Kids Today
March 22, 2006 | Life
My nephew, Matthew, is nine years old. He's been taking violin and piano lessons for a couple of years. His dad, Alan, my brother, is a technology manager at a big company and has been livin' the digital lifestyle for a couple of decades now. Matthew's mom, Susan, Alan's wife, my sister-in-law, is a graphic designer working half-time at home and taking care of Matthew.
It should be no surprise that Matthew has his own iMac, next to Susan's desk, and plays the keyboard I bought for him into GarageBand. I guess what's surprising is this song he sent, which is amazing! These kids today, I tell 'ya.
"Climbing Mt. Everest #2" (2:22) [work-safe]
[Update: Converted to an mp3 file, from an m4a, and nested the embed tag inside an object tag.]
Comments
Did Matthew arrange this?? It's terrific!
Posted by: katrina at March 22, 2006 10:35 PM
Yeah, he did the whole thing. I don't think Alan or Susan even knew about it until it was done, i.e. no on-going encouragement.
The ending is a little abrupt, but there are so many themes, and knowing him I bet it tells a story that he could describe too. Quite an ear for a nine-year old.
Posted by: Michael J. at March 23, 2006 08:07 AM
If I link to this from a public site this weekend, will you have sufficient bandwidth?
I'm guessing it will generate a few 100 to a few 1000 hits -- all of whom will play the mp3
Posted by: Barry Ritholtz at March 23, 2006 12:12 PM
All set – thanks for checking!
Posted by: Michael J. at March 24, 2006 10:04 AM
The link in your website doesn't come up so I can listen to it. What is an 'm4a' filetype? I run a Windows machine and it's not defined.
Posted by: Tom F. at March 25, 2006 04:10 PM
Thanks for commenting on that!
I switched the filetype to mp3. m4a is an mpeg 4 file, playable by the very latest versions of QuickTime Player (free). But I meant this to be an mp3.
Now fixed!
Posted by: Michael J. at March 26, 2006 09:18 AM
Thanks for responding to my post. There appear to be some broken links between the control panel on the web page and the server. I got no response from hitting the "play" button. I finally got to the song by copying the server site from the source code into the address bar which then prompted MediaPlayer to start. I'll tell you, that's pretty amazing stuff coming out of the brain of a nine year-old.
Posted by: Tom F. at March 26, 2006 09:49 AM
Thanks for letting me know. I changed from using the embed tag alone, to nesting it inside an object tag, which should help. If you happen to read this and don't mind checking it again, that would be helpful.
Instructions for how to do this cross-platform are here.
Posted by: Michael J. at March 26, 2006 10:52 AM
Bingo! It works.
Posted by: Tom F. at March 26, 2006 11:25 AM
I wait for the day when the next great rock and roll album will be produced on a computer by a 12 year old!! Bring it on!
Posted by: Dan at March 26, 2006 06:09 PM
This really great
Posted by: Vere at March 26, 2006 09:59 PM
I, for one, welcome our new Garage Band wielding child prodigy masters.
This is the soundtrack for the decline of the current generation of adults, a kind of mini Koyanisqqatsi for our times. Heard in that light, the abrupt ending is appropriate, signalling as it does the sudden "time's up" that Matthew's generation promises to the nutbars running the show at the moment.
:-)
Posted by: Chris Corrigan at March 27, 2006 11:45 PM
Nominated for Best Comment Yet award. ;)
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