I make most of these posts right after midnight.
I went to an "Urban Music" seminar today with Nick, mostly dealt with Fruity Loops and Reason. Fruity Loops is decent, I can't stand the interface or workflow, so it's not something I'd ever consider using. Reason is my main composition and sound designing software at the moment. Nick hates it because of the cable layout, but it's the way I learned to make music so it was ultra intuative for me.
The last 20 minutes or so focused on a product called Melodyne. Holy shit. I knew pitch-correction was a norm in the industry, and I thought auto-tune was the only option. Auto-tune is fairly easy to spot if you know what you're looking for, and lots of artists use it. This, however, blew my mind, just how automatic everything could be, literally pitch perfect with no artifacts. Going a few octaves off sounded a bit bad, but using some advanced settings they could get it to sound great as well. I won't rattle off all the different functions, let's just say pitch correction went from something I never thought I'd want to use, to something that I can't wait to try.
Even more logo goodness. I really like the hand-drawn look to the ...uhm, things, for lack of a better word. It was hand-drawn, so that probably has some influence over why it looks that way.
All that's left to do, graphically speaking at least, is the menu on the left, which will be hand written what some describe as serial killer hand writing. *I* describe it as my own normal looking handwriting, most people tend to disagree. The side will probably have some more of my tribal rendition running down the side, perhaps a bit more sparingly, or a thicker version. I'll play around with it a bit, and keep you, the general public, posted.
Well, I have my logo up, which is somewhat of a place holder. I still have to add the semi-tribal design around it, and then I have to do some tribal stuff down the column. it takes forever to fix it up in Photoshop, but what can I say? I no longer have a scanner so I took a picture of what I drew with a digital camera, and did the paths thing. That took a while as well, simply because I had MSN on, and I'll usually do anything I can to procrastinate.
Quick update, I'm looking for new studio monitors in the 300-500 range, and it'll probably be a toss up between...
http://www.zzounds.com/item--MDOBX8A
and
http://www.zzounds.com/item--BEHB2031A
I'll probably end up going with the BX8As, simply because I don't trust behringer.
Also the tapco link usb is no where to be found in stores, so it looks like I'll have to order it from the web.
One more sound link... I became aware of a Buzz Tracker clone called Psycle, and it's supposedly more stable than Buzz, which was about as unwavering as Win98. It also works with VST(i)s which is huge plus, I can't wait to mess around with it a bit. Nick already downloaded it so I'll hear his early verdict sometime soon.
So I'm actually going to use this page for more than just file hosting, finally. I'm still going thru a few things with the artwork for the title page, but it's gonna look pretty sick, I gotta say.
I've made a song, with a description right here. I'm not one to sample other people's work, but I think of this more as a remix than anything. It's reason for existance, someone on the rapmusic boards wanted "We're In This Together Now" flipped into a hip hop beat, and I originally wasn't going to do anything, because, again, I'm not a sampler. BUT, I heard an awful, trite, pick-your-word-for-garbage song, and felt compelled to do something.
The intention of this site will be to sell music, and most people wouldn't link directly to competition, but I don't think I have anything to be afraid of. So, here's my "inspiration" for at least doing Trent justice. Seriously, Nick and I were listening to this song earlier, and we just couldn't figure out why anyone would even show his "attempt" at that flip. It's not even coherent as a piece of music... or anything for that matter. Oh well, better for me I suppose.