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.
I try to keep this blog related to music but this entry is purely about computers. You’re all using computers right? It is such a good tip I could not resist.
I am a PC guy by choice. I like to tweak customize and upgrade. It also is makes economic sense. You can upgrade the components to keep up with the times without throw the whole thing or having to reinstall your programs(and go through the reauthorizing process for each of them) or transfer all your media, documents and settings over to a new machine. Not for everyone I know but great for some of us.
The thing that makes upgrading less attractive to me and other people is having to reload the OS or attempt to use the a repair disk to get the OS to work when you are changing out a motherboard. It is usually a much bigger pain than actually changing out the mobo which is basically a few screws and plugging is a few cables.
I have read and so many place that a clean wipe and do a fresh of the hard drive is the only way to go. “They” say there will be problems any other way. Others suggest you’ll need some kind of boot CD either a custom repair disk or the Windows CD to get make things possible. This what I have done in the past. Most of what I read recommended some version of this. I have found ways to make it less painful to reinstall windows like slipstreaming (a good idea to do as a backup anyway.) But I have found all these to be unnecessary.
I have since searched and found the method I used a few other places on the Internet but it is out numbered by others. I worked for me using XP I have no idea about other OS’s. I found it from Windows XP A to Z. You simple change the the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller. You can find the same method in a little detail here. Note that the terminology for the standard IDE controller you want might vary a little form the examples but you should be able to tell which one it is. I even forgot to restart in safe mode and it still worked. The one thing I will add is you should download new drivers from your motherboards manufacturers website before the change out. The drivers on CD that came with the mobo will most likely be out of date (almost any driver disk is outdated) and it you’ll have the most current drivers available to install immediately.
There was no need to mess with the BIOS, boot order or a repair disk. A few minutes to install the drivers a restart and that was that. Great.
I found this on the very cool Retro Thing. When I heard about Radiohead’s remix contest for Nude I was excited. Then when I heard the track my enthusiasm waned a bit. Radiohead were having some fun with the song they selected. If Radiohead was a Shakespearean character the their fatal flaw would be being too clever. I am not discounting their musical talents somethings they have done musically and other wise have suffered a little form being a little to clever. At least I think so which is odd because that special British brand of cleverness I never can get enough of in the forms of comedy and literature. Still a great band. And how often do you get access to each track of a song by a great band. That was my attract to it rather than any contest. I bought the stems and plan to have go at it despite 6/8 time and 63 bpm. Normal remixes are made for the clubby dance numbers. Which seemed impossible if you were going to use most of the music made available to you. So, I though I will just make it in to something else unique and not dancy or hip-hoppy. Stretching the sounds to a normal tempo the sounded well stretched and found it pretty hard to work with do to the songs structure. I don’t claim to be a talented remixer. I was falling miserably when The Great Hard Drive Disaster of ‘08 hit. Then I learned things like the also very clever Apple doesn’t let you download purchased music again. So, I was doubly defeated.
I was glad to see someone succeed at doing something original and generally awesome. Just give the video a minute to get going and you will see Radiohead’s Nude created on old computer parts and gear. You have to love a dot matrix rhythm sections & unintended purposes.
Ableton user should check out Vitamin L from Tonearm. If you haven’t heard of it here is what it is and does:
Vitamin L is a system of over 100 shortcuts and tools developed for speeding up the workflow in Ableton Live. It combines accelerated access to most frequently performed tasks with many functionality enhancements. The features include:
a set of ergonomically placed “smart” single-key shortcuts
context-sensitive mouse wheel assignment
easy keyboard access to many clip properties and envelopes
quick modes for adjusting clip gain, pitch and BPM from the timeline/session
keyboard timeline navigation, play-from-mouse-cursor, etc.
a quick and simple solution to recording and combining multiple takes
precision editing (nudge, move/copy to an adjacent track and more)
automation tools, including working with lanes and editing the tempo envelope
sample-audio-to-midi-track function and shortcut
This really corrects one of the weakness with Ableton. I have not been one for shortcuts. I played all those old school RTS games to develop mad point and click skills right? Well it is like learning to type correctly. It is slower going at first if you have been hunting and pecking but pays off huge in the long run. I am not that great at remembering shortcuts. My brain is just wired to make that easy. But it something I need to get better at if I am serious about getting more done. More doing and less time clicking about sounds good to me.
A few days ago I had a disk partition accident. Then I compounded it with my stupidity. Not good.
I am trying to be positive about it. Learning lessons. Moral victories that kind of crap. huh.
The first lesson is when doing something potentially completely destructive read the menu carefully and don’t assume anything.
The most obvious lesson is an obvious one that a lot of people ignore. Backup. I kept most of the non-program files on a second hard drive used to store media and irreplaceable files. Most. OK, that is not a back up solution. But it usually is the drive with the OS(s) that gets screwed up. The idea was that would really minimize that change of losing important data in between occasional backups. I would keep really important stuff on both drives and on removable storage, etc. Well, the saving important files to the storage drive and backing up occasionally fell by the wayside. I did not lose everything. But I lost some. Luckily I had my really important stuff in about ten different places including online storage. Yeah, I know I am not very smart. So, please let this be yet another cautionary. Let this one be the one you pay attention to.
I actually have scheduled a back up reminder. Lets face it not something most people are going to think about a lot. It is not fun. No one ever said I can’t wait to back up my data yippie! Besides neglect the other thing that kept me from regular backups up was disorganization. It not really practical to to back everything up with the gigs & gigs of data we collect now. So when your important data is scattered across multiple drives and in zillions of mislabeled folders and mixed with crap it makes it hard if not impossible to do a good job backing up.
You gotta have a real plan I guess not just a vague intent like I had. There is a million possibilities nowadays so there is no excuses. My plan is basically segregating all the data I create like project files, recordings, written word, etc. Then back that up on a schedule. As long as I pay attention to where I save things and stay organized it should not be that hard.
OK now I have to get a little philosophical. You don’t really realize the amount of crap that you can accumulate virtual or otherwise until you have to replace it. Especially if you have to go through annoying copy protections and have to find install disk you have seen since 2 seconds after you installed a program. Rerip music, etc. Despite all the advances now days in clock speed, bus speeds, memory and bandwidth installing software and data from DVD’s and CD is still slow as hell. You start to ask yourself if you need all of it while you watch the endless procession of progress bars.
The philosophical bit is you realize how little of it you actually really need. Not surprising really considering the culture here most people end up so much we don’t really need. Stuff that does not improve our lives at all and most likely hinder our happiness. Remembering that this here World Wide Web is just that World Wide I don’t know how it is in the rest of the world but in the good ole U.S. of A there is a strong almost religious tendency toward acquiring more and more stuff. Big neon signs, glossy print, screaming radio ads and moving pictures urge over consumption and acquisition overtly. Then there is the strong current drag us down stream with out us knowing it that some call culture. George Carlin describe this phenomenon well in this video. But it really is worse had he puts it. Maybe it is this way in the rest of the Western World and Westernized Far East but I do not really know what life is like other than the bullshit I have seen on TV. But I know how it is here. It is even the supposed answer to your current financially problems. Were are supposed to spend our way out of being broke. Go figure. And People buy into this idea. We are so entrenched in acquiring more and more stuff. I tried to stay organized. And keep my hard drives clean. I would try and get rid of the stuff I never used. But i probably was doing a very good job of that either. My computer was bloated with crap. Crap that hogged resources and diverted my attentions. Nothing good ever came of it.
My Desktop a microcosm of the this materialistic world…you bet. OK, I am not going to bullshit you and say I am glad this happened. I am not it is pain in the ass and I lost a few things I wish I didn’t . But maybe understanding a little better that I should possess only what I need and take very good care of those things is worth something. I should schedule a reminder for that also.
It is good that DRM is dying. The bad news is that the death throes will take some poor sucker’s music collections out. Thank Microsoft for doing something wrong even when they do something right. There are going to shut down the lisceneing severs trapping music on there current computers unable to be transfered. It not like Microsoft can afford to keep the servers up or anything. Not the end of the world but not cool.
Found this video on TED. This is about the least mind blowing thing I have watched on TED. But then again the is some pretty amazing lectures on TED. Some them have completely changed the way I look at the world. This one is just kind of an intro to a video that is less impressive than explaining how the poverty will end. If you have never visited the site before you should check it out there is most likely a topic you would be interested in.
Anyway, I am interested in the idea of music generated video. I am not sure this is the best example of it(probably would not be on the site if it was not for the name Eno and Bryne.) VJ’s have of course been doing this sort of thing for a while. But I like the idea of using the computational powers of computers to generate visuals that relate to the music. What relates to the music is a highly subjective matter but computers can create visualizations that it would be difficult for human to do or too time consuming animate by hand. Considering the technology like Celemony’s Direct Note Access deeper analysis of pieces of music could lead to more complex and even more meaningful visualizations. And with processing power ever cheap this kind of thing will become more accessible to more and more people.
I found the link to these cool videos in the comment section of the TED video:
Kind of related is a fun and simple music generated visuals of Audiosurf. It is a fun little game that does a great job syncing up to your music collection.
I found this both at GetLofi & Rekkerd. Gameboys are normally used for the eight bit funkiness. the kBANG Gameboy is more of a drum machine. It controls solenoids that are used to bang on stuff.
I wrote about Foals remix thingy yesterday. Radiohead also has a remix thingy going. Just slightly higher profile. Slightly. The down side is you have to buy all the tracks from iTunes for $5.49. You also can get a Garage Band project. The track is 6/8 time. Some people might like getting away from 4/4 some people might hate that though. Its not so much paying for it for me it is paying for it form iTunes that bugs me. I don’t care for iTunes that much.
You can find a lot more tracks to remix from DanceTracks Digital. They have music available in Aleton Live format.
The Automata / Automaton Blog has this cool musical box xylphone type gadget. I wonder if the pegs would fly out if you really cranked the sucker.
This looks like it came out of a Terry Gilliam or Tim Burton Movie. If you removed the keyboard it looks like it might be a early prototype in jet engine research. You can find at more about slightly insane The Harmonic Generator at Odd Music. Any instrument that has 32 motors is cool by me.
Open Source Works can source how to run Guitar Rig on Ubtuntu. Cool. You can find more stuff like this at Linux VST Compatibility. With Ardour and other works it looks like Linux is becoming more and more viable for more music makers.
The Microphone Site is a pretty amazing collection of mic information.
I got sanother plug-ins link. I haven’t got play with them much but whiteLABEL has a bunch of free plug-ins. The look good and seem pretty cool on first inspection.
I saw this and think it has a lot of possibilities. It is the DX1 Input System. I know that it is marketed toward gamers but I think it would work well with DAW’s, audio editing, video editing, live performance, etc. A cool idea indeed. Being able to make your own background is a nice touch.
Asus’s Eee is getting cooler. It looks like the little guy is going to have a touch screen version out this summer. CDM just earlier dicussed the Eee as a music maker device. The touchscreen made me think of using it with mono touch. That could be awesome.
Disaster, Accidental Hard Drive Cleaning or Stuff, Stuff, Stuff
A few days ago I had a disk partition accident. Then I compounded it with my stupidity. Not good.
I am trying to be positive about it. Learning lessons. Moral victories that kind of crap. huh.
The first lesson is when doing something potentially completely destructive read the menu carefully and don’t assume anything.
The most obvious lesson is an obvious one that a lot of people ignore. Backup. I kept most of the non-program files on a second hard drive used to store media and irreplaceable files. Most. OK, that is not a back up solution. But it usually is the drive with the OS(s) that gets screwed up. The idea was that would really minimize that change of losing important data in between occasional backups. I would keep really important stuff on both drives and on removable storage, etc. Well, the saving important files to the storage drive and backing up occasionally fell by the wayside. I did not lose everything. But I lost some. Luckily I had my really important stuff in about ten different places including online storage. Yeah, I know I am not very smart. So, please let this be yet another cautionary. Let this one be the one you pay attention to.
I actually have scheduled a back up reminder. Lets face it not something most people are going to think about a lot. It is not fun. No one ever said I can’t wait to back up my data yippie! Besides neglect the other thing that kept me from regular backups up was disorganization. It not really practical to to back everything up with the gigs & gigs of data we collect now. So when your important data is scattered across multiple drives and in zillions of mislabeled folders and mixed with crap it makes it hard if not impossible to do a good job backing up.
You gotta have a real plan I guess not just a vague intent like I had. There is a million possibilities nowadays so there is no excuses. My plan is basically segregating all the data I create like project files, recordings, written word, etc. Then back that up on a schedule. As long as I pay attention to where I save things and stay organized it should not be that hard.
OK now I have to get a little philosophical. You don’t really realize the amount of crap that you can accumulate virtual or otherwise until you have to replace it. Especially if you have to go through annoying copy protections and have to find install disk you have seen since 2 seconds after you installed a program. Rerip music, etc. Despite all the advances now days in clock speed, bus speeds, memory and bandwidth installing software and data from DVD’s and CD is still slow as hell. You start to ask yourself if you need all of it while you watch the endless procession of progress bars.
The philosophical bit is you realize how little of it you actually really need. Not surprising really considering the culture here most people end up so much we don’t really need. Stuff that does not improve our lives at all and most likely hinder our happiness. Remembering that this here World Wide Web is just that World Wide I don’t know how it is in the rest of the world but in the good ole U.S. of A there is a strong almost religious tendency toward acquiring more and more stuff. Big neon signs, glossy print, screaming radio ads and moving pictures urge over consumption and acquisition overtly. Then there is the strong current drag us down stream with out us knowing it that some call culture. George Carlin describe this phenomenon well in this video. But it really is worse had he puts it. Maybe it is this way in the rest of the Western World and Westernized Far East but I do not really know what life is like other than the bullshit I have seen on TV. But I know how it is here. It is even the supposed answer to your current financially problems. Were are supposed to spend our way out of being broke. Go figure. And People buy into this idea. We are so entrenched in acquiring more and more stuff. I tried to stay organized. And keep my hard drives clean. I would try and get rid of the stuff I never used. But i probably was doing a very good job of that either. My computer was bloated with crap. Crap that hogged resources and diverted my attentions. Nothing good ever came of it.
My Desktop a microcosm of the this materialistic world…you bet. OK, I am not going to bullshit you and say I am glad this happened. I am not it is pain in the ass and I lost a few things I wish I didn’t . But maybe understanding a little better that I should possess only what I need and take very good care of those things is worth something. I should schedule a reminder for that also.