Maths has always been a big part of music, and I'm not just talking about 'math metal' (or prog rock or whatever label you want to give it). There's long been a school of thought that a number of musicians and composers have used both the "golden ratio" and the Fibonacci Sequence to compose music.

This Binary Universe, an experimental album by Brian Transeau (aka BT), includes a track entitled "1.618" in homage to the golden ratio. The track features musical versions of the ratio and the accompanying video displays various animated versions of the golden mean.

Pearl Drums positions the air vents on its Masters Premium models based on the golden ratio. The company claims that this arrangement improves bass response and has applied for a patent on this innovation.

Now follow me, as we look at how modern day songs can be dissected via maths.

Firstly, let's take a look at how Meatloaf's "Anything for Love" can be broken down in graphical format.

Here's another simple graph, highlighting the simplicity of the Kelis classic.

I wouldn't classify Rick Astley as math metal, but maybe I've been wrong all these years.

Right Said Fred, broken down into percentage of sexy.

Ok, this isn't strictly maths, but it's a flow chart, surely that's very close to maths?

Another, not really maths, but maybe you could call it a bizarro Venn diagram or something.

And finally, Evita for dummies.

That is all. Have a good day.

If you dig it, digg it.

In case you're a Nine Inch Nails fan, or music fan in general, and haven't already heard. The latest NIN album 'Ghosts I-IV', and instrumental double album, has been released. You can download the first 9 tracks from the NIN.com now.

I've ordered the double cd set, and in doing so got the 'one time' link to download the entire album in mp3 (320kbps) format.

First impressions are that it's a solid, ambient/atmospheric collection of instrumentals, that sound like they could have quite comfortably come from the Fragile recording sessions.

The 36 track collections is available for immediate download from Amazon.com. You can download Ghosts I-IV in its entirity for $5! That's a freakin good deal!

Click here to listen to samples or order Ghosts I-IV

Here's a handy little offer for the music lovers of the world, well mostly for the US based readers, unless someone knows something I don't and are willing to share

Napster are offering a 7 day unlimited use trial of there service. All you need to do is check out the following link:

Get 7 days of Napster for FREE

Napster seem to have an interesting setup going. This is from the site:

"You may play any particular song up to three (3) times, after which you will need to subscribe to Napster or purchase the song to play it in full again."

Sounds good to me. Unfortunately at the moment, that service doesn't extend world wide, and plebs like me have to settle for the first 30 seconds, iTunes style. All that being said, where ever you're from, Napster would be worth a look if you're after an iTunes alternative.

WARNING! Extreme guitar nerd content!

If you are into either guitar, recording music, or listening to the music of Porcupine Tree, head over to one of my other sites in the super Swollen Pickles network and check out the guitar gear of Steven Wilson, vocalist, guitarist and producer of Porcupine Tree.

I found some pictures of his most recent pedal board, and even though he's simplified things a bit since dropping a lot of the rack gear, it's still fairly complex in comparison to some of the other rigs I've looked at lately.

If you haven't heard of Porcupine Tree I'd highly recommend giving them a listen. Their 'In Absentia' album is one of my all time favourites. Over a year ago now, I put together a list of some of my essential albums, needless to say, it was on the list. Actually, I think it's time I added to that list...

Any who, go check out the Steven Wilson stuff on Digital Burn DOT ORG, that's Digital Burn, and not Miracle burn, I'm sure the two are easy to confuse.

In the proud tradition of other great train wreck live music performances (remember Stephanie MacIntosh?) I present to you the G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S Fergie hitting all sorts of ungodly notes, and missing 99% of her vocal cues, whilst murdering "Live and Let Die".

The only thing that goes close to salvaging this performance is the pyrotechnics show in the background. I guess I really should apologize. This is not the sort of thing you really need to hear first thing on a Monday morning.

Thanks to blankshooting for sending me this and permanently damaging my hearing.

Well here's some sloppy reporting from the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), with the SMH website reporting that Meg White, "drummer" of the White Stripes, was the 'star' of the latest celebrity sex video doing the rounds.

As of writing this, the SMH "Meg White sex video claim" story is the second most viewed story on the SMH website. The story was first published on the SMH site at 12.30pm on the 26 September. The article signs off with:

"Representatives for the band are yet to confirm or deny the video is genuine."

I have to say, it's an attention grabbing story, I guess the only problem is that it's not all that accurate.

What's wrong with the story you ask? Well, anyone with access to Google, which I'm assuming is readily accessible by the people at SMH headquarters, can tell you within about 30 seconds that the "sex video" is a hoax. In fact, it took me all of 30 seconds to find a statement from The White Stripes publicist Chloe Walsh:

"Some people have a very twisted sense of humor and this prank is in particularly bad taste. The tape circulating on the internet as featuring Meg White is fake. It’s definitely not Meg."

source: http://www.transworldnews.com/

9/24/2007 6:47 PM GMT (FINDITT)

You can also find similar sentiments on the PitchFork Media website, and countless others if you can be bothered surfing around for more than 30 seconds!

Now did you pick up on the date that The White Stripes publicist released the statement? Yahuh, the 24 September 2007. Now even when you take into account the timezone difference, SMH went ahead and published their story stating that "Representatives for the band are yet to confirm or deny the video is genuine" almost two days after the publicist came out and said that the video didn't feature Meg White. So yes, very sloppy effort SMH!

Actually, if anyone from SMH reads this, here is the story behind the now infamous not actually Meg White sex tape. It all started with a guy (‘Itsmecraig’) who was a frequent visitor to the Hipinion internet forum. This guy posted a video at that forum, with the post title "MEG WHITE SEX TAPE" (warning: not everything on that page is 'work safe'). So this happens on the 17 September. For the next day or two a few of the frequent forum visitors posted the obvious jokes that you might come to make (eg. "that can't be Meg White, that girl can keep rhythm").

It wasn't long before the thread was "wiki'd" and not long after the sex tape story was picked up as 'fact' by a number of outlets. Things obviously snowballed from there.

Then on the 24 September, "Itsmecraig" checked back in on his one week old thread:

oh sh!t dudes,

i found this video through random wank mining efforts and put it up here cause i figured you guys would have a laugh. it had nothing to do with meg white when i found it.

So there you go, a random guy, posts a random porn video, labels it as a celebrity, and it gets picked up and run worldwide as news. It's both funny and sad that news outlets didn't bother to check if the story was based on fact at all! So the Sydney Morning Herald fail on two counts. They published old 'news' that had already been proven false. Sometimes the quality of Australian print media is laughable, I guess you could file the Meg White "sex tape" as exhibit A.

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I'm a massive Pearl Jam fan, so I picked up on this one when I checked in on there site just recently. The band have been performing on the Lollapalooza festival, with one of their recent shows being webcast, portions of their performance never made it to air.

After concluding our Sunday night show at Lollapalooza, fans informed us that portions of that performance were missing and may have been censored by AT&T during the "Blue Room" Live Lollapalooza Webcast.

When asked about the missing performance, AT&T informed Lollapalooza that portions of the show were in fact missing from the webcast, and that their content monitor had made a mistake in cutting them.

During the performance of "Daughter" the following lyrics were sung to the tune of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" but were cut from the webcast:

- "George Bush, leave this world alone." (the second time it was sung); and

- "George Bush find yourself another home."

[source: http://www.pearljam.com/news/index.php?what=News#195]

You can check out the 'edited' version and the 'unedited' version below to get an idea of what was missing.

The content monitor had made a mistake? Wow! I wonder what else is being cut, edited and repackaged for us to swallow? AT&T have opened a real can of worms here, and this censorship story will be an interesting one to following going ahead.