Music Linkstravaganza
Bored and elbow-injured once again, I spent a bit of today looking around for music sites and thought that I should document my new finds as well as a few regular visits I make that I might not have mentioned before: resources
garageband.com - After my recent experience with somesongs.com I remembered garageband.com and went back to check it out. It's kind of a similar deal, feedback and ratings, but the music is more unabashedly mainstream and there are allegedly prizes if you do really well. I think I may try it out next and see how poorly I do. I'm not sure it's very compatible with my 26.4k lifestyle however. I've downloaded a few songs off of there and have been impressed with their quality.
homerecording.com/bbs - This is the place I go for general information and advice on home recording. It's the best resource I've found. As long as you're not a total ass, the users there are generally extremely helpful and there are a lot of very knowledgeable people kicking around.
songfight.org - This is a cool concept and a bit chaotic. Musicians are given a song title and they write a song to go with it. The songs are voted on and a winner is declared. It is once again a site that I have a rough time with, being at low speed. I hope to participate once I eventually go high bandwidth.
allmusic.com - This is generally my first stop when I'm reading up on bands. Allmusic's biographies are great, discographies very complete, the reviews are more often than not right on the money and the artist browser allows you to easily find similar bands you might be interested in. My killer app of all time would be some sort of Audiogalaxy-esque MP3 sharing client hooked up to Allmusic.
kvr-vst - Your one stop shop for the latest in VST plugin news as well as a searchable database of plugins. There are also various other useful resources for music nerds, such as the sound card latency database for when you're trying to deal with your moronic sound card. The forums are also pretty decent.
artists
scottandrew.com - It occurs to me as I list his site here that I've spoken with Scott by email a few times -- he has always been very encouraging and supportive and helpful and to me -- and I don't think I've ever told him that I really, really like his music. Maybe I'm a dick. He pulls off contemporary mature folk/rock, kind of in a Goo-Goo Dolls vein if you want to get all comparative, and his songs sound very professional and natural in a genre where most seem to wind up coming off forced and amateurish. I really like his latest song, The Big Lie That Solves Everything.
shannoncampbell.info - I was introduced to her when she kinda dissed me on her weblog over copyright thangs, but I didn't really check out her music. I just recently downloaded Scott Andrew and Shannon's collaboration on Dreaming Of Violets (originally Shannon's song I believe). It's a folky sad song and I really enjoyed it. She has one of the best voices of the women I've heard on the net.
Chris Voss - I just discovered this guy the other day on somesongs and I really like the two tracks he has listed there. I don't know anything else about him but I've been trying to track him and more of his music down.
If you have any cool music links, feel free to post or send them in.