Totals for today’s composing event: 18 pieces. 16.4 minutes of music created over 7.3 hours. Thanks everyone!
Clean Soul
Q: How are you feeling today?
A: I feel like this.
Not sure of the title is quite right on this one… but it is what it is.
Man! I love that bass!
Enjoy!
Spikey – Public Domain piece
I added a new piece into the Public Domain over at FreePD.com – available in the unclassified electronic section. Also available for download at SoundCloud for a limited time.
I had hopes for this one, but it proved to be too difficult to produce easily, so this is the best it gets.
June 15th Event
What: YouTube Channel Music
Where: Google+ Hangouts
When: Saturday, June 15th – Noon(isg) Eastern until we’re done
Cost: $0 (donations are always appreciated)
I get a lot of requests to do simple intros for YouTube channels. People want unique music to identify their channels. I expect that I’ll be able to do from 10 to 35 pieces…
Randy the incompetech helper gnome will be there to help wrangle the projects in real time.
Stuff you’ll need:
– A google account capable of getting on a hangout.
– Your channel (one channel per person)
– Specifics:
* Length (3-22 seconds)
* Music feel (chill? invigorating? quirky? other things?)
* Your email address – so I can send you the piece
What if I can’t make it? Then you won’t be there.
Are you going to do this again? I don’t know.
Why are you doing this? Writing music for a single project takes time. Lots of time.
more info coming as I think up more info!!
Relaxy Shrimps
Because I needs me some relaxing today…
This uses an “older” piece of mine Silver Blue Light
Enjoy the shrimp!
It had to happen…
After 4 years of not releasing any new country music, I finally went out and got some software help from “Band in a Box”. BiaB is a super useful and horribly designed piece of software. You really cannot understand the depths of how terrible it is until you work with it.
Yes. Those are icons of floppy disks. Many of you have never seen a floppy disk. The last time a Mac had a drive like that was 15 years ago.
So the “Save” floppy has a useful tooltip… “Save Song, [F2 or cmd-S].” F2!?? ARGH!!!
The “Bass, Piano, Drums…” part is awful. You double click on the radio buttons to get a drop down menu.
So, putting aside the stupid, ugly, and completely non-customizable interface… we’re left with baffling buttons.
“F” That means “Folder”
“Song” Brings up a non-standard dialog of things in the “F” folder that you selected. ok…? hmm…
“M” and “S”! YES! These are standard buttons in DAWs. Mute and Solo!
Except that they are not Mute and Solo.
“M” is for “Song Memo” – a window that shows a bit of text including Key, Tempo, and Length.
“S” is for “Additional Song Settings”.
Okay, okay… I’ll be here all day if I keep this up. Anyway – designers, PLEASE help out the Band in a Box people.
But I wanted country… so I had to work with this craptastic interface. I hope you all appreciate!!
Back to country music…
Bam! River Valley Breakdown!
Six minutes of non-attention grabbing bluegrass music!
New Backseat Gamer
Wherein we get an expo center for ROCK CONCERTS!
And wherein, I got the audio mix better.
APRA and the money.
APRA (Australian music rights association) contacted me yesterday. They have money for me because a TV station aired a program that had my music in it. $460AUD.
The producers of the show correctly licensed the music from me, and no one had to pay for the use… but the TV stations have an agreement – they pay a yearly fee, and that gets divided up among the music rights holders and disbursed through APRA.
I asked if they could give the money back to the station. They said ‘no’. So, now I’m trying to get the money to give back to the station that didn’t need to pay it in the first place.
Here is exactly how simple that is:
1) Sign up for APRA*
2) Collect money
3) Send money to TV station
*Signing up for APRA is a problem. It isn’t difficult, but it is a problem. When you sign with a rights collecting agency like this, they get to do things for you. Things that I don’t want done. For example, as a “benefit” they get to demand money for the use of my music. Wherever they think they can legally get the money, I’m sure they try. That is their job.
Lucky for me, I can “opt out” of a variety (possibly all) of their collection efforts.
– public performance
– broadcasting
– streaming
– live performance
– film
– background music
– radio
– tv
In order to keep the CC license, I would need to opt-out of everything… including the things where they are already collecting money!
Now it looks like this:
1) Sign up for APRA
2) Opt out of everything**
3) Collect money
4) Send money to TV station
**Opting out requires 3 months’ prior written notice – to be effected on July 1 or January 1. The July deadline is gone. So I could sign up in September, immediately give the 3 months’ notice, and be all good by January!
From what I can tell, this would give APRA three months’ worth of free reign to go after people for money – which is exactly what I do not want. Also, this process can cost about $200AUD.
So now…
1) Sign up for APRA
2) Pay APRA $200 to…
3) Opt out of everything
4) Hope that APRA doesn’t screw with people in the meanwhile***
5) Collect remaining money
6) Send remaining money to TV station
***We have now run into the territory of “really unacceptable” and “potentially asinine”.
Option, The First
Do nothing. Leave the money with people who collected it on my behalf without my permission. This money will go back into the pool of random money and be given to other composers for no apparent reason.
Option, The Second
Try to actually get the money and give it back to the people who didn’t need to pay it in the first place, while possibly screwing up licensing for everyone else.
I seriously dislike this portion of my world.
Dark Fog
Echoes of Time
A horror-like suspense-ish soundscape.
You can download the original WAV (while supplies last) at soundcloud.
Echoes @ SoundCloud
NEW!
Also available without the melody… just the drone bits.
You can download the original WAV (while supplies last) at soundcloud.
Echoes v2 @ SoundCloud
Exhilarate
This piece accomplishes two goals; 1) I finally got around to getting out another rock piece. 2) I learned how to spell “Exhilarate” (no ‘e’ anywhere in the middle).
Synth is Monark.
Bass is NI Rickenbacker.
Kit is NI Modern Drummer.
Perspectives
Here is one of the pieces that I wrote for the background of Back Seat Gaming: Episode 1.
And here it is on SoundCloud for those of you who like to comment at specific points in time:
Shareheads
So there’s music, and there’s not music.
This is not music – but it IS Creative Commons: By Attribution art. And it is freaking cool.
Thanks to Dmitry for sending me the link.
Album art? Sure! Book cover? Why not! Stickers? Wallpaper? Anything that needs gussying-up… Cool stuff.
Also, they is high-res. Like 40 megapixels. I didn’t check them all, but they are really good to go for anything up to and including billboards.
Not Quite Strauss
Is this a rip-off of Strauss? Absolutely!
Is it as good as Zarathustra? Absolutely not!
I originally wrote this piece for a planetarium in Spain (where Zarathustra is NOT yet in the Public Domain). Enough people from other countries had issues with Strauss – so I figured I would post this.
Backseat Gaming
Hello, hello, and welcome to the first video that I’m on called “Backseat Gaming”.
Sim City with 2 people, but only one player.
(background music not yet available for downloads… so – just enjoy the show!)