It’s no secret that Gypsies make the best musicians. The Roma –as they call themselves– have always been making music, at literally every occasion, happy or sad, secular or religious. Ever since the time they left their native Rajasthan over a thousand years ago, Gypsies have been absorbing the music of the peoples they met, enriching it and making it their own. Some of them settled down –at least for a while– on what is now Hungary. Today I want to tell about a certain family of Hungarian Gypsy musicians, and why their music will blow you away.

Karaván Familia is a Gypsy music group from Hungary, formed by István Nagy, his wife Ilona, and their two teenage children István Jr. and Niki. The head of the family sings, arranges and plays guitar in a style that reminds you equally of Django Reinhardt, Paco de Lucía and Carlos Santana. The wife sings in a haunting high-pitched voice which goes from sweet whisper to meteoric lilting in a split second, and dances as well. The children are miniature versions of their parents, and I’m sure that one day they’ll become important names in the world of Gypsy music on their own right. For an example of what they do on stage, go to www.karavanfamilia.hu and take a look at some of their videos.

The group plays traditional Gypsy music from Hungary and elsewhere, using instruments such as acoustic guitar, accordion and a rich assortment of percussion: Middle Eastern darbuqqa (hourglass-shaped drum favourite of bellydancers all over the world), Turkish finger cymbals (zills), Peruvian cajón and the rustic but inimitable steel milk jug, which sounds very much like an udu drum… or better yet, a slightly drunk udu drum.

Roma Flamenco is the first album recorded by the Caravan in early 2000s. They got a little help from Boban Marković, one of the most famous Gypsy trumpet players from Serbia, and they also added to some songs a bit of electric bass and synthesized drums (traditional music fans, don’t cringe, it’s done tastefully). This album is, start to finish, one of best you’ve never heard in your life —without a doubt.

The stage is set at the very beginning of the record, with Ki Itt A Legény (Who’s the Man Here?), a fiery whirlwind of a song that clocks in at 190 beats per minute (read: faster than the Can-Can), and features all of key elements of the album: catchy melodies, very tight arrangements, Marković’s colourful improvisations, amazing polyphonic singing, the wildest lilting this side of Ireland, and a final accelerando that would make Fatboy Slim go green with envy. If you’re like me, this song will energize you like an hour on the treadmill would, but without the sweating.

Őszi Levél (Autumn leaves), the next song, has a rumba-like feel, and I think that if Karaván were a mainstream act in Argentina, you’d hear this chorus sung at every football match. And maybe one day they will, you know? I certainly did play the next song, A Tűz Varázsa (“The Magic of Fire”), at parties, and people absolutely loved it! Actually, I dare you to listen to it and not hum along.

There’s a few ballads, too. Pillem, Pillem, Karaván and Tango Gitano add to this colourful and extremely complex mosaic of styles which is Gypsy music. The underlying merry theme is, however, always felt — even in the saddest song of the album, A Szél Dalol (“The Wind is Singing”). And when I mean sad, it’s not because I understand what they’re singing, no. Lyrics are not included in the liner notes, you can’t find them online, and not even my Hungarian-speaking friends were able to help. To me, this is by no means a weakness — on the contrary, it allows the spirit of these songs to breathe through… and hey, it’s great fun to be able to sing along phonetically again, just like we used to when were kids and didn’t know any English, don’t you think?

The album wraps up with Pomagele, the happiest, bounciest song of whole CD. You’ll have no idea of what you’re singing, but trust me, you will be singing “ah-jelly-pom” with the rest of us… and if you don’t, I would check my vitals signs if I were you. Back when I use to DJ, no “Balkan party” block would be complete without this song, and I wonder how come nobody has remixed it yet.

Roma Flamenco is an excellent example of authentic, contemporary Gypsy music from Hungary, and Karaván will amaze you with their musical prowess and win you over with their fiery spirit.

If you are like me, you will also wonder how this music from so far away could possibly feel so close to home. But if doesn’t, hey, we’ll always have ah-jelly-pom.

• Who: Karaván & Boban Marković
• What: Roma Flamenco (2001), 12 tracks
• How to get it: unfortunately, you are not going to find this record at music shops in Argentina. Since currently Amazon doesn’t have it in stock, I’d say you get it whichever way you can.

The default user and password for the modem/router Ganymede 822+, which is quite popular in Slovenia, is user/user.

Just saying, so that our friends at Google index this.

Nothing else to see here, bye!

I want to show you how I managed to effectively organise my iTunes library, keeping it simple while not sacrificing detail, and without spending days doing it. I reduced the Genres List by 75%  and ended up with really great ways of rediscovering my own library. I currently have some 8500+ songs in my library, from widely different styles ranging from Irish Traditional to Classical Hindustani to Argentine Ska and, believe it or not, I can now find everything I want to listen to right away. Keep reading if I got you  interested.

The problem

Our music collections are growing. The price per gigabyte of storage keeps going down, and there’s more music out there that we can possibly imagine. And of course, we want it all. Given time, a healthy musical curiosity and a fast Internet connection, your iTunes Library will go crazy. Unknown albums, Unknown Artists, unhelpful Genres (Traditional Turkmenistani, anyone?), and not a thing can help, not even the once-useful iTunes Search, because there is simply no proper metadata to search by.

The solution

A short post at Lifehacker suggested a solution. By tagging your music instead of filing it (using the little-known Grouping attribute instead of Genre), you could then use Smart Playlists to filter your collection in any way you saw fit. Go read that post, I’ll wait.

While tagging certainly is more flexible than filing, after thorough testing I found this method to be a bit too flexible. In other words, you soon ended up with another mess inside the Grouping attribute, and the bloated, ugly Genre list was still there looking at you.

After some more testing I improved this already great original idea by adding to it the concept of taxonomies. If you’re not familiar with the term, a taxonomy is a way of grouping items (e.g. Color=Red). Since we’re talking about music here, two useful taxonomies come to mind: Country and Language, which we’ll use to identify where an artist is from, and in which language they sing. You could also add Instruments, but hey, let’s keep it simple.

Finally, one of iTunes 9’s less known new features is the revamped Column Browser, which now makes it possible to filter by our friend the Grouping attribute, which is excellent for our task at hand. Oh and by the way Apple, you spelled “Groupings” in the Column Browser, but “Grouping” in the Get Info window. Thought nobody would spot that, hmm?

First thing first: trim your genres!

Before diving into this taxonomy thingy, though, start by trimming your genre list. Go into Grid Mode (cmd+alt+4 Macs) and select the Genres tab. Pick one of the more obscure ones, edit (right mouse click, Get Info) and make all its items look more mainstream. Repeat until your Genre List looks as boring as Tower Record’s aisles. Yes, genres in your library should match aisles in a record store, and not sections in record bays. Use the broadest genres you can think of. Trust me, you’ll see why later.

• Good examples: World, Latin, Rock & Pop, Soundtrack, Children, Electronic, Classical.
• Bad examples: Celtic, Latin-Colombia, Choral, French chanson, Americana, Throat Singing, Instrumental.

When in doubt, go for those genres iTunes has icons for, because if nothing else, they’re sexy. Don’t be afraid of using big ‘catch-all’ genres such as Rock, Pop or Soundtrack, because you’ll be slicing your library using Smart Playlists anyway, ninja-style. My Library has barely 25 genres now, and my “Rock & Pop” genre has 196 albums and 1930 songs, in case you were wondering.

There is one exception, though. If you’re a true connoisseur of a particular genre, and you absolutely need to add a few extra subgenres to show off your amazing filing skills at let’s say, Qawwali, by all means do so (Qawaali Fusion and Qawalli Remix are good subgenres for that, by the way). It’s your library after all, and any system should work for you, not the other way around.

Finally, if you’re like me you’d like to tag songs individually by genre, regardless of the album’s main genre, such as a Spoken Word interlude between songs from a Soundtrack album. Resist this impulse, unless it makes perfect sense to you. Make all songs inside an album have the same genre.

Adding taxonomies

Now it’s time to start adding tags and taxonomies to the Grouping attribute. For example, let’s say you’ve selected all the songs from ABBA’s excellent compilation Gold. I would tag them like this (and as a matter of fact, I have):

What this means is that all 19 songs will be tagged as being from the planet Sweden, and sung in English. I separate tags and taxonomies with simple commas, but anything will do really. I’m used to commas.

From here on, you can add more tags and/or taxonomies as you see fit. Examples could be “dance”, “80’s sparty”, “Bands with creepy haircuts” or “When mainstream music didn’t suck”. As they say, the sky’s the limit, but the more anal you get with the tagging, the easier it’ll be to find your music later. Basically lather, rinse, repeat until your obsessive-compulsive inner self is happy.

Enter Really Smart Playlists

So, you’ve tagged all you music. Congratulations! Now the fun begins. Let’s create a Smart Playlist (cmd+alt+N if you’re on a Mac) to match Swedish music, as follows:

Simple, huh? This will grab all the ABBA music in your library (admit it, you have some!), as well as Yngwie Malmsteen, Roxette, Ace of Base and The Cardigans (and maybe now would be a good time to  meditate on your musical tastes, don’t you think?). Now switch to Grid View, and you might see something like this:

See the selected Smart Playlist on the left? You can create as many as you want, as I have, and even combine multiple Grouping filters. So next time you need your fix of Japanese videogame orchestral soundtrack music, you’ll only have to create the following Smart Playlist:

Yes, the mind boggles. And by the way, you can see an example of a subgenre right there with Soundtrack (Videogames). Maybe one day I’ll merge them all in a Soundtrack genre, and create more tags to split them apart, but for the time being, I have three different types of soundtracks, and all is well.

Some example cases

• U2’s music is Rock & Pop (genre) and Country=Ireland, Language=English (grouping). Instrumentals such as The Unforgettable Fire’s “4th of July” lack the Language=English taxonomy, since there are no lyrics, but sport the Instrumental tag.
• Music by Iranian pop star Andy Madadian is World (genre) and Country=Iran (grouping). He sings in many different languages, so Language=Farsi is not always the case.
• Madness is Rock & Pop (genre), and Country=UK, Language=English, Ska (grouping). I don’t use a Ska genre for the reasons outlined above. Keep the genres always as simple as possible, unless, well, you happen to be a Ska nut.
• The genre for the soundtrack to Guy Ritchie’s movie Snatch is Soundtrack (Films), and the Grouping attribute changes from song to song. You have Soul, Spoken Word, 80s Pop, Ska, Electronica, Jewish traditional instrumentals, Brit Pop, and Motown. And you can feed them all into the Grouping attribute. This is a good example where this taxonomy+tags method really shines, because there’s simply no other organization method that can handle this level of diversity within a single album.
• Señor Coconut’s album El Baile Alemán – Latin versions of Kraftwerk gets the Latin genre, and something like Country=Germany, Country=Chile, Covers as Grouping.

Conclusion

This method solved all the problems that came from having a large and varied iTunes music collection. Sure, you have some tagging work to be done, and depending on how precise you want to be, it could take a looooong time, but hey, nothing worth doing is easy.

So finally, you might ask why using Genres after all? It is a good question, and we could technically do away with genres completely, but iTunes has them hardwired in several places by default, so I think it’s best to let them be… just don’t get too picky with them. They’re aisles in a music store anyway, remember? And you don’t complain with that, do you?

I hope this tutorial was useful, and if you spot any errors or typos or there’s anything you’d like to say, use the comment form!

America has invested her religion as well as her morality in sound income-paying securities. She has adopted the unassailable position of a nation blessed because it deserves to be blessed; and her sons, whatever other theologies they may affect or disregards, subscribe unreservedly to this national creed.

Agnes Repplier, Times and Tendencies (1931)

Taken from an introduction to a chapter of American Gods, Neil Gaiman’s masterpiece. Makes you think, huh?

These days I’m spending a lot of time developing a WordPress-powered site, not yet online at the time of this writing. My workflow is simple: I develop at my home box (Mac OSX + XAMPP + Komodo Edit + Sequel Pro, thank you very much), and from time to time I deploy to a private URL hosted with WebFaction, where the rest of the project’s team can check for updates, give opinions, etc.

First I tried using a private Subversion repository, but it choked every time WordPress -or any plugin!- was updated, so in the end rsync proved to be the right tool for the job. I wrote these instructions on how to do this deployment mostly for myself, but I thought ’someone out there’ could benefit from them as well, so here we go. You’ll thank me later.

IMPORTANT: while this HOWTO applies directly to WebFaction customers only —and you should give them a try if you’re considering switching hosting companies, they’re great— resourceful Web boys and girls will surely know how to make it work at their Web company of choice too.

Requirements

• A fantastic WordPress-powered Website running on your box, itching to be deployed.
• The rsync command line tool running on your local box. Normally built-in with Linux or Mac OSX, I guess it should work under cygwin as well, but I haven’t tried.
• A way to export your MySQL database. I use Sequel Pro, but phpMyAdmin or mysqldump if you’re hardcore, will do just as well.
• Your favourite text editor. I prefer vi, because I’m old.
• An account with WebFaction. Any plan will do, since we only need SSH login and their Control Panel.

Step by step

Start by going to your WebFaction control panel, and create a new Static/CGI/PHP Application. Call it myproject, and hit Create. It’s up to you to wire it to one of your domains, so I won’t touch on that here.

Now fire up a terminal session at your home box, change to your project’s root directory, and type:

cp wp-config.php wp-config.php.tmpl

Now paste the following line into a new file called rsync_exclude.txt, which will live at the same directory:

wp-config.php

The previous two commands will make sure your local configuration settings will not overwrite those in the production environment every time you rsync.  Now we’re ready to invoke rsync’s magic:

rsync -avzh --delete --exclude-from '/path/to/local/wordpress/rsync_exclude.txt' . YOURUSERNAME@YOURBOX.webfactional.com:/home/YOURUSERNAME/webapps/myproject

This command does the following:

• It mirrors the exact state of your local development root directory with your live site at WebFaction, adding, modifying and deleting files as needed. Exercise good-old common sense while running this line, OK? (if you’re not too sure, add the -n parameter, which asks rsync to do a ‘dry run’ only, without changing anything at the destination site).
• The -avzh instructs rsync to process all hard links, preserve file attributes and other niceties, use compression for faster transfers, and display human-friendly statistics.
• The –exclude-from switch does what you expect: tells rsync to skip what’s listed on rsync_exclude.txt, which is nothing but WordPress’ local configuration settings (the wp-config.php file).
• The last two parameters describe the source and target directories to sync. The single dot (.) means “the current directory I’m in”, and the target directory is actually a combination of a SSH-enabled host plus the full path, separated by a colon. rsync will ask for your SSH password, so don’t worry about that.

Almost ready now!

Log into your box using SSH, change to ~/webapps/myproject, and execute:

cp wp-config.php.tmpl wp-config.php

Now go and edit wp-config.php and change the database connectivity options (DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD, DB_HOST, and maybe DB_CHARSET and/or DB_COLLATE) to reflect your production environment. Which reminds me…

What about the database?

The method outlined above takes care of the PHP side of things only. If you’re also producing content at your home development box, as I am, you’d like to copy your database over to the production environment as well. And rsync can help here too.

Using your MySQL frontend of choice, connect to your local host and dump your project’s full database to a file with a .sql extension (use today’s date as part of the the filename, it’ll help). If you’re using Sequel Pro, go to File -> Export -> MySQL dump and you’re set. Save the dump file with the rest of the stuff at your project’s root directory, and rsync will catch it next time.

If you develop locally using “localhost” or “myproject.local” as your home URL, as most of us do, you will have to edit the dump file and replace all local URLs with “live” URLs. If you use vi, this is a one-liner:

:1,$ s/myproject.local/myproject.com/g

(That means in oldfartese “change all the occurrences of the string myproject.local into myproject.com”)

Do a rsync now, watch your dump file get copied, and SSH to WebFaction.  We’re going to run one command that will overwrite your production database with the contents of the SQL dump file you just rsync’d. Which means you will not do this once your Website is live, unless you’ll have an excellent reason to do so. For the purposes of this example, “latest.sql” will be the dump file, and the production MySQL database will be “xyuser_myproject”. The command to run (at ~/webapps/myproject/) will be:

mysql --user=YOUR_SQL_USERNAME --password=YOUR_SQL_PASSWORD xyuser_myproject < latest.sql

And that’s all folks! You should now point your browser to your live WebFaction URL, and see your updated WordPress-powered Website. Now wasn’t that easy!

Conclusion / Everyday use

Now that I look back at all those scary paragraphs and lines of code, I’d like to say that for everyday use, this solution is actually pretty straightforward. It’s a matter of firing up Sequel Pro, exporting, running sync.sh (which is nothing but a wrapper shell script that invokes the rsync line), and SSH’ing to WebFaction to import the data back in. With a bit of extra shell script-fu, I’m sure you could streamline the process even more, let’s say to bypass Sequel Pro and to everything with MySQL built-in command line tools.

So, what do you think? Did this article help you? Found any bugs? Anything doesn’t work? Drop a line at the comments!

UPDATE: big thanks go to Japh for his help in simplifying this tutorial. Isn’t the Internet a great thing?