Just wondering how much of the music you own is pirated material. I'll be the first to go: <20% (and thats because none of the shops around here usually have what I'm looking for). Personally, I think the majority of ppl with more than 70% of their stuff being pirated, are morons who have no respect for other people's work and supporting the metal scene; plus I hope it happens to them one day. (hrmm, maybe I shouldn't say that, since this is the internet, the home of piracy, and you people are using it right now. Prove me wrong; maybe there are more people out there like me against piracy and stoopid fags that have never bought a CD in their life and all of their stuff is pirated ). In addition, it might be useful to mention your age as well.

__________________

Yeah, about <20%. Downloaded stuff.

i pretty much download everything...cds are $30-35 here so fuck them...plus i have a young family....and buying cds just isnt in the budget......but in saying that...i buy the bands dvds if they have one.....but i just gotta dvd burner.....so there goes that....but i dont dl that much to be honest....

i used to buy cds alot....i own a truckload....so i have paid my way....unlike the new generation.

__________________

40%ish

__________________

oh yeah...put me down for 95%

__________________

Whats "buying"?

__________________

id say about a third, maybe it is a bit more ...... but because i am currently a poor uni student my percentage is probably growing

__________________

The only song I have ever downloaded is Wrought by Nile and I only downloaded that so that I could tab the solos for Father Death. Everything else in my collection is bought mostly from internet distributors and label sites. The prices are cheaper this way and the money goes straight back into the industry rather than going towards lining Mr HMV's pockets.

Anyway, there's nothing like ripping the packaging off a new CD and marvelling at the crisp booklet within as the music blasts out of your CD player. You just don't get that experience when you download stuff from the web.

I can see how downloading is useful though. For instance, if you're not sure about a band and want to hear a song of theirs before you buy it. If you like the song, fine, go buy the album. If not, the band haven't lost out on anything as you wouldn't have bought the album anyway. Other than that sort of situation, I don't agree with piracy as it drains money from the extreme scene that could be better spent on the bands themselves.

__________________

Less than 10%.

All that is downloaded. And I don't like piracy.
I have only downloaded single songs, not whole albums like some people that I know. And I can understand downloading, if it's about bands that you haven't heard of and you want to hear what are they like before possible buying.

And of course there are cases like Weird Al Yankowic...

__________________

About 70%, I don't have enough money.

id say about 10% the stuff i download would be a few songs from bands so i can see if i like them or the videos for songs and shit. sometimes i have friends burn me cd's but if i like the album and when i get the cash i go buy cause i like to have the actuall thing
i completly agree with what johnmansley had to say

__________________

I put about 80% down, but I voted before reading this was just about music. I would say it's more along the lines of 50% music only. I have a completely obsessive amount of MP3's, but I buy cd's from the labels and bands at shows. I would say that atleast 50% of what I download metal wise I own. As for things that aren't metal, I will not pay $17.99 so some 15 year old kid can be plastered on MTV, loaned hundreds of thousands by record labels to make a cd, just to be ejected from the spotlight by the music scene within a year, because they won't dress a certain way. If it's mainstream and I like it, I'll download it. Jive Records can find someone else to pay for their penthouse suites. I'm not giving a goddamn dime to the music labels that have no interest in music, other than if their share goes down a quarter of a percent.

When it comes to metal, I go to the shows, I buy cd's from the band. That money goes into their pocket. It helps bands get from show to show on tours, and that is what I agree with paying for. Metal bands don't make shit, and with the big uprise in quality of production in recent months, recording is becoming more and more expensive to bands. And there needs to be more people that will support the metal bands that they like, even if it's buying a ticket to their show, picking up their cd, blazing one with them, or buying the band Beer.

__________________

very nicely said midnight!

__________________

I put down less than 10%. I'd rather hear the cd than turning on my pc for an mp3.

__________________

If I like what I download, I'll buy the cd. The only exception is classical music, because those guys are mostly dead and they don't get a cent from the sales.
And yeah, nice comment Midnight.

I have DSL so basically everything is pirated. I only buy cd's that are worth it. And never buy movies or video games or any other bullshit that i cna get for free

__________________

I'd be more of a pirate if I was on a better connection.

Yeah, especially when you've been waiting for a couple of years for the bastard to be released!

Oh, 'John' will do fine - it must be a pain in the arse to type my surname too!

__________________

I am at about 10% , but it would be more
if I hadn't only bought a computer last year
and had a better connection.Most of
the pirated stuff I have are cds and
tapes written by friends.Most cds
aren't so good as to buy them anyway

__________________

i hardly have any pirated stuff, my net connetions to slow

__________________

I put 50. I'll listen to something before I buy it... Their samples really... But I put 50 because I've probably had a portion of every single album I own on my computer at one point or another.

I used to download alot, but now America has that stupid piracy law. I still burn other peoples albums but getting the whole cd is great.

__________________

I agree with John, there's nothing like ripping that wrapping off a CD and putting in the CD player. Especially a box or a digipack.

Most mp3s sound shithouse: e.g., one had it switching to another song for like half a second, another was stuttery, another cut off prematurely and had 5 minutes of silence, and the rest are just "swishy", even at 192kbps.

I went and done a rough count of all my CDs and downloaded albums/songs. I'd probably say around 10-15% is pirated. I can d/load fast, but I have only ever downloaded 2 albums, (which I intend to buy when I see them in the damn bloody shop!), and some mates have burned me some CDs, but the majority of it is samples to see if I like a band, or individual songs if I think the album is not worth buying because all the other songs are crap on it.

__________________

I enjoy buying the albums. But the only bad thing is how expensive some of them are. Like Imports, and then I have to pay shipping and handling(simply because here in america too many pop culture stores are out there for even one to be a metal store). It eventually becomes hassling.

__________________

you have to pay shipping?! that sucks, at my local shop one of my freinds had them order a burzum cd from norway cost him 13$ and he didnt have to pay for the shipping or anything

__________________

How?

how what ?

__________________

How didn't he end up paying shipping for the Burzum CD?

__________________

No, I order it online, therefor ei have to pay shipping and handling. There are no shops that sell any underground death metal. The most they have is like Reroute to Remain by In Flames and that sucks balls.

__________________

i'm a sea pirate.

arrrrg me mates go on a sea voyage

__________________

im not sure but he didnt which is why i will always go to that store for as long as i can!

__________________

I wish I could hit you

__________________

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

__________________

they should have pirate smileys... aaaaarrrrrr

__________________

I've just ordered a whack load of cd/dvd's from century media a few days ago. I already have them burned/taped/downloaded. If I am a fan of the band, I will buy their product.

I do have a lot of downloaded songs but I own the cd's already. I don't know what my % is but it's nowhere near some of you guys.

__________________

So you mean its nowhere near 1%-99%

__________________

har har shiver me timber ya sea bums!

That's right! Nowhere near 1-99%

Perhaps around 5-10%. I use it to see if I like a song or two before I buy the album. The websites (like hmv) provide puny samples of the songs. They aren't long enough.

__________________

I was just wondering because you said nowhere near you guys. and I think every percentage was filled so i didnt know what you were talking about.

__________________

shut your trap Timon

__________________

I thought SpikeyHairz was Timon?

__________________

999999999999999999999999999999999999%

__________________

I think you missed a decimal point.

__________________

no i think hes right, he pirates more music that he has

__________________

Next time, make shure its the right guy you "quote"

__________________

Yeah, to 34 orders of magnitude!

__________________

I do not know what you said just there

__________________

"Orders of magnitude" is "base to the power of the order" (base^order) and are best explained using examples. For example, in the decimal system (base 10) we have:

1 order of magnitude = 10 (10^1)
2 orders of magnitude = 100 (10^2)
3 orders of magnitude = 1000 (10^3)
etc...

And in the base 6 system, where only the numbers 0-6 appear (thus the first 15 numbers are: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20), we have:

1 order of magnitude = 6 (6^1)
2 orders of magnitude = 36 (6^2)
3 orders of magnitude = 216 (6^3)
etc...

I just find it more convenient to say "orders of magnitude" because it is independent of the number base being used.

How does this relate to what MorbidGuitar said? He quoted a percentage that contained thirty-six 9's and since a ratio of an actual physical quantity cannot exceed 100%, he has over stepped the upper bound by thirty-four 9's. Hence he apparantly has about 34 orders of magnitude more pirated music than he can possibly own in the real world.

__________________

I have no clue what you are talking about. But then again, History/ Philosophy/ Art/ English has always been my forte... Math is just... weird...

WOOOOWWW, I feel enlightened and stupid at the same time. You must be a genious or something

__________________

HOW THE FUCK DID YOU FIND THAT!!! IVE BEEN LOOKING ALL OVER THE NET FOR IT.... I TRIED KAZZA AND ALL SORTS OF SHIT. YOU ARE THE ULTIMATE PIRATE... UNLESS YOU BOUGHT THAT

__________________

Hahahaha, yeah I bought it - it cost me seven and a half grand at university!

__________________

In the case of the the base being zero, you could state that the first order of magnitude (which is zero) is undefined. How can you have any order of magnitude with base zero? Every order of magnitude after zero would still yield a zero answer.

0^0 = undefined (error -E)
0^1 = 0
0^2 = 0 and so on...

I will side with the quoted statement above if:
Base does not equal 0; when the base number belongs to the set of numbers that do not contain zero. (which is anything but the whole number system, I believe...)

__________________

Wow. 10% is the most popular vote so far. That's fairly surprising. I put down 30% because although I've got a fair few cds, I download whatever I can whenever I can (which admittedly isn't very often since I'm no longer able to afford having an internet connection at home... ). My music collection isn't exactly huge though - probably about 150 - 170 cds worth.

Ah well, if you're not going to buy an album anyway, why the hell shouldn't you download it? Anyway, although I like Bjork & Public Enemy, I'm not going to spend 30 fucking dollars on one of their cds.

__________________

The base 0 set is empty and since the base 0 system is not used for precisely this reason, my statement holds true.

Anyhow, your definition of the number set to which the base number must belong is wrong: "when the base number belongs to the set of numbers that do not contain zero". This set would include every number imaginable (including negative and complex numbers) except zero. When discussing number bases only positive whole numbers can be considered so the set that you should have referred to is the counting numbers (N) which contains every positive integer.

__________________

shut your trap Timon

__________________

Classic, Atif, classic!

__________________

about 85%....

Hey, i live in a hickville illinois where you can find alot of good CD's.

__________________

I was trying to refer to the "natural" number system, which is all the positive integers greater than zero. Thank you for reminding me. It's been awhile since I've taken math.

With the definition clearly defined now, a fractional number would not belong to the N set. Since we were intially dealing with percentages, which has fractional properties ie 99x34% orders of magnitude/100%, this would yield a number of ...999.99 which is not a natural number. Since a % is not a number, it is a number multiplier, we would have to apply it to the present situation which is 99x34 o.o.m. divided by 100 to make it an actual number. This would produce a decimal number of ...999.99 which is two orders of magnitude less than 99 x 34 o.o.m.

I guess all i'm saying is that (according to your defintion of orders of magnitude and base number rules), you can't use 99(%) as a base number because it's a percentage. Does this make sense?

__________________

Wheres that, and if its hickville you shouldnt be able to find alot of cds.

__________________

You mean earlville??? god i used to live there.... it sucks

__________________

I used to live in Buffalo Grove. And that's not true, some hicks raise white power kids that listen to metal and from their white power music they get into some good music. SOMETIMES.

I live in Mt. Prospect, and I work right near BG.

__________________

johnmansley, what did u study at uni?

and htf did this thread become a maths-fest?

Anyway, do you think that mathematically minded people like technical music more than non-mathematical people? I'd be interested to know.

__________________

Um... yeah... I'm lost...

__________________

Percentages are part of the decimal (base 10) system and so you just apply the order of magnitude rules to percentages in the same way as you would to any normal number.

In this specific case, where the percentage should be less than or equal to 100%, the order of magnitude should not exceed 2. In the initial number that was quoted, the decimal point should have been placed after the second of the 36 '9s'. There would be 34 '9s' after this decimal point and so he missed the decimal point by 34 orders of magnitude.

BozoNightmare: I studied maths at uni, mainly applied maths, but I studied some pure maths (such as this) in my second year.

The question of whether more mathematical people listen to complex music is a difficult one. I was the only person of about 200 in my year who listened to extreme metal, so initially I would have to say that there is no correlation. However, I think there was a higher percentage of people in my class who liked classical music (most of which is very complex). So maybe there is a link between mathematical minds and technical music in general.

The reasons behind this are probably numerous, but I would suggest a couple of possible explainations:

1. A mathematical mind likes to look for and digest complex patterns. Afterall, maths is (basically) the study of the relationships between numbers. This curiosity of patterns may manifest itself in the form of deciphering the pattern behind a weird time structure.

2. Many mathematical people like to be challenged and get bored by simple tasks so the music that challenges the mind the most tends to be technical metal and classical music.

It's an interesting point and there may have been some sort of statistical analysis carried out by someone somewhere as part of a thesis.

__________________

That would be an interesting thesis. You could have many students surveyed and the like and see if there's a trend. My first thought, I wouldn't think so. You can't pin point why people like certain music over other music. I would like to see what Arts students would most likely listen too. Top 40?

Yeah, I didn't take math. I'll take your word for it, John. You win by just barely though. Perhaps by an order of magnitude of the 33 root of e^PI.

__________________

Hahahahaha, Brilliant!

__________________

you logic is flawed, due to the large quantity of females in an arts degree you may get sampling error, you may as well ask the nursing students

and besides i think the arts students are more likely to be hippies

__________________

I wasn't considering only males or females. I was merely discussing 'students' as a whole. You would definately need to apply restrictions or parameters and list all the results of the findings.

I was the only person that I knew that actually listened to metal. Everyone else was mostly into mainstream stuff, like top 40 hits. It's kinda annoying because you hear it all the time anyways. You tell them that you like metal and they look at you like you don't know what's going on. Strength in numbers, that's usually the way. A lot of people like music that they can easily identify with others and it's usually the simple stuff, like mainstream. Radio stations and music video tv cram it down your throat. Oh well.

__________________

I had similar observations while studying at Uni, at least in regard to classical music.

I'd rather say, mappings between sets, that also could be sets of numbers Take for instance abstract topology or graph theory, there are no numbers at all

__________________

AAAARRGGH!!!! BASTARD!

Whay don't you just have sex with my mother while kicking a broken bottle down my neck? HIPPIES?!?!?!

Hey, yeah, you kind of touched a nerve there. I quite enjoy my arts degree & I reserve all rights to fundamentally hate hippies & everything they claim to stand for.

...mind you, I'm lucky enough to live in Adelaide where the vast majority of hippies & their filthy ilk get laughed out of uni, arrested, &/or chopped up & put in barrels. Bogans however, rule the night...[edit] & this is a bad thing.

__________________

I've recently been listening to more and more technical compositions. And not just extreme metal either. Anyone bought the Rhapsody - Best Of that came out recently? It took me 5 listens to get over the whole power metal gayness of it, but the long term appeal is great. Legendary compositions... Solos are way out of my league, so that's probably what draws me to it; I like stuff I can't play/compose anything like it. Stuff that I can now play/compose myself I start to lose respect for, but only for copy-cat bands; the originals I still have respect for.

I love listening to Cryptopsy - Whisper Supremacy. The opening track just seems so random, but they can reproduce it live. Someone told me they read an interview in a mag and thought Cryptopsy were a bunch of mentals. Also, I heard of a recent study that showed there were like *degrees* of autism in the population and there were names they gave to the personality types as well. Einstein, for example was at one end of the scale with bad emotion/people skills, but really smart or something, I can't remember it exactly. So with the last few points in mind, my question is if an autistic person can play the axe like a banshee, since they're good with numbers (e.g. memorising patterns and numbers in phone books).

__________________

Damn my memory. Yes, indeed you are correct, Nomad. I actually studied a bit of graph theory as well! Damn my memory...




I've read a little about autism and, as you said, there are varying degrees and different kinds of it. If anyone has seen the film Rain Man with Tom Cruise they will know that Dustin Hoffman's character is autistic and had an amazing talent for arithmetic, counting and memory. No-one quite understands why this is, but it's most likely down to one part of the brain developing at the expense of an other (usually the parts that concern the interaction between other people, behaviour and attention span).

However, I think this "number based" autism is not related to the autism exhibited by some people who appear to be geniuses in the musical sense. Some autistic people could, for example, listen to Beethoven's 5th once and then be able to play it back exactly as they've heard it. Once again an amazing memory is evident.

They are both remarkable talents but I don't think I've heard of a cross-over whereby an autistic person who is a genius with numbers is also a genius with music or vice versa. This may be down to the fact that two parts of the brain would have to be abnormally developed, which in my reckoning would be a very rare occurence. Or, because I've not done a biology or neuroscience degree, I could be wrong! But from what I remember reading, I think I am right in saying this.

__________________

I remember seeing some freaky dude on a show where every single thing that went into his brain stayed in it. It was impossible for him to forget anything, and it was causing his brain to expand; his head looked like it was about to split in half and doctors reckon he'd soon die.

Anyway, I want to know something. I find it insanely difficult to play stuff like off that Cryptopsy album. Not only memorising the patterns; they cut riffs off, change timing/tempo, add bits to a riff, start riffs like part way through so its unintuitive, play in different timings to the drums, etc. But I can't play 4 notes per beat at 210bpm, skipping over a whole string at a time playing 2 notes per string. e.g. slow down the start of track 7 I think it is; they don't fucking miss a note! My wrist just aint that fast. So I wonder if the average person will ever be able to play songs like that for example, or do you need to be born with an above average level of co-ordination in your brain? i.e. something you can't learn; the average person has a lower limit to the maximum speed their brain can go at.

Now here's another question; does being a slow talker, etc, mean you're slow at other stuff? Because I fucking rip on videogames and dominate when I play sports like squash/handball, but when I play guitar I seem slow. I need caffeine and an hour warm up before I can start playing stuff like The Haunted's first album. Maybe I just need more sleep or a better diet. I find I forget stuff quick. Anyone know what those herbs are for memory?

__________________

i said more likely, doesnt mean all of em are

im friends with someone doing an arts/computing degree, and another one of my firends is doing arts in professional writing

it just happens that at my uni there are a lot of hippies, maybe thats because the thing was so fucking easy to get into, im only going though because its nice and close to my parents house

__________________

Well, I think that practise will always help to increase the brains capacity to do a certain task. There is no doubt that there is a limit to how fast you can physically play but you can get close to that limit with intense practise. I think everyone has the potential to play those Cryptopsy songs it just depends how patient and dedicated the person wants to be. I bet if you sat and practised that track 7 (I haven't got the album) for 3 hours every day for a year you'd be able to play it. But who'd do that?

I think the difference is that some people will need more practise than others and that's were the brain kicks in: attention span and capacity to learn. It seems that while autistic people have a low attention span, they also have a greatly increased (probably exponential) capacity to learn and memorise certain things. Therefore the low attention span doesn't have any effect on their ability to learn or play music.




I did know them but I forgot! Nah, only kidding, but I think if you take vitamin supplements you may witness an improvement in memory. The situation you describe (great at video games, etc, but slow on the guitar) is a strange one because hand-eye co-ordination is essential in both. Maybe it's down to practise again, but I don't know. If you play more video games than practise guitar then that could explain it, but if you play the same or more guitar than video games then I don't think I could offer an explaination.

__________________

I think we should develop a website called askjohnmansley.com Where he answers all of life's questions.

__________________

I think something that should be taken into account is how someone learns a song also. If you learn from ear, your mind has an easier time recalling the information faster, while playing the song. If you learned the song by tab, then your mind by instinct would look at it as a number system, then convert it to where your finger goes. I think that would inevitably slow the process down of playing. That doens't mean with practice you couldn't get faster. Also when learning by tab, it might take longer to burn the process to instinct from recall. When playing by ear, I notice that a lot of the stuff comes to me a lot faster. I can learn a song, and 2 weeks later play the same song again just like I did the first day even if I haven't played it again since, but if I learn something by tab, I almost always have to go back and look at the tab again 2 weeks later.

This makes sense to me, because when I play something from ear, I just go. And if I fuck up in some part, my brain KNOWS that I'm going to fuck up before I do, and I kick myself because it feels like I knew that I was going to make that mistake, but when I'm playing some thing that I've learend by tab, my brain almost always thinks of the notes that I'm playing as numbers. I could even call out the numbers as I'm playing, but I don't think I could do that with something that I've learned by ear. Of course that changes after playing something I've learned by Tab enough, it just becomes second nature, like everything else that I've learned by ear. I'm sure all of this just boils down to learning process, and ultimately minds capability to decipher different situations of learning, and how it stores everything. Or I could just be a total idiot.

__________________

You bring up a valid point. When learning from a tab, your brain stores the information as a visual memory and because vision is our primary sense (ie, we store a lot more visual memories than sound or scent based memories) recollection of visual information is somewhat less efficient than our recollection of sounds or aromas. That could be one explaination for you finding it easier to learn 'by ear'.

Corpsevomit98: Hahahaha!

__________________

ive given up, your all too mathy for me and my simple year 12 maths and university statistics, we all know that real mathmaticians think of statisticians the same way as death metal fans think of nu-metal people

__________________

No way! Have you seen some of the maths in advanced statistical theory? Very difficult. The real conflict arises between pure mathematicians and applied mathematicians. Now that can get nasty!

__________________

I'd like to see two pairs of scientist just brawl.

__________________

Gauss famously died in a duel in his early twenties. He was an amazingly talented mathematician and it can only be speculated as to what he would have achieved had he lived a longer life. At the age of 7 he came up with a formula for the sum of an arithmetic series and he contributed the Gaussian Distribution (a narrow spike instead of a bell shape) to statistics which is also utilized in quantum mechanics and financial models. He was a genius and probably one of the greatest mathematicians to have ever lived. Watching his duel would have been funny though!

__________________