Saturday, October 21, 2017

Music Technology & EDM tools - Bookmark dump

The recent flood of formulaic, recycled, and repetitive EDM is making me want to make my own. Why is house and big room coming back? I'm hearing the same crappy hardcore gabber sounds come back. Why? Is there really money in that? I bought the software years ago with lifetime updates, and the tools are increasingly more available for cheap or free. And I'm a quick study. I think I'll make a whole bunch of IDM and see if any of it catches on. I get that there's a new generation that didn't hear electronica evolve over the years, so they don't realize that it's seemingly going backwards.

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
― Ira Glass
I think with a nice sampler / sequencer and some mix automation, I can outdo the tripe I'm hearing on the radio. Especially so, having the massive amount of free sounds from Cymatics and Splice. It's like drinking from a firehose! I'll have to buy more storage. But I realize it's a process of learning to crawl, then walk, then run.

This post is really just a bookmark dump for my own reference, so I have them in a central location for digging in and setting up and filling up my studio computer. 

This is a lot of bookmarks. I wish they were better organized.  Maybe next time.

Free digital audio workstation software (DAWs):

$$ DAW software (many have 14 or 30 day free trials):

Free software / VST plug-ins links:

Producer info/education:

Samples and synth/generator presets:

Classic synth emulations:


Free sound editing:

$$ Sound editing:

Effects:

Mastering:

$$ Mastering:

More good software:

Android:

Apple only? Port that ish:

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Wednesday, July 12, 2017

The food. OMG, the food!

To my ancient ancestors who probably scraped and toiled for every morsel they ever ate, I apologize for choosing the seasonal greens with quinoa instead of the pork cutlet and 50 other choices for lunch. We have arrived, have we not? There's a lot for which to be thankful.
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Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Modern banking = credit swapping OR fiat money = debt

I was taught a misconception in school, and the truth was more than hinted at by my college Macroeconomics teacher. I wish I had been exposed to this explanation of modern banking earlier in my career.
"The fundamental proposition which I first wish to establish in regard to all commercial banking, is that the business of the modern bank is almost solely the exchange of credit, to use a clear but homely phrase, the swapping of credits.The business of a bank is not in the main the reception of money and its safekeeping, nor is it the loaning of money. The money transactions of a bank are, under ordinary conditions, comparatively insignificant: almost its entire business consists of receiving from its customers their evidences of indebtedness, which have a narrow currency, and giving to those customers in ex-change the bank's evidences of indebtedness, which have a wide currency. These evidences of a bank's indebtedness are then transferred from one individual to another and from one bank to another, and in that way the credits created serve the purpose of the medium of exchange by which perhaps ninety-five percent of the exchange transactions of commerce take place.
It is a misconception to suppose that a bank first accumulates deposits and then loans them out to borrowers.The operation is the reverse. The bank first makes a loan to the borrower and in so doing creates a deposit. The borrower exchanges his credit, his evidence of indebtedness, for the bank's credit, a deposit balance. The creation of these credits has relation to production; their liquidation is related to consumption. If production increases, the demand for this exchange of individual credit for bank credit increases; and the indebtedness incurred is liquidated as the articles upon which the financial credit was based enter into consumption."
- FRANK A. VANDERLIP, President of the National City
Bank of New York aka CITYBANK (1864 – 1937)
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Tuesday, June 13, 2017


This was the "strawberry moon" from June 9th, 2017 as seen from Texas Motor Speedway. Digital zoom made the picture grainy, but you can get an idea about how red it appeared.  This is as small as the moon will appear all year.

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2017/06/12/strawberry-moon-delights-stargazers.html


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Thursday, February 11, 2016

Wikipedia on a thumb drive.

I saw an article today about an organization in Seoul (and Palo Alto) called Flash Drives for Freedom.  The gist is that they smuggle donated flash drives into North Korea loaded with information that is censored by Dear Leader.  One of the content items they mentioned was a Korean version of Wikipedia.  I thought, that fits on a flash drive?  Turns out, the English version, just the articles without the pictures, clocks in at 15 gigabytes compressed.  Text compresses well, so that's feasible. I assumed that Wikipedia had grown much larger than that, or I just never really thought about it.

Anyway, you can get your own copy of Wikipedia here:  https://archive.org/details/Xowa_enwiki_latest

I haven't decided if it's useful to actually have a copy on my hard drive, but I did find the possibility interesting.
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Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Unlimited breadsticks since 1982

I gotta give it to Olive Garden.  I've been back lately a few times, and I like it.  I praise them for turning things around and simultaneously defending their bottomless breadsticks policy to shareholders.

That said, I'm off for some all you can eat soup, salad, and Italian generosity.
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Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Transition time: The next 10 weeks.

My Aunt Gail mentioned recently that I have always been good at reinventing myself. Well, I am good at adding to my skill set. I completed a year of night classes on massage therapy and got licensed by the State of Texas to be a professional massage therapist. The reason I did it is because I have friends who need massage and can't or won't pay for it.  I have a few paying clients, but haven't formalized it into a real business. . . yet. My long term goal is to open a practice with a scientific bent to quantify the benefits of certain types of massage therapy for conditions like PTSD.

Because working full time in a stressful day job during school was causing me to be exhausted and struggle both at work AND school, I took a contract with lower pay and flexible hours to complete school, and now that contract has ended and I'm starting to get back to consulting with clients of Veritable Networks Inc., a firm I own 50%. I can commit more time and make more money.  Also, during the past year I have been also working as a mentor / caregiver for a disabled veteran who struggles with the effects of combat in Iraq and helping him navigate life as a civilian. Even after I met all of the requirements, including Easter Seals training, the VA rejected my request for pay for doing that work, but I continued it out of a sense of actually caring. I'm going to file another appeal, because the burden of that has been a test of patience, fortitude, will power, and compassion beyond my previous capabilities, and apparently beyond my financial capabilities. If it weren't for the self-care regime that the Easter Seals taught me at the beginning, and the things I learned in massage school, or the gratitude from his immediate and extended family, or the mental clarity I get from my Buddhist-style meditation practice. (Om mane padme um, y'all!)  I would have given up a long time ago. He's turned the corner and I'm starting to ask him to take care of himself.  He's in the gym more and taking more responsibility and handling his own stresses in healthy ways. He's ready for school and a job now, and ready to get on with his life.

So, now is a time for transformation: Really reinventing myself to improve my income, lifestyle, and personal relationships! I'm going to blog about it for 10 weeks, and see if, by the end of 70 days, I'm not way better off by focusing on doing things differently. And, I'm asking for advice, because I'm sure I have a lot of blind spots, so I'm going to need the help of anyone who will help. I wish health, wealth, and happiness on everyone.

Now, I need an accountant.
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