Episode 1: Introduction to Music Production

Episode 1: Introduction to Music Production (AAC)

This is the debut episode of the Electronic Musician podcast on Serious-sounds.net. I am still working out the format bugs and everything, but in this episode I will be talking about choosing the right software for you and how you can find out what type of software is out there for music production.

Our featured artist this week is a Australian trance duo Suspended Animation, and of course I will be covering the latest industry news and discussions, as well has the happenings on the Serious-sounds.net forums.

Show Notes
Introduction
Industry News
Forum Topics
Topic of the Week
NAMM Roundup
Artist of the Week

Artist of the Week
Suspended Animation - Evolution

Featured Music
Must - Endless Sunday
Dynamic Interplay - Night the Morning Come
Robb Walker - Reality Check
Kid Wikid - None Thinking
DJ Pee - Cocaine (Extended Remix)


Send us questions or comments at sup (AT) serious-sounds.net and be sure to sign up for our forums at: Serious-sounds.net
Until the Next.

The Will to Write.

Well it seems I have moved into another one of those writers block moments with my music. These seem to happen with me about every two years. Perhaps I just get bored with what I am doing. Anyone who has known me on these boards knows it takes me an eternity to write any music at all. Usually at least a month for a track.

Currently I am in another one of those funks, twiddling my thumbs as to what I want to do now. About two years ago I quit production on the computer to focus on doing LivePA work and to try a new style of music. At first that started out great as anything else does and I was getting some pretty good shows, but at a great expense to me. I now have not done any live shows in over a year. The cost of driving out to those shows and everything was costing me a lot of money, and to be honest not that many people are looking for downtempo livePA acts. Again I am at that sort of point in my music where I am wondering where do I go from here.

Do I bring the MAS productions style and alias out of retirement, go back to computer production and back to more ambient music? On the one hand I really do want to do that and I am beginning to miss some of the stuff that I was able to o in Buzz. On the other hand I tried to move away from that vowing to go in a different direction with my music, only to find myself stuck at the same point I was two years ago, and two years even before that.

I suppose one of the things I am missing most right now is the gratification of my music. With the computer production I was really putting out some great songs and getting a lot of feedback online for my work. I left that behind for the LivePA work though, and for a while, while I was doing live shows, that was able to satisfy me because I had that feedback from the crowds. But since I have not been really putting out the shows, especially not the music as regularly as I used to, everything just seems to be lacking at this moment.

I suppose one of the things that is perhaps behind this as well is that I am done with college and now looking for a job. Ironically enough my time at college the past six years gave me some of the best free-time I have ever had to make music and those two things in my life really connect. My best music came out of those six years. Despite the some of the stereotypes of most college students I was really a hermit for most of college, locking myself in my room on Friday and Saturday nights pounding away at music with my headphones on. I really loved that and I was happy as a clam to do that, having my apartment to myself to get some real work done. I have a feeling I am not going to be able to get away with a lot of that anymore. I can already begin to feel pressures and responsibilities piling, pulling my attention and time elsewhere.

Anyways I am just sort of throwing this out there to see if anyone has some insight they can perhaps throw at me. At this point I really feel like getting back into the whole computer production thing, but unfortunately my budget just doesn't allow it at the moment.

It is an Apple Christmas

Well Christmas has come and gone, and I hope everyone have a great time. Surprisingly my Christmas this year went off pretty much without any problems. No crazy relatives shouting at each other or anything.

So I myself got some pretty nice gifts for Christmas, some of which I would never have thought to buy myself, but really enjoy actually. The first surprising gift was an iHome H6 alarm clock. Now what is so cool about this alarm clock is that I can plug my iPod into it and wake to my iPod. Plus it charges my iPod. Two birds killed with one stone there, and I totally needed a new one. My old alarm clock I have had since i was about six years old.

The next surprising gift I got was this super small photo printer, the HP Photosmart 385. Now I am not one of the photo types but this thing prints super sweet photos. You would never tell they were printed on a home printer from a digital camera. I went to get some extra paper for it and I found a sweet value pack from HP which included 125 pages of photo paper plus a print cartridge from $40!!!! Black ink cartridges for my regular printer cost $31!!!

I got plenty of other cool things, but to sort of tie a theme together here I was reading the "Cult of Mac" book which I got. My girlfriend and I have totally fallen into the whole cult. We adore our Apple products. She personifies hers, and we even held an "unpacking ceremony" as they say only Mac people seem to do. As far as I am concerned I could do without seeing anoher Microsoft product......Except for maybe an Xbox 360.

I am getting off the point now though. Through all of this I came to realize that when I get my own place I will have to design the rest of my furniture and design around my white Apple products.

So Christmas for the rest of my family was mostly and Apple affair as well. Both my Mom and my Dad got iPods and a plethora of Apple accessories.

The Impact of Web Journalist's Death

If any of you are as connected to the world wide web as I am (and I assume you are if you spend your free time reading blogs) then you have probably heard about the recent death of Cnet.com senior editor James Kim.

About two days ago James Kim's family was found alive in the Oregon after spending more then nine days alone in the frigid cold. In hope of trying to find help for his family, James Kim set off into the wilderness to try to do something and not just freeze to death. Last night however, it was reported that rescuers found James' body near a ravine.

Almost as soon as the announcement was made the news spread across the net just about faster then anything I have ever seen. This news however was spread not through the traditional sites like CNN, or Yahoo news, but rather through the blogosphere. As I opened up Bloglines to review my feeds for the evening, I quickly became aware of the cascading effect that was occurring around the blogs. Of course the technology blogs such as Engadget and Gizmodo and several others were the obvious sources that expressed their regret to the loss of James Kim. I was surprised however, to find out that some of the craft and knitting blogs that my girlfriend subscribes to also featured news of regret over the story.

Initially I thought that perhaps this was just some heartfelt expressions that were being expressed out of regret, but I later came to find out that some of the bloggers on these craft blogs were actually good friends with Kim's wife. Other close friend's of the Kim family also appear to be bloggers themselves and include authors from the site Engadget and others. As I read this, I quickly came to realize that the blogosphere is much more of a tight knit community then I initially thought.

That fact has always been talked about and discussed before here and there, but this is the first time that I think the fact is really being highlighted as the blogging community struggles to cope with the loss of one of its own rising media stars. These bloggers are not just nameless screen names behind a keyboard, but they actually communicate with each other all the time and operate in the same professional and personal circles. They go to the same press events and product releases, and I assume they generally hang out together during those times.

Through the blogosphere readers and writers have had a relationship of intimacy that has never really been seen before in the journalism world. Not only do the bloggers write news, but readers write back to them in the form of comments, and participate as never before seen. Often times the bloggers will respond personally to readers comments, which really creates a relationship that has never existed before. As these levels of relationships unfold and play out we can see how bloggers grow with each other, and readers grow along with them developing personal relationships which create dedicated readers and dedicated writers. For those in the tech community (and apparently other blogging communities) the loss of James Kim does not seem to have been just another report about a journalist tragically lost as we may have seen on the TV news, but it instead feels as if they have lost someone they actually knew. I would suspect that many bloggers out there professional or otherwise have developed different levels of relationships with their fellow bloggers and readers, and this blogger finds the response that has developed out of this sad story particularly remarkable. It certainly demonstrates the power of the online community, and I would not be surprised if in the next few days that same community mobilizes itself to develop a fund, or trust or something else in James' honor.

I think this whole series of events makes one think about the impact that the blogosphere really has on the society that we live in these days. For better or for worse we have developed a new level of intimacy and relationships with people online that would never have existed outside in the real world and that means something.

My girlfriend summed my thoughts quite nicely in an email she sent to me today when we were discussing this topic. She said, "I always found it sort of cool to stumble across a new Blog, and notice that half their links are ones I subscribe to. I don't know these people at all, yet somehow I am in the same group as them."? I think that sums the whole issue up quite nicely. We all have some sort of connection.

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Big updates coming for the New Year

So I have some big updates coming up at the turn over for the new year.
School is just about out and I should hopefully have some more time to work on some of my personal projects because I do not have a full time job yet. I was unable to schedule any live shows for this past fall because having class that goes until 9:00pm three nights a week and then work and commute the last two nights go until about 7:30pm does not lend itself to very much practice time. Especially when that 7:30 ends up falling on a Friday night.

I have been working on developing a new website for my music and projects, which is for the most part finally complete. I have been slowly developing this website since June, but I just get so lazy with it sometimes that the development grinds to a halt. The main development of the site has actually been done since about August, but I have been since designing and editing little annoying things on the site like spelling, links, and minor formatting such as shadows and such. This is extremely boring work and I hate doing it so the development of these tiny little pieces has taken more then three months, when in actuality it would only take about two hours to do if I just sat down and did it. I also put off the website's deployment for financial reasons, not because I didn't have the money for a domain name, but rather I just was too much of a miser to spend the lousy twenty-something dollars to set the whole thing up. It is getting there though and the new year seems like a perfect time for a new site launch.

I am putting up a proper website because I think it will help people better be able to navigate to my music for listening as well as download some of my net albums. As you probably notice from this Blog it is not exactly easy to find where my music is or where you can download it. I am using iWeb for the design of the new website and it is looking really nice. iWeb has a lot of great features in it that make it want to be used. Some of those features include blogging, photo albums, and podcasting. At present I am probably going to stick with this Blogger Blog for my blogging (wow that was a lot of b's) simply because I think Blogger is a little more flexible at the moment, but I anticipate that to change as iWeb goes to a release version 2.0 within the next six months. You can be sure I will add some pages in the future for photo albums as well as for downloads of some of my music tutorials.

As part of the new website launch I am playing with the idea of implementing a Podcast. I think since I am a musician the Podcast seems like it might be a natural progression for people to listen to my music and hear my thoughts. iWeb has some really slick podcasting integration in it that I do not think any other web development tools have, but I still have to explore the flexibility of it. If it is anything like the blogging software in iWeb it may be to inflexible for me to use. We will just have to wait and see, but I am very excited of perhaps implementing a Podcast feature to my site to make it more interactive.

If people have some feedback that they would like to give me on the idea of podcasting I would be more then happy to hear it. As much as I love listening to Podcasts myself, I really have no idea as to what goes into making an interesting Podcast. At present I am thinking of perhaps keeping them relatively short, between 20-30 minutes, and have about 10-15 minutes of me talking about a subject and then the last half of the Podcast feature some of the music I am working on. That shouldn't be too boring right?

Also for those who do not know, I run another Blog all about livePA, or live electronic music over at http://www.livepa.blogspot.com. Please go over there and check it out if you are interested. I am also looking to redesign that site slightly, or at the very least develop a new banner for it. If you have any suggestions or would like to do it, shoot me an email.


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New Song: Journey to the Edge of the Earth

Hey remember how I created this blog to showcase my music? Well I finally had time to sit down today and do some recording and I have a new song to share with everyone

The song is a rough recording since it is still a work in progress. It is a moderate dream trance song that I think has an adventurous sort of feel. Something you would hear in a fantasy or scifi scene. Feel free to listen to it via the hi-fi or lo-fi streaming links.

LoFi

HiFi

Soundclick Link

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OMG The Headphones!!!!

So I am totally digging my new iPod, but OMG those earbud headphones that come with it have got to be the most uncomfortable things ever to touch my ear. They are seriously almost unbearable.

I don't think I have weird shaped ears, but I do not see how people can wear these things. They just hurt right on my inner ear.

I am going to have to find some alternative headphones.

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The Big 24 and an iPod

Well today is my birthday. Here it is, The day was generally a decent day. I had to work all day and no one at work knew it was my birthday. All the better I suppose since there is nothing more uncomfortable then the awkwardness of a work party. Really there isn't.

My present this year from my parents was at 2GB iPod Nano.

Would you actually believe that I have never owned an iPod before? No, really I haven't. As big of a gadget freak as I am I just never had one.

I finally have one though and it is really small. Pretty sweet too. It will be nice for the train rides into work and so forth. I am not the sort of person who is going to load all my CD's onto my laptop. I am a big podcast fan so I am loading all sorts of podcasts on there. Music ones, talk, editorial stuff.

I am sort of excited about the iPod. Since I started jogging again I might pick up the Nike running thing at a later point. I guess my Mac transformation is finally complete. I am a die hard addict now.

Anyways, here is off to another year older.


Ohh gosh I almost forgot. My girlfriend was really sweet this morning and surprised me with a small present and some chocolate at the train station. Apparently she was waiting since 6:05 and I don't get there for the train until about 6:35.

She got me the Fray CD, some awesome Russian dark chocolate and a real cool little card. I am not a card person so the fact that I like this card is sort of a big deal, at least to me.

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Tomorrow is My Birthday

So Halloween came and went. Tomorrow is my birthday. I am turning twenty four. I can't believe I am that old. I really don't feel like I am twenty four, but I guess I am. The funny thing is that I am in that sort of "OMG am I getting old now?" sort of mentality.

You know you look forward to every birthday and the big ones are eighteen and twenty one. After twenty one though what are the highlight birthdays? None that I can really think of. I suppose I am not so much feeling old as I am feel as if people think I should be grown up now.

Graduation is coming up in a few months and the whole "real world" thing keeps getting told to me by countless people. I hate when people say that stuff, as if I am living in some delusional juvenile world now. It is like I am expected to cross some magical bridge and take on "adult responsibilities". I think there are several issues that are probably compounding this problem that I sort of have with it. One of least which being graduation approaching, but the others are probably the marriages and children that my friends and people I knew in high school are having. My good friend J has a daughter that is going to turn 2 on November 7th. He has had a daughter for two years!!!!!

I log on to the obligatory Facebook pages these days (because apparently it is the cool thing to do) and see people who were younger then me from high school getting married. I have to say it just sort of feels a little weird.

At any rate I am trying to stave off growing up as long as I can. I have sort of developed into a videogame nerd over the past two years and I am getting myself all revved up for the release of the Nintendo Wii. I am planning on actually getting up early that day (November 19th) to sit out in front of the store to make sure I get one. I have never, ever done anything like that before, but I think it will be sort of fun. Maybe I am doing that because I really want one, but maybe I am doing it because I still get to act like I am 16.

I'll be sure to blog about that experience as too.


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