Archive for the ‘Musician Resources’ Category

“The Music Studio”

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

Go to ClubCreate.com and you’ll find a collection of web apps to compose your heart away. I happened to play with “The Music Studio“. There are more web app options to choose from, so after reading you can check them out here.

About ClubCreate (via ClubCreate.com):

The Music Studio

ClubCreate stands at the intersection of music, technology and culture providing free, web-based music creation tools for the masses. ClubCreate breaks down the barriers to music creation providing Brands with unique ways to engage new customers. We have worked with top global brands such as Microsoft, MOG, Myspace and Vodafone to create these unique experiences that help promote brand awareness via music.

I’ll talk about the good first.

There are a lot of loops and options. I could take a loop and add reverb, delay, reverse, flanger, phaser, 3 band EQ, normalize, and distortion if I wanted to. You can also edit pan and volume by inserting nodes and moving them around. I also had the ability to solo and mute.

Working within the app is really easy, just drag and drop. You can’t cut a loop (I couldn’t find an option), but you can add or delete the loop by clicking on a ‘measure’ (simply put).

ClubCreate ImageThe Music Studio is actually a lot of fun, but I had some odd experiences. For example, I’d add the same loop a few times, then delete a couple of them and the specific track would no longer work. I don’t know why, but after clicking a whole bunch of times, it eventually worked again. My biggest frustration, though, was when I saved the project and came back to it. The whole project was a mess. Everything was in it’s place, but a lot of the tracks, more specifically tracks with effects, did not have the appropriate sounds. It was really annoying and after awhile I finally (or hopefully) got it back to the way it was supposed to sound. You’ll notice quickly what I’m talking about when you watch the video I created compared to the widget they offer to play your track in. You’ll notice that a lot of the sounds are just straight up wrong. I found the program unreliable.

You don’t necessarily have to be very creative to make something cool. That said, if you want you can get creative with what you have available. I found that with the limitations I was still able to change the project to my liking.

Check out the video to see/hear my demo ‘composition’, then listen to the widget track. You’ll have to skip ahead in the widget track because I had a few measures in the beginning I couldn’t get rid of. You’ll quickly notice the difference.

Anybody up for throwin’ a rhyme on top of the beat?

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It’d be cool if someone rapped over my mix. Surprise me! Let me know and I’ll add it to this post.

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MS Windows Audio in Hall of Fame

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Which Hall of Fame, you say? I don’t know.

Microsoft Windows Play for SureIt’s just a title… Like, “Win a trip to Hawaii” and then the fine print says ‘if you pay for it‘. So basically, you’re paying to read this post. At least I’m not the wife of a missionary in Africa wanting to send you 10.5 million dollars.

Regardless of whether you think PC is better or Mac is better (I have both, so that makes me a P-MaC), MS Windows has offered years of computer sound clips that brighten the day of millions of workers every morning. I’d thought I’d share a few videos I’ve come across in my quest for world domination.

Why hasn’t anyone sampled any of these audio clips in their music? Or maybe I just haven’t heard it, yet. Maybe you know?

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Leave a comment ;)
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Do, Re, Mi, Chip, Sol, La, Ti, Music

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Music ChipI was looking for some cool stuff and I feel upon this, ChipTune.com. According to the author, it’s a remake of the classic Amiga’s operating system, Workbench 1.3.

Well, it’s through ChipTune that I found ChipMusic.org.

ChipMusic.org is “an online community in respect and relation to chip music, art and its parallels.”

I signed up immediately because that’s just what I do. If you’re not signing up for stuff all of the time than you’re simply not in the cool crowd.

There’s a bunch of stuff on the site. For example, you can listen to chip music, read tutorials, mods, and how to’s, get to now a little more about vintage consoles, check out artwork and motion graphics, plug ins, software, hardware, audio production, and more. It’s like you’re birthday all day everyday.

So, happy birthday. I totally made your life that much better. Don’t thank me, thank my parents.

Oh, and there are cool words like ‘indubitably‘ on the front page.

Gotta go, time for cake and ice cream.

Let me know of any chip music resources and leave a comment.

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Audiotools aren’t just people you know…

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Some people are audio tools and some people have audio tools. This intro is somewhat pointless, but in a sense it helps me get to my point. And no, it’s not that I am a tool… silly goose.

Hobnox.com Audiotool, you heard of it? Well if you haven’t, you definitely should. I created a short video, so you can see what I’m talking about.

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… and hey, let’s just say you don’t feel like getting so serious. Then why not make your way over to Sheep Beats?

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Marketing Tips for Musicians and Venues

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Scott Perry, who produces the great New Music Tipsheet also has a sister site, MKTGideas.com, that is definitely worth checking out for marketing tips that I believe can help musicians and venues get the word out. Here are some samples from the site:

How GET BUSY COMMITTEE is Using Kickstarter to Raise Money

How NETTWERK is Using the Blog Platform to Empower Publicists & Bloggers

How FAMILY OF THE YEAR is Using Personalized Postcards to Raise Money

How EINSTEIN BROS Gained 340,000 Facebook Fans in One Week

How AMERICAN APPAREL Started a Fan Picture Campaign to Boost Site Traffic

How the GRAMMYS Leveraged Social Media to Mesh with Music Fans

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Tenori-on Alternatives

Friday, December 4th, 2009

Because I wrote about Weepr on my last post, I thought I’d go through a few options of Monomes/Arduinomes/whatevers and include some media as well. If you know some other options that I don’t cover please leave a comment and let us know. We’re always interested in checking stuff out and playing with ‘em.

First, the Tenori-on.

(via Yamaha.com) “The TENORI-ON is a unique 16 x 16 LED button matrix performance instrument with a stunning visual display. For DJs & producers it is a unique performance tool enabling them to perform using MIDI and load the TENORI-ON with samples to ‘jam / improvise’ within their set BPMs.”

I haven’t used the Tenori-on yet, but I’m sure my day will come. You may consider it expensive at around $800 – $1000. So, if all you want to do is push buttons, this may not be for you. Leave a comment if you’ve used it and let us know your thoughts.

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Now for the BlipTronic 5000 LED Synthesizer

This sucker is significantly cheaper than the Tenori-on at only 50 bucks. Not too bad, especially if all you want do is to push buttons. Here’s a description from ThinkGeek:

“If HAL 9000 mated with R2-D2 and their electronic offspring was tutored by Kraftwerk it would probably end up something like the Bliptronic 5000 LED Synthesizer.”

Not a bad description, right? I think it’s pretty good. Here’s a video:

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You could always build your own monome/arduinome.

Check out Monome.org or Flipmu.com to get a kit to build. The prices seem to vary, but generally more than the BlipTronic, but less than the Tenori-on. Here are clips:

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And lastly on this post, but definitely not all that’s out there, is Weepr. Yes, I just blogged about it, but this post is different and I’m willing to argue to prove so. Weepr is a free software version that you can download at their website. I made a video, but I chopped it up a bunch. Don’t get all weirded out when the audio sounds crazy.
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Leave a comment!

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Playing with Weepr

Friday, December 4th, 2009

You know, I was doing my thang and browsing the net, because that’s what I do, and I checked out the Tenori-on. I decided to do a search on alternative choices and that’s how we got here.

Weepr is an a matrix sequencer application created on the Adobe Air Platform. Users are able to create and share their beats/compositions with the Weepr Widget on blogs, forums, social networks, etc.

I downloaded the application and played with a bit, so I thought I’d share my experiences.

The application is fairly basic, but still fun to play around with it. I wish there was more to it, but I imagine Weepr is already on that. For example, you have 1 cursor within Weepr versus 10 fingers on a physical model. It’s hard to move around within the application when you want to make a lot of changes instantly at the same time. You can’t control volume, so I was having trouble getting a decent balance with all the layers. Also, time (or tempo) would drag if there was too much going on at once. I imagine that is all based on your computer resources. I was on a laptop and running some programs in the background, so more than likely if I turned my chair around and tried it out on a desktop I would have been fine. Instrumentation is limited, and is in desperate need of Hi-Hat sounds!

I don’t want to make you think that I’m bashing Weepr at all, because I’m not. I like the app and I look forward to future versions. My experiences were positive, just wish I had more to play with. You can download the app on Weepr.com.

I’d like to be able to try the app on a touchscreen. That would have made it a lot easier. Here’s just a short vid below as well as the Weepr Widget above (that I can’t get to work?!). The video has been chopped up to make it significantly shorter. I was playing with it for awhile and took it down to a minute.

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Have you tried Weepr? Leave a comment with your compositions, comments, or questions.

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When you aren’t sequencing your shirt, sequence online.

Friday, October 9th, 2009

Ahh, the web… It’s a place where I can just chill. You might think that is odd, but you can take the web everywhere, and you can do almost anything.

You can wear a shirt and no pants and still look professional at a business meeting, you can wear a shirt and no pants and end up being the star of the next “To Catch A Predator” (some people just don’t get it), or maybe you can just work with your very own web-based sequencer, Soundation Studio.

Screen shot of SoundationSoundation Studio is a web-based sequencer that enables you to make music, ringtones and audio clips directly from the internet without downloading any software. Developed by PowerFX the beta version includes over 400 royalty free audio loops, 9 different effects, track automation, basic loop editing, loop audition, master channel control, and mix down to desktop.

I took a moment, probably a lot longer than I should of (but I was having fun), messing around with the sequencer. I’m impressed. At first I felt somewhat limited regarding features, but it just took moment to say, “Oh Yeah, that makes sense!” Really, I’m impressed with what this sequencer has to offer. You should definitely check it out. It’s free as well.

In any event, check out the quick tune I made below. You can make fun of me all you want in the comments… really. Enjoy.

 

So what did I end up doing?

  • Changed lengths of the audio files
  • Automated volume, pan, and effects
  • Added some reverb (you have a solid choice of effects by the way)
  • Saved the project file to my computer to open at a later time
  • Bounced the wav file to my computer
  • Added multiple channels with solo and mute
  • Used keyboard shortcuts like spacebar to play and stop, or copy and paste
  • Zoomed in and out of waves, etc., etc., etc.

I really could keep going, but it would probably be more interesting for you to check it out yourself here.

Also, if you make your own tune let me know and I will add it to this blog post and give you credit as well! Have fun.

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Writer’s Block

Friday, June 5th, 2009


These last few weeks have been crazy, it’s the summer so I finally have all this time to indulge my creative artist interests. I’ve been writing songs almost everyday which I’m pretty damn happy about, but there’s one problem… I usually forget them.

Usually when I write a song I remember it enough so that when I come back to finish it, the music is in my head, but now that I’m so focused on music my brain is flooded, and consequently every time I pick up the guitar a new riff or melody replaces one of the ones I was working on.

Problem Solved:

I started recording myself every time I’m about to do anything musical. It’s not like I’m setting up mics, or going to a studio just to jam or play around; I’m literally just creating super rough reference copies on my laptop using garageband.

If you’re an artist and you want to do
the same but don’t have a mac or garage band and a mic, then check out these sites.

Audacity is a free program similar to Pro Tools – http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Search for mics here depending on your budget – http://www.newegg.com
http://www.sweetwater.com

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