It’s both a curse and a blessing that I’m so easily diverted… this morning, mention of Alan Lomax’s Cantometrics (in Ned Sublette’s Cuba and Its Music) got me hunting for the various resources I already have and could find to augment what I have. Alas, Lomax’s Cantometrics: An approach to the anthropology of music (1978, audiocassettes and a handbook) is long out of print and seemingly unavailable via the usual sources (though WorldCat tells me that Colby and University of Maine at Orono have it). A Google search led to Tim O’Brien’s posting of a talk by Armand Leroi A New Science of Music: Digital Cantometrics and the Evolution of Music, a 30+-minute YouTube video which I want to listen to (but don’t want to take the time to watch at the moment –though O’Brien provides a transcript). I remembered that Rob Kehler had found a conversion utility that (among other things) extracts YouTube audio to an mp3, so I found his reference in an email message and tried out vixy.net on that video. It stalled at 74% of the conversion, so I tried VidtoMP3.com, but its conversion dead-ended with no MP3 file. So I fired up Audacity to capture the sound in real time, for listening as I walk or drive. Meanwhile, a trip to the file drawers in the barn did locate the Cantometrics folder, with some photocopies and course handout materials from 20-odd years ago, so I added a few more bits of paper, and more than an hour later I’m ready to go on to something else. So it goes.