HACK A DAY Has a cool tutorial on how to make a really simple digital synthesizer.
Looperman has some free acapella and vocal samples.
If you like crazy musical gadgets you should check out Found Electronics.
IG Blog has a post about a soon to be launch vintage guitar hedge found. Thats right a vintage Guitar Hedge fund. Well, it can’t do any worse the than my 401k has lately. Maybe it will make rich people even richer it the nature of investment but it is a same if more cool vintage guitars will be locked up out of site and out of the hands of guitarist.
Ambience has a great library of free field recording capturing you guessed the ambient sounds of different environments.
Yellow Tools has 2 gigs of free samples for the download. If your German is, like mine, is consits of a few words used on Hogans Hero’s use google transalte or babble fish.
Captain Beefheart is awesome. So are his 10 Commandments of Guitar Playing. Not your normally tips but what else would you expect. Moses would approve.
Julien Bayle can instruct you how to make a monome clones which is good because the monome always have a waiting list.
Music might have stopped me from being a misanthropic criminal so maybe this will change some that are ready are. Jail Guitar Doors is Billy Bragg’s initiative to provide inmates with musical instrument. I believe in personal responsibility so I have to believe in punishment. But locking people up and doing nothing to change there behave other than punishment never made much sense to me. I like this idea. Johnny Cash would approve.
Audiotuts has a list of affordable mics. It is a pretty good list me thinks. But you might want to check out Studio Projects which lower then mics I think are a good value.
Audiotuts also had this link below there mic list but it is a good link that you might have miss to Jake Ludington’s guide to making you own pop filter. Anyone could do this one.
Frank Zappa is not everyones cup o’ tea but he sure is damn quotable read for yourself.
I use Reason and Ableton Live together. Reason is the most incredable sound bank rewired into Live. Here is a good video on using the 2 together.
Electric Guitar Review Telecater Relic project is getting further along and lookin’ good. I was apposed to relicing as phony but my mind is changing. I like to give it a try if I get the chance.
Amptone has about a list of about a zillion books about guitar sound.
Here is a bunch of cool stuff I have found lately:
The Openstomp Coyote1 is a product seemingly made for me. A stomp box that you can program to be any thing you wish. Sound great but it is not yet released. I am going to keep an eye on it there is a lot of potential.
From the site:
What is it?
The OpenStompTM Coyote-1 is an open source audio effects processor built for guitar players. With the Coyote-1 users can develop custom audio effects in software (like distortion, echo, chorus etc.), mix multiple effects to build “patches”, and exchange those effects and patches with the OpenStompTM community.
A companion Windows application (OpenStompTM Workbench) allows Users to combine effects into patches graphically, and to move patches and effects between the Coyote-1 device and their PC’s disk.
The Coyote-1 O/S is open source so users can tweak it to behave any way they like, and the hardware is fully documented so that developers can take control of the whole pedal, dedicating all available system resources toward the implementation of unique custom solutions.
Those Wii remote are cool and have lots of great uses. Macs people should check out WiiToMidi.
From the site:
WiiToMidi allows you to convert signals from a Nintendo Wii controller to MIDI signals. It is a Cocoa application for Mac OS X and uses the DarwiinRemote WiiRemote framework to decode Wii controller signals. It also supports the Nunchuk controller.
From Remix comes some really great tips for make glitch effects.
Karlheinz Essl has some neat software for making generative music. I found this when I got interest in generative music after reading about Brain Eno and Spore.
Gearslutz has a good thread on optimizing your PC for audio production use.
You can find this strange delay effect and other DIY audio goodness at WRONGROOM.
Along the same lines is this great video I found. Analog sequencer in a cigar box is cool enough but controlling other circuit bent gadget is just beautiful noise.
Euphoria Magazine has this list of strange and wonderful instruments.
Found this cool video on EtherBomb. The one man band is alive.
For those of you that want to turn back the clock and stopping buy the new versions of music software every and just happen to have a old ST in the closet should check out Tim’s Atari Midi World. A nice page on Cubase on Atari. It is where most of this computer music business started. It really is not as diffent as you would think after such a long evelotion. I now a lot of people still use it squence. Why not?
These new tiny tiny controls from Korg seem pretty damn cool. I am sure the is a market for these with all the mobile muscians out there. What took so long.
Desktopvibes same how nice images of some cool desktop areas. So if you workspace needs some work take a look.
I have been listening to quite a bit of 8-bit music lately. I get all nostalgic think about old video games. I must have rubbed off on my buying habits because I brought a CD for the first time for ever. I used to spend all my money on music in my starving dropping out of college days. I used to wait in line at midnight to get new releases. I kind of miss CD’s but the digital download is just to easy and practical. What inspired this purchase was Unicorn Dream Attack’s Love Bits. It is a damn good album if you like chiptune and 8-bit music. I don’t mind at all giving a little notice little artist in the big bad music world.
Oh, here is a vid of Les Paul & Mary Ford having a laugh and performing a little just because I think Les Paul is awesome.
I wonder what Watt would have though about the steam punk business going on now. They have done everything else why not a guitar. Though this does look like something that BC Rich would have sold in the 80’s. It might be the flying V. Maybe a little to Randy Rhodes for steam punk.
Robert Babicz gives this excellent talk on mastering and a few other things in the video. Plus shows off some cool gear.
Instructables has this cool hack to light up you keyboard. Good if are working in the dark and touch type as poorly as me it might be an idea.
Just a vid of the charming Drum Buddy that I ran into.
Mediacoder Audio Edition is a pretty cool little app. It will encode about any audio format and will run off a usb stick. It is going to go on my list of portable apps. From the site:
MediaCoder Audio Edition is an audio transcoding tool based on MediaCoder. It nicely integrates many audio codecs and tools into an all-in-one software. It decodes almost all popular formats of audio files as well as audio stream in video files and encodes them with all its supported (and even some not claimed supported) audio encoders. All the codecs are included in the standalone software. With CUE Sheet and DVD/VCD/CD support and many additional features, audio enthusiasts can convert all their favorite music freely to any format on-the-fly and in batch
Nick Cave wants to erect (no pun intended) a statue of himself nude on horse back in his hometown. It more of a blurb than an article but it does say he intends to raise money for it. Serious I like Nick cave Ship Song is one of my all time favorites but if you want to build a statue of yourself you could probably just pay for it yourself. Pay for it himself is not any ego maniacally than wanting to do it in the first place and with Cave’s long career that is doing especially well of late I am guessing he has the $60,000. Whats up with male Australian celebrities. They all seem to have issues Angry raving Mel Gibson. Heath Ledger, punch ‘em up Russel Crowe, death wish Steve Iriwn.
I ran in to this video that someone put to a Daniel Johnston song. Thought it fit really well. If you have never heard of Daniel Johnston you can find out about him in the fascinating documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston. I am not a rapid fan as some people but it one of the best music documentaries ever made. Even in the crazy world of rock music Johnston is one of the strangest and remarkable character you can find. But if you forget the music angle it is still a damn good film.
Today’s gear porn(above) is from Bill on TDPRI. I need a deck with that on it.
Circuit Locution is to the third part in the on bending a Yamaha PSS-460. There is not a lot of bending instructional stuff shown in detail this well. If you have interest in circuit bending you should check it out.
“sfilter creates a stepped filtered sequence, to create gating, sweeps or rhythmic modulation of filter cut-off. It uses a variable state filter, varying between 2 adjustable cut-off values according to a tempo-sync’d step sequencer. An LFO can also modulate the filter for extra movement”
If you have interest in copyright(copywrong) issues or like me just have and interest in getting all straightened out and returning culture to people I found a very through and thought provoking article via the ccMixterblog & The Patry Copyright Blog. Prof. Robert Brauneis of George Washington University has a paper documenting the convoluted history of a copyright icon the Happy Birthday song in great detail. It can be downloaded at SSRN. The detail history illustrates very well the problems of copyright. I can’t imagine trying to figure out the owner ship of something that has been orphaned.
I am accepting submissions for a comp entitled “Sloppy Seconds”.
Submissions must be exactly one second in length. They may be found sound, original compositions, previously released or unreleased.. anything. They are all being strung together into a massive, A.D.D. inducing, pummeling, roller coaster ride of an audio experience.
I have a weakness for Telecasters. I just like ‘em. Jeff Miller has built some tele that are bit different. He mixes Line 6 Variax electronics into a more traditional Tele. I think it is pretty cool even if regular tele is already perfect.
And speaking of Teles Electric Guitar Review has begun a project relicing a new tele. While I love the look of old beat up to closet classic relics I kind of think making relics is a little lame sometimes. Of course parting with 5 figures to get a real one is also lame. I am really curious to see the whole process works and the results.
And continuing the theme Swineshead Pickups have release some good looking Tele pickups the Spotlight-TC & the Dragonfly-TC. I really dig the wood but the different color plastic is cool also.
I thought I would start off with some gear porn. You can find some more images of the tape recorder above here.
Cycling 74 has this cool article. Expand Your Guitar, Vol. I hope there is a vol. 2. think of the craziness max/msp could do to live guitars. It is a really good or really bad thing I have forbid myself from acquiring anymore software depending how you look at it.
The next free Propellerheads Reason Refill (.rfl) is available from Line 6. I haven’t got a chance to look at it but it is from bandmatelopps.com. I hope it is more than some cheesy demo.
Bluenote has released Droppin’ Science. It is a collection of their most sampled tracks all on one CD. I am sure you have heard most of them. Go ahead and sample them everyone else has.
With all the fancy modeling mutli-effects units for guitar out there guitarpacthes.haax.se had the good idea of creating a site where they can be uploaded and downloaded.
I have always like concert poster and here is a nice collection.
Guitarist silenced by ALS is making music again. A human interest story like this makes me feel like the local news. It something like Dr. Stephen Hawking the music produce I quess. It is pretty cool though and the best thing about PC’s is uses like this. Film at 11.
Call it LastTV. It is a good idea mashing you YouTube and LastFM. It works ok. I entered my profile and it did a fairly good job of finding video that I should like.
Also youtube related is ListentoYouTube. It will make mp3’s of YouTube videos. There is of course other ways to do this but this way is fairly painless. It makes it easy to sample YouTube easily. If you want mp3 of teenagers lip syncing and people creatively injuring themselves this will be your new favorite site.
