first Wiinjuries, now Wiidi.

I knew playing with the Wii was fun (hell, I own one) but I never imagined it’s controller being used as a MIDI controller.

Basically this guy (YouTube username: jinx4848) decided to try and use his Wiimote as a MIDI controller, first by getting his Mac to play a sound when the Wiimote was shaken, then mapping the buttons to drums in Garageband, and then finally using Ableton Live to map all the buttons to specific knobs and using it to manipulate a sample.

He says that the software is going to be available for download.  So far, from what I understand in the video descriptions, the application is pretty robust, and should allow Wii fans to be able to use their Wiimote as a MIDI controller soon enough.

Apparently, this guy here is already ahead of the curve, using his Wiimote as a controller at a show in Europe.

they tried to make me go to rehab and i…went/i’d like to retract an earlier statement

So Amy Winehouse, the singer famous for turning down rehab, actually went.

And then she left.

And then (reportedly) she went back.

To be fair she did go out and binge on something and then had a seizure, so I guess going to rehab was a good choice, although this Yahoo! blog did report that she was ordered to go to rehab, which only makes it more ironic and/or spawn more cheesy, hardly humerous comments about the subject.

Let the games begin.

—

A few posts ago I ripped on Ashlee Simpson and her, almost definite ignorance to The Dillinger Escape Plan.  To be fair to the headline, I’m not exactly retracting that statement I’d just like to say that it’s more (but there’s still less than a 1% chance) likely that Ms. Simpson might just know who Dillinger is, especially after she got knocked-up by hardcore-kid-turned-eye-liner-wearing-pop-star Pete Wentz.

Good job, kids.

a thank you.

I’ve been tracking my hits lately and they’ve gone up quite a bit recently, and I just want to say thanks to all of you who have/are visiting my blog.

I know the writing isn’t always up to par, and I apologize for it, just sometimes I’m more pressed for time than others.

I encourage you guys to comment if you have something to say, or, if you just want to talk, IM me at seven20four.

Thanks,

Matt

maybe bob dylan was right.

In my neverending quest to repost every ridiculos thing I read on CDM I bring you this: According to Seattle Post-Intelligencer (or PI), you’re only listening to 6% of the original recording.

Please, read that again: “According to Seattle PI, you’re only listening to 6% of the original recording”.

The article is also accompanied by a nice little graphic saying “Going Digital Means Missing Music”.

In all fairness, the Post-Intelligencer (what kind of name is that for a newspaper, anyway?) probably isn’t written by audio engineers, so I’ll let them slide (a little) on the outlandish quote above.  But I won’t let them get away with that without at least hearing this: you deal in words and phrases, remember that.

What they meant to say is “mp3’s and other digital recordings suffer a huge drop in quality from when they were originally recorded.”

The article would lead you to believe that mp3’s are actually missing music as in missing instruments or missing tracks.  They aren’t.  The huge reduction in quality when an audio recording is compressed into an mp3 or a wav file is similar to listening to music from a distance, or through a wall.  The quality is reduced to make the file smaller, and thus, easier to store online and on a hard drive.

However, Bob Dylan is smiling as the article does say that old phonograph records have higher fidelity than mp3’s.

Maybe he is right after all.

get your band on facebook’s ilike.

Myspace! Who does that anymore? Honestly? Anyone whose anyone is on Facebook nowadays, and Facebook is getting more Myspace-ish everyday with the addition of Applications, or “Apps”.  Unfortunetly, Facebook can’t match the marketing functionality that Myspace possesses.

But it’s getting there, partially, thanks to the apps.  iLike is one of the most used apps on Facebook, and can be manipulated to get your band on your fan’s profiles.

If you go to the iLike site it’s not giving you much help as to how you can get your band on the app, it only tells you how to get your music on the site itself.  The explanation on the site is sort of complicated in itself, and doesn’t give a real answer, but it tells you to upload your songs to GarageBand, or have fans do some stuff with the iLike software, which, if you can pull off, have a fan base of Kiss Army proportions.

But GarageBand is the way to go.  It’s iLike’s sister site, all it takes is you to upload a few songs.

To be honest, I was wary that bands, especailly ones with smaller followings wouldn’t show up.  So I did myself a case study.

First, a punk band named *Counterpunch*.  *Counterpunch* was one of the most listened to punk bands on the site and, viola, they’re on the iLike app.  But what about bands withs significantly smaller followings?  I dove deep into GarageBand.com’s library to pull out a band by the name of Holly’s back from Vancouver, British Columbia.

To my surprise, they were there, along with all three of their songs.

But GarageBand has been around a long time (if you read my post about mp3.com, then you’ll know what I’m talking about), and they’ve been running contests since 2001.  But, again, to my surpise, the Swedish power-pop band, and winners of GarageBand’s June 2001 contest, Caser are on iLike too.

Facebook has every bit the marketing power Myspace does, you just have to learn how to use it.  More and more people are signing up for Facebook every day, and in order to stay on the cutting edge of marketing your band, you have to use every tool at your disposal, and with iLike/GarageBand, you get your music up on two sites at once.

start making music – now.

Want to compose your own song? What about trying your hand at remixing other’s songs?

If you answered yes to either of the above questions Splice is the solution.

If you’ve ever used a program like Apple’s GarageBand (comes stock on a Mac), then you’ll have some idea of what you’re looking at with Splice. The only difference is that Splice is completely and 100% online, as opposed to programs like GarageBand or Acid, that are software programs.

All the samples come from the freesound project, which is a hugely useful site if you need some sound clips. You can also add your own sounds to the library, and if the spirit moves you, add sounds to your “soundcase” which bookmarks samples for later use.

The site is really easy to use. By really easy to use, I mean if you simply read a few directions (or even watch a short tutorial video), you can start making music in under 5 minutes.

You can even add your own virtual instrument to Splice, which requires you to have some sort of MIDI hook-up, which makes Splice even more robust as an audio workstation.

Once you’re done, letting the world hear your music is simply a click away.

Surely it’s not ProTools or Cubase, but if you want to try you hand at making music without having to sacrifice anything but time, then this is for you.

winamp, what were you thinking!

So the other day I was just minding my own business, satisfying my urge to listen to some tech metal with some help from The Dillinger Escape Plan (Myspace). Just doing my thing, when, out of nowhere, my trusty Winamp Media Library assaults me with the following in the bottom right-hand corner (photo evidence):

The Dillinger Escape Plan
The latest news from Ashlee Simpson
New Releases: Ashlee Simpson

Now I might be wrong, because I don’t follow Ashlee Simpson’s every move like that show on MTV did (I watched it a few times, I thought she was hot, then I came to my senses), but I don’t think Ashlee Simpson made the jump from auto-tuned pop star to headbanger. I don’t even think such a move is possible. I’m not even sure Ashlee Simpson knows who Dillinger is.

going away

Hey everybody, I’m going away this afternoon.  I should be back sometime early on Sunday, so, unfortunetly, you’re going to have to wait until then to get some new content out of me.

See you later,

Matt

unofficial videos: the future, or grounds to get your ass sued?

After checking out +44’s video for 155 (that’s quite a bit of numbers), put together by a friend of the band, Haven Lamoureux, I thought to myself if, with YouTube’s steaming video technology and the recent simplification of video editing, if traditional music videos were on their way out. While the 155 video might not be unofficial, plenty of bands, ranging from Comeback Kid to Set Your Goals (alright, maybe that’s not such a wide spectrum of genres) have unofficial, fan-made videos on their official Myspace pages.

The unofficial video for Comeback Kid’s new single Broadcasting has the distinction of being the “Fake”, but nevertheless, the band put it up on their Myspace.

With all the multi-media available online and modern operating systems coming packaged with decent video editing programs, are unofficial videos the future for bands, especially those signed to smaller labels, who don’t really have the money to shoot a video?

Unfortunetly, the thing standing between the fans, their video editing skills, and the airwaves of MTV and Fuse is the suits like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the National Music Publisher’s Association (NMPA). The second of which recently joined in a class-action lawsuit against Google (YouTube’s parent company), headlined by the England’s Football Association, the governing body of Soccer in England, for use of user-submitted copyrighted material. Viacom, parent company of Nickelodeon, MTV, and BET, to name a few, filed a separate $1 billion lawsuit against Google in March.

The use of copyrighted music clips and full songs is what the NMPA hopes to get rid of by filing this lawsuit.

If the NMPA wins, Google might have to force YouTube’s moderation crew to be more aggressive when it comes to posting copyrighted material online, which inevitably lead to a sharp decline in fan-made videos.

new verb: elton johning

After Elton John’s recent comments in The Sun, the fine people over at Create Digital Music are taking this thing and running.  They’ve created a brand new, and, if I do say so myself, a brilliant addition to the English language: to Elton John.

Elton John [Lton Jon] v. to completely, or partially, disconnect from the internet in order to do creative work.

I thought it was a cute follow-up piece to my last post.

I’ll have a real post later today, don’t worry.