The MP3Blogs Aggregator is an easy way to keep track of a ton of MP3 blogs all in one place. MP3 blogs are pretty cool and are a bit easier to tune into than a radio show for people who are lazy and impatient, like me. They're also how I found out that Steve Burns (formerly the host of Blues Clues) has teamed up with some of the the guys behind the Flaming Lips. (The song Mighty Little Man kicks ass.)
How to be Creative is a pretty good list of observations on the creative process. Most are pretty insightful. The explanation behind "Ignore everybody" is worth reading alone.
For the home recorders out there, here's a pretty good article on compression/limiting. The main thing that sets this article apart: it has audio examples. As a ranty aside: why is this article one of the very few with audio examples? There's no shortage of tutorials on the net for recording, but almost none of them have any audio with them and are basically worthless without that.
A while back I had an idea about starting a recording website where any tips you gave had to be backed up by audio examples, money where your mouth is style. But then I had other things to do I guess.
Due to peer pressure, I signed up for the Songfight Coverfight where you get assigned another songfighter's song to cover. The assignments are in and I have until August 30th to finish mine. Awesomely, I have no voice right now, but I'm sure it'll come crawling back eventually.
Certain DeathGenre: Rock? Time: 3:48 Date: 07/19/04
Acoustic guitar, drums and synths. This one took forever to write.
This time around we've got a pretty neat children of the fifth people Borderline remix and two Look And Feel Years Younger mixes by the unstoppable c.layne. Borderline (co5p remix) Look And Feel Years Younger (anasthetic mix) Look And Feel Years Younger (violence of surprise mix)
Thanks!
This Vestax QFO Q-Bert Designed DJ Turntable looks pretty awesome:
For scratch DJ's and turntablists, the VESTAX QFO is the ultimate go-anywhere, try anything, all in one DJ tool. Not only is it an extremely powerful turntable but it is also a full battle-worthy, 2 channel dj mixer with all of the professional features you would expect from a Vestax Mixer. The Vestax QFO is a radical new tool for performance DJ's who are looking for a lot more creative options and who want to own the most advanced DJ workstation available in the world. With the QFO, DJ's will be able to take what DJ Qbert has started and revolutionize the Scratch DJ and Turntablist scenes.
Saves you the hassle (and hopefully cost, once the price is announced) of buying a turntable AND a mixer to get up and scratching.
The Shape of Song is a Java applet that analyzes and visualizes MIDI files:
The diagrams in The Shape of Song display musical form as a sequence of translucent arches. Each arch connects two repeated, identical passages of a composition. By using repeated passages as signposts, the diagram illustrates the deep structure of the composition.
Pretty cool. I think the server's pretty stressed out right now though, it's going very slowly.
Here's the source for Look and Feel Years Younger (41MB). Post your remixes to the forums or email 'em to me, I'd love to hear them. If I haven't mentioned before, it's pretty weird listening to the source for my old songs. All I can think of are all the things I'd do differently if I was recording it again today, which is probably made worse by being bored with the song altogether. Still, when I hear problems that I could fix now it at least gives me the feeling I've been learning something here and there along the way.
After reading an article about garageband.com selling tons of albums for artists, I decided to give it a whirl. A few weeks ago I submitted Making Me Nervous there. Based on user reviews, it's going to be the track of the day in the Alternative section on July the 14th. Here's the little badge I get to display:
Kinda neat. Guess we'll see what happens on the 14th.
Happy Canada Day everybody (who is Canadian).
A couple of people expressed interested in hearing my electric kazoo when I got it. So here's my 3:45 opus Me Screwing Around With My Kazooka Brand Electric Kazoo and My Boss GT-6 (5MB).
Three more remixes for you all:
- Borderline (Wadical Weft Mix) by billr
- Making Me Nervous (Wadical Weft Mix) by billr
- Making Me Nervous (UNIT-E Mix) by sharp.
Thanks!
I switched Sellout Central to Wordpress a few weeks ago, which was a bit of a rough ride due to the additional challenge I put on myself to not allow myself to break any URLs in the transition. Wordpress is faster and seems to have more features than Movable Type, but also has a lot of "quirks" and, uh, "character" if you want to put it that way. Enough research smooths that out a bit, but it takes a while. Overall I'm pretty happy with it and would like to switch on this site.
The main thing holding me back from that right now is moving the design over. I really don't want to jam this stupid table-based design into the guts of Wordpress and I also really don't want to spend the next six months of my life trying (and failing) to come up with a nice browser-friendly CSS design.
Besides being a totally amazing watch, The Popular Demo is extra cool because they released the tools to make your own demos with the engine. The quality is pretty stunning, I don't think a video made with it and rendered at high quality would be out of place on television. I wish I had the time to try and jam one of my songs in there because that would be super awesome.
Well, that is now in the bag. It was a pretty good experience in that I learned an awful lot since I had 100% no clue about live sound. I got some real helpful advice and a better idea of what the hell the deal is with playing live. Didn't really make me feel like a flawless rock god, but that I guess is what the booze is for.
The first Brad Sucks live rehearsal at a real place where bands play with real PAs and so on is in like two hours from now. Kinda nervous, kinda looking forward to it, I hope it all goes okay. Playing live is what I've been working on lately instead of recording new songs. If all goes well, I'll be able to start playing live shows, stop worrying about translating my songs into live format and start putting down some new material.
Wish me luck!
Joe Taylor points to the Internet Archive's New FreeCache project. For musicians this means a free and easy way to offload the bandwidth of their hosted songs. You just put "http://freecache.org/" in front of your URL and it does its thing. For instance, here's the freecached version of Making Me Nervous.
That is both handy AND dandy.