SLAMGAUGE

How to licence your music with Creative Commons

2008-08-23T22:36:05Z

You have written and recorded some music. You want to protect your intellectual property. If you have been paying attention to the music industry lately then I am sure you have heard of Creative Commons License. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has distributed his last few albums under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike in order to make his music more available to the public and allow his fans to remix his tracks without having to worry about going against his copyright. If this kind of license sounds appealing to you and you would like to apply it to your music or other intellectual property, then follow these steps to get your work licensed under Creative Commons.

Step 1: Get your work Copyrighted
Essentially, once you have recorded your music, all you have to do to get it Copyrighted is to simply say it is Copyrighted. For example,

Copyright How to license your music with Creative Commons ^© 2008.

Now this blog post is protected under Copyright. You can not distribute or copy this work without my permission. To go one step further, you can register at the U.S Copyright Office for $35. Registering your intellectual property with copyright registration entitles the availability to statutory damages and any fees that occur. Basically, if you have to fight it out in court without being registered at the copyright office, the legal fees would probably be more than the sum you would win. You don't have to register, but it is a good idea. If you don't register, then you will have to pay all the legal fees associated with it, proving that you are the copyright holder and original author. If you are registered then apparently the Copyright office takes care of that bit.

Step 2: Choosing a License
Now that you have your work protected and all rights are reserved, it is time to loosen your strangle hold on your intellectual property so others can be free to use it in whatever way you deem fair. Visit the Creative Commons Choosing a License page and read over the different types of licenses that you can apply to your music. Everything is spelled out in plain English so you should not have any problems with confusing legal mumbo jumbo. After deciding how you want to restrict the usage of your work, head over to the Creative Commons License Your Work page and select the allowances and fill in the info.
Generally you will want to select "No" for "allow commercial uses of your work". So if someone wants to make money off of your music, they will have to pay you for it, but if you want your work to be totally free then select "yes". Then select what modifications you will allow. Here "Yes" means someone can remix or cover your song however they like. "Yes, as long as others share alike" means they must attribute the original work to you, and it must be released under the same license you originally released the work under, and "No" means they can't modify your work at all without your expressed permission.
You then select your jurisdiction, which will make the license apply to whatever country you select and then fill in your info. Once you have done all that, click the "Select a Licence" button at the bottom of the page.

Step 3: Publishing your License
Now that you have gotten your license all squared away, you have to let people know that your work is in fact licensed under Creative Commons. The page you are taken to after clicking the "Select a License" button will have some code you can insert into the HTML of your web site or blog. On the left side of this page, you will find specific instructions on how to insert the code into Blogger, Movable Type and Typepad blogs. They also have some guides on how to publish your music to p2p networks like Morpheus.
Once your web site is set up, you want to be sure to include your license info in the ID3 tag of any mp3 that you are planning to distribute. You can use any program that allows you to edit ID3 tags to add your license information into the comments area. The information you will need to list includes the latest year the recording was licensed, the name of the band or artist, the type of license, and a link to the license info. It is also a good idea make sure it is pretty clear on how to contact you in case someone is interested in using your work for commercial purposes. Ex: 2008 Velvet Wasp ^©. Contact through www.slamgauge.com Licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

Now you are all set. Make a torrent of your music and put it up on Piratebay, Limewire, Myspace, your blog or where ever else you would like. Perhaps later I will write about different ways to distribute your music online.

H/T:Audiotuts, Electronic Music Production Tips, Home Recording Blog, The Home Recording Show, Adventures In Sound

Stereo Miking Techniques

2008-08-20T23:26:12Z

So you just got yourself some preamps and a pair of mics. You try to get those drums/guitar/piano etc. tracks laid down but it just does not sound right. It may seem like a simple enough thing to just point the mic and hit record but there are a few things to consider beforehand. The polar phase of the two signals can kill the recording. Audiotuts' 6 Stereo Miking Techniques You Can Use Today post will give you some basic guidelines on how to configure your mic arrangement to tackle your phase problems and get the best stereo depth from your recordings.

If you have already recorded your takes and think you might be having phasing problems try nudging one of the tracks left or right by a few milliseconds. You could also grab the highly recommended and free plugin Flux Stereo Tool to invert the phase of either side of the stereo signal and keep an eye on things.

Nudie Bar

2008-08-19T08:30:26Z

One Eye Doll, a local band here in Austin, just released a new music video for their song Nudie Bar. The shear ridiculous awesomeness of this video struck me as so creative that I just had to share it. Dun dun dun dun! If you dig this sign up for the newsletter or better yet, go see Kimberly next time One Eyed Doll is playing.

Enjoy.

Keeping track of your product keys with Gmail

2008-08-18T07:49:13Z

For some reason software companies these days have it in their heads that if they attempt to lock down their software with ridiculous software activation rituals, keys, codes and dongles, they will be able to keep the pirates from using their software for free. The fact of the matter is that no matter how many times they move the pea in their silly little game of piracy cups, their software will always get hacked. All the while people that actually support these companies by buying the software get to jump through these silly hoops they have set up. So if you find yourself becoming majorly confused and disorganized when trying to keep up with all your product activation keys/conformation codes/serial numbers/response codes, etc... here is a tip from Lifehacker that you should check out. You will get a good idea of how to search through Gmail and set up filters to find and keep track of your exhausting array of activation codes. If they never emailed you the codes, just open up whatever activation program you have and email yourself whatever numbers you need, or even a screenshot.

You do use Gmail...don't you?

How to get into the Video Game Music Industry

2008-08-17T07:03:06Z

The Austin Game Developers Conference is coming up next month, Sep. 15-17th. Video games is a huge market and one that is expanding all the time. And in every video game there is some form of music and sound. A few years ago I gave some of my music to a few developers that were working on some kind of space tank game, but it never saw the light of day. So I will be attending the AGDC to see if I may be able to make a few more contacts and maybe get involved in a project or two. If you have been itching to get into the video gaming music industry like I am then I would highly suggest you Register Here.
And if you are not here in Austin you might just want to check out this article over at The Game Composers Blog. You can read over how he started out, go ahead and check out the rest of his blog too.

Protools Is Killing Music

2008-08-15T06:10:32Z

I have spent about ten years working with computers and recording software. In '98 I got my first Mac. It was a 400mhz G4, the very first G4. I picked up a copy Protools and put my 4 track away forever. Those recording I made back then were utter and total shit! I have spent the last 10 years learning the fine arts of making my shit musical ideas sound polished. I have read article after article, applied every tip I ever read on line and now I can finally make a decent sounding track. I have only gotten to this point in the last few years, and I still constantly struggle to make my shit sound better.
Over the years I have learned quite a bit. I can explain how ultrasonic frequencies behave to my fiancée when she is confused about a question on a quiz for her sonography classes. I can walk into a room and yell and clap and tell you the best place to set up a guitar amp and mic. So when I was reading through this article on popmatters.com called How ProTools is Killing Music that I found on Audio Geek Zine, I got a bit upset. Basically the douche bag that wrote the article, Scott Oranburg, says that guys like me are ruining the music industry. Guys like me that sit at home with their measly $10K worth of gear and crank out music are putting shit producers out on the street because they can no longer afford to sit back and charge people to use their expensive sound boards and stuffy rooms.
Especially when guys like me will record and produce their friends for free. Especially when I can buy a mastering plug in pack for $400 bucks that rivals the sound of their single channel $6K compressors. I hate to break it to you but that is how this whole technology thing works guy. Sorry that I am free to sit in my room on my own time and be creative without leaches like you sucking off my wallet.
I know you probably crying in your cheerios over how unfair it is that you built up your career and now no one wants to pay you for all your hard work and expertise. Well, maybe if it wernt for the fact that nearly every musician in history has had to hang up their craft and get a day job because they couldn't afford to pay out the nose for services like yours, I might feel a twinge of sympathy. I am not talking about the guys that "hit it big", I am talking about everybody else that just wants to express themselves and share it with anyone that might enjoy it. Throughout history anyone with some paint and an easel can make something beautiful for others to enjoy, but a musican has always needed some wanker with a studio and money to spread his art. At the very least you need somewhere to play. And now that any average joe can build his own studio and learn to run it by spending his extra cash and time on the internet you feel like it is killing MUSIC!
Cheap recording is to music what cheap food is to an Ethiopian child. I have been starving for years for some decent music and no major label has satiated my hunger since the early '90s. The phat cats in the music industry have been rationing out "quality music" through their locked down avenues of distribution for so long I have never known anything else. These days I look to musicians that do it themselves. Mike Patton does not need a producer and neither does Trent Reznor. The utter bilged that has been passed off as music lately is enough to make me want to take it out of the hands of the majors. So please, spare me your sob story. And if you want to hear what Protools is really doing to music why don't you turn off the radio and MTV and get on the internet. Maybe then you might be able to pull your head out off your ass long enough to hear some music that still breaths with the passion of an artist making music for the love of the music.

Prodikeys PC-MIDI

2008-08-15T04:37:22Z

My buddy Stumbled me a link to the Creative Prodikeys website. They were hocking this keyboard for $21 shipped so I jumped on it. I though even if the thing is totally unusable, I am only out twenty bucks. So I gave it a shot..
More after the jump.

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So I get this thing and I had not realized how huge it is. Granted, I am kinda spoiled after using apple keyboards for years but damn! However they do manage to cram three octaves into this thing, and that can be quite useful. I have only played with it for a little while, really just long enough to get the midi keys working in Cubase, but so far it is shaping up to be a nifty keyboard. Now don't expect anything awesome from this thing, but if you start out with expectation as low as mine were you should be pleased. Really I was pleased just to get it to work as a midi keyboard. They market this thing as a kids toy and not as a productivity tool. In my opinion they would get a lot more sales if they were pushing this to the Garageband/Reason crowd, but the keyboard is only supported on 32bit windows so that kills a big portion of potential market.

It took me about an hour to figure out that you have to use the mini keyboard app to set the midi output so Cubase could see it. On the original install I didn't even include that app. I have yet to figure out how to get all the launch keys to work. I use Foobar2000 for most of my simple conversion needs when I am in windows and I could not get it to launch using the program that comes with the keyboard. It does not even give you an option as to how you want the media keys to behave. But if you need a keyboard to help you lay down some quick bass lines or step sequence out some drums than it does the job pretty well. I imagine this would be very useful to the laptop musician that is very low on space. Overall, bang for your buck wise, I would say this keyboard is a killer deal for any musician that is doing a bit of midi programing in windows. Don't get me wrong, this thing pretty much sucks. But if you think about the three octaves of keys you get for $20 that still isn't a bad deal. You are still gonna need a real midi controller of some type, but if you are using this along side with a Novation Nocturn then you can really do everything you need and save a lot of space and it would all fit in a travel bag that you could stuff into a overhead compartment. I could only hope some of my readers are traveled enough to need such a feature.

Make your singer sound like a choir

2008-08-07T08:21:08Z

I found this awesome tutorial at Audiotuts.com about making one vocal sound like many with Clone Ensemble in Cubase. You all know how I do love Cubase. Personally I would also take the original vocal and twist it up with Melodyne, but this is great for getting the quick and dirty done.

Multiple DAWs, one set of plugins

2008-08-07T08:06:21Z

Have you ever tried out a new DAW and tried to set your /steinberg/plugins/ folder as the plugins folder. Then I am sure you are aquantied with the nice dialog boxes that tell you over and over of the multitude of plugins that are not compatible or even the dreaded freeze. Here is a tip, use shortcuts. Make a separate folder for Ableton Live, or whatever program you are setting up, and put a shortcut file for all your compatible VSTs in that folder. Basically all you have to do is go into your /steinberg/plugins/ folder and highlight all the 3rd party plugins that you are pretty sure will work with the new DAW. Then, while they are all still highlighted, right click and select Create Shortcut (mac guys use aliases). Drag all your new shortcut files into your new plugin folder and you are all set. The beauty of this is you can have all your plugins in one spot and several other places as well, and you can have several different plugin folders for whatever apps you may have.

Nocturn Review

2008-08-07T08:00:30Z

So I did a meta-review a while back over the Novation Nocturn. Well, I have had mine for a month now and I feel confident that I can give it a decent review now.
I will start at the beginning with the install. It comes with a quick start card and a install disk, no manual. The manual is in PDF form on the disk. I see more and more companies doing this lately and I have to say that I am not a fan of PDF manuals. Even though I have a dual monitor setup, it is still hard to flip through a PDF the way you would a physical manual and still have the program up to tinker with. But lets just take this as a sign that the setup is so intuitive that you need nothing other than a quick setup, with Cubase SX3, which I use, this is actually the case. You go through the setup...next next next...until you get to the plugin manager. You drag the plugins you want to control over and off you go.
Starting up Cubase I realize that the Automap 2.0 program has made a copy of all my plugins and appended (automap) to the new version. This means that in all my old sessions I will have to go in and save the current state to a preset and unload the plugin, load the automap version and load the preset.
Wait...Viva Las Vegas just came on, gotta sing it to my girl...blame it on the scotch.
Ok, back to work. So to play with my new toy I had to start a new session, no prob. Load up some D'n'B breaks and a bass synth, kick up a loop and get to tweaking. Here is where this thing starts to shine. I loaded Glitch on the drum loop track and hit the "FX" button. This brings up the Automap GUI, and shows all the insert plugins applied over the knobs. You simply touch the knob that corresponds to the plugin you want to control and it shows you all the controls of that plugin mapped out across the virtual nocturn of the GUI with page up and down buttons to scroll through the multitude of parameters that you can tweak with the knobs. By just grabbing a few knobs I can now get some nice Justice/Daft Punk type grooves, so easy. Very nice, but not really my style. Actually it kinda takes the coolness out of music like that.
So now I hit the mixer button and the nocturn takes control of Cubases mixer, Awesome! CRASH!!!! Shit! Restart, reload. Over the next few weeks I get the same thing over and over, crashing. Automap is as stable as my faith in the government...and I am an anarchist. The Nocturn has afforded me an amazing amount of control over my plugins and synths. It makes them feel organic and real, I can easily manipulate everything almost as quickly as if they were physical units sitting on my desk. But I will be damned if I would trust this thing on stage. I would be surprised if you could make it though a set without it taking a shit. In fact last night I had to uninstall, clean the registry and reinstall just to get Automap to start without making the whole system instantly bomb out. This is more than a little glitch, we are talking catastrophic failure if you are on stage. Not to mention that when it is working, Automap seems to make all your plugins take up more cpu than normal, but only when tweaking the knobs. My workflow at home is much improved by my nocturn but it seems offset by the totally unpredictable crashing. Hopefully when Novation updates its Automap 2.0 software they will have worked out some of the bugs therein. Oh and if you were hopeing to use this with Ableton Live, well you are going to have to set everything up manually with midi CC. Don't you wish you had a "real" manual now?

Overall I would still say the Nocturn is cool. I would not however give it the 10/10 rating that Computer Music Magazine did. There is a lot I was left wanting, but it still beats the pants off of manually programing the knobs of my axiom in Cubase. However, if Live is your thing I would not recommend the Nocturn. Since Live has that niffty midi mapping feature, it kinda renders the whole Automap 2.0 program useless. And if you want to use it for your DJ software...forget it. They don't support any DJ software. I don't even know why they bothered to put a cross fader on the thing since it never maps to anything automatically.

Do I sound bitter? Maybe just a bit. I guess it was all the hype that got my hopes up. The Nocturn has a lot of potential, if it could only kick the crash habbit and pick up a few more friends, namely Ableton Live and some DJ software. Oh well, heres hoping to some quick updates.

Dancy Thing

2008-07-07T01:13:25Z

Here is a new generic Electronic Rock track that I worked out this weekend. It is not really that good, but it is catchy and I kept it right at three min. Just like all the crap you hear on the radio.
I will update if I ever decide to write some lyrics for it.

]]> I decided that I was going to do something with a "four to the floor" dance beat. I had been revisiting some of my old "nu metal" cds and I remembered how much I liked that Korn/Orgy fuzzy guitar tone.
Blue Monday - Orgy
Got The Life - KoRn
I left my 7 string in the rack for this one because I didn't feel like making it that intensely heavy. But with the right kind of distortion you can get a very similar tone without having the baritone register. Sometimes the cheap stuff (free) is just as good, if not better, than stuff that puts a dent in your wallet. For the task of fuzzing up my guitars I used Guitar Rig for a Rectified tone and Computer Music Magazines CM Waveshaper plug-in. I did pretty much the same thing with my bass.

Burn

2008-06-10T18:41:44Z

I threw together a cover of burn this weekend. I have not posted any music for a while so I though I would put this up. I have been in the doldrums lately as far as writing music goes so I though I may as well do a quick cover to keep the juices flowing. Let me know if you think I totally ruined Trent's song.

Nocturn metareview

2008-04-27T23:03:41Z

I am a big fan of the UK magazine Computer Music. It cost me about $20 per magazine but I still find myself buying every one because it is so useful and informative. They recently did a review of a new midi/usb interface for audio apps from Novation called Nocturn. I don't recall ever seeing a product receive a perfect score from these guys before, but the Nocturn did. I must say, I am freaking stoked about this thing. Anyone who has tried to get a midi controllers knobs to play nice with a program like Cubase SX or Protools will testify that it can not only be an excercise in futility, it can kill your creative flow instantly. Not to mention how fucked you are if the program of your choice decides to forget your settings when you are about to go to play live.
Well, Novation has apparently got a handle on their Automaping technology because it has the reviewers at CM doing back flips over how easy and intuitive it is to use. Anything that makes them happy makes me happy. Read the review here.

Oh and did I mention that it is cheap! Only $150 bucks for all the touch sensitive, super intuitive fast mapping glory. I am gonna go get one next week, will update with a real review.

Hanging from the rafters

2008-04-22T01:59:12Z

I have never seen a show like this! Dillinger Escape Plan blew my mind this weekend. I have seen these guys a number of times before and have seen their lineup change over the years. Their new lineup kicks ass.

Full account of the brutality after the jump.

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With the explosive way the old lineup would tear up the stage, I
was a little hesitant to hear that their former virtuoso drummer, Chris Pennie, had left to join
the prog rock band Coheed & Cambria and been replaced by Gil Sharone. Also Jeff Tuttle (rhythm guitar, stage right) had joined the band since I last caught their live show. Not to
mention that just the day before I had drove out to Houston to catch the Meshuggah/Ministry
show...which sucked ass...so I was really needing to get my weekend going. Jon and I
showed up at about party time to catch the first opening band, The Bled, and have a few beers.
The next band had a singer wearing saggy girl pants...I had a few more beers. When it
was time for Dillinger to set up Jon and I crammed our way up to the stage to watch the guys
from the band to their sound check and tech their setups. "Fuck You Hippie" shirt and the metalheads were taking pictures of it while we were waiting for
the mayhem to commence. Anyone who has ever been to a show like this would know that
no one is ever impressed by your stupid fucking shirt.>

Before they came out I had about a three beer piss brewing, but when the ambient guitar and
the lights came on my adrenal cortex kicked in. Four clicks from the drummer and they
burst into Panasonic Youth like a mortar shell going off. Somehow Greg Puciato must have
nicked his arm because amidst the flying bodies and flashing strobes, I could see a growing
blood stain on his right arm. Greg cut his hand on the rafters of Emo's last time I saw them
play, probably while he was hanging upside down like a freakish muscle bound monkey.
The guy should buy stock in band-aid. The tremendous amount of energy coming
from the band was palpable and inspired the ratty haired, faceless, shirtless and tattooed bodies to climb up and dive off the stage, most often into groups of girls that let them hit the ground in such a comical way that it would make you laugh and point if you were not watching out for the next falling body. Uncontent to let the audience have all the fun, the guitarists began, one after another, to throw themselves into the mass of heaving bodies as they pointed fists and various other hand signals up toward Greg while he screamed and paced the stage like a foaming animal. There was no respite from the auditory and physical onslaught until
the break in When Good Dogs Do Bad Things. The band went into their free form jazz stint while Gil pounded out machine gun fills and Greg curled up into a fetal position on the stage light boxes. The bodies stopped flying for a moment, and I could breath for a moment.

After the furry kicked back in time became a blur again until a break in the songs to have some kid crawl up on stage to propose to his girlfriend. Not very romantic, but she took the ring. Come to think of it, that may have come before Good Dogs...it is hard to say. All I remember now is that they ended with 43% Burnt. The crowd lost their fucking minds. Swinging from the rafters like monkeys, climbing on top of each other like insects. Various members of the band had disappeared into the crowd leaving no evidence of their existence save the chugging sound stabbing at you from the PA. The mob had reached critical mass and I had the very distinct feeling that something was about to go very wrong.

While dodging falling bodies, Jon and I made our way away from the front of the stage to a safer distance for the last song. When it was over we were out the door to go get some devil pizza, which is no longer there because the Alamo Ritz took the space over...which sucks ass. So we got some bratwurst instead and called it a night. I was sore for two days, but it was so fucking worth it.

Girl Pants

2007-12-06T09:24:25Z

This one is kind of an inside joke between me and my friends.
But if you ever go downtown and see a guy wearing pants tighter than your girls tight jeans then you will pretty much understand. I can't check out a band downtown without seeing a thousand of these 80's throwback , hipster, sissy boys running around all over the place. I even have a few friends that wear the girl pants. Seriously, I went shopping with a buddy of mine and he was actually browsing in the woman's section. I slipped over and tried to whisper to him that he was looking at chick jeans and he turned to me and said that they fit him better. Can't argue with that kind of logic.