Installing the Zune… sucked - Engadget
Wow this microsoft zune thingy sounds really freakin sweet! 
Archive for the 'Music' Category
I’ve completed a small side project for the band Taking Back Sunday. It’s an album cover generator.
Inspiration for the project came from the Church Sign Generator. As the name implies, this site lets you generate custom church signs (which tend to yield quite ironic but funny results). The author of this site used image manipulation functions in PHP to generate the signs. Additionally, the author has made his source code available for download, which became an invaluable framework for me to work within.
Most of my work was done in Photoshop. First, I needed to match the font type of the original sign. The font I ultimately used was ‘Wide Latin’ (this was a little too wide, so I shrinked each character horizontally). Next, I made a long, narrow image containing all ASCII chars from 32 to 255, and calculated their individual widths. This was needed for the php script to know the exact pixel placement of each succeeding character on the marquee. The last step involved erasing the existing “Louder Now $1.52″ sign from the marquee, which was done using Photoshop’s clone-stamp tool.
Thanks to the Church Sign Generator, I did very little coding involving the image generation procedure. All that was needed was to plug in some default values (image width and height, char widths, filenames, etc.), and it was good to go.
Leave a comment if you have questions or whatnot.
While on the iPod theme, I figured I’d share this fun video which shows how Microsoft could theoretically ‘enhance’ the iPod packaging box. (Thanks to Ethan for finding it.)
On a side note, the music for this is freakin’ great… and rightly so because it’s Danny Elfman (from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure). Man I’d really love to meet him.
Anyway, this video is a great example of ‘less is more’. It may exaggerate how Microsoft packages its products, but it also shows something I really like about Apple. They keep it simple. The iPod box contains plenty of empty space, giving the product breathing room to speak for itself.
It is understood that a difference between a mediocre musician and an advanced musician is that the mediocre musician has a tendency to overplay. That is, during a guitar solo for example, the mediocre guitarist will play too many notes and basically try to do too much to impress the audience. Frank Zappa had a way of describing these types: they like to masturbate on their guitar (it’s somewhere in his book ‘The Real Frank Zappa Book’).
A matured musician is comfortable with playing only the right notes, and does not overburden the listener by overplaying.
Our eyes need the same blessed treatment. Good design is not about cramming as many features, text, etc. as possible into a spatial region. Good design is marked by natural intuitiveness and usability.
It is ironic that I linked to my myspace profile above. I really hate myspace.
It grew way too large and fast for its own good. Its interface is horrible and unintuitive. Worst yet, it encourages users to modify their profiles (despite lacking valid xhtml/css markup), which yields in god-awful themes that resemble the web in 1996: tiled background images, badly colored text, animated images, etc. It seems the only difference now is that we can download these crappy pages quicker.
Facebook is the other big social site, and I wish it could be bigger (its only for students). Its interface is much more intuitive than myspace, and it’s not afraid of white space. The profile pages maintain a consistent feel, and they are easy and fun to read.
Now back to the iPod box. I think the video was made by a Microsoft employee? I’m not sure about that, but if so, I would assume it was done as a tongue-in-cheek joke. I honestly don’t think Microsoft could butcher the packaging that badly (but who knows?). Regardless, the difference between the two companies remains pretty distinctive.
Other examples of Apple’s ’simplicity’:
- One-button mouse - I remember reading that the main reason for this was to encourage developers not to cram too much functionality into a right-click context window. Apple forced its developers to ‘think differently’ in finding other ways to add functionality to an application by integrating it with the user interface. (Of course, macs have supported the right-click since at least OS9 anyway…)
- 6-button remote control - Steve Jobs made a point of this during the keynote last year. He compared the new Apple remote with one from Sony (or another big brand?). A typical remote control may have 30-40 buttons (for a tv,dvd,etc.), but Apple kept it simple and went with only 6. I’m not sure how well this works since I have yet to try it out in person (with Front Row).
I stumbled across this old thread today from MacRumors regarding Apple’s introduction of the iPod.
It’s pretty funny to read, not to mention an interesting piece of history.
One of the comments:
I still can’t believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! Who cares about an MP3 player? I want something new!…
Of course, I’m sure most of these original iPod flamers eventually ate their own words.
This old thread emerged today as people were flaming Apple’s recent products: iPod Hi-Fi Boombox and the $99 leather cases (which I agree are quite ridiculously priced, especially since they completely obscure the click wheel?)
However, it is a stark reminder that what seems silly today may ultimately be of vital significance. The iPod was not an original idea (new product in crowded market), but it was revolutionary (library/playlist syncing, etc.), and it ultimately became a notable sub-cultural icon.
Last night we had our first recording session for “The Survivors of Orange Grove High”. It was more of a pre-recording session really.
Chazz and Nick (who co-wrote the film) want me to do the music. We met yesterday in my parents’ garage in RB, mainly to test-bed the Fast Track Pro. I mic’ed my amp and sent the signal to the fast track, which interfaces to Logic Express.
The beauty of having my Powerbook is that I can record virtually anywhere. I have a portable studio! I used my parents’ garage because I didn’t want to blair the amp in my own apartment. It would probably piss off the neighbors. I may experiment with other recording locations… perhaps a lecture hall at UCSD?
Yesterday we mainly skimmed over musical ideas. I recorded some takes, but probably nothing I’ll want to keep. If anything, yesterday served as a crash course in logic express. I have a lot to learn. I am forcing myself to read through all 500+ pages of the manual.
Once I feel comfortable with the software, I will start recording for real. This may not be for a couple months. I will want to enlist the help of fellow musicians (as my main weapon is guitar), so if anyone is reading this and plays and instrument (and doesn’t suck), either I’ll be in contact with you, or you with me.
Last week I removed all music from my iPod so that I could re-build my library in an organic manner. I quickly adopted a suitable management scheme that harnesses the full power of iTunes.
The problem:
I have a 40gb iPod. I have over 60gb of music in my iTunes library. I’d like a simple way to manage my music so I can cycle through some material while keeping others as perennial favorites.
My solution:
Use the full power of iTunes:
- My Rating System
- Smart Playlists
- iPod Syncing with Playlists
I’ll start first with the ‘My Rating’ system. This is the feature that allows you to define a number of stars (0 to 5) to rank a song. I’ve always thought this was a dumb feature. Who seriously browses through their entire library and ranks each song to an abritary rating?
I realized, however, in conjuction with Smart Playlists, this can be a powerful feature. I’ve created 6 Smart Playlists, where each one contains only songs ranked at a certain rating. I categorized each Smart Playlist according to the number of stars it refers to (there is an odd bug in iTunes regarding this, documented here with the work-around):
- No stars - Unsynced
- 1 star - Live
Live concerts, comedians, etc. - 2 stars - New
New (to me) albums, etc. - 3 stars - Rotate
Music I listen to in phases, may rotate in/out of my iPod - 4 stars - 4-star
My current favorites - 5 stars - 5-star
Classic favorites (Beatles, etc.)
Initially I had no ranked songs, so my entire library fell into ‘Unsynced’. I then setup my iPod to automatically sync with the playlists: ‘Live’, ‘New’, ‘Rotate’, ‘4-star’, and ‘5-star’. As I browse through my library, I would add songs to my iPod by changing their ranking, and thus moving them out the ‘Unsynced’ playlist and into one of the other five.
An interesting note is that these playlists differ from their traditional use in that they primarily serve as a management tool. By organizing my music into these different sections, I can quickly find, for instance, all the new material I want to hear while all other material is filtered away.
This setup has a few assumptions: I can have no more than 40gb worth of songs ranked at any given time. As I rotate songs on/off my iPod, their rankings will change (from 3 to 0 stars or vice versa). Songs can be demoted/promoted if my musical tastes changes over time: Perhaps a 4-star album gets demoted to 3 stars, and thus falls in the rotation cycle.
I’m not sure how the rating system affects the Party Shuffle. So far I haven’t noticed any difference, but I don’t use Party Shuffle that much. Even if my 4-star and 5-star songs are played more often, well, that’s the point, right? Any of my ‘Live’ or ‘New’ material are songs/albums I would deliberately choose to listen to, so I’m not worried about the star ratings affecting my shuffle play.
It is possible to set up a system like this without using the My Rating system. The real power is in the Smart Playlist/iPod sync combo. I could have done this using keywords, genres, etc, but for now the rating system works fine.
[UPDATE] I just realized there is a checkbox in Party Shuffle to play higher rated songs more often. That’s cool.
In an effort to start listening to my iPod (40gb - 4th gen) again on a regular basis, I reformatted the drive, hereby deleting all songs from it (I have them all backed up on an external drive). My goal is to slowly add music back on a daily basis in an organic manner.
My library is full of material I have either not yet listened to, or haven’t heard in a long time. By always making sure I have about 6 to 8 hours (a day’s work) of fresh music each morning, I will ultimately listen through my entire library. This process also helps me weed out albums and songs from my iTunes library that I do not deem to be ‘iPod-worthy’.
My goal is to store about 20-30gb of music on my iPod. The rest of the space I will use for Voice Memos and extra hard drive space (should I need to transfer or store a large file).
For Voice Memos, I use Griffin iTalk. I don’t really record voice memos… I use the iTalk to record musical ideas I come up with when playing guitar, most always the result of endless noodling and improvisation. I’ve started doing this last summer, and it’s been an invaluable way to build a library of riffs and melodies that could later expand into a full-length tune.
Back to the iPod Purge, here are the first albums I’ve transferred back. You’ll note I’m going somewhat in alphabetical order.
AC/DC - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, Back in Black
Aerosmith - Get A Grip, Get Your Wings, Permanent Vacation, Pump, Toys in the Attic, and select songs from Big Ones and Greatest Hits
Arcade Fire - Funeral
Beatles - Revolver, Rubber Soul
Phish - Live at Madison Square Garden, New Year’s Eve 1995
This amounts to 147 songs, 11.5 hours, and 854.2mb.
My M-Audio Audio Interface device arrived this weekend. The Fast Track Pro allows me to record music to my computer via USB 2.0. I can input my MIDI keyboard, or a mic’ed guitar, amp, or vocals, and record them into Logic Express. I purchased Logic Express a few months ago, but haven’t played around with it much without a decent interface. Hopefully now my music composition will see an increase in productivity.
I ordered the Fast Track Pro on from sweetwater.com. A small plug for this company… the customer service was great. I happened to stumble upon them online when looking for this product. I had originally looked at the larger companies: zzounds.com were out of stock, and musiciansfriend.com was too high priced. When I found Sweetwater, I called them and spoke directly with an employee who was very knowledgable about the product and music in general. Even better, my package arrived with candy inside!
I hope to test it out this week and write a full review later.
Shaun Haber
