Piku - The Chemical Brothers

That's just what I'm listening to right now.  The Chemical Brothers were the first electronic group that I listened to and really got me hooked on the genre.  What has kept my interest wasn't the high bpm or the "dancibility" - it was the layering of sound, the variability of the rhythms and the fact that everything is part of the part of the rhythm.  Lyrics, tone, melody aren't important - all the sounds are about percussion.  That's what separates the best electronic from ten minutes with a drum machine and a sample deck.  It's complexity, layers and rhythm.  

I wanted to start with something about prime numbers and the posts, but I realize that I've screwed up the last few postings.  At least the number of the post - the last post was 159, not 158 like I noted.  159 has a nice prime factorization, like 158, it's the product of a small prime (3) and a larger one (53).  This post, however, is actually post 160.   That's 2^4 * 10 or 2^5 * 5.   It's always nice to be able to express values as powers of 2.  Guess I have to be more careful about counting blog posts.  No biggie there.

We got our piano tuned today - well, my wife's piano.  I found out that it's been in her family for sometime.  Her maternal great-grandmother bought it new in 1890 and apparently my father-in-law still has the original bill of sale.  My wife is trying to get me to use the word "provenance", but I don't wanna.  I shouldn't be resistant to new words, but whatever.  The tuning is done now, but more work is necessary.  The key and hammer actions need to be tightened and it was suggested that the bass strings be replaced to give the lower notes a more modern sound.  Maybe we shouldn't, considering the piano was made in the 19th century.  I'm sure people in Europe or China are laughing at 119 years being "old", but this is still a relatively young country and that's pretty good.

The piano tuner also offers digital pianos for sale and my wife is really taken with the idea of being able to practice silently.  More specifically, the kids practicing silently.  This particular store offers Kurzwiel pianos, which look really nice.  They seemed to be reasonably priced, but  I'm still looking for a good comparison.  I finally found the Yamaha site for the Clavinova line, a pretty reputable brand as well.  I'm looking at the CLP-320, which has some great specs, but no prices.  Seems that no one is allowed to publish the MSRP for these items which is frustrating.  Whatever - I still don't want to invest in an instrument like this unless I get a chance to use some different examples personally.  Hopefully I can make it out to a few stores this week - the guy who tuned our piano has offices near my work, so I'll have to check it out.