertisements before videos, Vimeo has a much cleaner look and more personal feel.
It’s a good idea to periodically check Vimeo for new video uploads of your favorite bands. Only relying on YouTube could mean that you miss out on great concert videos.
For example, I recently found an entire Rilo Kiley concert (from May 2005 at Austin City Limits) on Vimeo — Vimeo is the only place on the Internet to watch this concert.
Set list: “Pull Me in Tighter,” “More Adventurous,” “Ripchord,” “The Absence of God,” “Does He Love You?,” and “I Love LA.”
For the last installment of How To Discover New Music, we’re going to focus on social media (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and MySpace).
1. Ask your friends for recommendations and have them make you a CD of songs they like. Or, on Facebook, you can see what bands your friends have listed in their music sections.
Example: I discovered “Can You Tell” by Ra Ra Riot and “Our Deal” by Best Coast via direct suggestions from friends.
2. YouTube: YouTube’s right hand panel shows suggested videos, and these videos are not always other songs by the same artist. Sometimes the videos feature a different artist or band (perhaps one that the first band has toured with in the past).
3. On Twitter, you should be following artists and bands that you like. Many musicians tweet links to songs that they like, which is an easy way to discover new music that you may like.
Example: I discovered the band Land of Talk (and the songs “It’s Okay” and “Some Are Lakes”) when Holly Miranda tweeted a link to the music video for “It’s Okay.”
4. Check out the MySpace page of your favorite bands, and listen to the songs on their “Top 8” friends’ MySpace pages. Bands are friends with other (often similar) bands. Also, supergroups introduce you to new members of bands.
Example: The formation of supergroup Tinted Windows encouraged me to listen to “1979” by The Smashing Pumpkins.
5. iTunes free songs of the week: Every Tuesday on record release day, iTunes offers 3 or 4 songs for free. After listening to the 30 second samples, download whatever you think you might like.
Example: I’ve discovered “Simple As It Should Be” by Tristan Prettyman and “All For Love” by Serena Ryder via iTunes free downloads. (This rule also applies to TV shows like White Collar and FlashForward).
6. If you like going to concerts, you probably have some favorite venues. Look at the calendar on your favorite venue’s website, and see who’s playing. MySpace or google any interesting sounding bands.
Example: I discovered Los Campesinos! by searching for what bands were playing at the Troubadour during a specific week in May.
7. Go to a used record store and browse their clearance section. You should be able to get an album for a dollar, so spend $10 and get 10 CDS (should be 100-120 songs). How do you pick what CDs to buy? You can get CDs from artists you’ve already heard of, bands that have interesting names, or CDs that have attractive album artwork…You’re bound to find some gems.
Example: I discovered Pete Yorn’s song “Strange Condition” by this method at the Princeton Record Exchange.
8. Read After The Show. Follow After The Show on Twitter here. Watch the concert videos on After The Show’s YouTube channel here.
To read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of How To Discover New Music, click here, here, and here.
When it comes to many YouTube live concert videos, the sound quality is often pretty bad. The bass drowns out the rest of the instruments, and the sound is often too loud for the video camera to pick up without distortion.
Sometimes, though, you can use this distortion to your, the viewer’s, advantage: if the distortion actually emphasizes one instrument, like the guitar, over the others, you can better hear background guitar parts that you’ve never heard before, even on the album.
Here’s a great example of this: the bass drowns out the vocals in the live concert video of “I See Red” by Uh Huh Her below. But, you can consequently hear the guitar part above all other instruments.
Here is a cover of the Arctic Monkeys’ song “Fluorescent Adolescent” by Kate Nash.
The original is better, but Nash’s version, recorded in 2007, is still interesting. Do you like the female vocals on “Fluorescent Adolescent”?
This YouTube video has over 1,318,939 views!