GarageSpin

Cubicle turf wars got you down at the office?  Rogue band mates disagreeing with your creative vision during a recording session at your DIY home studio?  No more...I need one of these bad boys...a USB powered, web cam guided Rocket Launcher.

It's a foam dart launcher with a web cam -- you plug it into your PC's USB slot, aim the rocket launcher using your computer and webcam display, and fire up to a 6 meter range.

I dare my wife to try to tell me to wash the dishes when I'm in the middle of recording a vocal track...

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The "trackback" functionality of my blog has been "broken" for quite some time...it's frustrating.  (If you're new to "trackbacks", a "trackback" is basically a note inserted in the form of a comment in a post's comment section to let the blogger know their post was linked to by another blogger.  It's a great way to know who's giving you link love.)

Unfortunately, trackbacks don't appear on GarageSpin...nor do trackbacks appear in other blogs when I post about them.  Whassup? 

I recently realized there's been a decent amount of commenting by fellow music lovers...apologies to anyone that never got a "shout out" from me.  It clearly needs to be fixed for GarageSpin to be a true blogosphere participant...!  Are there any common Movable Type trackback bugs that anyone is aware of?

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Spending "chill" time with cool peeps is a good thing.  On Saturday, I attended Megan Moss Freeman's photography exhibit at Greenwich Yoga; funky neon light-play photos in a zen environment...groovy stuff.  Also got to hang out with playwright Tara, cholonic hydrotherapist Xell, youth counselor Jamie, and optimist /blogger/event organizer Terry Starbucker.  (Speaking of Terry, he's helping to organize the SOBCon '08 (successful and outstanding bloggers) conference taking place in Chicago this weekend...check it out if interested.)  Also got to hang with family for Easter, and watch the Rangers lose to the Penguins (sigh...poor NYC).

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Dropouts, crapouts, DAW patheticness, software upgrades gone wrong...my very own personal digital audio workstation Odyssey may finally have come to an end:

An Abbreviated History of my DAW Trials and Tribulations:

• December 2007: After too many crapouts on my 5-year old Dell with Sonar 6 over the course of a year, I upgraded to a new DAW customized for audio production. 
• Jan-Feb 2008It was fast, mean and deadly...but unfortunatley, it was still experiencing crazy dropouts (despite an increase in performance).
• March 2008: In an effort to identify the cause of the problem, we installed the Sonar Producer 7 Trial and Reaper to run some tests.
• March 2008: Strangely enough, Sonar 7 and Reaper both worked perfectly fine.  Even more odd, so did Sonar 6...that is, as long as I ran Sonar 7 just before running Sonar 6.  Otherwise, it hobbled along just as much as always.
• April 2008: Then, the Sonar 7 trial expired.  And my file was labeled "corrupt" by Sonar 6.  (Most likely, some part of the S7 Trial had taken root in the S6 installation, then failed once the trial ended, "bruising" my project file.  Or something.)
• April 28, 2008: I upgraded to Sonar 7 last week, and installed it cleanly tonight (with help from Jim at Purrrfect Audio).  Voila, not only does my "corrupt" song project now work, but I didn't experience a SINGLE dropout after playing around for an hour.  Absolutely and completely AWESOME.

So far, so good!  Finally, back to recording audio...it's time to finish this song already...

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So, while I was writing about Animoto's Music Submission Program, Girl Crusade went ahead and gave the music video/slide show creation application a test run...  Without telling me, she slyly combined my song "Spinning Daydream" with a random assortment of bachelorette party photos  Cirque du Soleil photos, bathing suit shots of yours truly, a couple floating head shots...etc.  I couldn't help but laugh. Check it out:

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Remember the blurb in Orwell's 1984 about all music being computer generated in the future?  (I guess that's only partially come true...nice try, George.)  Here's a little computer generated music video creation for ya...

Animoto is a web application using Cinematic Artificial Intelligence to create music videos from images and music you upload.  It's sort of a slideshow on steroids, analyzing audio characteristics to determine ideal visual cut and transition times.  Kinda cool.  But not totally free -- 30-second clips are free, but full-length videos cost $3 each. 

But here's something cool -- Animoto started a Music Submission Program for musicians and bands.  Basically, you can submit up to one song per month to join a pool of music that regular users can use in their own videos with their own pictures.  The songs that are used the most will become permanent additions to Animoto's hand-selected "best song catalog".  It's another way to promote your music in this crazy web 2.0 world of ours.  Mashup city, suckas.

So go and upload your best song today, and prepare to game the system by getting all of your friends to create 100s of music videos with your song.  Just kidding.

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It's always nice to find decent free sound libraries that look good, work well, and don't present some kind of a "catch" to use the audio.

SoundSnap is a new sound library that seems to fit the bill.  Over 30,000 audio clips have been uploaded by the site's community.  It's 100% ad supported, and 100% free for use in derivative works...and isn't even Creative Commons licensed...so you can use it for personal or for commercial purposes.  (They suggest that you give credit to any sound designer whose work you used, but it's not required.)

To keep the library fresh, it might be cool to introduce some kind of ad revenue share to the site to entice/encourage sound designers to contribute.  (But that may be a level of complexity that the site managers don't want to introduce, since they neither have venture funding nor do they have any kind of administrative infrastructure..!)  Or maybe even some kind of a "create a loop" tool using some kind of "mixer" widget...?  But hey, this library is already a great start.

Absolutely check this site out when you're looking for some interesting embellishments for your sound projects, or even just new ringtone for your cell phone.  Orrrr....consider slicing up an existing song you've recorded, and offering up a couple slices for free download on the site for marketing purposes...

Hey, I just invented "Audio Sample Song Promotion Marketing", or ASSPM for short.  Please think of me when you use that fantastic new buzz term.

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As much as people always tell me to back up my projects...I never have.  Stoopid, stoopid, stoopid.  I learned the lesson the hard way, but not the hardest way.  The most recent version of my lastest song project file was somehow corrupted last week, and I lost about 20-25 hours of work (my most recent separate file save was dated in February...d'oh!).  That's pretty friggin' annoying...but certainly isn't as bad as losing an entire hard drive of audio data.  Obviously, I need to backup everything ASAP.

Don't let this happen to you...please, back up your files!

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This 2 year old has more swagger than Elvis Presley.  And he actually knows the lyrics to "Hey Jude" better than I do.  If you can, stick with it until you get to the "Naaa, na, na na-na-na-naaaa!" part of the song, it's absolutely brilliant:

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