The Old Double Melman

Three years in the making, this is the official release of The Old Double Melman Adventures in QuickTime Musical Instruments, a CD now on sale at lulu.com.

This is in the tradition of music boxes and Raymond Scott. Gryltose is my answer to Scott's Powerhouse.



Many of the tracks are also available in lower-fidelity versions, here, free.

Among other software used in the making of this album are RedMoon's maxWerk, Motu's Digital Performer and Audacity. Graphics by Bryce, mostly.

History of General MIDI and QMI

The General MIDI spec was formalized in 1991. General MIDI (GM) implementations consisted of simulations of standard instruments like pianos, guitars, drums, fiddles and oboes, as well as sound effects like helicopters and birds. This gave the computer musician a built-in orchestra that was heir to those "consumer electronics" keyboards that Casio and others were selling. Once you had GM installed on your computer, you could create hours and hours of MIDI files and still be able to fit those files on the 2.8 meg diskettes of the day. If you fed the MIDI data from your computer to a different device, such as a Roland keyboard, the resulting music would sound similar.

QuickTime Musical Instruments was Apple's version of GM, first introduced in version 2 of QuickTime, their multimedia playing and editing software suite.

What we're talking about here is something meant to be the living room piano, a parlour orchestra to accompany the odd video game or slide show. The individual instruments often sounded like bits from 1970s vintage television show themes.

And so this became a folk instrument of the 1990s.

The Old Double Melman is the name I give to my technique of taking two identical (or NEARLY identical) tracks of music, processing them separately and then recombining them in a process I also call Brute Force Additive Synthesis.

Most of these tracks were created using Redmoon's maxWerk software (I think of it as being similar to a fabric loom.) Motu's Digital Performer was used for some arpeggiations and other tweakage. Apple's QuickTime Musical Instruments created the actual sounds, often two or more versions that were then individually tweaked and then recombined using Audacity.

_{(also available online, at archive.org)}

Flash-Embedded Players

I'm not a fan of profligate Flash usage, but a few sites that carry my stuff do let you play it that way. So here's a collection of those. Play them all at once for maximum confusion!

This plays my SoundClick stuff:

Medium-bitrate streaming from archive.org:

Higher-bitrate streaming from archive.org:

And here's YouTube's copy of the video "Haunts of Molly Zumwalt:

jj on archive.org

My albums are now available at archive.org in their full glorious fidelity FOR FREE, with graphics of the whole CD packages, if you feel like printing 'em up.

The Old Double Melman,
Cubeworld Vacation,
Ayatollah of Understatement.

Site offers downloads in various formats, as well as streaming. On the other hand, the site's also often very busy, so if things don't work out on your first visit, consider trying again.

jj MIDIs

These use General MIDI instrumentation, which many computers can handle quite well. And even if yours can't, the files are very small.


Haunt You, Babe -- Karaoke version of my rock song.

Melman -- Just a single Melman, not a double..

Haunts of Molly Zumwalt -- Dire soundtrack. (older version)

Scared So -- Urgent fiddles!

Slacker on 10th Avenue -- Quickening rag.

Twitchaboog -- As the name implies. (older version)

Ramswort's Approximation -- Approximately minimal. (older version)

Peggijes -- Tiny time pills?

Barrelfull -- Pauses.

Bells and Whistles -- You've used the phrase, now hear it play!

jj Remixes the Universe!

HypCCjj1.mp3 -- Remix of Hyperdriver's "Crowd Control"

jjMXmp01.mp3 -- Remix of Multi-Panel's "Fondness"

lets_try_se_cityglo.mp3 -- "Cityglo" remix of dj terabyte's "Let's Try Something Else"

lets_try_se_mill.mp3 -- "Mill" remix of dj terabyte's "Let's Try Something Else"

rbt640jj.mp3 -- "80x80" remix of the Opponent Process' "Real Bad Timing"

rbtjjcby.mp3 -- "Drunken Cowboy" remix of the Opponent Process' "Real Bad Timing"



Here's a page of remixes I did for Radiohead's Loophole remix contest.

Ancient-format RealAudio Files

(More of my stuff, mostly from the Eighties) Note that these were encoded in the mid-1990s, using the way RealAudio did things then. In this new century, you'll have to download the files and try a modern RealAudio on them. Happily, some have mp3 versions, albeit not necessarily of any higher fidelity.

Lumiere Brothers mp3s

Dino DiMuro mp3s

Dino DiMuro has been making music for decades and has released dozens of albums, first on audio cassette and now on CD. With his consent, I've mp3-encoded and uploaded the albums and tracks on this page. Enjoy!

To retrieve mp3s, use your favorite download maneuver. (Often, it's right-clicking and selecting "Save as ...") (And since I built this page, my ISP has sped up to the point where left-clicking to play the mp3s in place usually works!) (Tho it's still not guaranteed.)

And for even more enjoyment, here is a link to where you can buy some of his other stuff, here's a nifty interview, and here's his SoundClick page.

Caleb Bullen

Caleb Bullen has graciously consented to my posting of several of his songs on this site. Files are in mp3 format, and may be obtained via your favorite "Save File" maneuver.

Creamed By a Bus 2.3 MB
Coffee Blues 1.7 MB
Cold In Here 3.0 MB
Emperor 4.3 MB
End of the World 4.0 MB
Mermaid 5.2 MB
Nevada 2.5 MB
Nevada (Gothic Version) 2.8 MB
Pedantic Panda 2.7 MB
Schmarab 4.5 MB
The Squirrel Song 4.2 MB
Who Doesn't Like Tits 2.4 MB