PC Out of Commision

My PC (i.e. recording studio) is not usable ATM. Backup solutions are also a no go. An old college friend suggested I "get a Mac." That's a rather annoying suggestion. While it would be nice to be a shiny, happy Mac person, the cost is prohibitive. Actually, that's not quite correct - the cost is simply impossible. There is a difference between being cheap and being poor. Cheap is when you have the money but don't want to spend it. Poor is when the moolah simply isn't there. I fall into the poor camp. I may be able to get the parts for a new PC but I don't know how soon. Certainly not this week, perhaps not even next. We'll see. In the meantime, there will be no new music. Sorry. :(

Marginally Music Related Linux Nerd Post

Turbo Linux was the very first but only lasted on my PC for a few hours. Then I picked up RedHat 6.1 or 6.2, I don't remember which but I have the disks around here somewhere. I bought it in a box! I didn't do much with it though. I complained about what a PITA Linux was to a CS major friend of mine. He told me I shouldn't bother with it. I didn't listen. The first distro I used somewhat regularly was SuSE (also boxed). Then I moved to Mandrake and I loved it. It was the first somewhat easy to use Linux I used and I used it regularly. I got especially easy to use once I switched to broadband and didn't have to screw with winmodems anymore. Mandrake stumbled though. They slowed their releases and that made it harder to get new software updates. Plus RPM was always a pain. Then Ubuntu hit the scene and I've been using it and it derivatives (like Mint) ever since. Now Linux is a pleasure to use and even easier to install and update than Windows. I use it for pretty much everything except audio recording and a few games.

Speaking of audio, one of the few things in Linux that has lagged behind Windows is audio tools. That has just recently started to change as a few of the best audio tools available for Linux have matured to the point of usability versus hair-pulling. Ardour, for example, always looked attractive but used JACK. And early versions of JACK, at least for me, were impossible to get working. Now it's alot more automated and stable and usable versions are (more or less) available in various repositories. Though for whatever reason, the official Ubuntu repositories seems to have alot of fubar'd software that I want to use. I had to get the current version of Ardour from getdeb.net because of an impossible to get around bug in the file open dialog in the official Ubuntu version. However, I used it to remix a few songs for Blind With Rain and it worked well. I still had to use software on Windows to master the remixes though. Anyway, audio on Linux is slowly getting there. It's usable but I seriously doubt it will ever have the polish and presentation and support that the proprietary audio software companies can provide. The demand for Linux enterprise solutions is there and so is the need for cheap servers. The same can't be said for high-end audio recording and editing software. It's a niche market.

There's no point to any of this really, I'm just babbling.

Doesn't Play Well With Others

Asperger's Syndrome has become a big joke on the internet. This is unfortunate as I really do suffer from it. I have an official diagnoses and everything. It has caused me alot of problems in my life. It's made the simplest interactions with people incredibly stressful and has been a very large component in the severity of my problems with depression.

Basically, I can't work with others.

It's highly unlikely I'll ever be able to have a band to play my material live. I still want to play live though. When I played in SL all the parts except the guitar were prerecorded. However, this new material has alot more guitar parts and I think it would sound really weird to have guitars coming out of nowhere. Playback of electronic parts like drum machines and synths are one thing but I believe live instruments should be played live. What I will have to do is rework my material so I can play it all by myself. I'll have to strip the music down to it's basics. I have some ideas about how to get a really big, full guitar sound and I can probably emulate a bass with an octave pedal.

I don't know what else to do.

Music Now Hosted on Bandcamp

Thanks goes to Dan from Life Toward Twilight for suggesting this site to me. There are several big advantages to bandcamp.com - first is that it's free. Second is that it automatically creates just about any audio format you could possibly want - mp3, FLAC, Ogg, AAC and more. The page is easy to set up, no fugly clutter like on MySpace, iMeem and other such sites. The only down side is the lack of options to set more details in the tags, like the genre for example. But they are still working on it, adding feature and such. Plus, I think it's much nicer than MediaFire and it saves me alot of hassle and lowers the chance that I screw up the tags again. You will have to give me your email though (I promise not to sell it or give it to any nasty spammers). And I'd appreciate your real email. I think that's a fair trade though, don't you? You can even get a nice, simple, clean-looking player to put on your website, MySpace page, blog, etc. Check it out: http://shadowjack.bandcamp.com/

Tags FUBAR'd

I had to fix the tags on both "The Last Ballad" and "Cloud Keep" so you might want to re-download them if screwed up tags bug you as much as they do me.

Track 09 - Cloud Keep

"Cloud Keep" is now available:

DOWNLOAD


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