Just read an interesting aricle on Sky’s new talent show, Must Be The Music. In it, Stuart Heritage rightly makes the point that the the producers should be applauded for seemingly producing an anti X-Factor that puts talent before all else.

However, regardless of it’s merits, I can’t help but feel any serious act shouldn’t touch such things with a barge pole but should instead work there way up through traditional roots. Am I just being curmudgeonly or is it right to expect real artists to have come up through more grass roots avenues?

I recently had a Tascam US-144, USB audio and midi interface, gifted to me by my awesome sister and her boyfriend - thanks guys. However, I’ve had an absolute nightmare getting the thing to work so just wanted to share my experiences with the world.

Essentially, I wanted a device that I could hook up to my laptop and it provide professional quality mic and jack inputs alond with a midi interface, which is a remit the US144 fills exactly - it’s powered over USB, has two XLR inputs, two 1/4in jacks inputs, a line out, and midi in/out. The problem is, the US144 is deprecated and seemingly no longer supported by Tascam and as such the company hasn’t developed Windows 7 64-bit drivers for it.

That’s pretty much the long and short of it. My laptop was running Windows7 64-bit thus it didn’t work. I’ve now put a 32-bit version on and it works fine. Now some people have had success getting this device working in 64-bit Windows 7 but I think the general rule of thumb is that it doesn’t.

So, to summarise. If like me you’re scratching your head as to why your US-144 won’t work on Windows 7 64-bit then don’t hold out much hope. Either install a compatible version of Windows or get the US-144 MKII, which may work, or the Roland (Edirol/Cakewalk) UA-25, which is still being properly supported by its manufacturer (there are other alternatives as well but these are the ones I know).

First things first, I just want to say congratulations to Rage Against The Machine for getting their top spot. Regardless of anything else, it’s probably quite a nice feeling for them and I for one revelled in the moment having a good dance round my room as th4e single was played on Radio 1. Also, well done to Jon and Tracy Morter - it couldn’t have happened without you. Perhaps most importantly, thumbs up to all the people that donated to the charities involved. A significant amount of money was raised and that’s certainly something that Joe McElderry, or more importantly, Simon Cowell and the X-Factor empire can’t say!

My reasons for posting this, though, are not just to congratulate the various people involved but also to point out one particular flaw in the nay sayer’s arguments against this campaign…

It means entirely nothing that RATM and Joe/Cowell are on the same record label. Simon Cowell’s label is a subset of SonyBMG as is Epic, the label to which RATM are signed, as such there isn’t any direct crossover and even if there were there’s nothing to suggest Simon Cowell makes any money from Epic’s sales. The only way that could happen would be if he was also in charge of that division of the label or if he were a share holder. Whether he’s the latter or not is irrelevant as the share price of such a large corporation has very little to do with the sales of one single. As for the former, well I’m certainly not aware of him having any direct involvement in Epic.

Think about it like this, if you’re head of the software division of Microsoft (Simon Cowell) and the hardware division (Epic) makes a load of money, you don’t see any direct benefit.

Also, to all the people saying it’s just as sheepish to have followed this campaign, you also seem to be missing the point. Just because a large number of people followed a suggestion, it doesn’t mean we’re all highly suggestable halfwits. If the suggestion had been to put Rick Astley at number one I’d have told them to go stick it. It was my decision to buy the single and I’m very happy that I did. Of course, I’d rather they picked something even more extreme and less cliched - ‘they swear a lot, that’ll be funny’ - but I’m, willing to forgive that becuase people needed a song they were familiar with and could latch onto for this campaign to work. Suggesting You Suffer by Napalm Death would have been more extreme - a 2 second grindcore songwould certainly have got people thinking - but somehow I don’t think it would’ve worked.

So there we go. All I need now is to get hold of a ticket for that free gig next year…

Just saw an interesting piece on the bbc website.

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7598549.stm

It cites some research done into the relationship between personality and musical taste - a link that’s always been assumed - and comes up with some surprising results. However, what struck me was how depressingly conformist I apparently am.

If I were to list my two greatest musical loves they would be Classical (though that’s a horribly generic term) , and Heavy Metal(actually I suppose all these terms are), which would make my personality:

• High self-esteem
• creative
• introvert
• at ease

and

• Low self-esteem
• creative
• not hard-working
• not outgoing
• gentle
• at ease

Obviously there are a couple of contradictions there but essentially, creative, at ease (well I am hopelessly chilled out), and gentle. Of the low or high self esteem I’d have to er on my metal side because I’m one seriously unconfident person.

Let’s hope my new-found appreciation for dance music (thanks Alice)  can push my outgoing side.