Jay Meydad's Life Mashup

Amir Lev, one of my favorite Israeli rock songwriters has recently released a new live album that was recorded in the Zappa Club, Tel Aviv. Guests: Berry Sakharof & Geva Alon.

Fantastic as always.

Posted via email from jaymeydad’s posterous

I came across Emanuel and The Fear today on the HypeMachine and was blown away.

They are an11-piece orchestra-rock band from Brooklyn that uses a wide variety of instruments, like electronica, percussion, orchestra instruments (flute, violins and cellos, trumpets) and hard hitting guitars, to create mind blowing Orchestral pop/rock/ songs.

One of the highlights in IMHO is “Jimme’s Song”. It is available in two versions that sound great, but still I like the Demo version (vid below) more than the the Full band version

Roy’s interpretation to Steve Jobs’s iPad announcement and what would his older brother, the iPhone, say/sing.

I have been getting many questions & comments about my two posts on how to listen to Israeli radio stations on the iPhone and iPod Touch using the FStream app (here). That’s the “price” I had to pay for being ranked first on google for queries like “israeli radio on iphone”. Hopefully this post will provide answers to many of the questions.

Recently a new free application was released to the App Store called “Visual Radio” (download link). It was developed in Israel by Unicell and it offers the capability to listen to over 10 stations using a clean and elegant user interface.

Unlike the FSTream solution which requires configuring the radio stations’ streams urls into the app and changing the urls whenever those change, Visual Radio comes pre-configured with many radio stations which leads to an easy “install and play” experience. A few stations are still missing and I hope the Unicell team there will add them soon. Other nice features include:

1. Radio Dial that lets you preview what song is being played in a station before actually switching to it – big time saver

2. Displaying artist and song names

3. Song’s lyrics (when available)

4. Programming for every station

Kudos for the Unicell team for a great app. One small tip to the developers – change the app name to say something like “Visual Israeli Radio” so people who search iTunes will be able to easily find it.

Posted via email from jaymeydad’s posterous

Yesterday was an exciting day for Roy Zu-Arets and I. An album we’ve produced especially for the holiday season called “Snowflakes Piano Holiday Classics” was officially released.

If you were looking for an original music album to treat yourself or give as a gift in the coming holidays just visit iTunes , Amazon or order as a physical CD.

In “Snowflakes” Roy played in his unique style, renditions to seasonal classics such as Silent Night, Joy to the World, Jingle Bells and others. The result is a charming album that uniquely convey the serenity, joy and magic of the season.

You might ask yourself what do two Jewish guys have to do with Christmas songs? Well, we don’t. But when we first listened to the melodies without reading the lyrics, we actually heard a wide variety of music styles that show we are all coming from the same roots, including Israeli folk (O Little Town Of Bethlehem), Sephardic Romanca (The First Noel), a Classical composition written by the great (Jewish) composer Felix Mendelssohn (Hark The Herald Angels Sing), Blues & Soul (O Christmas Tree). Plus, if you look closely at the snowflakes that are on the cover you will see that in the center of each one of them there is a Start of David. I noticed this only after Ken sent his final design, so I assume it was a sign from above that we are doing the right thing.

I know I am biased, but when Roy called me a few days after we finished recording all the tracks and said “I hardly listen to my complete albums after they are done but in this case I keep listening to the songs over and over”, I knew we created a very special product.

The beautiful artwork was designed by Ken Messenger who used to be on my team at at Snap and now runs his design studio. Highly recommended designer.

Here’s a version of Jingle Bells that we posted to our YouTube channel.

Let it snow.

Update (1/26/2010):
There is a new iPhone app that eliminates the need to configure FStream. Read about it here.

Original post starts here:
According to Google Analytics this old post of mine is one of the most popular on this blog. It is time to refresh the list, add new Israeli radio stations streams and fix the broken ones.

The updated list below uses a stream url structure from fm1.co.il. Simply launch FStream on your iPhone / iPod Touch and configure it to use the following streams. Enjoy.

Galaz -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/glz.asx

GalGalaz -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/glgltz.asx

88fm -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/88fm.asx

Kol Hamusica (classical music) -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/kol-hamusica.asx

Reshet Aleph -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/reshet-aleph.asx

Reshet Bet -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/reshet-bet.asx

Reshet Gimel -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/reshet-gimel.asx

Regional stations

Kol Hacampus (one of my favorites, run by students, plays plenty of alternative music) – http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/campus.asx
Radius 100fm -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/100fm.asx

Radio Tel Aviv 102fm -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/102fm.asx

Radio Lelo Hafsaka 103fm -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/103fm.asx

Radio Lev Hamedina -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/91fm.asx

Radio Emza Haderech -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/90fm.asx

Radio Kol Rega -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/96fm.asx

Radio Jerusalem -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/101fm.asx

Radio Haifa  -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/radio-haifa.asx

Kol Ramat Hasharon – http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/kol-ramat-hasharon.asx

A few weeks ago my friend Roy Zu-Arets (disclosure: I created his wikipedia page) who is the most gifted musician and very original composer I have had the luck to meet and I began working on a fun side project that involves music & social media. We call it “The Vibe Of Now”.

The idea behind “The Vibe Of Now” is to create a musical micro-blogging experience – release of original compositions that are created in a spontaneous, immediate, unplanned and instant way and reflect what the composer is feeling at that moment. The entire production process is also very fast. We meet at Roy’s studio in Hollywood three times a week (Mon, Wed and Fri) for 1 hour. It takes us 45 minutes to record a piece, mix the video with stereo audio that we pull out of the recording console and publish the clip to YouTube.

Both of us have worked and released products that reached millions – I have done it in the internet space at Snap, JDate and ICQ and Roy has worked as a composer, pianist and producer with many artists, performed in prestigious halls in front of thousands and produced platinum and gold albums. But this small side project has its own magic and is very exciting for both of us. Users from all over the world send us their feedback on the music videos and how they touch them. Our YouTube channel metrics are growing week after week – the number of daily views, subscribers (now is a good time to become one), friends, comments and ratings.

A few days ago we reached a new major milestone with the release of Roy’s first solo piano solo album (after a 20 year career of playing, producing and composing with and for others) called “Confessions of a Composer”. The album features selected tracks from the first series Roy released to YouTube during the summer of 2009 plus a few bonus tracks recorded with guest musicians. You can buy the album on iTunes , Amazon or order as physical CD.

We are also about to put the “The Vibe Of Now” concert. It will be a very original and different show from a typical piano recitals, and it will feature the album pieces, variations on a theme of known songs but with some twist, and original compositions that will be composed during the concert together with the viewers similar to the process that happens at the studio. If you are interested in bringing Roy to your venue, university, tech-conference, town hall or your next corporate event, please contact us.

Next for us are a few additional mini projects:
* A special album for the holidays which is being finalized these days (Update: It is now live)
* Collaborations with some of LA’s finest musicians
* A 100% live session that we will stream to the web using UStream and twitter
* And probably a few more fun projects since the tools we have in our hands allow us to do almost anything and take it to the masses.

Last thing – this project would not exist without users’ feedback. So if you have one for us, a request, suggestion, media inquiry, touring/booking request or a testimony/album review, please contact us using this form or on twitter – royzuarets or jaym.

The bootlegs for the two Pearl Jam concerts that I saw in LA were released a few days ago and today I finally got them.

What I find cool about them is the way the look and sound. They concerts were recorded and manufactured by a company called Kufala based in Paso Robles. Their unique eco-friendly chipboard packaging was the first thing I noticed. Their turn around time from purchase to delivery was super fast (less than 48 hours!). No wonder the band selected them to manufacture all the bootlegs of the tour, and If you are a Los Angeles base  artists who is looking for a bootleg recording service you should check them out.

Moving on to the sound quality of the bootleg. Although I was pretty surprised from the audio quality of my videos that I captured using the Ultra Flip HD , the bootlegs sound fantastic which makes it a completely different experience.

Now I am starting a long project of mixing my HD video setlists with this audio. I have a little over 50 songs to work on and hopefully Final Cut Express will make this a fun experience. The biggest pain would be syncing audio and video without a clapper. I will probably master video editing techniques once this project will be completed around the end of the year.