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Don’t Listen To The Douchebags (Listen To George Takei)

I’ve written one Star Trek inspired song, but here (in a roundabout way) is another, though slightly more serious in nature.

The source of the inspiration is George Takei’s hilarious response to anti-gay bully Clint McCance, former Arkansas school board member who called for more gays teens to kill themselves. You can watch that here.

And here is the song it inspired. Its slightly ironic that the video I made a couple of weeks ago was about dead teenagers rising from the grave, whereas one facet of this one is encouraging teenagers not to top themselves.

The Trevor Project, referenced to in the video, is here.

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Why Must I Be A Teeange Zombie In Love?

Get This Song:iTunes US – iTunes UK –
Amazon UK – Amazon US – 7Digital
and more stores to come!!!

The song was written by Rishi but mixed, produced, recorded by and featuring performances from Benny G of the Organ Grinders Monkey – a phenomenal thank you goes to him! Mastered by Philosophers Barn and released on UkeyLove Records as a track off the Bard For Life album.

Camera work and co-direction with Katya Gorodova, filmed in October 2010 and released the day before Halloween! A big thank you to The Portland Arms and Jesus College Cambridge for filming premises!

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Bard For Life – The Album

We are proud to announce that the first Karmadillo album with UkeyLove Records is now available on iTunes! ‘Bard For Life’ features 11 Karmadillo tracks, available for the first time online.

Places to Buy The Album

Track Listings

Noone Else (drums)
Veloceraptor
Why Must I Be A Teenage Zombie In Love
Facebook Makes This Bit Easy
Still
Australia
Noone Else Oboe Mashup (original)
Rent Boy
Woman In Red
E.T.
Mars and Venus

The album is in part a retrospective of Karmadillo work in the naughties, and features contributions from many Cambridge musicians including Jon Craven from Liquid Sky , accordian maestro Karl Sandeman and Tom Barden, drummer from the Pony Collaboration.

The album cover was designed by Miss Roberts of the Rude Mechanicals.

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Manimal has gone :-(

Sometime around the age of 10 I used to run round in the back garden and come to a sudden halt. I would hold my arm out, hand belly button high, in front of me and start breathing deeply, pretending I was slowly transforming into either an eagle or a panther. This was me trying to re-enact scenes from the TV series Manimal, but without a special effects budget.

This is what I was imagining was happening to me.

I confess to this as I have come back from the pub to read the actor, Simon MacCorkindale, has passed away today. I know his current acting role on British TV is in Casualty but I haven’t watched that since at least he started acting in that. He probably has been other famous roles but however great they were, the sight of him turning into whatever member of the animal kingdom he wanted to be struck a chord with child me. Now I think about it, I fail to recall trying so hard to ever be any other super powered hero.

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Drum Map Managers

Most of Karmadillo stuff is recorded using Sonar, currently on version 8.5. Since Karmadillo have moved from being a full band to a one man act, one of the things I’ve had to engage in is with putting drum tracks on the audio recorded. Cakewalk provide something called Session Drummer that I’ve not managed to get to grips with, but I’m outlining the steps here that I go through to make it easier to remember the steps I go through each time.

First of all, add a MIDI track by choosing Right Click –> Add MIDI track.

Assign the output of the MIDI track to a Drum Map. I tend to choose GM Drums (Complete Kit).

Not being particularly understanding of how MIDI works I use a Software Synth to make noises. I do this by choosing Insert –> Soft Synth –> Cakewalk TTS. Here ensure that MIDI source is disabled and the First Synth Audio Output option is enabled.

To get this working you need to open the Drum Map Manager and choose the drum map you’ve got. Change the Out Port settings to be the Cakewalk TTS Software Synth you have just created. To do this double click on an Out Port entry, hold down the Shift and Ctrl buttons and THEN select the Cakewalk TTS option.

When you add notes to the Piano Roll for the Midi track created initially and start playing you know should get drum sounds out.

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Geekpop Summer song writing challenge – Prizewinner!!!

Karmadillo are pleased to announce that the song entry for the Geekpop Summer Song Writing Challenge has won the Most Contrived Rhyme Prize! Why not peruse the lyrics of our biographical song on Gregor Mendel and figure out which couplet was the winner. Or listen to the geekpop podcast and hear it for yourself!

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It is the same day the career killing Mercury Award prize is announced – I’d rather have this one as if my career nosedives from here I’ll never get to play at Glastonbury again!

The overall winner was a fantastic song on the nature of Google. I didn’t catch the singers name (Naomi F…?) properly but someone worth watching out for. While lots of geeky songs are clever this was also quite moving, funny and poignant.

Thanks to the Geekpop team and the judges for their decision. Now to decide what to spend £25 of science vouchers, supplied courtesy of the Graphic Science.

Don’t forget if you like contrived rhymes more can be heard during the chorus on our single at http://karmadillo.org/2010/08/22/noone-else-karmadillos-first-ever-single-release/

Tags: geekpop, prizes
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You Must Be Mendel – Geekpop Song Competition entry

The Babble

I’d sat down a few days ago to think of a science song for the Geekpop Science competition due tomorrow. I couldn’t come up with anything musical, though I vaguely had the idea of writing something about Gregor Mendel, who pioneered the work in genetics while a monk with loads of time on his hands (Over 25000 pea plants in 6 years!). As I have plenty of other stuff to do with a single just launched and the Bard For Life album launch coming up, as well as recovering from my knee injury, I decided to let it go.

All that changed this evening as I went to get a pint of milk at the Co-op. I started humming a tune in my head and once I’d also come up with the phrase ‘Mendel Arithmetic’ there was no going back. I didn’t have my mobile on me to get the ideas down so I am particularly proud to not loose the tune or the lyrics I was constructing on the way to the shop. Also before getting down to writing the song I had answer a quick phone call from Mrs Karmadillo and hunt around for a number in Germany for her. It was then recorded in one take for the charango, one take for vocals and then sent off as the competition entry!

The Music

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The Words

You grew up on the family farm
Moved to a monastery with an experimental gar-den
Six years of wrapping bags around the flowers of plants
Giving us the music for the genetic dance

You must be Mendel Mendel Mendel Mendel yeay oh yeah

You analysed traits of the plants that give us peas
Then controlled how they got to breed
You then analysed the plants that grew from the seeds
Eventually proposing living things had genes

You must be Mendel Mendel Mendel Mendel yeay oh yeah

Its a shame they didn’t believe / in the theory you got from you plants
It was only after you died / that they gave the peas a chance

Growing 29000 plants was not the only trick
You still had to perform some Mendel arithmetic
Probabilities of hybrids, dominant and recessive traits
Giving us genetics and showing us the way

You must be Mendel Mendel Mendel Mendel yeay oh yeah

Tags: geekpop, science
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Noone Else – Karmadillo’s first ever single release!!!

One month after having been crowned winners of the Cambridge Busking Festival 2010, Karmadillo are proud to announce the launch of their first ever single!

The song is Noone Else from the forthcoming Bard For Life album and is available from iTunes UK and iTunes US. It should also be going up on Amazon soon!

Here’s a video made to go with the song. Footage was shot in a day and was hastily put together for another project, but hope you enjoy!

Single Available from iTunes (and now with added Amazon!), released September 2010. More stores coming soon

You may not have the time and money
To get psychiatric help
But you can get on to the online stores
And buy Noone Else!

Unlike X-Factor contestants this single is autotune free and features James Thomas on bass and Pip Johnson on drums. Produced and recorded by Tom Gaskell. Cheers guys!

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Congratulations to Kate & Simon

Last weekend saw the wedding of ex-Karmadillo member Kate Newell to Simon in Wales. It was a pretty amazing wedding (though not as good as the previous one I’d been to ) and I was honoured to do a reading at the ceremony on their special day.

I was also inspired to put together a little photo montage as a tribute to Kate set to the song I wrote after hearing her play the oboe, and she came and wrote and recorded a brilliant solo over to the top of the song ‘Still’. Hope you enjoy.

The song (remastered version of an earlier one) will be part of our Bard For Life album coming out August 2010. If you want to know when that’ll be released why not join our mailing list?

Tags: kate newell, still
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Karmadillo – Cambridge Busking Festival Winner 2010

So in the midst of a day of migraine pain on Wednesday I had a call from Heather at the council who organised the Busking Festival we played at last week. Karmadillo were voted by the audience as their favourite act of the Festival! That was great news, and I bounced around for at least five minutes before going back to holding my head going ‘Ow Ow Ow’. Thanks to all who voted! Your support was great and appreciated greatly.

You can read the full tale of my days out at the busking festival. I’m also busking later on this month raising money for Cancer research as part of the big busk for cancer. This is happening between 17th – 25th July 2010 – I’ll put more information about it up here next week when I’ve figured out what I’m doing.

Tags: Busking, cambridge, charity
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