new cell phone, new ringtones

for those of you who are counting, jer and i have switched to cingular. we changed carriers at the end of last month because we really really needed to get away from tmobile. if you don’t have my new number by now (c’mon!!, it’s been almost a month!), do let me know and i will give it to you. unless you’re one of them crazies. Then i’ll just give you a bewildered look.

so i’m really digging on my new phone!! it’s the siemens s56. it’s small, sleek, sexy, has a color screen, decent battery life, can sync with Outlook/functions as a PDA, and has polyphonic ringtones! i finally got some new midi tunes for it last week, cuz the original ones on the phone were awful. actually, there are a lot of really terrible midi songs out there, and i sifted through many many songs before finding ones that were exceptional, or even just good.

the good:
– peanuts theme
– weezer – in the garage
– seaquest dsv theme (WOOHOO~!!!!!!!!! SUCH A GOOD SHOW.. in the first season.)
– shanice – i love your smile (remember that song?! oh, back in the day! too bad the intro is too quiet to be a really good ringtone…)
– blind melon – no rain (oh shannon hoon, how we’ve missed ye)
– futurama theme (sounds terrific as a ringtone! and plus it’s a great show.)

the bad:
– a lot of poppy techno/electronica midis are okay, because they often use synth instruments as it is. but boy some of those songs are reproduced in MIDI to sound really soulless and repetitive. garbage’s ‘cherry lips’ is one such song, and although i can hear shirley manson’s girlish purr in my mind, it’s not really there, and the song sounds pretty sad without her.

the ugly:
– too many. you’d have to hear it to believe it. and i wouldn’t wish a fate like that on anyone. color me badd’s all for love is super repetitive and irritating without (and some would say with) the vocals. 911’s ‘the day that we find love’ is probably the ultimate in boy band cheesy goodness, very difficult to say no to, except in MIDI form. elastica’s ‘connection’ is a another fun song, but reproducing the fun dissonance of justine frischmann’s voice with MIDI instruments is a task that should have been left undone. i also found a few versions of the really pretty travis song ‘driftwood,’ and all of them were so bad that they almost made me cry.

but you know, it’s free, so what can you expect, right? i kinda wish there were some way to pay these folks for their time… like an ‘insert a dime or quarter or dollar’ to this person’s fund for taking the time to arrange a thing like a MIDI. I tell ya, electronic music is HARD WORK. anyone who tells you that good music has to be instrumental and acoustic has clearly not dealt with the difficulties in composing and producing music electronically. it’s just a different instrument to be played, and electronic music producers deserve respect too, dammit.

anyway, my new ringtone as of today is the peanuts theme. i guess it’s additionally appropriate seeing as it’s the week of Halloween, and networks will be airing “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” soon.

in case you need to hear the peanuts theme rightthismoment, you can click here.