The band has done this on a smaller scale in the past - the release of "The Hand that Feeds" in Garageband format was something of a first, although they experimented with a flash-based music editing system on a previous project (according to the note from Trent included with the download of "The Hand that Feeds").

The band is also collecting geographical statistics from users (not required, but encouraged) for future "visualizations" that they claim will be "really cool."  We'll see what that means.  I'm hoping they're planning on showing the record industry just how many people are willing to be a part of culture when they're allowed to participate, instead of being treated like slaves and criminals.

Anyway, here's a band who is not only giving away their music for free, but letting people remix and share it.  I'll be paying close attention to how well "The Slip" does when they finally release the physical CD...  I'm going to propose, as a hypothesis, that it's going to do really well, in spite of the millions of people who will have already downloaded it for free.  We'll see how the RIAA feels about that.

GarageBand 2: The Missing Manual

This experienced writer and musician not only teaches you the basics as well as tips and trick about Apple's Garageband, he also talks about music theory, and making computer music in general.

Read it, and you'll see why he's now showing up in major print media and on TV.

As some might know, I've spent the last year working on my first album, "You Stir My Soul," which is a collection of contemporary religious songs I wrote for the Catholic Mass. About three weeks ago, I finished the album and submitted it to a digital distribution company to place on iTunes. They indicated that it would take about 8-10 weeks before it was available, but last night, I noticed that it had already become available!

This is a huge milestone in my life! I don't have any illusions that it will elevate me to superstardom. But I've accomplished what has been a lifelong dream for me.

Admittedly, a couple of the songs really aren't production quality, but I learned a lot about the music production process since then. The ones that have a much clearer sound to them are the songs I recorded later in the process. Oh well, first album, lesson learned.

Check out "You Stir My Soul" on iTunes!

Tam + Patrick - Glad That You're Wrong

Last night was warm, so we ate on the porch. It was a light meal of pasta with pesto, mixed greens with balsamic vinegar and strawberries and tart mojitos. Unwilling to let the evening lie fallow, we jumped into a project right after the dishes were cleared.

Tam had never really written or recorded a song (though based on our karaoke night, I knew she could sing), so we decided to write a duet. I had a bit of a melody in mind, so I recorded some guitar on my trusty iBook G4 while Tam scribbled in her notebook.

The results are pretty darn good, don't you think?

View and comment on LOLcloverfield

So I just uploaded this video to the "When Cloverfield Hit" web video contest... Top three videos get judged by Cloverfield director Matt Reeves, and grand prize winner receives $4500. My video stars me and my cat, Kenobi, in a parody of both Cloverfield and the whole LOLcats internet subculture.

I just found out about the contest last Sunday, so I had to work fast as the deadline was only a week away. But now that I know the capabilities of Final Cut Express (see my initial review of the software here), I was confident I could complete the video in time. I wrote the script on Sunday night, took some footage with my digital camera on Monday of the skyline from the building I work in, and also shot most of the footage of myself and the cat Monday night. It was a mix of using my handheld video camera for shots where I needed more detail, like of the cat against green screen (in this case a bright green plastic tablecloth from Party City that I threw on the floor), and using my digital camera's video features, which have a cool grainy quality to them that I thought would add to the hand-held camera look. I wish I had taped down the tablecloth to the floor before trying to coax my cat to play on it, but I wasn't thinking - so I had a lot of shadows to deal with when keying out the background. Plus the cat kept trying to play under the tablecloth, of course, or scrunching it all up. I did manage to get a few good seconds of him in monster mode, which I looped in the final film.

I think it's awesome how Final Cut Express allows you to easily mix different video formats into one project. I had no trouble mixing/compositing layers of video cam and digital camera footage - no settings to worry about. As far as keying out the background of the cat, I wound up using a combination of chroma and luma keys, plus I messed with the gamma settings to equalize the green/shadows a bit, allowing the keys to work better. Only had a few minor spots of green left, and those I took care of with the Garbage Matte filter and also hid with some cloud layer generators. Hey, it's far from perfect, but it will do for a web-quality video.

Spent the rest of the week mostly editing, visual effects and sound, plus a couple extra shots were needed (realized I had to make the room look messed-up a bit after the big shake-up at the end). I used Apple GarageBand to generate the sound effects - some of them were a couple layers of different sounds, and the "meow-monster-roar" sound is my own voice doing the meow with a ton of filters on it. I also used GarageBand to record all of the dialogue, which I did as one track, exported to iTunes, and then imported into FCE. Once in FCE, I put the track into a separate "sequence" and cut it up into individual master clips saved to the browser. Then when I switched back to the main sequence, I could pull the clips down into the timeline and match to the scenes they belonged to. For the helicopter reporter's voice, I added a vocal transformer effect in GarageBand that shifted my voice deeper. Also added some reverb and echo to the dialogue tracks in GB. I used some of my original dialogue from the actual video I shot for certain parts, and for these I added reverb using FCE's audio effects.

Editing went smoothly, but then I had a lot of trouble trying to render my final movie. It would get halfway through and then crash, leaving an unplayable file. Even when I tried to do a straight DV render without compression, it would make it about 75% thru. This is where I had to slow down and do some technical research. Busted out the old FCE pdf manual and googled some stuff online. Found out I was basically overloading the renderer with my tons of audio tracks and also I had a couple of separate sequences linked to the main sequence which had a lot of video layers and effects. I had to break down and learn about the orange and red lines across the top of the Timeline... These lines tell you that sections of your movie need to be rendered in order to play in real time when previewed. And these can also be a problem when rendering for output. So I went through, selecting a few clips at a time and doing Sequence>Render Selection>Video, on both my main sequence, and for each of the other nested sequences. (By the way, using nested sequences really helped out a lot with compositing - I used them for the news clip scenes, since I had to distort the entire scene to fit over the shot of the laptop, and also added the BadTV effect). I also did the "mixdown" render on the audio tracks. All of this pre-rendering creates rendered files somewhere on your hard drive that are linked to the reference clip in the timeline. If you then decide to further edit the clip, the associated render file will be deleted, and you may need to render again if you get an orange or red bar above it.

Once everything was rendered (and it didn't take as long as I thought), I then exported the video as an MPEG for the web. Finally, it all worked smoothly. Then it took a couple hours to get the thing uploaded to the Cloverfield site - the upload kept timing out or something, but it worked in the end.

So please check out my video if you get a chance, and you can also comment and vote (from April 22, 2008 thru May 13, 2008 ) if you register at their site. Thanks!

Have a look...

Winter Light

Di GarageBand aku nyobain VoiceTransformer, yang ngerubah suaraku jadi suara monster, cewek, robot, sampe chipmunk... Kuereen... Tanpa harus mengolah, tanpa harus menyimpan. Suara masuk dari mic langsung bisa keluar dengan suara lain. Thank's om Steve! Aku pikir, GarageBand bisa diandalkan sebagai pengganti Sonar kalau untuk keperluan rental studio. SIMPEL dan CUKUP.

Click the triangle "play" button below..

Album: Useless Thinking Title: Beginning

[audio http://aaron.thepaxson5.org/music/AaronsSong.mp3]

No, there really isn't an album, or a real song name... it just makes me look professional. ALMOST, like I know what I'm doing. HA! Foooooooo'ed You!!!!!!

Well, I think that South Park has had several seasons in the past where a few weak episodes pushed the panic buttons on their most loyal fans (myself included). Personally, I feel that Matt Stone and Trey Parker are like Eminem, Howard Stern or John McEnroe in that they are at their very best only when something really pisses them off. This usually gets their creative juices going and we get episodes that really communicate real passion and some of the best modern day social satire available. Now a days they practically own Comedy Central (all the execs that were there to police them in the past have all moved on so they can just about get away with anything and that's usually not the most creative environment to be involved in). Plus, they're loaded so who can be angry at that?

But that's not what this post is about.

I want to help potential voice over talent to benefit from my experience, trials and successes.

I get a lot of questions regarding the type of voice over equipment one should invest in if they're serious about getting into the business. They mostly ask for suggestions and advice on different brands they've heard of out there. There's also always a thin ulterior yearning that's hidden in their voice: if I spend X (usually low to mid four figures) amount on a microphone, will it book me more jobs?

If you're serious about voice over and all the rewards and benefits you can achieve from it, spend less time on equipment and technical issues and spend more time on discovering who you are as a person and developing your reads into something that can turn into voice over money in the bank.

Read this post. Get into a class. Maybe this simple post will help start your career on the right track. Above all, listen. LISTEN. LISTEN.

Listen to radio commercials. Listen to TV spots. Listen to the narrators on all those reality shows people are so crazy about. Don't just listen. Study.

But you still want to know more about equipment. I know.

"What kind of mic do you recommend for voice over?"

There's the Sennheiser, there's the Neumann, there's the built-in mic on your laptop, there's a USB mic you bought at Best Buy, etc. etc. The choices are infinite. Some microphones are expensive, others are less so. Here's the truth: prices don't have a direct correlation to the quality of the mic.

More importantly, the prices, quality, design, omni or uni directional specs have NO BEARING ON THE QUALITY OF YOUR READ or your ability to deliver a booking worthy performance.

This is what I tell every VO talent and actor who ask me if buying one of these super expensive mics will improve their chances of booking a job. Then I follow that up with this real life story:

"There's this client who I used to rep who still works very consistently every year by just working the VO circuit. He leads a very fulfilling life and supports his entire small family of three (probably more soon) very well. One of my favorite stories about this client is that a few years back he was surfing down in Baja California when he received a phone call from his voice over agent about a last minute car campaign copy that he may want to participate in. This call was completely unexpected and quite frankly unwelcomed at the time (the dude's in Baja chilling with his lady and vacationing after all). Luckily he had his small $600 laptop with a cheap $40 USB connect mic that he always had in his "work" bag. He got into the back seat of his rental, covered himself and the mic with a heavy blanket (to kill the echo noise inside the car as well as the crashing wave noises outside the car), spent seven minutes to record three takes and sent in the audition from his cell phone wi-fi connect. He got the job and was the voice of this particular car campaign for just under a year and made something in the ball park of $250,000 on just that one job alone.

The point of that story is obviously to make most readers of this post very jealous and pissed at their 40-50 hour work week. But secondly, it's really the epitome of how unimportant expensive equipment is at the end of the day. More importantly, it's to re-emphasize just how important your reads are.

A great cost effective mic ($100.00) that's perfect for voice over auditions.

I've been receiving a lot of compliments and good feedback on this particular $100 mic. It's not expensive, it's easy to use (just plug and use) and the sound quality is extremely good. I have access to all the Neumanns and the Sennheisers in the world. But really, when I recently heard some of the stuff coming from the Snowball, I was beyond impressed. For the purpose of auditioning, it is more than sufficient to satisfy all your VO needs. If you're fortunate enough to book the job, that's when you can either have the buyer book a broadcast ready studio to re-record the job or you can schedule it yourself and take care of it.

For some of the more advanced and experienced VO professionals, you can invest a little (or a lot) more for a mic you think compliments your voice best. Microphones are very much like cars, clothes -- or more to the point -- instruments. You need to test out as many as you can to find the right fit for your voice.

My experience has informed me that Neumanns tend to give your voice a bit more "body" and "richness" that you may otherwise not have. But if you already have a deep, full voice, this may be overkill for you. Sennheisers have a tendency of giving out "crisper", "cleaner" sounds that weed out a lot of the miscellaneous environment noises that you may not have as much control over (if you live in Los Angeles like me, those leaf blowers can drive you nuts in the middle of auditions!)

Really, dude? At 7:00am? You couldn't wait like, maybe a couple more hours?

But if you're in the market to make such a large investment, do yourself a favor and test out as many options as you can.

How should I prep my recording room?

Try to find a small room. Perhaps a closet? A small den? Never a bathroom.

Try to set up shop facing a corner. The sounds have less room to bounce thus less echo.

If you only have access to a big echo filled room, buy some soundproofing foam at a music store.

You may be able to find something comparable at a home improvement store.

I've had clients who've used heavy blankets to temporarily cover hollow room space. Just make sure your sound is as clean as possible. If people are noticing the echo in your room more than your read, you may want to make adjustments until it deadens all those extraneous distractions.

You may also want to work on a better read.

"What sort of recording / editing software should I buy?"

In the past I've used Adobe Audition and Sony Soundforge to record voice over on a PC. At home I use Soundtrack Pro or Adobe Sound Booth on my Mac. Many of these programs are way more than enough to record voice over. I also have a lot of other jobs and geek interests that I like to satisfy. But if your primary focus is voice over, you'll do just fine with either the Sony Soundforge Basic if you own a PC or the built-in Garage Band on your Mac.

Each program works differently to record, edit and convert audio files but that's really part of the fun. If you're not too technically saavy, it'll take you a little while to figure it out. Write your steps down. Take notes. But once you do, you'll be guaranteed to feel a great sense of accomplishment. Besides, most modern software programs are so user friendly, it won't take you long. Go online and Google your question and search your answers out. But by all means, get it done. Not only will you feel great, you'll also empower yourself so much more by needing less from others.

"Apple or Mac?"

They're both the same. Maybe you mean "Mac or PC?"

"I haven't booked a job in weeks / months, what's the matter?"

Maybe you suck? I don't know. Leave me alone, I'm watching South Park and trying to figure out if they jumped the shark or not.

This pack of loops Has some amazing shall we say elements. With Disco House, Trance, Electro, Minimal and Hard House. Each Loop Pack gives you countless compositions, Included in each pack are Bass, Synths, Leads, Drum kits, One Shots, Percussions, Guitars, Snares, High Hats, Rhythm Enhancers Sound Effects scratch beats and More. For Only 12.00 USD each they are a great purchase for any producers.

Add them to your Beat Phone Iphone/Ipod Touch beat sequencer, or to Garageband, Acid, Logic, Pro Tool Ableton Live, Traktor DJ, Torq or any other music creation software.

So for our project, we decided to "implement" a "contest" in "YOUR Library" called GarageBand Battle.  Hypothetically, this contest is geared towards teens and young adults.  The contests create a "song" using GarageBand and submit it to the library.  A wiki has been created that provides information about the "contest" as well as provides video clip tutorials.  We then created a link from the wiki to a podcasting site where the "contestants" upload their music.  From the podcasting site, the public is able ot listen to "entries" and place comments.  The "entry" with the most comments "wins."

Challenges of this project:  Not spending every moment of my day playing with GarageBand.  Making the video clips small enough to fit in the side bar of the wiki.  Pod-o-matic; its a great site, but it does not like me.

Overall, I am really happy that I did this project, we were able to implement a few 2.0 tools and now I know how great GarageBand really is.

Click Anonymous to checkout a mix a created to demonstrate to my class the opportunities and creativity available with GarageBand.  It samples Bjork's "So Quiet"  as well as an anonymous comment made to a blog entry on Tame the Web.

For the opening lead part, I did "cheat" a bit and used my Hot Rod's speaker cab for a bit more tonal depth, but still powered with the Champ. I love that little amp! Here's the song:

[audio http://www.masshysteriaband.org/orgmusic/WeAreCalled.mp3]

Equipment:

Guitars: ES-333, Strat; Piano, Bass

Drum loops were standard GarageBand loops, and everything was mastered in GarageBand. Not bad for demo-quality work.

Esta semana además, como ya sabréis por medio de la blogosfera apple-niana, han puesto a disposición de la gente las pistas de "Nude", perteneciente a ese último disco. El precio no es disparatado y además durante un tiempo limitado quien las compre podrá acceder a una archivo de Garage Band con la configuración de la misma "de casa".

Tienes hasta el 1 de mayo para enviar tu versión a esta web donde podrá ser votada por la gente. Después los propios Radiohead decidirán cual les ha gustado mas.

Radiohead made split all the tracks from their song Nude and are asking their fans to remix the music. Here a snipit from their site explaining it all!

For more go to radioheadremix.com

Ryan Adams just posted some pictures of his NYC apartment. I don't think this can be considered stalking on my part since he's posting pictures up himself. It's not like I'm actively snooping in his apartment or sifting through his garbage. His apartment has nice daytime light and lots of books and records and stuff. And he's got a black MacBook and he's using Garageband to record songs.

I wonder how large his song files are. Apparently if you tax your Mac, the Garageband file changes colour at the top of the window, or something (I read that on MacWorld, I believe), and so far I have not noticed any colour change for my files, but I have gotten a message from the computer telling me that my disk couldn't keep up and wasn't able to write something while I was recording. I was trying to record in Garageband, and also in Photobooth, while I was playing guitar and singing, so I could see what I was doing wrong. The fan came on, and there was lots of hard drive gurgling, so I knew it was working pretty hard. That file is now over 800 MB, mostly because I just keep adding tracks to it rather than start a new file, that way I can mix and match the tracks. And I just record over the bits that I'm done with. So far I have not produced anything that I would want to share publicly, or privately. In these recording sessions I have discovered that my voice is not as low as I thought it was, and I am crap at keeping time. Though I think I may be getting a bit better on the time front, as long as I don't have to sing AND play at the same time. Things get a bit dicey at that point.

My favorite Ryan picture of the day:

Breaking News: Ryan Adams Found His Glasses. Or bought new ones. Whatever.

During our conversation, I said something that compelled me to think about my guitar playing [actually, I'm surprised I even said it]. It was simply this: "Sometimes, in order to even start a journey, you have to give yourself permission." For quite a while now, I've experienced a bit of a block in regards to improvising, admitting that I can't do it, or saying that I'm purely a rhythm guitarist. Even the solos in the songs that I've recorded are the result of countless takes, where I've memorized the lead. That's not so bad, Brian May talked about doing this on some Queen records back in the day. But for me, I realize now that it was fear that was blocking me; my fear of people thinking I sounded bad.

But something changed in me this past weekend. I wrote a new song for Church and I only had an hour or so to lay down tracks so my band had an idea of how I wanted it to sound when we performed it. So I open GarageBand, picked out a click track, laid down the keyboard and bass parts, then laid down the two rhythm guitar parts, then finally added the vocal parts. Realizing that I wanted a bit of solo at the beginning of the song, I quickly recorded a solo in the first 16 bars of the song. I did a quick mix and master, output the song, and wrote it to a CD.

On the way to Church, I listened to what I recorded, then realized I did every single part in one take each - even the solo. I know it's not a very sophisticated solo, but it was the first time I just put something down without thinking about it. That really inspired me for the service where we were going to do a couple of songs that would require some instrumental interlude.  To make a long story short, when it was my time to solo, I just - did it. I told myself, "Don't think about what you're going to do, you know the fretboard well enough now. Just feel the music." After Mass, someone came up to me and said they really enjoyed the music, and the way I expressed myself on the guitar. How's that for affirmation? Admittedly, I was somewhat nervous because all my solos had been fairly calculated in the past - I had a pretty good idea of what I was going to do, and how I was going to do it. This time, I was on a bit of shaky ground because the only thing I started out with was the key of the song.

The point to all this is that in giving myself permission to solo, I was able to just do it. Did I make mistakes? Sure I did, but nothing glaring. For the very first time in my life, I was able to just let loose and express a message using my guitar. After Mass, I realized that I could probably have done this for a long time, but my fear of soloing kept me from doing it.

So give yourself permission to pursue your dreams and goals.  Like me, you will be pleasantly surprised by what you can accomplish.

I wanted to do something to get my feet wet with Garageband, so I decided to try to make my own ringtone. I knew I could drag a song into GB, and I knew I could connect via Bluetooth to my cell phone. But I wasn't sure if I could put it all together. My song of choice to start was "Awakening" from Switchfoot's "Oh, Gravity!" album. The chorus is upbeat so I figured it would make a good ringtone.

I opened Garageband and went into the Media Browser. There I found all my iTunes songs, so I clicked and dragged "Awakening" into my first track. I cut away the intro and first verse so the chorus was at the beginning. Then I listened to the chorus and cut away everything after that. I left about a second on each end so I could fade in at the beginning and out at the end. It took me awhile to figure out how to do the fade, but once that was done, I was ready to export.

I found one of the greatest features in GB, "Export to iTunes". You mean I really don't have to mix down the song, save it, convert it, then find it? Nope. Send it to your iTunes in whatever format you have prechosen for your importing, and viola, it's done. Sweet!

Finally, I have a small, 503 kB ringtone just waiting to be sent to my phone. I connect via bluetooth and send it over, then set it as my ringer. Done!