Archive for June, 2008

One thing I learned today was that the funky powersaving things that computers can do these days, such as not running full speed unless it really needs to, do odd things with audio applications. Make sure you turn off those features so that your computer is always running full speed if you want to do audio on it, otherwise, your sequencer will report that it is more used than it really could be, and you’ll have a lot less processing power to use since the app won’t push it into full speed mode.

I’d come to the point where I thought the drivers for my Firestudio were complete crap because I couldn’t even play back a song at 512 samples of latency on a quad core computer without getting pops and clicks. Now, with that powersaving crap turned off, I can play back at 256 samples, if I want (192 is still a no go, however). The drivers still have some problems, but the thing is not as much a pile of doo as I had thought it was.

A new version of Confusion exists, an improvement, I think. You no longer have to go to the studio page to listen, either. See that player to the left? Yeah, that one. Click on Confusion, and it plays! Imagine that!

At the point where I’m happy with it enough to call it a finished product, the little arrows will take you to a page where you will be able to download it for free or buy it so I can spend more time working on new songs.

You can now get here by going to http://www.markfassett.com. How cool is that. I figured one of my alternate selves would have taken it already.

I found out who wrote the end credit song for Portal, and failed to mention it. It was written by a guy named Jonathan Coulton who is, essentially, an internet musician. A while back, he decided to quit his tech job and become a musician, and spent the whole of the next year writing one song a week and posting them to his site, among other places. I’m impressed, really, and he seems to be making a decent go of being a self employed musician in this internet age. He gives me hope that I might be able to make a bit of money from my musical hobby, if I ever get around to recording more songs.

There’s another artist, Brad Sucks, who is doing a similar thing, though the guy behind Brad Sucks still maintains a regular job.

In both cases, they give a very significant amount of their music away, even while selling it from their sites at the same time. The whole idea is sort of interesting, as we’ve seen big artists, Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails to name a couple, basically giving their latest albums away. The mainstream media talks about this phenomenon as if it’s fairly new, and I suppose it is for artists that have had record deals, but Jonathon and Brad have been doing it for quite some time – since 2005 or earlier.

Anyway, I think once I’ve got my music to a point where I’m willing to put a price tag on it (I’m not willing to sell things I don’t think are worth selling), I think I’m going to follow in these guys footsteps a bit. Give it away, sell it, do anything I have time to do to get people to listen to it.

I talked to Woodcraft again today, and they said they had talked to the rep, and I should maybe have it by the end of next week, which would be nice. I’ll believe it when I get the call that it’s there, however. I’m aware there are always circumstances that cause shipping of product to be delayed when it’s coming from overseas, but this is getting ridiculous.