Less Recent... June 01 to Jul 99
Mac Audio - VSamp 3.2
VSamp 3.2 by Malcolm Haylock is a program and VST plug-in that turns
any Macintosh into an OMS or a FreeMIDI multitimbral sample play
back module. Configured like a hardware sampler, VSamp can playback
on 16 MIDI channels with up to 128 samples per channel. Samples are
mapped and enveloped as desired, and can be modulated in real time
with low frequency oscillators and resonant filters. Version 3.2
adds the ability to import SampleCell and SoundFont samples and
instruments.
www.kagi.com/smaug/vsamp
...
Creative Labs new 1394 thingy
From the Register ..
'According to the Russian site, Audigy appears to be aimed at
home music and video buffs. So there's the obligatory Dolby
Digital 5.1 and Surround support, plus audio in. It also supports
Windows Media Audio and MP3.
Interestingly, Creative has also included an IEEE1394 interface
- or SB1394, as Creative calls it - to transfer files to hard drives,
CD-RW units or even Creative's own Nomad Jukebox MP3 player. Ready
for copyright-protected material, Audigy contains ContentPass
technology to prevent unauthorised music duplications.
According to the Russian site, Audigy appears to be aimed at home
music and video buffs. So there's the obligatory Dolby Digital 5.1
and Surround support, plus audio in. It also supports Windows Media
Audio and MP3.
Interestingly, Creative has also included an IEEE1394 interface - or
SB1394, as Creative calls it - to transfer files to hard drives, CD-RW
units or even Creative's own Nomad Jukebox MP3 player. Ready for
copyright-protected material, Audigy contains ContentPass technology to
prevent unauthorised music duplications.
more
...
MP3 pro, quality for windows
Joel from joel.editthispage.com says,
'I've been playing with MP3pro, a new file format that is
exactly half the size of MP3s, with higher sound quality.
The even neater part is that you can play MP3pro's with your
old MP3 player. It sounds great. And it eliminates Windows
Media's technical advantage.
You can download an MP3pro encoder and player from www.rca.com.
It's only for windows though.
Here's more from macnn.com...
'Thomson Multimedia and the Frauhnhofer Institute, the two
creators of the MP3 format, have released a codec for the
mp3PRO format. The new digital sound recording format doubles
the compression rate at the same sound quality, thereby bumping
the ratio up to 2 minutes per 1 MB of audio instead of 1 minute
per 1 MB of audio. The new format is backwards compatible with
current MP3 players, but the current players will not be able
to play the higher pitches that have been reinstated in mp3PRO.
The mp3PRO coder and decoder are currently only available for
Windows, but Mac players and encoders supporting the new format
should be available later this year.
...
flash (and shockwave) art sites
irixx.org fun with flash
Mstation contributor and keeper of the flame for the
Xperiments section, Miriam Rainsford has
started an art B-log which will evolve as time goes by.
It is aimed at isdn/broadband users.
www.irixx.org
Ross Mawdsley does nice shockwave
Ross Mawdsley's website has some very pretty and
nice sounding shockwave files should you be looking to fill in some time.
...
** NEC Unveils Research Index Library of Computer Science
Articles
The NEC Research Institute has launched the
ResearchIndex ( http://www.researchindex.org/ ) , its
free research library of 300,000+ computer science
articles.
(www.researchbuzz.com)
...
a Debian Music Distro ...
'
...DeMuDi Project, ...
The distribution will be based
on an existing Debian distro (hence the acronymic for this "Debian
Multimedia Distribution") and will include a kernel patched for low-latency
along with a selection of the best audio and MIDI software currently
available for Linux.
(news from Dave Phillip's page)
enquiring minds might wish to know what's the status of the Mstation
distro. It's on hold at the moment but the initial reaction is that
the responce to the apps CD doesn't warrant the effort. However we
keep getting emails of encouragement so ya never know ...
...
Dark studio space?
Heliobus make light tubes that send light down mirrored tubes
while an attachment at roof level tracks the sun. Maybe one for
when the royalty money comes in.
www.heliobus.com
...
In addition to our own musical time waster, musicmachine
here's another at altzero.com which involves dots and water.
...
A while back we said that harmonycentral had folded - it doesn't look like
it really has as this April fool's day story shows.
...
A new file sharing service called WAPster has already created
havoc amongst artists and record companies. The file sharing service
aims to provide music for people with WAP enabled mobile phones.
Because of storage problems the songs have needed to be short but this
hasn't fazed WAP phone users. A WAPster official said that millions
of song files had been downloaded in the last two days.
On other fronts the RIAA has already started a lawsuit against WAPster
seeking damages of US$201 million while individual record companies
have had emergency meetings with A and R staff to try and set up a new
format of a ten second pop song. An insider at one major company said that
they had already signed five acts for the new format. The cleaner at
Samuraitunes said that he'd heard that their label wouldn't be taking
trip-hop into the new format.
Meanwhile, artists are split on the subject. Gordon X of the (unsigned)
Purple Rhinos said she thought the publicity was good and it was nice that
fans could get their rare songs but an unidentified spokesperson for
Matallica said 'the leaches will be hunted down like dogs'.
The WAPster phenomenon could have wider economic implications as well.
In London, England an official of the British Railways and Underground
Consumers Union said that if WAPster wasn't banned then WAP phones on
public transport should be banned and if neither happened their twenty
million people strong union would be boycotting all public transport
and staying at home.
When asked for comment about how serious he thought the situation was,
a coder at WAP game maker Tiny Little Footprint said 'this must be a
joke'.
April 1, 2001
...
Pick up sfront 0.71 3/29/01 at:
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~lazzaro/sa/index.html
Change log message:
[1] Bugfixes for user-defined
opcodes that use slower-rate
statements. Thanks to Robert
Sherry and Robin Davies.
...
- - -- - -- -
for Mac and Windows
Digidesign is happy to announce that Pro Tools FREE is now available on CD-ROM from our
website. This version of Pro Tools runs on qualified Mac OS, Windows 98 and Windows Me computers.
Visit http://store.digidesign.com and order your copy today!
...
GNU Octal
http://www.gnu.org/software/octal/octal.html
'0.92.3b is at the download site. This version includes the new widget-builder
code and examples on how to use it. I've also updated the webpage's graphics to
include screenshots.'
...
Dave Phillips' site for Linux sound and Music apps has
been updated.
...
** Patent Office Puts Applications Online
Last week, the patent office announced that they've
published the first set of patent applications under
the American Inventors Protection Act.
47 applications were published initially. New
applications will be published every Thursday. They'll
be ramping this up until about 3500 applications are
published weekly.
You can search for the applied patents at
http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html . This page
allows you to search for granted patents and patent
applications. You can do a basic Boolean two-keyword
search, an advanced search, or a search by application
number. An all-fields search for "Internet" found four
results. An all-fields search for "vascular" found two
results.
(researchbuzz)
...
David Olofson's Linux multimedia API related site ...
The MAIA site is now back home at
www.linuxaudiodev.com/maia
MAIA was formerly known as MUCOS.
and! belated Congratulations to David and his partner on the birth
of a baby boy named Linus.
...
M Audio's Audiophile 2496 looks like another nice card from these
people. It has 2 in/ 2 out analogue and 1 in/1 out digital, S/PDID
coaxial and 24 bit converters. Drivers are for Mac and Windows and
... Linux!
...
Apparently the music equipment news site harmonycentral folded a little
while back. Another good place for this sort of thing is www.sonicstate.com
...
artist and label links
Cyrus has a nice collection of artist and label links
relating to electronic music at ...
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/little.e-wakingside
...
Scale This Piano Site
(Get it? Scale? Piano? Bahahaha-- uh, ahem. Anyway.)
Piano World ( http://www.pianoworld.com/ ) has a
variety of piano information for your piano jones.
There are directories of piano tuners, teachers,
dealers, movers, restorers, buyers, rentals, tuning
schools, and performers and artists. Some directories
(piano tuners) have more information than others (piano
tuning schools.)
There's also other information on this site. For $3,
the site will help you determine the age of your piano.
(They don't determine value, though; for information on
value you're referred to another article on the site.)
Among other things there's also a link list to free
sheet music, a gallery of piano pictures, the history
of the piano, piano care, and piano FAQs. Some of the
directories are a little hard to read (they're laid out
in tables) but there's interesting stuff here.
(ResearchBuzz)
...
Sydney, Australia electronic dance label nine09 are seeking "solid, beat based,
electronic' tracks for their 2nd compilation CD Astral Physx. "We'd
particularly like to hear from anyone in Adelaide, as our contact with that
particular city has, up to now, been rather minimal," label boss Sam Speight
said. "It doesn't matter whether only your cat and your next door neighbour
have heard your tunes, or whether you've been producing for years." Nine09
will be releasing their compilation internationally and told Mezz they're
also interested in tracks from unsigned non-Australian producers ('though
Australian producers will get first pick'). . .
www.nine09.net
(Mezz)
...
Lisa Garrett has a new issue of catascopic up now ...
'catascopic issue 5.5, featuring 2 interviews (one with ari from the slits, the other
with kitty-yo artist, peaches), an enlightening article on djs and their place in the
musical realm, reviews of albums you should have picked up by now, the ever popular
listening station with three mp3s, AND, the trivia page (folks, this is what held
everything up - you'll just have to check it out. it's one of those ongoing lists on mine
...
Shure Mics
has a page on connecting mics to computer soundcards.
(PS)
...
www.boosthardware.com is a new
venture by Mstation helper Pat Shirkey and a partner. If you're in New
Zealand and interested in high-end video cards, keep an eye on their
website. Boost Hardware will also be selling the Mstation apps CD.
...
JIM 2001
Journées d'Informatique Musicale Bourges, 7-9 juin 2001
APPEL A PARTICIPATION / CALL FOR PAPERS
Nouveau Calendrier
Soumission des articles : 5 Mars 2001 reportée au 12 Mars 2001
New Dates
Submissions : March 5 2001 reported March 12 2001
information:
Web : http://www.gmeb.fr/JIM2001/index.htm
Email : jim2001@ime-bourges.org
...
Mac OS X and 9
Audio Tool News: Sound Studio 1.5.4
Sound Studio 1.5.4 from Felt Tip Software is an audio recording and
editing application. It allows you to take full advantage of your
Macintosh computer's built-in sound recording and playback
capabilities, to digitize music, to record live audio, to edit
digital audio, and to save audio files in several file formats. This
version is "carbonized" for use with Mac OS X and includes a number
of bug fixes.
http://www.felttip.com/products/soundstudio/
(ADC)
...
www.nickcave.net has 40 second sound-bites of each of the twelve new tracks
from the forthcoming Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds album "No More Shall We Part",
which is set for release on 2nd April.
(mute records)
...
Salon's take on last week's Grammy biz
'Eminem steals the show: The Grammys bring in the bad boy of the moment
to boost ratings. By Eric Boehlert
http://bf.salon.com/X1RT07CA88B738DA8523
...
US for more dance?
³The US market is 10 years behind the UK in terms of dance and it is a huge
market,² said former Radio 1 chief Matthew Bannister this week explaining
why he¹s decided to join internet startup ŒTrust The DJ.com¹. The new site
(launching in April) represents DJs including Brandon Block, Gilles Peterson
and the Dreem Team and was co-founded by one of Britain¹s top music
executives, Lynn Cosgrave, who set up Ministry of Sound¹s compilation series
in the early 90s. Cosgrave, who also until recently ran Sony¹s Dance
operations and manages many of the world¹s top DJs, appeared equally bullish
about America¹s potential in press interviews this week. ³I¹ve watched the
(UK) compilation market get bigger and bigger and the rise of the DJs in
records,² she told the Observer. ³The time is now for dance in America. It
reminds me of dance 10 years ago in this country² (Music Week).. .
http://www.WinterMusicConference.com (March 24-28th)
http://www.trustthedj.com (from April 2001)
(mezz)
Pick up the new sfront 0.69 2/18/01 at:
www.cs.berkeley.edu/~lazzaro/sa/
...
gotta cool flash movie with sounds or music?
There's a contest on ...
www.onlineflashfilmfestival.com/ING_frameset.html
...
Our apps CD (did we mention that before? heh heh) has now been
tested with Mandrake 7.2 and works fine. It also runs with RH
6.0 thro to 7.0
...
Pro Tools free will die if you upgrade from OS 9.0x to 9.1 but
a re-install of Pro tools gets it working again.
...
another contest
'Enter to win a Roland ED Sound Module at:
http://www.musicplayer.com/edirol.html. Learn all the latest info
about our other contests, such as Shure's free trip to Chicago, or
Music123's giveaway--an Ibanez RG570 Electric Guitar. Check out
what's in store from Sweetwater!
Simply go to http://www.MusicPlayer.com/ for our most current contest details
...
are you a dance DJ? www.dancedjs.co.uk would like
to host your page and include you in promotional flyers etc.
It's not free beer.
...
Coming up in London..
March/April at the Barbican in London 'Outsider Art/Music'.
see their site for details.
...
Christopher Penrose, composer and Helping Professor at Keio University, Japan, has
recently released the latest incarnation of PVNation, an application which
he has been developing over much of the last decade. PVNation is a suite of phase
vocoder applications, which at present runs from a command line interface in Linux or Mac OS X.
He is working on a GUI interface, MisterMixUp, which he will be releasing commercially in around six
months time for Mac OS X.
PVNation is available for free download from Christopher's homepage at Keio University,
www.sfc.keio.ac.jp. He has used the
applications in many of his compositions, including "Manwich" which can be heard at his website
After the Taj Mahal.
(MR)
...
gnu-darwin.sourceforge.net is about running various
Linux/Unix apps on Mac OS X. The ftp section has quite a lot of stuff already.
...
Also in the OS X area is osx.hyperjeff.net, which
has a list of native OS X already in existence and seems to be the best source
for info at the moment.
It's now widely expected that the big announcement time for OS X ports by the
big commercial developers will be July.
...
killerfish.de
We're running some websites (see below) with music_related
topics, mp3s, real_audio_tracks, information etc pp and
publish a newsletter and a newsflash about new music, releases
and developments on
see our newsfish_archiv here
www.killerfish.de/faq/newsfish.html
and streams
www.killerfish.de/radio /radio909inside.html
Mac OS X
the full non-beta release was announced at MacWorld last week and is
due on March 24.
Other news at MacWorld was the new G4 powerbook ... a pretty groovy
titanium model ... specs at apple.com
---
GStreamer 0.1.0
GStreamer 0.1.0 is the result of over a year of development by an
international group of open source developers aspiring to build the
ultimate streaming media framework. Although not yet completed, this
release already boasts many impressive features and capabilities including
a streamlined core library, an intelligent autoplugging architecture,
extensive developer's tools, and a large plugin library. With all of the
features listed below, GStreamer promises to be the leading architecture
for streaming media. This intelligent pipeline opens new doors in bringing
the latest in audio and video applications to the Linux desktop
gstreamer.net/
---
More Low Latency news ...
a new version against recent 2.4 kernels of my multimedia-lowlatency
patchset is now available. These patches are the 2.4-adapted versions of
my 2.2 lowlatency patch, which project has now reached an age of 1.5+
years.
the lowlatency patch against 2.4.0-ac6 can also be found at:
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/mingo/lowlatency-patches/lowlatency-2.4.0-ac6-A2
the lowlatency patch against 2.4.1-pre2 can be found at:
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/mingo/lowlatency-patches/lowlatency-2.4.1-A2
---
Linux Latency...
A patch against kernel 2.4.0 final which provides low-latency
scheduling is at
http://www.uow.edu.au/~andrewm/linux/schedlat.html#downloads
---
Free MP3 Informer newsletter
'MP3 Informer' is a premium newsletter for MP3 fans out
there. All the latest software downloads, news, tutorials
and discussions. If all you want is MP3, 'MP3 Informer' is
the choice read of your week.
http://www.mp3machine.com/
---
OFFICIAL NOTE FROM ICMC 2001 ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
SUBJECT: NEW WEB SITE AND SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Hi all,
we have finally moved to the new server, address is still
http://www.icmc2001.org
The site is kindly hosted by Centro Temporeale in Florence, Italy.
Before we were hosted a CCRMA, Stanford University, and we would like to
thanks CCRMA for their help.
In the new site you will find various changes, including the
guidelines and on line forms for Music Submissions and Abstract
Submissions.
Please check:
http://www.icmc2001.org/news
where you'll find more detailed instructions
We are sorry for the delay.
We want also to remind that deadline for Abstrac and Music Submission
has been postponed to FEBRUARY 15 2001.
In the Music section you'll find also a new call for music, for a
Off-Icmc event: The Door Project (also check
http://www.icmc2001.org/news )
---
Mac OS X users on the look out for audio apps will be pleased
to know that Cubase's Nuendo is now available for that platform.
Hopefully Mac World on Jan 12 will see the announcement of
more.
RME go to 96kHz ... The announcement of the DIGI96/8 PST PCI
recording card actually mentions the existence of Linux Drivers.
Also supported are NT, Mac OS (X?) and ASIO.
zeroworks.org is a site devoted to audio matters
and has tutorials on such things as using a compressor and some platform specific
stuff that relates to Windows. There are samples available and if you're stuck for a
band name their bandgen might help you out.
musicscape.com is a site devoted to releasing
truly independant dance music. You can get streams here of stuff you've prolly never
heard before and you might even like to buy a CD there which will help keep their
wheels turning.
Version 6 of Silence is now available from www.pipeline.com/~gogins.
Silence is an extensible system for composing or programming music by means
of software alone. It is written in pure Java and has been tested on Windows
98 and Red Hat Linux 7.0.
Changes in this version include a new all-java software synthesizer with
plugin instruments, improved MIDI file translation, and the introduction of
base classes designed to facilitate composing music by programming using the
Silence class library.
As far as I know, Silence features the first user-extensible,
general-purpose software synthesizer written in pure Java. Instruments can
be programmed in Java using all facilities of Java, including external class
libraries. The programming model is similar to Perry Cook's Synthesis Tool
Kit (STK). A number of STK and Csound instruments have been ported to
Silence, including some physically modeled instruments such as the flute and
guitar.
In addition, Silence continues to work with MIDI and with Csound.
The new version of Silence will be demonstrated at the first dorkbotnyc
meeting, Wednesday, December 6th, at 7:00 PM, in Prentiss Hall at Columbia
University in New York City. See the dorkbotnyc site at
music.columbia.edu/cmc/dorkbo
tnyc for more details.
F\x9fllstimme ... a while back we mentioned xrefer.com had a reference engine
which was quite reasonable for music related things but they didn't have
the word 'F\x9fllstimme '. They just wrote us to say they've added it. What
does it mean? Go look it up.
-DSP guide
a book on DSP is available for free download
(for non-commercial use) from www.dspguide.com
- - -
hotrod AWE64
up to 28 Meg of memory on an AWE64? Apparently there's a
pdf file at Creative Asia with clues how to do it
but you might have problems finding the components.
The file is ct19850.pdf and should be found here...
www.creative-asia.com/sound/64-gold/wp.html
- - -
free protools
not for Linux but protools have brought out a free version
for Mac (OS 8.6,9) and Windows (98SE/ME). Minimum RAM is 128 Meg (with 192
recommended). It's a fully functioning program with 8 tracks of audio
and 48 of MIDI and no special hardware required. Nice one guys!
Initially it was pretty hard to get a clear download but that might be
better now.
There will be a CD for US$9.95 in the next few weeks.
Get it at digidesign.com
- - -
Mozilla Build 18
Mozilla Build 18 is out!: www.mozilla.org ...another
security problem in -- oh, heck. Just turn Java and ActiveX
off, okay?: updates.zdnet.com/
(ResearchBuzz)
- - -
Sound & Music pages update
As of October 10 2000 the Linux Music & Sound Applications pages have
been updated. This site contains more than 700 links to Linux audio,
MIDI, and DSP sites, making it the most comprehensive listing of its
kind on the Internet.
The site may be reached here:
http://sound.condorow.net (USA)
Here:
http://linuxsound.at (Europe)
Here:
http://linuxsound.ymo.org (Japan)
- - -
futuremusic makeover
Just a quick letter to you all to tell you, if you didn't already know,
that the new look, relaunch issue of Future Music is on sale. With a
bonus, free CD full of over 500 copyright-free samples, it features a
group test of virtual analogue synths and the world first test of the
Korg Triton-Rack and interviews with Jimi Tenor and Attica Blues.
Not only that, but our new Web site goes live today. It will boast online
tutorials, screensaver freebies and downloadable audio, as well as the
popular reviews and interviews archives plus the ever-controversial Forum.
Because the site will be evolving over time, we'd welcome your feedback
on what you'd like to see added, and we'd also like to find out if you'd
be interested in adding your tracks to our A&R area.
So get your www.futuremusic.co.uk bookmark at the ready and join us for
the relaunch of the site and the magazine.
See you there
Lisa McGee
(editor)
- - -
radio stuff
Davis CA ... KDVS http://www.kdvs.org
a community supported College station has a cool range of stuff and most
shows are archived for a week in Real Audio format.
Melbourne, Australia Kiss FM is back again till 12 Nov http://www.kissfm.org 90fm
Mostly dance.
- - -
SDMI cracked! (there's also a slashdot story that it's not)
The Secure Digital Music Initiative has been cracked! Hackers
have broken into the recording industry's much vaunted music
protection system, Janelle Brown reports. A number of inside
sources say that not one of SDMI's watermarks to protect digital
music have stood up in a hacking contest. A spokesperson for SDMI
denies it....
Hackers break the recording industry's vaunted music protection system,
Janelle Brown reports at salon.
also, more on Mojo nation ...
The Mojo solution: Forget Napster and Gnutella. Jim McCoy's Mojo Nation is the coolest file-trading service on the Net, writes Damien Cave.
- - -
saol update
After quite some delay, our updated website is now finally online:
www.saol.net
- - -
trance part2
Hi all,
The second part of my article 'A Guide To Writing and Producing Trance
Music' is now available to view on Themestream at:
/www.themestream.com/gspd_browse/browse/view_article.gsp?c_id=192904
If describes how to finish your track, following on from Part 1 which
explored trance drum programming.
If you missed the first part of the article, it can be found at:
www.themestream.com/gspd_browse/browse/view_article.gsp?c_id=188740
Hope some of you find these articles useful.
Joe Williams
- - -
teac CD-RW
TEAC's 12x10x32 drive writes to CD-RW's faster than any of its
competitors, and its CD-R speed is impressive, too.
www.winmag.com/reviews/hardware
(Byte)
- - -
Hi!
This is Toryumon's Office.
Toryumon1 Battle ground round1 has kicked off.
Please check out the tracks on the toryumon web site and vote for your
favourite.
Schedule is as follows.
Round 1: from 1 October through 31 October
Round 2: from 1 November through 30 November
Round 3: from 1 December through 25 December
Final Round: from 26 December through 25 January
Toryumon office.
For info in English : info@toryumon.co.uk
For info in Japanese : info-jp@toryumon.co.uk
http://www.toryumon.co.uk
- - -
jazz++
A new beta of the MIDI and audio sequencer jazz++
has been out since Sept 4ish.
get it here.
and going thro the genres ... there's a new beta
of the opera browser for Linux available.
- - -
software/music rules/ripoffs
License to be good: In the free-software world, people
obey the rules because they believe in them. In the
music industry, the rip-off is a way of life, writes
Andrew Leonard in his first open source column.
at Salon
- - -
trance makers
Hi all
I've written an article entitled 'A Guide To Writing and Producing
Trance Music, Part 1: Drum Programming'.
You can find it on Themestream at:
http://www.themestream.com/gspd_browse/browse/view_article.gsp?c_id=188740
It describes how to emulate artists like Sash and ATB to create the
classic Ibiza trance sound.
Part 2, which shows how to complete the melodic parts of a track, will
be appearing soon.
Apparently I'm supposed to point out that I can make money if people
read this article. Don't worry though, it's not you that pays ;-)
Hope some of you find it useful.
Joe Williams
- - -
TK-707: a MIDI drum sequencer for Linux,
based on the functionality of Roland TR-707.
The MIDI output is live via a sound card, or on file.
A Latin-percussion instrument map emulates the Roland TR-727.
Moreover, the instrument map could be customized by the user.
File save is ASCII, easy readable.
This software bases on the Linux Alsa library (MIDI),
and Tcl/Tk (interface).
The license is GPL.
France www-lmc.imag.fr/lmc-edp/Pierre.Saramito/tk707
Australia www.vislab.usyd.edu.au/staff/chris/tk707
Distribution is a tar.gz pack.
- - -
new ecasound
Description: Ecasound is a software package designed for multitrack
audio processing. It can be used for simple tasks like
audio playback, recording and format conversions, as
well as for multitrack effect processing, mixing,
recording and signal recycling. Ecasound supports
a wide range of audio inputs, outputs and effect algorithms.
Effects and audio objects can be combined in various
ways, and their parameters can be controlled by
operator objects like oscillators and MIDI-CCs. As
most functionality is located in shared libraries,
creating alternative user-interfaces is easy. A
versatile console mode interface is included in the package.
Changes since last release:
Support for ALSA 0.6.x, aRts and 32bit float samples. A new ecaconvert
tool for converting between audio file formats. Numerous bug fixes.
Qtecasound and related packages removed from the main distribution.
They are now distributed separately.
Packages:
ecasound-1.8.2r14.tar.gz (563kB)
ecasound-1.8.2r14-1.src.rpm (568kB)
ecasound-1.8.2r14-1.i386.rpm (991kB)
- libraries, console-mode programs and all documentation
dynamically linked to glibc 2.1.x and libstdc++ 2.9.0
ecasound-plugins-1.8.2r14-1.i386.rpm (139kB)
- audio input/output plugins (ALSA, libaudiofile, aRts, etc)
ecasound-devel-1.8.2r14-1.i386.rpm (65kB)
- header files needed for compiling other programs
against ecasound libraries
- - -
go faster 2.4 kernel
Paul Winkler has put up a guide to upgrading to 2.4
with Andrew Morton's lowish latency patch.
here
- - -
new noteedit
The Qt-based note editor "noteedit" version 1.9.1 is available:
http://rnvs.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/~ja/noteedit/noteedit.html
New features:
- transposition
- play transposed (this is usefull if you wrote an instrument in F major (or so...)
- merging staffs before MIDI import (there are MIDI files with a piano spread over 5(!) tracks)
- - -
Clinton dates
m-station contributor Clint Small has four dates
at the upcoming Melbourne (Australia) Fringe festival.
He's playing under the name James Clinton.
Earlier in the year he gave a lecture at Monash University
based on his essay on the Implicit Politics of Techno.
The lecture will be repeated next year.
- - -
glibc updates
Weekly Linux Security Digest
- More bad news this week with regard to glibc. A number of string related
problems have been found. Chances are, if you updated glibc last week you
will need to do it again. The good news is that people on the Linux audit
list seem active, finding and fixing many problems in core Linux software.
This means short term pain, but ignoring the problems won't make them go
away either. Another popular utility, screen, has also been found to contain
problems, if it is setuid you probably have a problem. Some good news is
available: kernel 2.2.17 is now available, and fixes numerous problems.
Upgrading is a good idea.
securityportal.com/topnews/weekly/linux20000911.html
- - -
This is the announcement for MuX2d 0.2.4 - a graphical editor for
MusiXTeX (a TeX macro package) using Qt 2.x.
For the edited score can be created a MusiXTeX file which will be
computed by TeX and musixflx and display by xdvi.
- --- STATE ---
MuX2d is still in a alpha state. Features are planned in a roadmap. See
"To Do" on the website http://mux2d.sourceforge.net.
- --- REQUIREMENTS ---
Qt 2.x (tested with 2.0.2)
musixtex (tested with T.98)
musixflx (tested with 0.83/T.63dt+jh.2)
MusiXLYRics (tested with 1.1)
- - -
'* Eric Raymond, Vox Populi!: Open Source
Doesn't Equal "Information for free"
The Open Source Initiative rejects defamation by DVDCCA, reports Eric
Raymond.
byte story
- - -
Tesla Opera
It's inspired by Tesla's autobiography,
and lyrics by James Joyce and
E.E.Cummings.
The music is structurally something new,
with no accent on simplicity, none on complexity.
You can hear fragments in MP3 and RealAudio on:
/www.mp3.com/TeslaMusic
or
jagor.srce.hr/~vnemet .
I would be grateful for any kind
of help or information that would make
performing of my ensemble
possible, or can help to spread
an information about it.
- - -
can't remember where this came from but seems
worth a look ...
' My choice was based on ratings I found on Linux Hardware
Database http://lhd.datapower.com/ which I found out about from an
eLinux sales person.
- - -
DeCSS art contest
it's an art contest centered on DeCSS:
www.lemuria.org/DeArt
- - -
Byte at LinuxWorld
'Tom finds new hardware best friends, serious developer bait, and kewl
software at the LinuxWorld Expo held in San Jose in August.
Byte story
and also an interview with Larry Augustin.
- - -
Ninja will also be staging a "mini festival" betweem September 21st-24th,
kicking off in 3 different bars in Hoxton ("remember- we were there before
the dotcom millionaires'), followed by more gigs with a final Sunday jazz
event at Ronnie Scotts, in Soho. Even more impressivlly, they'll be
unveiling special Ninja Tune temporary tattoos and a new edition of their
best loved items of merchandise, New Ninja Tune skinz.
Xen Nites - 21 -24 Sept London
Coldcut/Hexstatic/Koala/Fink
XenCast: 22 Sept: http://www.virtuetv.com
Herbaliser/DJ Vadim Russian Percussion
XenReCast: 12 Oct: http://www.virtuetv.com
http://www.ninjatune.net
http://www.atrecordings.com
http://www.bol.com
- - -
Kurzweil page
Raymond Kurzweil won a 1999 National Medal of Technology
award which was recently featured in Scientific American.
There they mentioned his first prize, as a high school
student, at the International Science Fair, for a a program
that analyzed the works of famous composers and then
composed new melodies in that style.
There's more about him at www.kurtzweiltech.com
- - -
'.. it clocks in at over 16,000 words. "The Heavenly
Jukebox" is a painstaking look by author Charles C. Mann at the
digital-music conundrum, ranging from sheet music to the intricacies
of copyright law to Metallica and beyond. A few pithy quotes from the
piece - which manages to keep interest from flagging in spite of the
massive length.
article at Atlantic
(Beat Sheet)
- - -
'XFree86 4.0, the latest freely redistributable implementation
of the X-Window operating system, is on the cutting edge in that
it is still fairly new and under heavy development. While there
is still work to be done before Corel makes it a mainstay in its
Linux operating system, it includes many features that you may
find appealing or necessary before it officially becomes a part
of Corel LINUX OS ...
Read the rest of this article at /corel.rsvp0.com
- - -
gramofile
o GramoFile - Size: 106K - Free Open Source
hitsquad news
Record LPs to CD, removing hiss, pop and clicks
- - -
classical music index
A music librarian at Duke University has put together a
classical music resource site at
http://www.lib.duke.edu/music/resources/classical_index.html
. The front page is sparse, merely listing the seven
sections of the site (from Composer Homepages to Databases)
but take the time to explore. The composer homepage link,
for example, lead to a subdivision of six sections, plus a
link to a section on female composers.
It would be nice if some of the composer links were more
annotated, with notes for the late 20th century list as to
which links were for "official sites" and which weren't. The
database link pages, on the other hand, are nicely done with
plenty of information on what's available in each database.
This site is searchable by keyword, and does link to pages
that are not in English. (The language of the page, if not
English, is noted in red next to the site description.) The
site maintainer has also taken trouble to provide suggested
cross-reference links, making the site easy to navigate.
(Tara Calashain at ResearchBuzz)
- - -
Salon Technology has a couple more napster stories ...
A hacker crackdown?: As the long arm of the law reaches Napster and
its lookalikes, programmers could be held responsible for what others
do with their code. Damien Cave reports.
here
But isn't it against the law?: How Napster turns otherwise upstanding
citizens into recidivist outlaws -- and what the music industry can
do to save itself. Scott Rosenberg explains.
and here
- - -
RSA patent song
In September Cypherpunks are having an RSA Patent Exit Party
in Menlo Park, CA ... they're looking for a song to highlight
the occasion. Current suggestions are ...
"So long, it's been good to know yuh"
"Evil Ways" (Santana)
"Won't Get Fooled Again" (The Who)
"50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" (Simson & Garfunkle ;-)
"You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling"
if you've got something that just fits the bill send the title
and an URL to an mp3 to ... <rick@linuxmafia.com>
- - -
Timidity++ 2.10.0
... now has ALSA sequencer support. Timidity++ is
a softsynth and midi to wav converter.
Check it out here
- - -
Prince Essays
"(T)he fundamental reason y those 'young people' r xchanging music online is
that they r xcited about the music, that they r actually developing a
sense of appreciation of what good music is."
and
"Does (Time Warner chief Richard Parsons) really think that
what motivates an artist 2 create is the fact that record company
xecutives r making millions off his back when he barely manages 2
scrape by even after selling hundreds of thousands of copies of his
album?"
You can check out more of his thoughts at www.npgonlineltd.com
- - -
ALSA 0.5.9
... has been out a few days now.
Contains bugfixes and updates - it hasn't been
tested here yet.
Get it at www.alsa-project.org
The ALSA drivers are an alternative to the free drivers
that come with most distros and the commercial drivers
from 4front.
- - -
Weekly Linux Security Roundup
- A busy week - LIDS, Netscape, Mailman, NFS, kon2, gpm and several other
programs were found to contain security problems, some of them very nasty. A
few weeks ago I slagged Mandrake Software. Well, I'm not going to apologize,
but I will say this: Mandrake has significantly improved its security
advisories. They are now issued regularly, contain solid information in
regard to the problem and how to fix. My remaining complaint would be that
they have no vendor site for updates, but rely on third-party mirrors. This
is somewhat mitigated by the update tool, but I still feel that vendors
should not rely on the good will of third parties to distribute fixes.
Reliability aside, there are trust issues to be considered.
more at securityportal.com
- - -
anthem - the sequencer
anthem is another promising looking
sequencer. It has a nice looking GUI with such things
as a studio clock and onscreen keyboards. It looks
like its being intensively worked on right now.
You need a recent KDE2 snapshot to run it.
- - -
C for Contest
'in under 5000 lines of portable ANSI-C, write a song.
its that simple, and there are prizes for first AND last :)
www.i2pi.com/comprez
(l-a-d)
- - -
software music keyboards ...
can be really useful if you don't have MIDI keyboards
or if you're a practised keyboard musician and don't
want your fingers falling into familiar patterns
(thanks Miriam for that point :)
There is a way of running the software keyboards clavier
so that its output will be picked up and recorded by
sequencers such as Melys or Jazz++. (You "play" the
computer keyboard for this to happen.)
If you know ALSA already you just need be told the words
'aconnect' and 'virmidi module'. If you'd like further
help, it's been written up here
- - -
Music and Sound book for October
The official publication date for Dave Phillips
book, LINUX MUSIC & SOUND (US$39.95, ISBN 1-886411-34-4)
is October 00.
m-station will be reviewing it and having a chat with
Dave.
- - -
FM remix comp
'You have one month to remix the soundtrack to the new PC
game Homeworld Cataclysm (from Sierra), and the remixer of
the winning track will win £500 and have their track released
on vinyl, sent out to loads of clubs and used in the promotion
of the game in the autumn.
Simply visit our Web site now - http://www.futuremusic.co.uk - and
download the main track and the various samples and start remixing.
All your entries must be sent, on CD (in audio, MP3 or WAV format)
to Havas Interactive by noon on Friday 1 September.
The judges will then spend the afternoon choosing a winner and it
will be rushed overnight to a vinyl pressing plant and will be
distributed around various clubs in Europe by the end of the week.
You have to use the main track, but to that you can use any of the
game sound effects (guns, engines, explosions) provided by the game
programmers, and also any of your own copyright-free samples. The
remix can be done in any style... whichever suits you best.
Visit our Web site NOW to have a chance to win £500 and your track
distributed to thousands in European clubs.
All the sounds and samples will be available on our FM100 cover CD
as audio tracks when the issue goes on sale on 18th August. But for
now, you have a headstart.
So what are you waiting for!
Best wishes and good luck!
Lisa McGee
(editor)
www.futuremusic.co.uk
- - -
There's been a preliminary injunction against Napster's
file sharing activities and about 5 gazillion news stories.
The fact is that the file sharing genie is out of the
bottle and smart answers are never going to be provided
by lawyers.
'Hold the Champagne, Hollywood! Why the music industry has nothing to
celebrate. Napster's shutdown will only cause a thousand alternatives to
bloom, argues columnist Scott Rosenberg.
salon story
Napster Redux - also at Salon
Lars Ulrich "elated" over Napster shutdown
nme story
Napster users outraged at closure threat
nme story
Napster faces shutdown after losing legal fight
nme story
- - -
Laura Conrad publishes some motets...
'I will be offering these in hard copy for the cost of reproduction and
shipping. Meanwhile, you can download:
* [3]The pdf file.
* [4]The covers.
* [5]The MIDI files
* [6]The ABC, TeX, and eps sources.
_________________________________________________________________
1. www.vonhuene.com
2. can2v.html
3. motets.pdf
4. cover-letter.pdf
5. motets-midi.zip
6. motets-src.zip
7. email to Laura
Wutz this got to do with Linux? Laura is a contributor here
and the publishing work was done in Linux.
- - -
low latency prepatched kernel
'Thanks to Udo Jocher (udo@udoj.org) a friend of mine, we have now
easy to install 2.2.16 redhat kernels with the lowlatency patch applied.
(only the UP version are available because Ingo's patches do not improve
the situation on SMP boxes)
Udo basically applied Ingo's 2.2.15 patch and backed out a part which was
already present.
Note that Ingo's patch causes unresolved symbol errors on a few modules
which are NFS and ipmasq related, so these features will probably not work.
I am writing this mail using the above kernel while a latencytest session is
just running, so it seems stable to me. :-)
the kernel RPMs are here: (with links to Udo's site)
www.gardena.net/benno/linux/lowlatency-rpm.html
Plus it contains a short LILO tutorial for newbies.
- - -
pre alpha mod2mid
On our trackerz page we mentioned a rumour of
a mod->midi conversion utility. It's now in
working protype form and Eric Welsh thinks it
could be out in a month or two (at least for
<16 channel conversions)... and shortly we'll
be putting up an article by Eric about making
patch sets.
even more in the pre-alpha stage is a gigasampler
clone for Linux. This is looking like it will
be very nice.
- - -
Beth in Ireland
Beth Orton has a short accoustic only tour of
Ireland coming up.
Dates are:
July 22 An Grianan Theatre, Letterkenny
July 24 McCarthy's Bar, Baltimore (ie!)
July 26 The Lobby, Cork
July 28 ?, Galway
July 29 Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny
- - -
more DeCSS
'...on the other hand, not even the almighty MPAA has succeeded in shutting
down the internet so far. not only are some of the original targets of
their lawsuit warfare still online, development of decss, livid and
others is uninterupted. I have just today added a new decss-sibling
called "decss plus" to my webpage that doesn't rely on the dubious xing
key anymore. http://www.lemuria.org/DeCSS/decss.html#download
- - -
T-shirt Design Contest - and the winners are ...
Fran and Kath. Fran did the nicely oblique linux->music
t-shirt and Fran did the collection of deconstructed
m-stations.
Which one will be used? Not sure yet - the t-shirt will come
out about the same time as the distro so there's still some time for
dithering.
Thanks very much to all who entered and thanks also to those
who offered opinions on the entries.
- - -
A special-effects wizard for "The Perfect Storm" talks about crafting
virtual victims (and heroes) and the evolution of computer graphics,
from morphing to "The Matrix."
By Michael Sragow at Salon
- - -
Mackie HR824 review
The HR824s are self powered monitors and if you've
seen the ads you may wonder how they stack up.
Studio Sound mag recently reviewed them and found
them to be satisfactory with the only worry being
the extremely steep LF rolloff.
Those interested in the test methodology can read here.
- - -
JavaTuner moves
Giving for the three pages of interest here:
FROM: http://www.globetrotter.net/gt/usagers/roule/temper.htm
TO: http://pages.globetrotter.net/roule/temper.htm
FROM: http://www.globetrotter.net/gt/usagers/roule/accord.htm
TO: http://pages.globetrotter.net/roule/accord.htm
FROM: http://www.globetrotter.net/gt/usagers/roule/demos.htm
TO: http://pages.globetrotter.net/roule/demos.htm
The JavaTuner has also changed a bit (a first version with MIDI
input so you can hear the music you want -- improvements pending
tho, it's not very convenient right now), and I now have more
links.
- - -
new smurf ...
Smurf, the sound font editor and cool tool for just
fooling with fonts has just had a new release.
- - -
'money' back
Remember the Flying Lizards' take on the Beatles 'Money'?
Deborah (the original voice), Sophie Viney and Miriam
Rainsford are doing a dance remix on protools. Proceeds
will go to charity.
More news as we get it. You read it here first!
- - -
paper stuff...
If you haven't tried out EQ mag you go can over
and get them to send you a free copy... not sure
if that means you'll be pestered forever after.
jockey slut mag has a website ...
'disco pogo for punks in pumps' but there's no door
er person, so we're safe.
There are a few sections including one with
Badly Drawn Boy where you mouseover a few
words and get a few words more. hmmm
- - -
sign here
another looking-for-acts-to-sign site is
/www.dreamworksdigital.com ...
'The site, www.dreamworksdigital.com, is breathtakingly simple. Just
read and sign the contract, upload an MP3 of your song and you're
done. If and when Wood hears something he likes, he'll dig around
online to hear more from the band before contacting them. Critiques
and suggestions aren't part of the service.
...
The site might be efficient, but some bands aren't buying it. The fact
that contract artists must sign before submitting songs to DD has
prompted more than a few howls of protest.'
also mentioned in the latest edition was www.worldpop.com -
this U.K.-based site is jam-packed with everything even
remotely related to the "global pop network."
(Beat Sheet)
- - -
audiomulch is a nice synth program for win98 and NT.
The author is presently considering the possibility
of a Linux port.
www.audiomulch.com
- - -
The John Lennon Songwriting contest is open
until 31 August 00. It has a bunch of different
genres and costs US$30 to enter.
/www.jlsc.com
I was wondering where John Lennon came into it
but the small print says 'John Lennon is a
trademark owned by Yoko Ono Lennon'.
Is it just me or does that seem a trifle ...
tacky?
- - -
not normalize
Mastering engineer Bob Katz never normalizes
audio files - he has written about it at his
website www.digido.com
- - -
at www.mezzmusic.com ...
'Click on New Music or any of the genre buttons on mezzmusic's home page to
hear great garage cuts from some of the UK's biggest producers and
independent labels. New mixes include cuts from from MJ Cole and Colours.
As well as hearing audio streams, you can also buy each track as an MP3 for
just 0.99p (UK sterling). All tracks on mezzmusic are independly signed
and each artist will receive a direct cut from each purchase you make.
Gerideau - Masquerade - MJ Cole Vocal Mix
Colours Featuring Stephen Emannuel & Eska - What U Do- X-Men Vocal Mix
Push - Til We Meet Again - Original Mix
- - -
midiman delta cards
.. are supported by the ALSA (and 4front) drivers but
the problem is trying to figure out what apps will support them.
Snd will definately support the 1010 as testing has
been done. It should also support the 66 and 44 but
testing hasn't been done yet. It is said that aplay
and arecord will also support them but there seems to
be no hard evidence that that is so.
The delta series of cards are 24 bit PCI hard disk recording
cards.
- - -
'HITS OF THE WEB: A new feature that gathers rankings of music activity
at a variety of Internet music sites and audio services.
at Billboard
- - -
newest bit at rolandgroove.com is one from Sasha...
What did you buy?
I started with two Technics
decks and a really awful mixer
that I found in a bin.
more at www.rolandgroove.com
- - -
Fight for killer Sony Memory Stick Walkman by voting in the dance music
soundclash!
The battle of the bedroom beats is raging at :
www.toryumon.co.uk/vt/index.htm
By just voting in the head to head battleground from 01.07.00 - 15.07.00,
you get the chance to win a MS Walkman.
The Memory Stick Walkman is the very latest piece of technology from Sony
that allows you to download music from the internet.
You can get your hands on one of the first few in the country, by checking
out www.toryumon.co.uk the specialist dance music showcase site for
unsigned dance music producers.
Let Battle Commence!
Toryumon HQ
- - -
new real
There's a new real player beta for Linux out. It seems to
work a lot nicer than the last one ... freshmeat just throws
you at www.real.com so here's the real URL URL
- - -
Dr. Katherine Norman, Director of the Electronic Music Studio
at London's Goldsmiths College is proposing
to use Linux for audio work on some of their studio computers.
The Linux machines will be added to what is now
a Mac based setup.
musicscript move
musicscript has moved to sourceforge.
musicscript.sourceforge.net
- - -
fans
'Hush, little PC: If Apple can make an almost silent iMac, why can't other
computer makers turn off the white noise? Robert Bryce explains the PC noise
pollution. More at ...Salon
Xaudio
An invitation:
What I'm trying to do is spark discussion, and determine who among you
would like to be involved in the standardization process of an X audio
system. The goal is to create an industry standard. In the near future,
I will set up a mailing list to act as a discussion space for this stuff.
I invite you to participate. If you're interested, drop me an e-mail.
And, please, if you think I've left out some large section of the
population, let me know.
Thanks for your time,
Mike Andrews
rocko@shiman.com
Shiman Associates Inc.
SUID audit
'In this article, I'll introduce Linux/Unix file permissions, root privilege
and the SUID path to root. Then I'll help you run a SUID audit on your
system, using Red Hat 6.2 as an example. While Bastille Linux also runs an
audit, there are some really great concepts and practices here for your
everyday use; furthermore, you have more options doing this manually. Let's
start by discussing Unix/Linux file permissions.
more at securityportal.com
- - -
If, like thousands of other musicians out there,
you've never uploaded your music to a website because
you didn't think it was worth it, then think again. UK
garage artist Lilly Ray, also known as 'Little M', has
been signed to EMI after uploading his track, 'Wonderin'',
to Musicunsigned.com. The deal was aided by a Musicunsigned.com
advisor, and the track is to feature on the Fantasy Island Ayia
Napa compilation album in the summer. The success story doesn't
stop there, as Musicunsigned.com artists Popsicle and Curtis
Lynch have gone on to secure deals with Eastwest and Telstar Records.
www.musicunsigned.com
(bbc1)
- - -
Toryumon2 Battle ground round2 has kicked off.
Check out the tracks on the toryumon web site and vote for your favourite.
http://www.toryumon.co.uk/btlg/index.htm
The deadline date of signing up for Round 3 is put off till 15 July.
/www.toryumon.co.uk/infpnt
Toryumon office.
For info in English : info@toryumon.co.uk
For info in Japanese : info-jp@toryumon.co.uk
http://www.toryumon.co.uk
and Radiovalve .... is a techno webcasting station
coming to you from a RH6.1 server in Boulder, CO.
- - -
While some people find Britney Spear's presence
on earth offensive, Salon finds something nice
to say ...
'Forget the schoolgirl skirts and the psychosexual interpretations.
Britney Spears sings calculatedly brilliant hits.'
By Andy Battaglia
here
- - -
Linux Amiga
'Seems that Amiga is getting ready to come to life again. They promote
themselves as a Multimedia platform that runs on top of Linux.
There was concern about usage of Linux as a multimedia machine...perhaps
Amiga will help propel it to that front.
Check out the following:
http://www.amiga.com/corporate/060300-mcewen.shtml (Info about the $99 SDK)
http://www.amiga.com/ (Amiga's Home Page)
- - -
CPS
CPS version 1.1 is out, which has several new features and changes
requested by users. New features include an easy presetManager, a
'scoretoDisk' MPEG4 score writer, a serial port object (automatic polling),
'weak references' to subpatches, filters with resonance, MIDI file I/O,
lots of predefined macro's, etc. For developers: you can now also 'Save as
.java' and 'Save as .cpp', so you can use the engine only of CPS in your
own program (Java 1.0 compliant or C++) through the new StandAlone SDK. The
graphical interface is extended with new features like support for arrow
keys, assigning colors and size, easier creating of wires, etc. etc.
CPS is a graphical environment where by placing blocks and wires, realtime
software 'machines' can be created. CPS offers lots of audio processing
blocks including MPEG-4 Structured Audio core opcodes and generators, and
has also lots of objects to control and generate realtime I/O like MIDI,
joystick, sensors, etc. You can read more info online in the manual and in
the F.A.Q.'s.
The shareware version is full-functional, and loading/saving patches is not
disabled. You can download it at http://www.bonnevile.nl/cps including the
manual.
- - -
Bang and Olufsen make pretty and nice sounding upmarket
CD players, speakers, and TVs amongst other things.
Recently a company representative said that they
wouldn't be supporting DVD any time in the near future.
Reasons given were that the technology was immature and
that the licensing (in particular the zone restrictions
on DVD discs and players) was onerous and too greedy.
other company goss ...
According to one music industry source audio apps development
for BEos has been dead in the water since the 'Internet direction'
was announced last year.
- - -
Audio Quality HOWTO
due to problems with netpedia's DNS...
The audio.netpedia.net site is defunct. The new URL is:
www.linuxdj.com/audio/quality/
The Audio Quality Howto is a collection of tips for
increasing audio quality while using Linux (although
some of the tips are universal in their application)
- - -
"Better Living Through Circuitry": In this floor-level view of the rave
scene, director Jon Reiss keeps it pumping, humming, buzzing and
spinning by Jeff Stark at salon
- - -
the first techno-only search-engine is now online. There are
120.000 indexed techno sites, you can search for every single site
and word.
- - -
MusicScript is a new scripting language for constructing
music, loops etc. It looks fairly easy to get a grip on
and you can check it out here ...
- - -
Toryumon2 Battle ground has kicked off.
Check out the tracks on the toryumon web site and vote for your favourite.
The deadline date of signing up for Round 2 is put off till 15 June.
- - -
Music search
www.xrefer.comsearches a few authoritative
sources including The Grove
Concise Dictionary of Music...
It found Mozart and Bass clef
but not fullstimme, heh heh
(researchbuzz)
- - -
If you're just sussing out what MIDI is and what your
controller options are, Cliff Suttle has an article at harmonycentral
on the subject ...
more
- - -
Joe Cocker recently had a nice addition to his
retirement fund when the Australian Tax Office
used his 'Unchain My Heart' song as the
background to an ad.
What Joe didn't realize was that the ad was a
blatantly political piece to help smooth the
way for a fantastically unpopular new VAT type
tax on all goods and services. As well as that,
Joe gets to have his name printed on the TV
screen every time the ad is shown (necessary
under local laws apparently).
So now he's made a statement saying that he is
_not_ in favour of the tax and that he'd like
his name taken off the ad.
But it looks like his name will stay.
- - -
CD at nme ...
well, they're doing a survey and according to them, you
could win a CD for your trouble. What the odds are is
unknown.
nme survey
- - -
darn, missed it for this year ...
Detroit's Electronic Music Festival was May 27-29.
(if you're online as I put this up you might just
get the end of it at www.groovetech.com
The festival should be on again next year and will
hopefully still be free. Check out the people you missed
here...
which included Juan Atkins, Derrick May. and Richie Hawtin.
and the SF Examiner has a story here
The Detroit Free Press said
'It's official: The Detroit Electronic Music Festival works.
Amid a collage of pulsing beats Sunday, tens of thousands
descended onto Hart Plaza for a day of cutting-edge
sounds, apparently undeterred by gray skies and lingering
mud from morning showers.
more
- - -
home studios
A drummer who built a studio in his garage wrote a
nice piece on his project here - being a drummer, his
main concern was soundproofing.
There is a good link there to an accoustic treatment
article which turned out to be a part of a whole series
covering a range of studio related topics at ucsc.edu.
- - -
Berlin's Love Parade is on again this July 8.
In the meantime they're looking for ideas and code for
this year's website ... more at www.loveparade.de
- - -
mp4 trademark
A company called Global Music One created a proprietory
format and decided to call it mp4. They then decided that
it would be a good idea to trademark the name that had
already been in use by MPEG to refer to MPEG-4 files.
Opposition papers were submitted and we now await the words
of the USPTO.
(info from saol-users)
- - -
qt note editor
notedot
Version 1.4.0 of the note editor on Linux (GPL, beta) is ready:
rnvs.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/~ja/noteedit/noteedit.html
New features
============
- volume change
- tempo change
- program (instrument) change
- key signature change
- time signature change
- clefs with octave shift
- export Midi
Other Properties
=================
* insertion/deletion/modification of notes, rests, dotted notes, slured
notes, clefs, time signatures, key signatures, beamed notes, triplets on different sta
ffs;
* building accords, undo, block copy, block delete,multi staff block copy,
multi staff block delete;
* playing on /dev/sequencer (if correctly configured) whereby:
o giving each staff a different voice;
o giving each staff a different channel;
o highlighting the played notes;
o setting midi tempo;
* export MusiXTeX
* saving an restoring the files. The file format is similarily to the
format of the music publication program (MUP):
http://www.arkkra.com
So you if you are a MUP user you have the possibility to convert
the files into Midi and Postscript.
Because it is a Qt program I plan to transform it into a KDE
application (if there is enough interest).
also ...
Maarten de Boer has made a GUI for alsamixer
It needs fltk ... which needs Mesa.
Screenshot
Download
- - -
Spacey Guitars ...
Thankfully someone is getting beyond making clones of
Les Pauls and Strats - quite a bit beyond.
Teuffel Guitars make the birdfish (pictured above) as
well as the Coco and soon, something interesting called
the Tesla, which is aimed at Industrial music making.
On the birdfish you can contruct your own resonaces and
swap pickups. Price is DM 6600.
www.teuffelguitars.de
- - -
Toryumon off again
Sign up has started now.
The deadline date of signing up for Round 1 is put off till 26 May.
Now you can submit the Recordings through Sign Up page of the Toryumon.
Round 1 will start on 5 June( on schedule ).
Toryumon office.
For info in English:info@toryumon.co.uk
For info in Japanese:info-jp@toryumon.co.uk
http://www.toryumon.co.uk
- - -
netsounds conference
Debates rage at Netsounds conference in London
The nme.com hosted two-day event saw the future
of music on the Internet come under close scrutiny...
more at nme
- - -
Salon have a history of BSD ongoing ...
'This is the first section of Chapter 2 -- a close look at the history of
Berkeley Unix, also known as BSD. BSD advocates have long argued (believe me,
you should see my mail) that BSD is too often ignored in favor of Linux.
This is my attempt to rectify this imbalance of coverage, as well as begin
to explain why Linux has surged to the forefront in recent years.
more at Salon
- - -
MPEG 4 Programs
Announcing sfront version 0.58 4/17/00, a program that
compiles MPEG 4 Structured Audio (MP4-SA) bitstreams
into efficient C programs that generate audio when
executed.
Pick up this program (freely-redistributable, under
the GNU Public License) at:
www.cs.berkeley.edu/~lazzaro/sa
The major change in sfront 0.58 is an enhanced
control driver API, which supports the use of
sfront in end-user applications like streaming
decoders, patch editors, sequencers and symbolic
debuggers.
A multi-part programmers manual describes the
new API, and an example control driver (fstr,
which streams MP4-SA files from a local file)
shows how to use the API for a complex task.
In addition, many bugs were fixed, mostly in
wavetable generators and the linmidi control
driver for real-time MIDI input under Linux.
Finally, random number opcodes now produce
unique data streams on each decoder invocation,
with a new sfront flag to force deterministic
data streams for testing.
- - -
Krashmag is a hacker zine and issue 10
has a couple music related thingies ...
[X]
9) Tracking Corner (Walrus) - Beats man, beats. chooon.
or something like that.
[X]
16) Mp3 Scene Burst Open - Submitted anonymously
KrashMag #10 is out now. Download it from
http://www.krash.org.uk/issue10.zip
Download the other issues from: http://www.krash.org.uk/ezines.html
To subscribe to KrashMag send an email to:
krashmagazine-subscribe@egroups.com
- - -
Canada's MEDIA Crack Support Systems want music. Your music!
brado creamed corn (AKA Brad Pine) is calling for submissions
from musicians of the electro/ambient/noise/instruMENTAL kind,
in hopes to put together a co-operative compilation. People
interested in submitting material are asked to e-mail
bradocreamedcorn@yahoo.com, or contact brado at 2789 St.
Paul Ave, Niagara Falls, ON, Canada, L2J 2L3. The submission
deadline is some time this summer, and the CD is planned to be
released at the end of the year. brado is also gearing up to
release a Forgotten Rebels tribute album sometime this fall.
"MEDIA crack is not just a performing/recording band, but an
attitude, a message, a somewhat political and fashion statement,
and hopes to be a part of pop culture by being anti-pop," he says.
- - -
Free Music Public License
God Ate My Homework is putting together a copyleft
license for music called the Free Music Public License.
We're hoping to do for music what the GPL did for software.
Before we turn it from a bunch of ideas into a real
license, we want to get as much feedback as possible from
other artists, to make sure it's something everybody (or
at least other freedom-minded artists) would want to use.
Info about the FMPL is at www.gamh.cx
(Homer (of God Ate My Homework)
gamhomer@email.rabbit.com (remove the animal))
- - -
drum machine+
Jean-Daniel Pauget has written a nice drum machine-
like program.
For console with mouse support, it also provides a
schematic for a three pot, midi/joystick controller
for some of the parameters - quite nice for a two
card setup. Groovit is in alpha and you can find
out more at it's website
There's also the 1'30 club for making music..
- - -
netscape 6
A pre-release it's called. It's actually not too bad in
quite a few ways. The download is about 10 Meg which is
a nice start. The GTK GUI (Linux) is quite nice and it
didn't actually die on me which was better than early
4.6. CSS support has been upgraded a lot and XML files
are shown now but nothing useful could be done - I'm not
sure if that was the nature of the file rather than the
browser.
'Sidebars' are a touted new feature. In effect they're
mini HTML pages shown on the left of the browser and
include Reuters news and stock quotes... hmmmm.
The default font sizes now make pages look big and clunky
just like IE! On the plus side the letter rendering is
nicer than it was and reading is easier.
6 runs pretty slowly on a lower order pentium but there
is a lot of debugging info going to the console so
maybe this will be better when that's turned off.
And the mouse-wheel works too now.
Worth a look anyway.
- - -
jazz fests page
From all over -> www.jazze.com
- - -
The USA Songwriting contest is under way with
an announced first prize of $50,000 in cash
and gear.
Genres and languages are open and the closing
date is May 31, 2000.
There is an entry fee of US$30 which should
keep the judge's work down.
- - -
ardour, the Linux HDR app for the RME Hammerfall card has
taken a leap forward in functionality. Check it
at it's website
- - -
LADSPA 1
... is a plugin API for Linux audio
' There is a large number of synthesis packages in use or development
on the Linux platform at this time. This API (`The Linux Audio
Developer's Simple Plugin API') attempts to give programmers the
ability to write simple `plugin' audio processors in C/C++ and link
them dynamically (`plug') into a range of these packages (`hosts').
It should be possible for any host and any plugin to communicate
completely through this interface. The LADSPA plugin API is free to
use.
Version 1 of LADSPA is now available from
http://www.muse.demon.co.uk/ladspa.html. Plugin ID ranges available.
- - -
Linux developers are frequently looking for people
to make nice icons and the like for their apps ...
At www.icontown.de there are a whole bunch of icon makers
and they made a pixel town with their individual
icons...
Hackers from around the world overcame interrogations,
censorship and an all-around bad reputation to hold Israel¥s first hacker
convention, wrapping up the two-day conference Thursday without a glitch
...story
(thro securityportal.com)
- - -
This is Toryumon's Office.
The final round of the Toryumon Battleground has kicked off.
Check out the tracks on the toryumon web site and vote for your favourite.
Toryumon office.
For info in English:info@toryumon.co.uk
For info in Japanese:info-jp@toryumon.co.uk
www.toryumon.co.uk
- - -
Jimi Movie
Apparently a movie is to be made of Jimi Hendrix's
life - shot in Toronto, Ca, it'll be on cable in September
before a theatre release.
Somewhat weirdly, the Hendrix family company Experience Hendrix Inc
has not been contacted for licensing rights so the movie won't
contain any of Jimi Hendrix's original music.
Doesn't sound like this is going to be the definitive Jimi
flick.
(nme)
- - -
ac3play
This is the first public release of ac3play, a user space tool to play
AC-3 encoded bitstreams through the S/PDIF of ALSA supported soundcards.
http
ftp
Current Limitations
-------------------
- Probably works with Trident 4DWave NX based cards only
- Needs more error checking
- - -
'eCoustics ( ecoustics.com ) has a searchable subject index
covering a variety of things interesting to the stereo-head.
Categories include Home Video, (313 links in the DVD category),
resources (68 links to online magazines), and accessories (over 175
reviews of cables. Who knew?)...
(ResearchBuzz)
- - -
'Opera 4.0a for Linux Technology Preview 2 is now available!
As noted by the version number, this is still an Alpha release.
We at Opera have decided to refer to this version as
a technology preview since the term Alpha states by its nature
that it has not been released from our local offices. Since this
is a technology preview, and not a beta, we are
asking that you do not send us bug reports--there are still enough
being generated internally to keep us busy for a while. In addition,
we will not be providing technical support for this version yet.
- - -
It is ... a mobile disco!
Powersound Mobildiscotek and Booking is from Denmark so call 0045 26153152
ask for Jens
mobildiskotek@powersound.dk
www.powersound.dk
- - -
Salon d' Aqua ... Love and Hate revisited
Salon's Michelle Goldberg reviews the latest offering from
Aqua and finds something to chew on ...
"Aquarius" is a beat-driven Disney soundtrack with undertones of
Hieronymus Bosch -- an entire international landscape of pop trash has been
compacted in these sinister, oddly self-aware saccharine ditties. Though it
makes Britney Spears sound like Polly Jean Harvey, "Aquarius" is
nonetheless more interesting than most of the cotton-candy, adolescent
ephemera clogging the airwaves, because it offers a glimpse into mass
culture's smug, beastly heart.
more at Salon
- - -
P Gabriel squat
The World Intellectual Property Organization will decide if Peter
Gabriel or an alleged cybersquatter holds the rights to the domain
name www.petergabriel.com.
more at Billboard
- - -
MainActor for Linux 3.5 released.
by Devin M. Ash
Webmaster, Tucows Linux
MainActor is dynamic software that allows you to edit and sequence
multimedia videos. With MainActor, it is possible to perform many
of the same tasks that professional video production studios do
when they are preparing film for broadcast.
here
- - -
PCI128 howto ..
'Just in case anyone is trying to get a SoundBlaster PCI 128 up and
running under linux 2.2.14, I write a fairly specific mini-HOWTO on the
subject:
here
(alsa-user)
- - -
BACKSTREET BOYS TORTURE CANADIAN COLLEGE STUDENTS
Students at the University of Toronto are being
"tortured" by campus police with the music of the
Backstreet Boys in an attempt to end a six-day-old
sit-in at the president's office.
- - -
SGI dmSDK toolkit
now for Linux ... here
also in that line ...
OpenAL is the audio-equivalent of OpenGL: Open Audio Library.
- - -
After the announcement of the Vestax VRX 2000 vinyl cutting lathe,
there has been another one. Vinylium, a Swiss company, are just
about in production of their cutter. Their version is reputedly going
to be much cheaper than the Vestax at around US$4000.
- - -
Jazz++, the Linux midi app, is
now officially Open Source
with the release of version 4.0.
ALSA support doesn't seem to be
working but it works
under OSS emulation under ALSA.
There are some file getting bugs.
You can get it thro here
- - -
There are some quite useful reference titles with brief
descriptions and cover pix for each one (you have to
buy them to read them) at focalpress(uk)
There are separate sites for the US, Australasia etc (US was down when I tried) and you can
get to them via www.bh.com
- - -
It is a client-server dj-ing program with about a dozen
filters, multiple mp3-playing, a sequencer, a buffer editor,
semi-automated beat matching.
http://gdam.org/
- - -
Corel have a 12 city North-American tour coming up. Attendees
will get a free copy of their new OS and other stuff ...
'This exciting 12-city tour across North America runs from April 4 - 7
and will showcase Corel(R) LINUX(R) OS at work with Corel's cool new
Linux applications. Our future Linux strategies will also be discussed,
and each session will conclude with a question and answer period.
Best of all, the event is free of charge and all registered attendees will be
showered with great gifts from Corel: a copy of Corel LINUX OS download
version, a T-shirt and a Corel LINUX OS squeeze-cube!
All are welcome, but gifts are limited to registered guests, so be sure to RSVP
today. To register online, and to find the roadshow stop nearest you, visit:
...this place
- - -
Sometimes the mass media is totally clueless about
fringe music genres. Michelle Goldberg's review at
Salon of a techno compilation by Rhino Records is
an excellent example.
Starting with the use of "electronic dance", "rave" and
"techno" as interchangeable terms, she was never
going to get near any essence anyway.
She was right about one thing though. The Rhino
compiliation is probably crap.
' It was probably inevitable from the moment disco met European
electro-music in a Detroit warehouse that Rhino, the
K-Tel of the '90s, would one day issue an electronic dance music compilation.
Still, it's easy to remember a time when rave devotees believed such a
collection -- a coffin nail for the scene, if ever there was one -- was
impossible.
more at Salon
- - -
The Industry Standard has two new services:
a job seekers thingy ... called Job Shop 'is designed for Internet Professionals who are
looking for the perfect new gig'
and ...
'Once you've found that great new job (or if you're ready to renegotiate
your current contract), you need our second new service called Vester
Tester. Evaluating a compensation package can be trickier than it looks.
Compensation can come in many different forms - salary, bonuses, stock
options, a 401(k) account - and each component of your compensation will
grow and change over time. How can you weigh the relative values of old
and new with so many variables involved? Your base salary might seem
substantial, but option packages aren't easily gauged. By punching a
few figures into the Vester Tester, you'll soon have a precise picture
of your entire offer.
Vester Tester
- - -
Top producers and songwriters have signed mentoring deals with
Tonos.com, a new music industry website founded by Babyface, Carole
Bayer Sager, and David Foster.
more at (billboard)
- - -
There's a preview of the upcoming 2.4 Linux kernel at
Linuxtoday.
Low Latency stuff? The word is very un-promising.
- - -
L7 have offered up their drummer, Dee Plakas, for a
one night stand with one of the audience of their next London
date.
The lucky winner will be selected by open raffle (breakfast not
included) at the all-girl heavy metal outfit's show at London's
The Garage on Friday April 14.
Plakas said; "I'd do anyone for L7". The band meanhwile have
released this official statement; "We're not being hypocritical
about Rock N' Roll anymore. Rock N' Roll is prostitution. We
want to give our fans more bang for their buck. England has
always made us horny. It has supplied us with masturbation material
since we were kids, from Jack Wild to Mick Jagger.
(music365)
- - -
The infamous Milk Bar in Ibiza is for sale - Please phone 0034 61665 6438
- - -
mozilla.party, 3.0
mozilla.org is having a party
in San Francisco on April 6,
2000 to celebrate our second
anniversary
details at www.mozilla.org
- - -
There's a newish resource for those looking for
info related to Ballet/Dance. Links to companies
around the world and listings of mags etc.
www.balletcompanies.com
- - -
RIP Ofra Haza, who died last week. She was a singer of traditional Israeli
songs as well as participating in various dance projects (with
Coldcut amongst others) and contributed a beautiful wailing
background to Sisters of Mercy Andrew Eldritch's early 90's
'Temple of Love'.
Her biggest commercial success was the much-sampled
'Im Nin'alu'.
- - -
Nick Petreley at LinuxWorld talks about his recent panel which discussed
the problems of Open Source drivers in a commercial world in his departing
editorial.
The general feeling was the only problem they had was in revealing code
for proprietory chip sets.
'It is actually a simple matter to provide the open source community with
specifications or sample source code, along with a binary file that controls the
DSP. What you end up with is a hybrid of open and closed source. The code
that initializes, communicates, and controls the card on the PCI bus is open.
The code that initializes, communicates, and controls the proprietary chip sets
on the card remains closed. '
If it's done properly that might be a workable compromise but
where the Open Source code released doesn't (or gives very
limited) access to the proprietry chip then all you get are howls
of derision (as happened with Creative Labs last year).
- - -
RME's Hammerfall card is reviewed on p 36 of the Jan issue of
Studio Sound mag. Hammerfall provides ' 24 channels of optical
ADAT I-O, ADAT sync and stereo SPDIF I-O together with
wordclock I-O on a single, tiny PCI card'
Not mentioned are the Linux drivers which can be had from
ALSA
- - -
The Google Search button allows you to highlight
any word on any Web page and click the button for a google search of
that word. The Google Scout button allows you to highlight any word of
any Web page and click the button to get suggested Web sites.
more info here
(ResearchBuzz)
- - -
m-station in academea dept.
Clint Small's two articles, The Implicit Politics of Techno, and Is Rock Dead,
have been put on the required reading list for a second year politics subject
called Raging against the machine. This is at Monash U in Melbourne,
Australia.
Clint will be giving a lecture there sometime in May.
- - -
Itching to get rid of that IPO bundle? Evett and Shaw make
beautiful PC speakers called Elans. They come with a small
amp and special cables with mini 2XLR connectors.
Apparently, in addition to looking very pretty they sound
excellent as well.
www.evettandshaw.com
The price? US$4200 ish. . . .
- - -
Securityportal.com have 'seen over and over again
all the crazy things that make it into Microsoft software, things like that
talking paperclip (which finally got nuked). But to add insult to injury
some pretty big things have made their way into the software that shouldn¥t
be there, things like a flight simulator in Excel, or a password that when
used to protect an Excel document doesn¥t actually require you to enter the
password.
...and...
- - -
ALSA/OSS script switch
'Here at ccrma we've been using OSS, but we're slowly moving
to ALSA; Fernando Lopez-Lezcano (our sysadmin) wrote a script
to switch back and forth that I thought might be of interest;
he calls it simple and inelegant, but it might save someone
much time and cursing: '
here
- - -
Moby will be chatting on nme.com's webchat on Mar 6
- - -
'Rationalizing that you never know where the next Mozart will emerge, you click.
Everything's in tune. The backbeat is ripping -- incredibly, it sounds like the
drummer from the James Brown band. You consult the user profile. Turns out the song
was created by a 17-year-old from Hingham, Mass., who calls himself DJ Toccata.
Select another random file, from another young user. More precocious sounds. Tap
into a few more files and the light bulb comes on: Most of these songs, so
suspiciously generic, weren't built from the ground up.
The San Jose Mercury surveys the art of sampling ... more
- - -
Several ex Mac people are working at a startup called Eazel which hopes,
in conjunction with the gnome project to bring more ease to the Linux
desktop - and also more ease to updates...
'It's an enticingly chaotic scene that the Eazel founders have acted out before
-- several as seminal members of the original Apple Macintosh development
team. This time around, these ace programmers and business folks are set on
a new "Let's change the world" course: to build a user-friendly desktop for
Linux-based operating systems and to make managing the notoriously tricky
Linux a breeze.
more at Salon
- - -
ex Beachboy Brian Wilson, producer of pop masterpieces from times
gone by, 'has booked two nights at
the Roxy in Los Angeles on April 7-8 to record a live
album that will be exclusively available on the
singer/songwriter's Web site'.
- - -
Scream of the week Contest
The soundforge people sonicfoundry.com are having a
contest called "Scream of the Week" in which you can
enter your most blood curdling recorded screams
(should you have felt the need to have recorded such
a thing)
- - -
minimalist of the day ...
While searching for links for Kai Vehmanen's interview
I came across www.brianeno.com which has one
picture and no text ... not sure whether this is actually his or not.
- - -
Linus Scratched ...
That famous recording of Linus Torvalds telling us how to
pronounce "Linux" has been hip-hopped using the Linux
app TerminatorX ...
MP3 here
- - -
a few people have been trying to find realproducer for
Linux.
This will take you there!
...
'It's high time that somebody figures out how to copy-protect CDs, but
apparently there are at least a few bugs left to be worked out over
yonder in Germany. BMG Germany, citing "rampant copying of audio CDs"
(read: rippers) started copy-protecting discs last week, selling
100,000 units before howls of complaints from consumers put a halt to
sales of the discs. It seems that consumers were finding that some
normal CD players wouldn't play the CDs at all. The technology BMG
Germany used, Cactus Data Shield, was developed by Israeli software
firm Midbar. BMG Germany quickly put a halt to sales of the
copy-protected discs and presumably resigned themselves to potential
piracy, at least for now.'
(the Industry Standard's Beat Sheet)
and a story at wired as well
...
In what will be its first widespread tour of the continent in almost
four years, Pearl Jam will embark on a 26-date European jaunt set to
kick off May 23 in Lisbon, Portugal.
more at (billboard)
alsamixer frontend ...
A new version of my fltk based alsamixer frontend,
and a screenshot, is available for download at
ftp://mtg150.upf.es/pub/mdeboer/
It is written directly on top of the alsamixer.c
code, so it should provide the same features.
If you find any difference, missing features,
or layout problems, please tell me.
You will need ALSA 0.5.x
Changes: some bugfixes, more keys are handled,
help and /proc/asound windows, lock button to
change left+right simultaniously, some code
cleanup, configure script.
If somebody can [improve/provide me with a better]
autoconf/automake scripts, please do!
I can only test with SBLive, I'd like to see
screenshots of how it looks with other cards,
send to me personally.
(l-a-d)
...
RESEARCH POSITION IN MUSIC TECNOLOGY AT THE IUA-UPF
The Audiovisual Institute, IUA (http://www.iua.upf.es) is an
interdisciplinary center of the Pompeu Fabra University,
located in Barcelona, Spain, and dedicated to Research,
Education and Production in the area of new media technologies
applied to the Arts.
The Music Technology Group of the IUA (http://www.iua.upf.es/mtg)
is very active in the area of sound analysis and synthesis for
music and other multimedia applications. Specifically, the group
is working with spectral models and their application to synthesis,
processing, recognition, performance analysis and content-based
retrieval of audio.
This full time position will involve working closely with other
researchers of the Music Technology Group in the specific topic of
sound synthesis using spectral models. Applicants should have strong
technical skills in signal processing in the area of computer music
and demonstrable skills and experience in computer programming for
music (C++ under Windows NT or Linux).
Beginning date: April 1st 2000.
Duration of the contract: 12 months
Salary: According to background and experience.
To apply, please send your resume with qualifications before March 3rd:
by email to:
anna.escoda@iua.upf.es
or by surface mail to:
Anna Escoda, IUA-UPF, Rambla 31, 08002 Barcelona, Spain
(l-a-d)
...
BJORK is to be given her very own island by the Icelandic government for
helping to put Iceland on the map.
The singer will be given the remote, mile long island of Ellidaey
located in Iceland's Breida Ford to work, live or relax on whenever she
sees fit.
Icelandic Prime Minister David Oddsson, who calls Bjork "our beloved
singer", told his parliament: "We ought to do everything we can for her
and show her as much respect as possible."
Bjork had initially contacted the government to try and buy the
horse-shoe shaped island, but on hearing her intentions, the prime
minister intervened and insisted it be a gift to recognise how she'd
enhanced "the glory and fame of Iceland."
more at (nme)
...
ardour is a heavy duty pro-level Hard Disk Recorder for Linux.
Built by Paul Barton-Davis to be part of a pro studio setup
interfacing with an RME Hammerfall card, it is in early development
now but is coming along fast.
screenshot
website
...
a J.S. Bach page with a links to articles, mids and curios
more at http://users.castel.nl/~schic02/bachstuff.htm
...
Microsoft Makes Pay-Per-View Play
The software giant's newest utility aims to surpass RealNetworks'
dominance in Net-based media delivery.
more at The Industry Standard
...
GSM tools ...
For encoding and recording voice where quality isn't an issue
Artur Skawina has some tools.
'The tool i wrote to do this is available at ...here
It doesn't have a lot of docs, but does include source and executable
(so it doesn't need the gsm lib, which iirc, needed some tweaks) and even
does silence compression.
"gsmplay -h" gives basic usage, the rest should be obvious.
(l-s)
...
In the wake of Hillary Rodham Clinton's accidental and
embarassing adoption of Billy Joel's "Captain Jack" as
her official New York senate campaign theme song, the
Dwarves have volunteered their gem "River City Rapist"
to George W. Bush's presidential campaign.
...
-------------------------------------
JOURNEES D'INFORMATIQUE MUSICALE 2000
-------------------------------------
Bordeaux May 15-18
The Journees d'Informatique Musicale is an annual meeting of
researchers in computer music and musicians who use the computer as
a
means of expression or as a tool for composition. This year, the
seventh edition of this meeting will occur may 15-18 at Bordeaux.
PAPER SUBMISSION DEADLINE: February the 15th
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION ACOUSMATIC MUSIC : March the 15th
Visit our site for more information:
http://www.scrime.u-bordeaux.fr/JIM2000
...
Brainstorm is a small program for recording MIDI data. It has no user
interface at all; rather it automatically decides when to start and stop
recording, when to save files, and what to name them. This is similar
in concept to a dictation machine.
Because it is very lightweight and has no interface, Brainstorm can be
run as a daemon at all times. That way, you never have to consciously start
up a sequencer to capture a great new idea when you're brainstorming.
This, of course, is the origin of its name.
Brainstorm takes three arguments on the command line: the name of the
MIDI input device (or FIFO), a filename prefix, and a timeout.
Brainstorm stores all incoming MIDI events in a buffer in memory. If
it senses that there have been no new MIDI events for <timeout> seconds,
it writes the buffer to a standard MIDI file named
<prefix>.<year>.<month>.<day>.<hour>.<minute>.<second>.mid .
Brainstorm was developed on Linux using the standard free OpenSound
driver, but should work with ALSA or any other Posix compatible operating system
that supports raw MIDI streams.
Div Slomin
4 February 2000
brainstorm.tar.gz
...
uk.music.rave host PLUR, the biggest underground dance party ever to hit the UK!
PLUR Party Homepage
Tickets
London Bridge "Drome", Sat 26 February 2000, 40 DJs, live acts, ends 8am
Sunday
...
Pete Townshend, the Who guy, has launched a new website,
www.eelpie.com which wants to sell you stuff.
...
Groove at Sundance
Janelle Brown at Sundance
'"Groove" takes place one night at an underground warehouse rave in San Francisco. The
story follows the characters at the party: the obsessive-compulsive health-nut drug dealer;
the wannabe DJ thrilled about his first gig; the enthusiastic promoter who
knows just how to manipulate the police; the gay couple who get lost. The psychology
of raves and ecstasy is explored by the film's two main characters, a buttoned-up writer
named David, who takes ecstasy for the first time, and a jaded club girl named Leyla,
who has spent her life at parties. The two meet at the party and spend the
evening cuddling in the corner.'
more at Salon
...
VoxML
is a markup language for sound produced by Motorola.
The newest addition is Mobile ADK Version 1.0
Version 1.0 of the Mobile Application Development Toolkit is now available
for free download. You can acquire the newest version by going to the following
website
features include:
* Change the device viewed in the simulator.
* Toggle from WML to VoxML modes.
* Set messages to be viewed in the transcript window.
* Set the mobile link settings.
* Support for the following phone configurations
** Motorola Leap
** Motorola Map
** Motorola i500plus
** Motorola i700plus
** Motorola i1000plus
** Motorola StarTAC
The VoxML DK is not available for Linux but has interesting
possibilities for sites which might run on Linux.
...
DVD with jackboots
'DeCSS author Jon Lech Johansen's home was raided by special police forces at the whim
of the Motion Picture Association, an organization which affectionately refers to itself as
"a little State Department"' ... and this is in Norway!
Jason Kroll writes in Linux Journal about what's happening and what you can do.
Remember that what this is about is Linux users having a way to play DVDs that
they've paid for.
The story
...
The Linux Audio-Quality-HOWTO has been updated.
It has also moved to:
audio.netpedia.net
This document contains all the information I currently have about
getting high-quality reliable audio performance out of a linux box.
...
Looking for authors to submit General MIDI music (techno/electronic style)
for an upcoming Shareware game. Reply if interested, or for more info.
-Felix
"Felix Leung" fleung@ican.net
...
soundfont stuff
We're putting together a feature on soundfonts which should
appear in the next month or so.
...In the meantime smurf is the only linux app to let you mess around with them.
...As reported earlier Emu has plans to support their APS card in Linux.
This is being done now but no release dates are available yet
*ahem* another m-station scoop.
... allied is Thorsten Klose's midi box;
"The second important task of the box is to controll the NRPN
controllers of the AWE and Soundblaster Live soundcard. As
far as I know there is only one Wintendo program, which is
able to convert MIDI controller messages to NRPN controllers
for the AWE, but unfortunately it provides not all possibilities
of the EMU8000 and there is no chance to forward the messages to a
MIDI sequencer.
more here
...
Journees d'Informatique Musicale
The Journees d'Informatique Musicale is an annual meeting of
researchers in computer music and musicians who use the computer as a
means of expression or as a tool for composition. This year, the
seventh edition of this meeting will occur may 15-18 at Bordeaux.
PAPER SUBMISSION DEADLINE: February the 15th
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION ACOUSMATIC MUSIC : March the 15th
Visit our site for more information:
www.scrime.u-bordeaux.fr/JIM2000
...
Love em or hate em, (awww, loosen up :) Aqua will be back with
a new album called Aquarius on March 21.
...
m-station wm theme
There's an m-station theme at wm.themes.org for
windowmaker users (under websites).
...
speaker scam(au + other parts)
I was approached _in_ traffic by these guys on Warringah Rd, Frenchs Forest.
I was actually driving and this guy was waving at me, when we pulled up a
lights he parked next to me, I wound down my window cause I thought
something was up - then he tried to sell me speakers! (He said he had some
spare ones in the van from a job, and that he would give them to me really
cheap)
Peter
"Hermes" wrote in message
news:86hfu8$pbf$1@the-fly.zip.com.au...
> This is true and has been verified,
>
> There are some guys in Vans cruising the world (yes, everywhere!)
> trying to suck people into buying speakers. They are Dynalab speakers.
> The guys will come up with a convincing stories about receiving too
> many by mistake and trying to get rid of them before their manager
> finds out. They will try to convince you the speakers are worth
> thousands and then give you the off the back of the truck price. The
> guys are very convincing because the Vans have the Dynalab company logo
> and the guys will show off some fraudulent magazine show their value.
> The speaker also look the piece, but sound no better than some $50
> speakers. They are currently doing the rounds in Sydney targeting young
> people in sporty cars.
>
> If you see these guys, run them off the road, shoot them. But don't
> give them money. You have been warned!!!
>
> Here is the reviews by those who have been sucked in:
> www.audioreview.com/reviews/Speaker/product_7192.shtml
or is the scam a scam - you'll know if you see the van
(alt.2600)
...
Hole Bass Player Search (still)...
Hole are still looking for a bass player after recent
auditions where all 30 were found lacking. If you're
interested, look at the bottom of the page for an
address to send your tape - Oh yeah, you have
to be a female.
...
Jazz++ goes OS
*ahem* we were first with this news.
Jazz++ the fully featured commercial midi sequencer for Linux is going Open Source...
Version 4.x will be Open Source
We are happy to announce that the next major version of the Jazz++ midi sequencer will be
distributed under an Open Source license. This applies to versions for both Linux and Windows
platforms. We expect to release this software by medio february 2000. Among the news in
version 4.x will be an ALSA driver for Linux and enhancements on the GUI side (including a
GTK+ version for Linux).
Open Source not only means that the software is free to use, it also gives the users freedom to
enhance the software and correct bugs. In general this leads to a better product and a dedicated
user community. We sincerely hope this will happen also to Jazz++ and that all users will
benifit from this change of license terms.
We give this information some time in advance to give new Jazz++ users a chance
to decide whether to wait for the Open Source release. It will of course be possible to buy
licenses for version 3.x up to the time of the new release in order to be able to use the current
version. There will however be no refund of licenses bought in this period.
www.jazzware.com
...
audio analyser
X/RTA Audio Real Time Analyzer for X
Version 0.30 of X/RTA is now available. Changes is this version
include code optimization and the addition of sixth octave analysis,
plus various bug fixes.
X/RTA is a constant percentage bandwidth real time analyzer for acoustical
measurements. It uses digital filters to do octave band and fractional
octave band filtering of the audio spectrum.
The signal processing unit is written in C. The interface is written
in Tcl/Tk, with the Blt toolkit. As Tcl is a scripting language, this
makes the creation of sequences of tests straightforward.
In its current state, with X/RTA you can perform octave, third octave,
and sixth octave analysis with A and C-weighted SPL, save and recall data files,
and print data (using gs or ghostview). Thus you can measure and tune
a home theatre, commercial cinema, hi-fi, public address system, etc.
REQUIREMENTS
Linux x86, 2.xx
Pentium 133 or better
sound card capable of sampling at 48 kHz
The homepage for X/RTA is here.
...
The Cure Readies 13th Album For Feb. Release
"Bloodflowers" is the third and final installment of a trilogy that
began with the 1982 album "Pornography."
more
(billboard)
...
help DVD
INTERNET CONTEST TO PROMOTE WORLDWIDE SPREAD OF DVD
SOFTWARE FOR LINUX
In response to baseless legal threats by the motion picture industry,
Internet users have begun a worldwide contest to develop creative
methods to distribute free software to play DVD movies under Linux. The
contest is based in the Bay Area and will be judged by local Linux and
Internet experts.
An industry organization called the DVD CCA recently attempted to get
a temporary restraining order to prohibit Internet distribution of DVD
software for Linux, even though it the software is only useful for
playing DVD movies, not for copying one DVD to another, and was written
from scratch, not by violating the copyright of any previous software.
There have been no reported cases of anyone using Linux software to make
illegal copies of DVD movies -- only to watch them.
The three winners of the contest will be the person who distributes the
most copies of DVD software for Linux, and the people who develop the
best "high-tech" and the best "low-tech" methods for doing do.
"The contest is a direct response to legal bullying by DVD CCA," said
organizer Donald B. Marti Jr. "A well-financed industry organization is
threatening independent web sites, when Linux users are only trying to
watch the movies they already paid for."
There have been no reports of anyone using Linux software to make
illegal copies of DVD movies -- only to watch them.
The Great International DVD Source Code Distribution Contest web site is
located at: here
The prizes will be DVD movies.
...
So you're back at work and your brain hasn't quite got back into
gear yet? Prolong the moment by visiting www.jodi.org.
I'm pretty sure there is no rational explanation for what is
happening there.
...
holiday reading
In Termination Node (Del Rey Books by Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg)
hackerz rule ... when they're not being brutally murdered by rogue spooks
that is. Set in the near future, the book zips along nicely and you even
get a few unix commands along the way.
And Arthur C Clarke and Michael Kube-McDowell's The Trigger
(Harper Collins) isn't too bad either.
... not to mention Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon if you haven't
already read it.
mu magazine ... issue number 5 might be the last one for a long while.
love, luck and lollipops 2u2 deanne
...
Led Zeppelin - Early Days - The Best of Led Zeppelin: Volume One
Before Jimmy Page could gurn for Guernsey and Bob Plant began to resemble
that stuff used to line hamster cages, there was a time when it was all Valhalla
and velvet loons round Led Zeppelin's pad....
more at nme
...
new Real stuff
Real Networks, the company responsible for providing the world with
RealSystem G2, has just launched the RealServer 7.0 and RealProducer
7.0 as part of its RealSystem G2 interface. The RealProducer 7.0 uses
DVD technology enabling users to save bandwidth and provide true
VHS-quality video at 800kbps. RealServer 7.0 promises to improve
connections and reliability, with a 250% increase in viewing capacity,
this will enable broadband quality at approximately half the required bandwidth.
Check it all out at the RealNetworks site.
http://www.realnetworks.com
(bbc1)
show name: Artist and Computer III
date: Sat. Jan. 22nd
time: 8:00 PM till 12:00 am
address: 60 Orchard St. New York City
directions: on Orchard just south of Grand St.
price: $5.00
info: Music: Antartika (confirmed)
Fingernail (confirmed)
Accelera Deck (unconfirmed)
Performances: Dynamo-Ville
Visuals: panOptic
Audio: Soundlab
Art: Kgorosh Yaraghi
Buffet: Criterion
David O'Toole, who is involved with the Gnu Tracker project is
somewhere in this lineup so go along and say Hi!
...
mpman
V2.1 of Linux software to program the Eiger Labs F10 and F20
portable MP3 players has been released. The latest release
includes binary releases that includes a GUI installer.
The mpman software is designed to provide the Linux platform
the same capabilities that come with the windows software.
This software will control both the Eiger Labs F10 and F20
units. Also units have been sold overseas under that name
Schneider or Saehan that should work with this software.
Two binary releases are available. One for SUSE 6.2 Linux and
RedHat 5.2 Linux. Also available is the souce code to
compile it yourself if needed. This software is licensed
under GPL. It is available here
...
Billboard Online has launched its famed year-end wrap-up, "1999: The
Year In Music." In this exclusive feature, visitors may peruse this
year's chart activity, with text summaries and lists in 14 genres and
18 categories...here
and
Maybe we can get the nostalgia out of the way before we even
get to the 21st ... anyway, there are a few popping up and
Billboard has one.
'Billboard Online's exclusive examination of the major artists,
innovations, and events that shaped the musical landscape of the past
100 years.'
here
...
MidiShare is a musical operating system designed for the Macintosh, Windows
3.1, Windows 95, Atari and Linux. Result of many years of research and
development undertaken by the Computer Music Research Laboratory of Grame,
MidiShare provides high level services to the field of computer music and
MIDI applications. It is freely available to users and developers.
A first release of MidiShare for Linux is publicly available on the Grame
ftp server. This version is built using the LGPL published MidiShare source
code.
MidiShare on Linux is separated in a kernel module and a shared library.
The kernel module contains the code used with kernel privilege : scheduler,
Midi drivers, Inter Application Communication... The shared library
contains code used by MidiShare client applications. The library and kernel
communicate using the standard ioctl mechanisms.
This first version is distributed as source code and has to be compiled and
installed.
There are two possible compilation targets :
- - one without drivers which allows to test MidiShare applications, Inter
Application Communication.
- - one with Midi drivers built using ALSA low-levels Midi drivers
(http://www.alsa-project.org)
The source code of MidiShare for Linux is located on the Grame ftp server at:
midishare-linux.tar.gz
The source code of the Player library for Linux is located on the ftp
server at:
player-linux.tar.gz
Several simple MidiShare applications are available as a separate file at:
MDK.tar.gz
For interested developers, the MidiShare Linux source code is available on
the Grame CVS server. Look at http://www.grame.fr/MidiShare/SCPP/
Amacdys
Amacdys is a single disk operating system designed to play mp3 CDs.
OR
Amacdys is bootable mp3 player, that fits into a single diskette.
It is designed to be on floppy or El-torrito image of cdrom.
URL: here
Author: Joonas kekoni (jkekoni@cc.hut.fi)
online jazz
Verve Launches Jazz History Project Online
Dubbed "Jazz Ed," the special online feature traces the evolution of
jazz throughout the century.
more at billboard
radiohead want demos
After the success of Radiohead's live webcast last week, guitarist Ed O'Brien
has invited bands, musicians and collectives to send him their material. He
says it'll be cool to feature unsigned acts on their next webcast. The address
to send your tapes to is:
Radiohead, P.O. Box 322, Oxford, OX4 1EY. UK
And Ed says don't just send him guitar stuff, he likes a bit of everything.
(BBC radio1)
ecasound v1.6.9r9
Changes since last release
Linear envelopes for parameter control. Improvements to output mixing,
multithreaded mode and input double-buffering. Various bug fixes.
homepage
ecasound-1.6.9r9.tar.gz (641kB)
ecasound-1.6.9r9-1.src.rpm (645kB)
Check the website for more files.
Sox Update
Announcing the release of SoX 12.16.
SoX is a commandline universal sound file processor. It can convert
most popular file formats to any other file format (such as converting a
Microsoft WAV file to an Apple AIFF file).
It can optional apply sound effects to the audio data, change the data
type (uncompressed PCM to ADPCM for example), change the sample rate,
plus many, many more things.
You may download and obtain more information from the following web
address:
here
(c.o.l.a.)
MuCoS pages up
MuCoS (Multimedia Communication System for Linux) has a home.
It has to do with designing a sensible API - have a read of
David Olofson's article.
Bjork Review
Sssh! Creak! Sssh! Never has a door in need of oil created so much havoc
at a 'rock gig'. Bj–rk and The Brodsky Quartet have taken their places
by the pulpit and whenever someone walks through the offending door they
are glowered at by the rest of the audience. That's not all: people tut
when others take pictures. It's been commanded that mobile phones are
switched off.
more at nmeupdate because it fixes a major bug.
(c.o.l.a.)
Bono gets his laptop
BONO told the Irish newspaper The Star that the new U2 album
is "back on track" now that his missing laptop computer with all of
the lyrics on it has been returned. The singer was reunited with
the computer Friday after it was handed over by a man who said he'd
purchased it for 300 pounds ($460) from what he assumed was a
reputable source. The computer, which was stolen from Bono's car in
Dublin last Monday, contained everything he'd written since August.
He offered to buy the man who returned it a new laptop on top of
the two grand reward promised by U2's management.
(rollingstone)
Radiohead website
According to Billboard they had a live jam there a couple
days ago. Right now it's fairly minimalist but they say there
are new things most every day ... er, here
wav to midi
A while back I mistakenly jumbled timidity++ and called it a
a wav to midi converter, and got corrected for doing so.
Now there's an attempt to do just that (not linux though)
It's commercial but the specs might be of interest
IntelliScore listens to polyphonic wav recordings and writes the pitches,
chords, and key to a midi file. You can create midi files without a
midi-enabled instrument or even knowing how to play the song. The
generated midi files are suitable for notation and clean up through a
sequencer. IntelliScore includes extensive online help and free
unlimited technical support...
new wavplay
It's up to 1.4. Get it here
music biz - EMI talks
John Gartner of wired had a chat with EMI's Jeremy Silver ...
'Silver, who started as a researcher in 1984 at National
Sound Archive in London, has been around long enough to
know that the retail channel is here to stay. Although EMI,
the world's third largest music company, is adopting digital
music, Silver projects that even by 2005, 80 percent of the
company's revenues will come over the retail counter.
Silver also talks about SDMI (maybe) and the cost of digital music (up - more fingers in the pie).
more at wired
da Blues ...
The Blue Highway is a website devoted to the Blues.
They've got essays, chat, a shop, radio listings, and
real audio tracks.
Win a recording contract?
At garageband.com
submit demos, review music ...
The idea is that you can win a $250000 recording contract.
Behind the scenes heavies include ex Talking Head Jerry
Harrison and Sir George Martin (the Beatles dude).
vaporware nominations
Wired News is once again seeking nominations for its Vaporware of the
Year Award. Vote for your favorite piece of promised software that never
materialized ... here
... and the winner was ...tada... Windows 2000 (Jan 4)
ecasound new release
Support for multichannel audio files and effect processing. Flexible
cut&paste feature. Completely rewritten interactive-mode that gives
you full access to ecasound functionality. Console-mode user interface
now uses GNU readline making it much more pleasant to use. MikMod
support allows you to use tracker modules as input sources. A couple of
new effects. Reimplemented signal handling and mp3 support. In most
situations, ecasound is now noticably faster. Last but not the least:
lots of new, up-to-date documentation.
more info here
ecasound-1.6.7r7.tar.gz(635kB)
ecasound-1.6.7r7-1.s
rc.rpm(638kB)
ecasound-1.6.7r7-1.i386.rpm(854kB)
- libraries, console-mode programs and all documentation
dynamically linked to glibc 2.1.x and libstdc++ 2.10.0
ecasound-qt-1.6.7r7-1.i386.rpm(102kB)
- Qt-based user-interface, dynamically linked to Qt 2.x
ecasound-devel-1.6.7r7-1.i386.rpm(37kB)
- headers files needed for compiling other programs
against ecasound libraries
netscape 5.0 soon
"According to a recent article at ZDNet, Netscape should
be shipping the first beta of Navigator 5.0 sometime in
December 1999. Navigator 5.0 will have a new layout
engine, code-named gecko, that has been available as
part of the Mozilla open source effort. Navigator 5.0
should have complete support for CSS1 and HTML 4.0, in
addition to support for the World Wide Web Consortium's
DOM, or Document Object Model, and Extensible Markup
Language (XML). Additionally, support for CSS2,
specifically much of the positioning capability of this
specification, is also present in the Mozilla milestone
deliveries.
more at linuxtoday.com
Hole song online
Hole have a downloadable new song at their website
Called Be a Man, It's from the forthcoming Oliver Stone movie
On any Sunday. The song has a heavier, more industrial sound
than previous Hole stuff.
(nme)
Well, maybe not industrial, but it does rock. Other Hole news is
that auditions for the new bass player were held over the weekend.
There will be an announcement soon ...
Producer's website
Top dance producer Howie B has launched a website to give
budding producers an opportunity to get their new music heard.
The Toryumon website is a dance music information resource
site that will also allow people to post tracks, download tracks,
and get advice from producers like Howie B. The site also has
a feature whereby producers can post their new tracks and have
visitors to the site vote on them. The name comes from a Chinese
proverb, which encourages people to overcome large obstacles.
toryumon.co.uk
(bbc1)
mp3 artist ripoff ??
salon have a story up about how the new mp3 download
sites ripoff artists in a way that makes Big Music look
like philanthropists.
But most people putting up music at these places really use
them for distribution and don't expect to make money.
Still, those agreements are nasty and just lately some of
them have become fairly useless for distribution as their
bandwidth is inadeqaute.
There's also a discussion page at slashdot.
Movie School ...
Three institutions in separate
continents said Thursday that they were jointly establishing a
Global Film School on the Internet, providing the ``highest
level'' of moviemaking education by computer.
Teri Bond Michael, a spokeswoman for the University of
California, Los Angeles, said the new online courses would be
offered as early as next year in a program created by UCLA's
School of Theater, Film and Television; the Australian Film,
Television and Radio School; and the National Film and
Television School of Great Britain.
She said the Internet school would allow students sitting at
their computers anywhere in the world to study directing,
producing, screenwriting, editing, design, cinematography,
music composition and other subjects on
http://www.globalfilmschool.com.
more at San Jose Mercury
rio 500 review ...
cnet have a short review of the rio 500. In a nutshell,
they say if you don't have usb, don't bother
SLab release 3.10 was finally punted up to the Slab server, and revised to 3.10.1 for some
import/export issues that turned up whilst building 4.0.
website
ftp here
In addition, 4.0-1b, first round beta, has also been uploaded. It has CD Mastering included, such
that the audio output daemon can copy data to a ".cdr" formatted file, and then a mastering front
end will take these files and burn them onto a CD using cdrecord (batteries not included). If anyone
is interested in making some nice beermats I would be interested to see if this code works on other
systems than my own.
SLab 4.0 also has the first release of ALSA code, developed with ALSA-0.4.1e. It is still a bit
kludgy, there is some noise at the start of each playback, and an audible "hick" at the same time.
If you prefer to use ALSA, or are willing to test this code for me I would again be grateful. If you
actually want to do some recording then perhaps stay with 3.10 for now! All the audio driver code
is available in source format, so if anybody is interested in bugfixing it......
A bugfixed release of 3.0 may also be put on the server sometime soon, although I doubt if there
is any big interest in it.
CDNOW is proud to announce that the Cosmic Music Network is up and running, giving
musicians and music enthusiasts a global community to interact, get informed,
get new music, and get heard!
Cosmic gives artists of all genres a FREE, one-stop source for promoting and
selling their music, and an opportunity to interact with industry pros and get
helpful advice on career planning. For music enthusiasts, Cosmic is a place where
they can uncover a world beyond MTV and the local radio station, be it coming
across a Cosmic band they dig, or chatting with other music fans or their favorite
artist in a Cosmic Chat Room.
It's at cosmic.cdnow.com
Artists wanted ...
I am looking for some artists, doing some kind of audio-visual
plastic/installation work, using a complete free software platform.
The ideal case would be some kind of work where there is a tight
integration between the creation itself and the free software
developer community, and a highly visual component of some kind.
Thanks for any help you can give,
Maurizio
WTO Protest show cancelled...
Due to the riots over the arrival of the WTO in
Seattle, a protest concert with Michael Franti, Krist
Novoselic, Kim Thayil was cancellled.
more at cdnow
15,000 song giveaway...
'CHICAGO - Banking on the notion that free music downloads will
attract enough people that advertisers will pay a premium,
Platinum Entertainment plans to give away its 15,000-song
catalog over the Internet.
CEO Steven Devick says the plan puts his company at the
forefront of a fundamental change in the way music is promoted. In
the future, Devick believes, most music will be available for free
over the World Wide Web, and advertisers will pay the music
companies and the musicians.
"We think the music model will be a lot more like TV than it has
been in the past. TV is free, supported by advertising," Devick said
Wednesday....
...... Platinum Entertainment's catalog includes such rock 'n' roll war
horses as Kansas, Rush, Pete Townshend and the Beach Boys, as
well as older country acts such as Crystal Gayle and the Oak
Ridge Boys. '
more by Eric Fidler at the SF Examiner
neural net composition?...
Seemed to me to be an interesting thing to try out sometime.
Neural nets are a "black box" type of AI and are trainable.
There's a GPL one for Linux ...
This is the Announce of billnet ver 0.41: Billnet The Fast and Free (GPL)
simulator for neural networks.
What's new in this release
- --------------------------
New Algorithms:
adaptive
BFGS
Dogleg
Levenberg - Marquardt (Coded under brain storming.
Heavily unoptimized. Practically untested.)
simplex (experimental)
flf3 (experimental. Rosen Method)
New features:
Several new linmins
Back Tracking (default for BFGS)
More - Thuente (untested)
Support for trust region update. Thanks to Spiros Spirou.
Support for Cholesky factorizations. Thanks to Spiros Spirou.
plot scripts.
MATLAB / OCTAVE compatibility scripts, bdfread, bwfread. bwfwrite.
data generation scripts & programs
multiplexer
encoder
parity
NOTE: that the implementations of the above linmins are the only
implementation in we know of.
- -------------------------------------------------------------------
If you want to learn more about the features of billnet:
http://www.iit.demokritos.gr/~vasvir/billnet/billnet.html
NOTE: Experimental algorithms are not distributed as source but only as
special binaries until they get published.
(c.o.l.a)
Petition to save OMS
>On the following website is a petition to save OMS from Opcode's wreck
>which asks Gibson to release the source code to the public domain under a
>license such as the GNU Public License.
>
>Il y a sur ce site une p=E9tition pour sauver OMS du naufrage d'Opcode,
>p=E9tition qui propose =E0 Gibson de faire passer le code source dans le
>domaine public sous licence de type GNU.
>
>http://sonosphere.dyndns.org/Petition
>
>Roald Baudoux
(linux-sound)
Computer Music Meeting (fr)
Les Journees d'Informatique Musicale reunissent chaque annee des
chercheurs en Informatique Musicale et differents acteurs de la vie
musicale utilisant l'informatique comme moyen d'expression ou comme
aide a la composition. Cette annee, ces septiemes Journees se
derouleront du 15 au 18 mai a Bordeaux (33). Les JIM 2000 sollicitent
des articles et des oeuvres musicales.
Visitez notre site pour plus d'information :
http://www.scrime.u-bordeaux.fr/JIM2000
The Journees d'Informatique Musicale is an annual meeting of
researchers in computer music and musicians who use the computer as a
means of expression or as a tool for composition. This year, the
seventh edition of this meeting will occur may 15-18 at Bordeaux. JIM
2000 is now requesting papers and musical works to be submitted for
review
Visit our site for more information:
Five free sounds ...
If you register at soundsonline you can download 5
free sounds
Rolandgroove have a new catalogue out which is quite
useful not only for potential buyers but for people who
are interested in how that stuff works - the catalogue
has step-by-step diagrams for typical actions on each
of the machines and connection diagrams at the back
for how the things hang together. Your local music shop
might have one.
mu is a newish mag with a relatively cheap price tag
because it's a collaborative effort where the designers
and writers don't get paid (ed: sounds familiar :).
Beautifully designed, it covers dance world music and
fashion and is available in Japan/US/UK/Australia.
Tower is one outlet.
Humorous Take on DVD crack...
'Well, we've done it again. We've gone and cracked the
encryption scheme on DVD movies. First we killed the
recording industry. And now, while it's still barely cold, we're
already knocking nails into the coffin of the motion picture
industry for dessert. '
more by Neil McAllister at the SF Chronicle
Gnu Tracker Project update
Check out their website for details.
The OCTAL project is still in the design phase and they are interested
to hear any thoughts that musicians might have.
(David)
new SLab beta ...
This is to notify that third round beta for 3.10 has been uploaded to
the ftp server below. I could really do with feedback on whether this
can play/record, since beta2 had some fault reports.
This code should fix recording with SoundBlaster EISA card (works in
8 bit recording only), some issues with import/export sample counts -
there are now better default values, master filters should no longer
tick/pop, and single track recording should work. Stackload of other
fixes. Some alterations to the cosmetics, and a new soundcard database
to simplify configuration. The helpfile should document all the changes.
ftp here
Nico Augustijn, who provides the primary site services, now also hosts
the SLab web site. If you are interested take a look. Discussion groups
and distrubution lists are being worked on.
new website here
Low Latency Patch update ...
The patch has been updated for kernel 2.2.13 and you can get
it here
mp3.com has artist contest...
Enter to win a chance to "Totally Launch Your Career." Winners will open
for TLC at one of their North American Fanmail tour dates, win a recording
session with a famous record producer, receive an exciting promotional
package on MP3.com, have their song featured on a MP3.com promotional
CD, and receive an exclusive Sephora makeover and gift package.
check out here for details
Alternative dance? ...
EMI's Dancesite has another of their genre guides up.
This time covering alternative dance (the last was 2 step garage)
Bjork downloadable ...
Song from closing credits of Being...
at nme
mp3blaster, version 2.0b12
I have released a new version of mp3blaster, version 2.0b12. Mp3blaster
is an interactive text-based program that plays mp3 audio files. It is
one of the very few mp3 players for the text console that allows full
interactive control during playback. Another important feature is the
ease with which one can create and store playlists grouped by albums.
Important recent changes are:
- -Playback over NAS (Network Audio System) added.
- -Playback of SID files (c64 music)
- -several bugfixes
- -compiles flawlessly on gcc-2.95.*
- -improved mp3->wav interface
You can download mp3blaster 2.0b12 from these places:
here
and here
website
(Bram on c.o.l.a)
ALSA update ...
ALSA, the sound driver project, is now up to 0.4.1e. Check out their
website for more details.
XMMS plugin competition ...
Go to their website for details. There are prizes and the
deadline is Dec 10.
Kraftwerk single ...
There's a new one out in Germany now but it'll be out in the
rest of the world in December.
Squeak - open source
Sqeak is an open source implementation of Smalltalk the OO environment.
Even the VM is open. It has sound and graphics built in to an interesting
windows setup and there's an app called Siren which aids compositional
work. There's a linux port though it could be possible to boot straight to
Squeak.
Sound Editor ...
Snd 3.4, a sound editor, is available at ccrma-ftp.stanford.edu
pub/Lisp/snd-3.tar.gz and various rpm versions. Requires Motif
or Lesstif, and works much better if you have Guile.
(c.o.l.a)
DJ's website ...
Paul Oakenfold and Pete Tong have a flash and real filled
site at www.essentialselection.com.
Has gig lists, news, etc.
(tori)
new SLab ... the HDD sound recorder
SLab 3.10-2b has been uploaded to the ftp site above.. This release is
dynamic compilation on RedHat 5.2 (glibc 2.0). It has a number of fixes
including many to the subFragment and tightSync algorithms. It has been
tested on a configuration with
audio dev 0: SB-128 PCI full duplex
audio dev 1: SB_16 half duplex
This has been done with and without the tight sync options.
new alsaplayer ...
goes to 0.99.29. Get it here
Real .. Problems
'Internet music consumers took RealNetworks to court
Wednesday over recently discovered user-tracking behavior
in the company's Internet music software.'
more at wired
On another front Streambox 'has developed a
way to hack through RealAudio encryption so users, not content owners,
can decide when, where, and how they listen to downloaded music.' ..more
(wired)
More $ music on the web ...
TOKYO (Reuters) - Internet empire-builder Softbank Corp
extended its reach to popular Web-based music business on
Thursday, announcing a plan to distribute songs through the Net at a
fraction of the price of store-bought compact discs.
``This is going to be Japan's, and probably the world's first
comprehensive music download site,'' Softbank President
Masayoshi Son told reporters.
The new company, eS!Music Corp, which is scheduled to start
operating next June, will enable customers to download music for
about 100 yen (95 cents) a song.
more at san Jose Mercury
mp3.com pays for play ...
They have launched a new program so that artists are
paid for every download ... once a minimum threshold
has been crossed.
details at mp3.com
Patti Smith ...
'Following in the footsteps of Dylan and Reed,
Smith was not the first to explode preconceptions
of what pop lyrics could be. What she added into
the poet-songwriter equation was ecstasy -- not
just visceral thrill, the standard goal of rock,
but spiritual epiphany, a striving for communion
with the beyond, which in the abstract sounds like
the worst kind of pretension, but with Smith it
was heartfelt. "Horses," the first album to emerge
from the CBGB class of '75, is full of gestures
toward transcendence...'
more by Greg Villepique at Salon
(geo)
Classic toon from dancesite - Beasties
There's a full length ram of Fight For Your Right To Party. It'll only be up for a week.
Beth Orton Birthday show ...
Well, it would have been Jeff Buckley's birthday and the show is next week.
JEFF BUCKLEY's birthday on November 17 will be marked by a special show
in New York City featuring Beth Orton, Kattell Keineg, Black Beetle
(featuring Michael Tighe and Parker Kindred who used to play in Jeff's
band) and Daniel Harnett and Sandy Bell who also used to play with
him. The show takes place at the Angel Orensanz Foundation Centre for
The Arts. There will also be a commemorative photo exhibition by Merri
Cyr and an exhibition of memorabilia called Parting Gifts.
There's also an aution on the ame day on Amazon.com selling off the
sound system, t-shirts and other items. Proceeds go to Road Recovery, a
charity supported by the Estate of the late singer and son of Tim
Buckley.
(nme)
Auf replacement wanted for Hole...
As a follow up to the earlier story about Auf quitting here's
the official statement ...
"In the interim, the band is conducting a
global search for a female bass player, and is accepting submissions.
If interested, please send two copies of your photo, bio describing
your style & influences, and demo to: BASS PLAYER, PMB 394,
2658 Griffith Park Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90039."
2 step garage?
... remains one of Britain's most creative (and invisible)
underground music scenes. Click for the sound of London's pirate radio stations. (real) and there's a genre guide as well.
Creative SBLive ..
Creative made a bit of a splash announcing the driver for their SB
Live card would be Open Source. It turns out, however, that part of
the card (dsp) isn't covered!
Which means if you use the Open Source driver you'll have a
rather expensive card with the functionality of a rather cheap one.
The official explanation for this is that programming the dsp is
non-trivial and might be destructive to speakers (!) and that they
are currently trying to think of a way to teach people about the
dsp.
Smells to me like some tech people at Creative do think that Open
Source is a good thing and that management have forced the
current move as a compromise. It's scarcely credible that they
don't have proper documentation for their own card.
Note to other card manufacturers - Going whole hog on open
source can be a very good thing in all kinds of ways and needn't
threaten your commercial viability one bit. If you really feel that
your chip is super secret then just release a binary and an
interface API. Linux users will welcome you.
Remember The Clash? ...
Lead singer Joe Strummer was with the Pogues for a while and
now he fronts the Mescaleros which have just started a US tour
in Seattle. There's a story at CDnow.
Dave Phillips page ....
Sound and Midi applications for Linux has just been updated.
New Multimedia site ...
There's a new site in German with links to all kinds of AV stuff.
RealJukeBox the Spy ...
There are stories all over the place about RealJukeBox "spying"
on users by collecting data with a unique ID number for each
user. Real have now put out a patch to correct the situation.
Debby Harry ...
For a realaudio tranced up D Harry just click here
Cool Review ...
Under the heading 'Linux Rocks at Linux Music Station' we got a really
nice review from Tina Gasperson at TechSightings.com - Thanks!
In that line of things Clint Small's essay on Techno is being cited
in a soon to be published academic book on politics.
heh heh, groovy baby
Multimedia Gulch ...
'Multimedia Gulch is the dynamic core of San Francisco's 24-hour,
7-day-a-week economy. Its borders are widening, and all or most of
SOMA is now being referred to as Multimedia Gulch, where some 500
digital media companies create the pictures and sounds featured on the
World Wide Web.
Business in the district - bounded by Market Street to the north, the
Embarcadero to the east, Townsend Street to the south and Division Street
to the west - has contributed significantly to a robust economy partly by
helping transform what was recently a forlorn warehouse area, said the
study, released by the Fisher Center for Real Estate & Urban Economics.'
more at the SF Examiner
Payola at mp3.com ...
There's an interesting story at sonicnet about overt pay-to-be-on-the-charts
charts. Nothing terribly sneaky about it but all the same it smells like noxious
greed.
more at sonicnet
Melodic France Trance ...
You can play it! Right now, if you so wish.
Vinyl ain't dead ...
Some people still play 78s. That's about pure nostalgia though.
Some people still play 33s and some of that is about musicality
and (perhaps!) increased bandwidth. In one part they talk about
the fact that LPs have the sound of the room they were recorded
in ... which is pretty silly. You can record all the room sounds
you like on CD as well. Still, I agree that tops sound better on
vinyl.
more at nando times
Korg Gadgets ...
The Korg electribe series are interesting to play around with. They
play loops with controllable parameters, a bit like analogue synths
except you can have midi control and can input and alter audio.
There's an effects controller that works by moving your finger around
on a touch pad.
more at Korg
astralwerks ...
have set up a new web site to promote unknown US dance/electronic
acts. You can check it out at unknownwerks.com
Australian dance awards ...
Australia's music industry are set to stage their first ever dance music
awards on February 9th, 2000, in Sydney, indicating that dance music is
finally beginning to achieve recognition in the traditionally rock
dominated country...
more at dancesite
Glasgow Gangster Funk ...
'Pete Heller does it again, with this filtered disco stomper. Accessible,
funky and likely to match or even surpass the success of Heller's recent
Ibiza smash, Big Love.'
real stream here
(dancecite)
American Classical ...
'It is probably not a point the New York Philharmonic was hoping to make in "An
American Celebration," the latest and most edifying of its CD compilations of
archival recordings, but one thing this lavish set proves is that Ecclesiastes was
right: there is nothing new under the sun. It seemed certain, after all, that debates
about the Philharmonic's relationship with American music were of fairly recent
vintage, if only because the American symphonic repertory we know today began
flourishing in the 1930's. And what could be more current than the back-and-forth in
which critics assert that the Philharmonic does barely enough American music and the
orchestra responds that given the ticket buyers' clear preference for Beethoven and
Tchaikovsky, it does plenty?'
more at NY Times (free registration)
Luke Slater interview ...
There's a short interview at dancesite with LS covering his
recent effort ... not too much depth.
here
Samples on the Web ...
Dave Stewart, guitarist for the recently re-touring Eurythmics,
and solo artist and producer, has some downloadable samples
up from his latest album at his website.
(Tracy)
Burning Man ...
You've missed it for this year but there's always the next.
Joyce Slaton has done a nice story of her visit to the latest
one.
'... Almost 25,000 celebrants from all over the world made the arduous
trip to Burning Man this year, meeting in the desert to create
a playground for adults who have never quite lost their
desires to cavort like kids.
They brave unimaginably harsh weather and a host of other
difficulties to do so. Why? Because Burning Man is the
world's freakiest summer camp. And who needs summer
camp most of all? Those who work the hardest, of course, our
own Bay Area cadre of tech workers.'
more at SF Examiner
New Media art show ...
The InterCommunication Center in Tokyo -
'Takuo Komatsuzaki, a senior curator at ICC, said in a telephone interview
that the biennial is meant to introduce the Japanese to new-media art, a
genre with which they are generally unfamiliar. "I'd like visitors to be
infused with surprise," he said. "New technologies bring about surprises
of visualizing something for the very first time."
more at the New York Times (free registration)
Brahms new...
You'll need qt and kde to compile it and mico to use the aRts synth as an extension.
Download
This is the first one I've been able to compile. There's a lot to do yet but it
will play midi files and the whole thing looks very promising.
(John)
Big Monitors ...
tired of those crummy little PC speakers? How about the Quested
HM415? 4 * 15" (380mm) speakers per box, a low mid, high mid,
and tweeter. It's 4 way active and power is by 5 amps capable of
5 Kwatts rms ... Whoa! They weigh 590 lbs (268 kg). heh heh -
don't know how much they cost.
TiMidity++ ...
the midi player/converter is now at 2.7.0 here.
Recording Dock app ...
a new dock app for windowmaker is WMRecord 1.0.5
This link was dead on Nov 7 '99 - don't know if that's permanent
Microsoft last word on Firefly ...
Remember? They closed it down. Prior to doing that they said
that suggestions would be considered. Just recently a reply
was recieved from a senior tech guy to an email sent to
Steve Ballmer ... the main points were that the code was way
out of date and needed to be totally re-written and that
a certain portion of the community had been a problem
(the porno-people I imagine).
Valid points.
The questions remaining include what obligations might exist
between people who setup communities and the communities
themselves ... especially big resource rich companies like
Microsoft who could afford to take a longer view.
New Gnu - Audio Project ...
"The gnu.octal project aims to build a set of portable,
efficient, and free components which work together as a
tracking audio workstation for gnu/linux and other unix
systems."
There is a webpage coming soon at Gnu's website.
(David)
NIN wants female singer ...
for touring backup work. They're looking for demos
at the moment. More at CDnow
... and on 10/22 there's a correction - the singer is wanted for a new
project.
NME mp3 ...
New Musical Express have a page with new free mp3's from
commercial artists on it.
Currently includes Pavement, Kobe, and Rollins.
Yugoslav Techno ...
TRANCEPHORM MP3, it's my site
with mp3's in full quality.
Alien Artefact electronic
music label, the first one
of that kind in Yugoslavia.
General information base about
Yugoslav techno scene: artists, djs,
reviews, ...)
(marko)
BeOS API ...
you can get it in PDF from eMatter ... here
You'll have to pay though.
Mr Oizo ...
nirvanet currently have streaming Mr Oizo and Bowie
at their music page.
Da Moozik Biz ...
'HOLLYWOOD -- For tech companies entering the online
music game, their best investment might just be a good
street guide for LA and New York.
That was the message Thursday night at the first Artistdirect
online music awards, where prizes played second fiddle to
the real event: record industry insiders schmoozing with new
media and tech entrepreneurs trying to drum up -- and
speed up -- business.'
more at wired
It looks and feels like another marketing droids day out.
also ...
Cranberry Grove is signing up artists for online commercial
distribution. This appears to be NatWest's ploy to make
money out of online distribution.
more at wired
Low Latency for Linux kernel 2.4 ...
It looks like the Low Latency stuff (BeOS like speed and control
for audio/video apps) is going to go in the 2.4 kernel which
could be out as early as November. In the meantime you can read
Benno Senoner's mini Howto to find out more.
As a side issue, MusicStation has been trying to get the existence of the
low latency stuff more widely publicized to attract more developers and
interest win/mac/beos people.
Sites that find the low latency info not very interesting include Slashdot and
Geeknews. Duh! But judging by the visits and downloads from Benno's patch
page the info is getting out. Great!
Sound File database tool ...
sfdb is a tool/library/GUI for working with and using a database of
soundfiles.
It arises from my own work developing applications that use soundfiles
in various ways - I wanted a standard way to look up all the available
soundfiles, and some basic information about them, without schlepping
all over the place.
It consists of 3 parts:
libsfdb.a : a tiny library allowing for the creation of
a database, adding new directory trees, and provide
database listings to stdout. Written in C.
sfdb: a small cmdline tool allowing you to create, add to
and list soundfile databases. Written in C.
gsfdb: a Gtk-- interface to a soundfile database. It includes a
widget (sfdbDisplay) that can be used to play any
soundfile when it is selected from the display. You can
add new directories to an existing database in gsfdb,
but you can't create the database from scratch. Written
in C++.
It turns that gsfdb is something rather like a jukebox containing
every soundfile you have stuffed in the database. Its cool!
(pbd on linux-audio-dev)
mp3 players in UK ...
Dixon's, the UK High St chain, are giving mp3 players a big
go for Christmas despite misgivings by makers that the UK
isn't ready for them.
(BBC radio 1)
new G2 player for Linux...
another alpha. You can get it at
http://www.real.com/products/player/newlinux.html
This is new on Oct 5.
Big Day Out ...
Melbourne, Australia. If you read Clint Small's piece on Rock and
wondered what Big Day Out was, you can find out more at their
website. Tickets went on sale yesterday for the Jan 30 event.
Lineup includes Red Hot Chili Peppers, NIN, Chems, Blink 182
and Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros.
NetAid ...
'And what were you doing Saturday night?
Odds are, you were not watching NetAid, the United
Nations-sponsored charity rock concert that took place in New
York, London and Geneva, and on the Internet (www.netaid.org), TV
and radio.
Strangely, although nearly all the performers have sold at least a
million albums each, the diverse, A-list lineups couldn't even
fill Giants Stadium, Wembley Stadium or Palais des Nations.
However, though the heavily hyped event did fall short of its
hoped-for billion Internet visits, it still reportedly draw a
massive 2.4 million visitors online--easily eclipsing the largest
single-day Web event (last year's Victoria's Secret fashion show).
No official word yet on how much the concerts raised for world
poverty. The total cost of NetAid, including stadium rental and
organizational costs, was between $4 million and $5 million. The
performers and Website developers donated their services.'
(Emily Farache at eonline) more
Madonna Piracy in Sweden ...
'A Stockholm teenager is facing piracy charges for simply posting web
addresses of where to find mp3s on the Internet. Tommy Olsson faces
charges brought by the International Federation of the Phonographic
Industry over Internet piracy after he created a web site that contained
links to tracks such as Madonna's Ray Of Light. By creating such a page
Olsson could then attract advertising to his site and gain revenue from
the use of Madonna's name. The case is the first of its kind and if convicted
Olsson will face a minimal charge of $150-$250.'
(bbc radio1)
Oh, please.
Speakers ...
The Dallas News has a guide to purchasing computer speakers
which has some useful pointers but don't go too overboard
in rejecting the technical terms - sometimes they actually
mean something and can save time in narrowing the field.
There's also a story about wearable computers as a fashion
item off the technology main page.
Timidity++
Version 2.6.1 is out now. This fixes the typo we reported before plus
a couple other things.
Advertising is the pornograhy of Capitalism ...
say the Chems. This is the theme of their (banned) video
which can be seen on the web.
Beta Band ...
'Trying to define what the Beta Band does is
practically impossible. The quartet from Scotland
produces a unique sound that's somewhere
between Pink Floyd, Beck, Phish, and the Orb.
On top of that, all of its projects, including its
recently released, critically-acclaimed
self-titled album, and the three EPs that preceded
it, are totally different in both sound and feel.
This, says Beta Band drummer-percussionist Robin Jones,
is part of the plan.'
more at Wallofwound
Serious Club Mix ...
BBC radio one have 30 minutes of realaudio from Serious Records.
Genre is commercial dance and the roster includes Sonique and
The Morrighan.
more at BBC radio 1
Playstation 2 (linux) workstation??...
'Sony is to follow up the launch of the Playstation 2 next March with a move into the business workstation
market, according to this morning's Nihon Keizai Shimbun. The new line of machines will use the
Playstation 2's Emotion Engine processor, and although the company doesn't seem to have said anything
about the OS as yet, Linux would seem the logical choice.'
(the register)
MTV Europe show ...
is to be at the Point in Dublin. Reported performers so far
include Underworld, The Cardigans, Corrs, The Offspring,
Sean Puffy Combs and Marilyn Manson.
Date is Nov 11
BeOS interview...
There's an interesting interview with the BeOS guys about
the design of that operating system at Dr Dobb's
Technetcast - you can either read it or use Real player.
Linux gets Serious on multi-media...
Developers and end-users alike should get some joy out of
reading Benno Senoner's Low Latency Howto. This enables
BeOS like performance on Linux. Exciting? Yes!
New G2 player...
Real have a new G2 player out that works with RH6.
It installs to a different place than rvplayer so
you'll need to change where netscape expects to
find it. Its an alpha release.
Auf Rocks Out ...
Hole Bass player Auf Der Maur has quit to pursue
other projects including photography. Der Maur
was a contract player at Hole and is free to join
any record label. Rumours have linked her with
Smashing Pumpkins and friend Rufus Wainwright.
A statement is expected later this week.
Bono, The Pope, and Bob ...
Bono and Bob Geldoff are amongst a group of musicians, charity workers
and economists meeting with the Pope to highlight world debt
problems.
The meeting is on Sept 23 and will be broadcast live on the Web at
www.unimondo.org/debt at 2.15 BST.
(music365)
Music Micropayments ...
Wired has a story on how music distribution sites are going
to try and organise that one dollar payment which has been
impractical up to now. Involves your ISP adding them up and
charging for the total...more
Audio Dock Apps ...
Love those cute lil things! There's a bunch of them
here (aimed at WindowMaker users) including a nice
new CD player and various mixers and a scope.
Belew waiting for NIN...
Guitarist Adrian Belew put down some tracks for NIN's new
album back in January and now he's waiting to see how it
all came out.
Belew did his work on The Fragile during January 1998,
and he says he can't wait to see what Reznor wound up using from
their sessions together. I'm real interested to see how it turned out,"
Belew says. "When I left, there were no vocals, so it's a little
hard to know what was going on. I thought the tracks sounded stunning,
though. It fell into two categories more typical Nine Inch Nails material
that I played a lot of wild guitar stuff on, and then there was this
whole other realm he was working in. He called it his Tom Waits record;
on that side I played string bass, cello, lap steel, and mandolins a
pretty unusual combination of things the way the sound was going at that point."
The album is out on Tuesday.
Emergency Broadcast Network...
aka EBN - remember the U2 zooropa tour and the big background
video screens and all. EBN were apparently responcible for
some of that and there are some sound clips in various
formats at their website
Scholarly docs ...
Julius Smith has a series of documents relating to sound synthesis
that should be interesting to anyone either in the field or
contemplating entering it.
Townsend Free LP...
The album, Pete Townshend Live, which
collects songs from his '97 and '98 performances at Chicago's
House of Blues -- both staged to benefit the Maryville Academy
for abused children -- will be available for free download Sept.
20-27, via Musicmaker.com.
(rollingstone)
Beck's new one ...
He confided to NME last year that this record will be "a dumb-ass party
record," instead of making a weighty, end-of-the-century reflective
opus. "I wanna come out with a party record, 'cos essentially life is silly.")
His web site is here.
The album is in stores on Nov 16.
(jamtv)
MP3 for Handheld ...
'San Jose, Calif.-based Innogear announced today that it has developed a
small MP3 hardware module compatible with Handspring's new handheld
computer, the Visor.
According to Innogear, which formerly operated as Parallel Design, the
company will utilize the Visor's Springboard expansion platform to offer
the MiniJam MP3 player/voice recorder.'
more at mp3.com
Belgium Techno...
The twice yearly 'I Love Techno' event in Ghent, Belgium is next
up on Nov 9. In the meantime if you run WindowMaker you can go
get the theme from wm.themes.org.
Dolby Digital...
At the Digital Distribution and the Music Industry Conference
yesterday in LA, Thomas Dolby (ex musician, Beatnik plugin guy)
savaged the big labels and suggested that already successful
bands such as REM or Phish (Hi Jennifer!) didn't need the labels
anymore.
'Computerized radio playlists, the packaging of music in
12-song formats that cost US$20, and a lumbering production schedule
takes away the fans sense of loyalty and belonging and participation'
... 'The music industry is now going to have to own up the fact that
the flocking of people to the Web as a venue for music is really an
expression of the fact that the Web ... is a much better venue for
that activity than a large chain store in a shopping mall.'
more at wired
NetAid...
There's a story at Spin that mentions the upcoming concerts
(Oct9 ) and Bono, Bowie, etc but nothing about what it is...
' NetAid is about all of us coming together to
make a real difference. But NetAid will only
work if we all share - our time, our resources,
our good ideas - and do it collaboratively
online and off. Please be a part of it.'
- NetAid Foundation
Broadcast 2000 beta 2 ....
is a Linux tool for mixing video and audio.
'Don't try this in a suit' is their motto... heh, heh
Also there's a non-lossy (non-streamable)
compresion/decompression utility for audio which has
ratios of between 40 and 60%.
You can get them here
MP3 tests...
Sound and Vision mag have listen tested some lossy codecs
including mp3. The results are scarcely surprising (mp3 top
of the ones they tested but not as good as CD) given what
mp3 is. The closeness of mp3 to CD is
also unsurprising given the test methods.
There's a discussion at slashdot as well.
Philip Glass...
was asked by the Salzburg Festival to write a symphony
for it's millenia celebration ...
'It is a glorious, inspiring work, and the rapt, dignified audience that filled the Large
Festival Hall just about went crazy. It is hardly the first time Glass has received an
enthusiastic ovation, but as he was called out on stage over and over and over again,
as people tirelessly cheered and stamped their feet (ignoring a handful of meek boos),
refusing to leave the stiflingly hot theater, the composer looked first stunned, then
happy, then even more stunned.' writes the LA Times. More
Timidity++
Trying to get timidity going the first time can be frustrating as
you might miss out on important files you need (sound patches!).
Here is a good place to get the patches and info.
There's a bit in our Tips section as well.
Why get timidity? If you have an es1370 and you want to play midi,
timidity is one option. If you have something like an sb16pnp all
I can say is ... timidity sounds _lots_ better!
Microphone University...
DPA Microphones (Danish Pro Audio) have quite a good primer on mics
and placement on their website. The emphasis is on their equipment
(used to be called B & K) and model numbers but there's enough
general info to be useful even if you have a solitary SM58 in your
collection.
Hendrix...
Violin virtuoso Nigel Kennedy has tackled some of the music
of sixties legend Jimi Hendrix. If you find that hard to
imagine there's a short (295k) mp3 here and a story at CNN.
Ear Training ...
Perfect pitch is a simple ear training program for Linux under GPL.
You can exercise the recogniton of intervals, chords and scales.
Perfect pitch requires the installation of Perl (Version 5),
Perl::Tk, Perl::MIDI and an extermal MIDI player, like timidity
(Verion 0.2i). Perfect pitch is written in Perl, uses Perl::Tk
for the user interface, Perl::MIDI to write MIDI files and timidity
to play these files. It is easy to substitute timidity with any
other MIDI player. You just have to edit the variable
$play_midi_file_command.
This is an alpha release, which means that there are a number of
features which are not implemented. But perfect pitch works pretty
fine on my Pentium 90 with Suse Linux (Version 6.1).
see here for more
information
(comp.os.linux.announce)
Prodigy, Armand ...
Two stories at Rolandgroove.com make interesting light reading.
One involves The Prodigy frontman and the other includes various
DJ's incl Van Helden. Lots of mentions of Roland gear ... of course!
SLab ...
the Hard disk recording system
is up to 3.02 with various bugfixes but is still beta.
Get it here.
Bumbershoot ...
The 29th annual BumbershootÅÆ returns to Seattle Center this Labor Day
weekend, September 3-6, with a superbly crafted line-up of artists and
performers from the Northwest region, across the country and around the
world. This year's showcase features more than 2,000 poets, painters,
composers, musicians, writers, thespians, dancers, filmmakers, comedians,
video artists, performance artists and children's artists converging in
Seattle for four days of unparalleled artistic celebration.
Basement...
current darlings of Britain's dance scene, the
Basement Jaxx, are invading U.S. clubs next month. Hot
off the release of their full-length debut, the club favorite
and critical darling Remedy, the Jaxx will man the booths
in clubs from Boston to San Francisco.
9/14: Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Chili Pepper
9/16: Boston, Axis
9/17: New York, Twilo
9/18: Toronto, Industry
9/19: Montreal, Stereo
9/21: Minneapolis, Quest
9/23: Chicago, Karma
9/24: Washington, D.C., Nation
9/25: Detroit, Motor Detroit
9/27: Denver, Baila
9/28: Seattle, Aro Space
9/30: Tempe, Ariz., Kind
10/1: Los Angeles, Vinyl
10/2: San Francisco, Club Release
(jamtv)
Lilith Fair Song Contest
The annual national competition is designed to encourage
female songwriters. The contest prizes include $25,000 for
the grand prizewinner and $10,000 for the first runner-up.
The prizes are being funded by a "group of the country's
most prominent women songwriters."
Eligible applicants for the contest are women not currently
signed to a recording or music publishing contract. Applicants
must submit one original song on cassette or CD, clearly typed
or printed lyric sheets, and a completed application.
The deadline for submissions is Nov. 15, 1999.
Winners will be announced in the spring of 2000.
Applications for entry can be obtained at www.lilithsong.org,
or by visiting a participating Guitar Center store. Potential
participants can call toll-free at (877) 835-0611 for more
information about the contest. Application to the contest is
free of charge. The address for submissions is:
The ASCAP Foundation/ Lilith Fair Songwriting Contest
Box 4022
Ansonia Station
New York, NY 10023
Cellists...
Both the Kronos quartet and the Tokyo String Quartet
have new cellists. Englishman Clive Greensmith for
the Tokyo and bi-coastal Jennifer Culp for the San
Francisco based Kronos.
(allstar)
L7...
L7's new LP, slap-happy has more pop than past efforts
(Hole influence?) but has enough of the hard rockin
stuff to keep fans happy.
Guitarist/singer Suzi 'Gardner does acknowledge that the
band has "pushed the envelope" further with each album,
but she doesn't think it's from conscious effort so much
as a natural progression. As for "Freeway," she says,
"It just happened, and I'm pleased it happened.
Some people may not like that song, but whatever."
more at cdnow
RIP Firefly... Phooey to Microsoft!
Latest...
The plug has finally been pulled on the firefly online
community. An extremely disgruntled member said 'We don't
argue with Microsoft's right to do what they like with
their software but there are people involved here and
Microsoft's behavior has been sneaky, dishonest, and
arrogant. I thought they needed friends!'
And Slightly Earlier...
In the Wired article below a Microsoft rep said that
suggestions regarding the online community firefly
would be considered. They might be considered but they're
not acknowledged! A list was sent to firefly and Steve
Ballmer and a copy to Wired without any reaction whatsoever.
Background...
Firefly, the online community with (at one stage) over
3000 members was an MIT project in online agents. The hook was
you selected music you liked and it would suggest music you
might like. Surrounding this was a nicely built community with
messaging, chat, and mini homepages.
The project was sold off and the music part split from firefly (which
has recently disappeared) and the rest eventually acquired by Microsoft in
early '98. During that time features were removed and the operation
of the site became erratic. Now Microsoft has announced it will be
closed down on August 18. Members are being offered space at MSN
but most firefly members find MSN to be inferior to what they
were used to at Firefly especially those people who communicated
using the messages facility.
As one member said "F... Microsoft!"
Now Wired have picked up on this story and you can read more here.
And to add to what's there - the reason the
numbers at firefly dwindled was because of the awful service
Microsoft gave. The community was often down for entire
weekends and many users have had great difficulty in logging
on and just went away. It looked to most people as if
Microsoft had made the decision to kill the community a long
time ago.
RH6 zaps Real...
Not v new but a lot of people just seem to be getting around
to changing. Did your rvplayer die? Redhat lists it as a
casualty in their errata section and says there's a patch at
Real - but if there is, it's impossible to find. We've asked
Real for more info and will post it here when we get it.
Meanwhile, if you're thinking of changing to Red Hat 6 and
the Real stuff is important to you - don't!
And yes, emailing support at Real is pretty much a complete
waste of time.
Sting...
is being sponsored by Compaq for his new tour. They
have put up a website to tell you about it.
Alsaplayer
A new version is out. One of the interesting things it can do
is vary the speed (+/-) of playback. It's here.
Technology Shapes Music...
Not an original thought but there's a story at
Rolling Stone which updates it in relation to
mp3 and the opening of the gates that we've
commented on here.
more
Windows Media ...
MS's security code to protect music from being copied
has been cracked. The crack file is called unfuck.exe
and is widely available. An article at Dimension Music
points out that it is more a workaround than a crack.
The Windows Media file that is copied must first be owned.
Still, that by itself defeats the purpose of the code -
giving copies to all your friends.
(dimension music)
Dave Navarro ...
ex Janes Addiction, has a new band project with his girlfriend
Monet Mazur. The band, Nancy Raygun, had a gig with Navarro in
LA recently at the Pop in Highland Boulevard. 'Twas well
recieved and they're building up material for recording.
Mp3 ...
A new card being made by X10 will infra-red
broadcast mp3's to your stereo. Cost is about US$100.
(wired)
Big Deal Soundcard a Good Project ...
Ok, some specs ... PCI, single VLIW processor good for sustained 240 MFlops
with peaks of 480. Can handle over 128 tracks at up to 32 bits or 64 tracks
of simultaneous record and playback. For this sort of thing two HDDs in
parallel are recommended. Virtual mixers? How about a single card being able
to act as a real-time crosspoint matrix (switcher) for up to 64*64 where
each node has control of level, delay, and phase.
Consoles? You could do a 24*16 matrix with individual gain and delay at the
384 matrix nodes...and still have room for effects processing.
But wait, there's more! The range of effects includes 4 band parametric EQ
for up to 64 channels, 10 band graphic EQ for up to 10 channels, dynamics
processor for up to 16 channels and real time reverb for up to 8. (Groovey
for super-surround!)
The card also features 32 bit floating point processing which provides max
headroom of +700dB on the high end and a total precision of -700dB at the
low end - this gives 144dB of dynamic range for 24 bit I-O and up to 192kHz
sampling is available.
Processing time for input to output is under 4ms at 48kHz.
Another feature is the ability to connect up to 8 boards in parallel or in
series.
Phew!
But this story isn't just about the card: it's about the fact that it's being
supplied as an OEM item and so could be an ideal opportunity for a linux
developer to jump into this field at the very top.
The card is the VS3 OEM Audio Engine available from
Merging Technologies
Le Verney
1604 Puidoux
Switzerland
ph 41 21 946 0444
fax 41 21 946 0445
Lollapalooza...
the indie fest, might be back in 2000. Pearl Jam are
rumoured to be the headliners.
(rocknews)
Melbourne(s) ...
If you're in Melbourne, Florida you can check out the Melbourne
Linux users group and get a you@mlinux.org address.
If you're in Melbourne, Australia you can check out the local
raves at www.raves.com.au
Web Music Biz...
AOL have signed a three year deal with Emusic for them to sell
music at AOL sites in mp3 format. Emusic will pay AOL a fixed
marketing fee and a percentage of revenue.
(jamtv)
RealNetworks and Time Warner have signed a deal whereby Net
users will be able to download selected tracks from selected
artists at the Transworld Entertainment website. It'll start
later this month.
Read CNN for more
Oolaboola award...
4Front Technologies have given their monthly killer-app award
to Oolaboola (digital DJing tool).
Tori Amos...
has become the first major artist to actually sell a new release
digitally as opposed to giving it away. Atlantic Records view it
as education and experiment: education for consumers and experiment
to see whether it will work. Formats are Liquid Audio and Windows
Media and are available from such as cdnow and tower records.
Who are We?
Not music related but an interesting question anyway.
Georgia Tech has the results of their last Web survey
online which covers who and with what..
Edinburgh Band...
Papa Kane have recently had their first gig and have ra's
and mp3s of their nicely constructed song oriented indie-pop up
at their website.
(a friend of a friend of...)
jMax ...
'Paris, France (July 20, 1999) -- IRCAM announces the distribution of jMax,
its software environment for music performance and real time digital audio
processing, as free software under the GNU General Public License.
Since its first public release for the SGI and Linux platforms in early
1999, jMax has reached several hundred users that expressed high interest in
the product and its development. This interest, added to the rapid growth of
the Linux operating system and the effectiveness of the open development
model, created the conditions for an opening of the jMax development.'
(linux-sound)
For more info go here
If anyone has in-depth knowledge of using this we'd love to hear
from you about the ins and outs.
Woodstock Digital
Amid the rape and pillage of the latest Woodstock happening
interesting things were happening on the digital front.
Viewers at home who had paid $59 for a feed were converting
their DirecTV files to mp3 and putting the bootlegs up on the
net.
Net Music Stocks Down...
Hardest hit have been mp3.com, Liquid Audio and Emusic.com.
Factors include the reluctance of people to pay for what is
largely free and the stirring of the big music companies.
Our MP3 - a player's guide show other factors as well.
More at wired.
The Corrs are cutting their work down to concentrate on
writing their next album. ëTalk on Cornersí has sold a
whopping 3 million in the UK and 7 million around the world
so the pressure's on a bit to recreate that success.
Sharon and Jim told Radio One they're not looking to
change the winning formula but are looking forward to the
challenge of writing again: "I think weíre very enthusiastic
about it. Weíre really enjoying recording it this time.
Really musicís a very natural thing. Itís all about
expression and what youíre feeling, so you canít dictate
what comes out - itís a very natural process", says Sharon.
"What we want to do is something that we love ourselves and
hopefully that is very true to us and hopefully something
that our fans will appreciate again, you know. Weíre trying
to do what feels best, rather than to calculate a change in
what weíve been doing. Itís all about expression". And Jim
adds: "Weíve all been very inspired. At the moment itís
very much free-flowing, thankfully !"
(BBC)
A handy web guide to London techno events can be had at
Dale's pages which have been going since '96
(Chance)
DIY...
In the useful sites dept is Franklin Emsley's DIY Central
which deals with different aspects of recording and selling
music.
Another is designed to get you started recording on a pc or
Mac.
(Future Music mag)
Eclipse Fest...
Dates: 7-14th August
Place: the Lizard Peninsular, Cornwall
Music: Wide range
ie. James, Kula Shaker, Levellers
MUSHROOM+ MILO (Wild Bunch)(for the first time in 12 years!!)
Sasha, Leftfield (DJ set), Drummer of Burundi, Groove Armada, Femi Kuti,
Bjorn Again, Way out Westand the Kennedy Experience with Nigel Kennedy.
Tickets: Full Week £125, Weekend £49
Info: Tickets were slow to go at first but now itís gone "beserk" and
they are expecting to sell out. No secret guests are expected.
Universal Music Group, the world's largest,
said it will make its music available in
digital formats that can be played on hardware
being made by RioPort Inc., Panasonic and Toshiba.
more at cnn
ALSA
Members of the ALSA sound drivers project have pointed out that
the word "obsolete" in connection with the OSS API in the
comparisons table on their website, means "not used here anymore".
The word has been deleted to help prevent further misunderstandings.
Taiko Today...
Taiko are big Japanese Drums.
North American Taiko Conference, Japan American Theater,
244 S. San Pedro St., public concerts Saturday, 8 p.m.,
and Sunday, 3 p.m., $24, (213) 680-3700
There's a nice background story here.
Techno Heights...
The LA Times has a review of the recent Long Beach Concert
by Orbital. They were impressed. Hopefully we'll have our
own review of the Philly concert coming soon (in the techno
section)
Montreaux Jazz...
The wonderfully eclectic Montreaux Festival is over for
another year (from Stanley Clarke to Elvis Costello this
year) but their website has tons of streaming music
media (G2 and Win Media) for you
to enjoy still ... and you have a choice of languages
(incl Anglais). I'd like to go someday.
Ramones ...
There's an interview at Rolling Stone with Joey for those who're
interested. The title is ... I don't want to grow up ... or be
a Ramone again.
A new Sex Pistols documentary filmed by Julien Temple
will have its premier at
'the Toronto International Film Festival (Sept. 9-18),
where the filmmakers hope to obtain a distributor.
Temple also says a film soundtrack including Pistols
material and other artists that influenced the band
is in the works.'
more at jamtv
Underground Archive ...
If you haven't checked out the Internet Underground Music Archive
already it's worth a look for 'undiscovered' artists. IUMA were
amongst the earliest people on the Net and their original interface
was telnet and ftp. Now they seem to be linked to emusic.
SDMI aims to restrict CD copying so that only a limited
number of copies can be made from each CD. This system
would operate in conjunction with hardware.
Read more at wired
But what about digital copies of the copies?
Wired mag ...
The August issue has a big feature on mp3 including a round-up
of players and software and some good URLs. I would have liked
to have seen some intelligent crystal ball gazing about where
Big Music is going to end up ...
Tom Waits has announced some more dates...
the latest round of tour dates includes shows at the Hummingbird
Centre in Toronto, Canada on August 23 and 24 (tickets on sale July 23),
at the Chicago Theatre in Chicago, Ill. on August 26 and 27
(tickets on sale July 26) and at the State Theatre in Minneapolis, Minn.
on August 29 and 30 (tickets on sale July 24).
Virgin Burns ...
Virgin Megastore customers in the US are able to burn
CDs of their favorite mp3s. The service is being piloted at the
new Columbus, Ohio store. The rest of the megastores will follow
in the fall.
For $10 a customer can choose ten tracks from eight internet sites
(Liquid Music Network, CDuctive, AMP3.com, Amplified.com, songs.com,
Riffage.com, Mjuice, and Noisebox).
(wired)
NIN have new stuff online at www.nin.com apparently. I found the
all shockwave interface um unhelpful.
Ibiza legend quits
Bad news for fans of Mambo - the Ibiza legend, Jose Padilla
has already quit his residency. His PA says he felt he wasn't
appreciated and was being asked to play tunes he wasn't happy with.
(BBC)
NICK CAVE, The Fall, John Cale and Tindersticks have been confirmed to
take part in this year's Flux festival in Edinburgh this August.
Flux, a contemporary music adjunct to the Edinburgh Festival is
now in its third year. Previous years have seen performances form
PJ Harvey, Nick Cave, Michael Nyman, Teenage Fanclub and Baby Bird.
The announcement of part year's line up follows news that Orbital
are to play their only Scottish concert this year at Flux.
Other guests include Pere Ubu member David Thomas and a screening
of the Alfred Hitchcock film The Lodger with a score from Divine
Comedy member Jody Talbot. There are also four concerts from former
Soft Cell leader Marc Almond at Edinburgh Queen's Hall.
Details of the acts so far confirmed are as follows:
Orbital, Princes St Gardens, August 13
Ivor Cutler, Queens Hall, August 14
David Thomas and The Pale Orchestra, Queen's Hall, August 15
John Cale, Queen's Hall, August 20 & 21
The Fall, Queen's Hall, August 22
The Lodger, Lumiere Cinema, August 26
Marc Almond, Queen's Hall, August 27, 28, 29 & 30
Nick Cave, Princes St Gardens, August 27
Tindersticks, Queen's Hall, August 30
(365)
Sonic Youth
The band is offering a reward for the recovery of their
instruments, and they can be contacted via email at
Mascaras66@aol.com, or call their representative, Aaron Blitzstein,
at 212-343-2314. The band still has three more shows before they
return home to New York City, including two nights in Austin, Texas,
on July 7 and 8, and a performance in Santa Fe, NM, on July 10.
The band will play those final dates with rented equipment,
according to their spokesperson.
Trance Radio
Thump radio has a selection of Trance stuff for your
edification and enjoyment.
(leo)
Brighton festival Cancelled
The Brighton Festival has become the first real casualty
of the season - it's been cancelled after the local council
refused to grant it a licence. The event was due to take place
at the end of the month with a bill featuring Run DMC, Phats
and Small and the Freestylers among others.
"Fears have been raised over public safety. What Iím interested
in doing at the moment is looking at a possible postponement,
which will allow us the time to answer any queries which
anybody may have regarding the eventís organisation",
promoter, Josh Deane told Radio One. (BBC)
Audiohighway.com has claimed they were awarded a patent for
their digital audio player.
The patent, which the company applied for in 1995,
covers any type of digital audio player used to store and
play back downloaded content, regardless of the electronic
format in which the content is saved, said David Politis,
a spokesman for the company.
Read more here then go to slashdot and add your comment/scream
of frustration.
Oolaboola hits 0.3.0
Version 0.3.0 of oolaboola, a digital DJ tool, is now available at
hyperreal.org. New featues include:
* Binary package available (a RedHat 6.0-friendly RPM)
* Much easier to use MIDI binding architecture (works nicely with my PhatBoy)
* Command line options complement rc file and environment variables
* A man page!
* Pretty level/hold lights
* EQ
* Optional quadratic interpolation
* Much greater efficiency and robustness
* Bug fixes
Planet Ben will be in Sydney, Australia on July 24 and
Melbourne on the 31st. Check local guides for where they
are appearing.
(roxi)
LILITH FAIR KICKS OFF
The third and possibly final edition of Lilith Fair kicked off
in Vancouver, BC Thursday (July 8). The sun was shining and the
whole show went off without a hitch as Lilith founder SARAH McLACHLAN,
SHERYL CROW, LUSCIOUS JACKSON, and DEBORAH COX, among many others,
cranked out the good vibes.
(muchmusic)
For a right wing looney take on Lilith check out this
Irish Band The Cranberries
follow the release of their fourth album, 'Bury The Hatchet', with
a quartet of UK arena dates. With the exception of a low-key one-off
date at the Shepherd's Bush Empire in London last April, it will be
band's first British shows for three years.
They play Newcastle Telewest Centre (November 23),
Manchester Evening News Arena (25),
Birmingam NEC (27)
and London Wembley Arena (29).
Tickets are £20 at all venues,
except London where some £17.50 tickets are also available.
The Queen of Soul has agreed to sing the national anthem
to kick off the Three Tenors concert at Detroit's Tiger
Stadium on July 17. She may even join Luciano Pavarotti,
Jose Carreras and Placido Domingo for an encore.
Astrojams is a site dedicated to the appreciation of free
music. They have a shoutcast server and a selection of mp3's (including a big assortment of
Grateful Dead stuff)
(Joshua)
Def Con 7 is about to start
in Las Vegas (Jul 9-11) - not really
a music event but there is a music feed being done by pirate-radio.co.uk
Love Parade
Techno music lovers and good time seekers from all around
will be descending on Berlin on July 10 for the Love Parade.
There is a website as well (in German).
Suede fans can get new quicktime vids with the recent Roskilde concert
coming up soon at their website (www.suede.net)
This site isn't new but its new to me. It has reviews of various sound cards
here...
KDE HDD recorder
I would like to announce KHDRec 0.4, the KDE HardDisk Recorder.
This version is still at alpha stage, but IMHO quite usefull.
Please feel free to download it and test it. I'm looking forward for bug
reports and problems with different hardware.
Downloads here
(Martin on Alsa-users list)
The Bottom 10
The LA Times has a nice curmudeonly story on the ways in which
current pop music sucks ...and names names.
Has it ever been this bad? they ask.
Mp3 anti-piracy
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A coalition of major record labels and
electronics manufacturers announced new specifications for digital
music players Monday that they claim will eventually prevent people
from illegally downloading copyrighted music over the Internet. On a
yet-to-be determined date, new music released by the major record
producers will be digitally encrypted to prevent piracy, the Secure
Digital Music Initiative said. At that point, only devices that can
recognize the coding will play the music. Diamond Multimedia, which
makes the popular and controversial Rio portable digital music
player, said it will comply with the new standards. See
(Infobeat)
Hmmmm, I think they're missing something somewhere.
A recent survey by Wired on streaming media left out shoutcast.
Now they have a separate story on it here.
Don't tell your ISP you're going to read it (you'll see!).
The German magazine Linux-Magazin has a title story on music notation software
for linux in its July issue. It covers...
- Rosegarden
- abc
- Mup
- Lilypond
- MusixTex/PMX/MTX
- Tab
(Christoph)
Offensive lyrics in Australia
*Irony warning*
Australia joins other notable free-speech nations China and Iran in
passing into law strict censorship provisions for the Web. On the
down side your nasty lyrics could you see you lifted from Aussie
servers or have blocks placed by Australian ISPs to your material. On
the upside, there is a lot of unpaid work coming up for the ISPs and
it seems very likely the system won't work at all. Still it's a
stupid law in both conception and execution.
Talent Scouts ...
According to CNN, talent scouts visit Braden Merrick's site RedButton.com
once a week to see what his picks of the week are. Apparently he deals
mostly in local San Francisco bands but it still might be worth checking
out if you're from somewhere else and are looking for a contract with a
major record company.
Orbital Don't Make Dance Music
It's been more than ten years since brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll
released their onomatopoeic first single, "Chime." After dubbing
themselves Orbital in homage to the round highway that English kids
use to travel to raves, the brothers from Kent, England, went on to
release five albums and numerous singles of glossy electronic music.
They also developed a formidable reputation as a live act, despite
taking stages as only two blokes and their sequencers. Their latest
album, The Middle of Nowhere, weaves frenetic breakbeats, synthy peals
of liquid sound and big, gorgeous melodies into a dramatic sonic
tapestry that makes as much sense in headphones as it does on the
dance floor.
(Jamtv)
Diamond (the rio maker - now owned by S3) after winning a court case on 15 June has
decided to join them rather than fight. In addition to a partnership
with Microsoft they are promoting to record companies the idea
of mp3s with closed codecs to ensure security of ownership. How
this will be done remains to be seen.(wired)
...first all MP3 cd has been released by the group "Day By the River",
from Athens GA. It has over 4 hours of MP3 data on it from their
last 2 years of live performances, and it also has the software
players for Linux, Mac OS, and Windoze, as well
as a mini website with some info on the whole thing.
It was put out in conjunction with a small indie record company from
Providence RI, called Lauan Records.
some links w/more info
lauan.com
(craig)
Phreakers like mp3 ... software allows users of Diamond rios to "red box". A Canadian website outlines how it is done.
Owning a "red box" is a felony in the US.
(wired)
Webmonkey has a story on streaming media. They have consistently pushed Flash in the past and they still do. No mention of Shoutcast
altho they do mention mp3 and Real's Jukebox.
Pedophagia uses linux to create their Industrial music.
Free mp3s can be had at www.mp3.com/pedophagia (NaTaS)
"We're not saying that Glastonbury as a whole will be dry throughout, but we
are saying predominantly dry weather, a lot of sunshine and, we think,
decent temperatures with it", Jim Dale of the British weather service
told BBC radio1
X11amp (the X windows mp3 player) is now called XMMS and sponsored by 4Front
the commercial sound driver people.
The Mondays kick off this year's fun and games at Manumission in Ibiza
tonight (Mon). It's the first in a series of events themed around
historical characters - there'll be a Julius Caesar night and even an
Adolf Hitler evening, but tonight it's Jesus night with entertainment
courtesy of Madchester's finest: "Its just a wild club, innit ? It
feels like I'm just recovering from last year!", says Shaun.(bbc)
Lists for art and copylefted music can be found here at Linart (m)
Drum and bass can make tomatoes grow - according to new research!
British tomato growers are apparently filling their greenhouses with
the sounds of Fabio and Grooverider, because it's reckoned tomatoes
like a bit of heavy bass. According to plant experts the music's
pounding vibrations cause more pollen to be dislodged, so aiding
fertilisation. (BBC)
Gospel choirs, Tibetan monks and nuns, traditional Hawaiian dancers
and musicians, Bosnian and Croatian choruses, Native American drum
circles and the Los Angeles Philharmonic represent only a small
sampling of the global mix of artists scheduled to perform in more
than 60 Los Angeles venues during the World Festival of Sacred
Music--the Americas, Oct. 9-17.(LA Times)
If you have mp3s on a server, and multiple client machines, dmcat is a
useful cataloging tool. (Jeff)
Composer and performance artist Laurie Anderson is
going into the studio in mid-June to record Songs and Stories from
Moby Dick, her new theatrical work based on the Herman Melville novel,
as the first recording in her exclusive worldwide recording agreement
with Nonesuch Records.
OOLABOOLA - a GPLed program that does mixing of .wav files with
adjustable rate of play, levels, etc. It's a digital DJ tool or
cyber-shamanic noise-maker!...a hacker-grade release that the
author would appreciate feedback on. It's here.
The Boston Early Music festival is on this week.
check at their web site for details.
Rainer Wiener is starting a database of configs for sound
cards. Go here (in German) or email wiener@bigfoot.de
Hard disk recorder designers looking at the top of the market should
check out Studio Sound Mag's
review of the Euphonix R-1 in the May
'99 issue. Lots of desirable features outlined there ...
Natalie Merchant is scheduled to cap her global trek with four benefit shows, June 8
through 12, at New York's Neil Simon Theater. Proceeds are to go to
Riverkeeper, the Association to Benefit Children, Doctors Without
Borders and the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Soundweave is a sound generator that produces an endless changing sound, using a set of sound samples. The
samples are chosen at random and added to the loop. By manipulating this loop rhytmically changing sound textures
are created.
Go to http://listen.to/soundweave for more info.
Slab 3.01 is now available - more bug fixes takes this
one out of beta.
ftp://dutw1288.wbmt.tudelft.nl/pub/audio
There's an mp3.com story on mp3 encoders here which includes why
bladenc is able to get around copyright problems ...
Real producer G2 for Linux can be had at
realnetworks
You need a P120 and 16Meg RAM for audio and a PII200 and 64 Meg RAM for video.
June 7 in the UK sees the release of Bjork's new single
'All is full of Love' on DVD. Reading between the lines
of the BBC story it looks like it's just an audio disk.
Paul Winkler has put up some tips for getting better quality
sound on his web-site at members.tripod.com/~slinkP
Blur, Paul Weller & Jamiroquai Private Show - Don't Go !
Organisers of the private show where Blur, Paul Weller, and
Jamiroquai are due to appear are urging fans - DON'T GO! The bands
will be filmed at Greenwich Naval College on Tuesday June 1st for a
TV special being broadcast live via satellite to Japanese TV Network
NHK, but the show is not open to the public. Police are worried that
the Greenwich one-way system won't be able to cope if all the people
who asked about tickets turn up on the day (BBC)
The cream of the dance world was descending on Mass in Brixton
tonight from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. to raise thousands of pounds for
Kosovan refugees. The bill includes Carl Cox, Judge Jules, Groove
Armada, and Basement Jaxx so with tickets only a tenner it's a
bargain (especially with a room set aside for the United match!)..
(BBC)
Factory Records are putting out a live concert
of Joy Division's from 19 years ago. This will
be the first non-pirated release of one of their
live performances.
The Cowboy Junkies will be selling their new album
Rarities, B-Sides and Slow, Sad Waltzes from their
website from June 1
Orbital will play in Edinburgh's Princess Street Gardens
as part of the Flux Festival sometime between Aug 13 and
30.
The Chemical Brothers will be playing at the
Scotish Homelands Festival in Edinburgh in
early September
SLab 3.0 beta 2, a free hard disk recording
program suite is available from
ftp://dutw1288.wbmt.tudelft.nl/pub/audio
There have been a number of bug fixes.
See our Software section.
Beck is countersueing Geffen records saying that
'Mutations' was illegally issued. A pirate, huh.
Wasn't even put out on mp3.
more
Echo and the Bunnymen kick-off a North
American tour on June 4 in Toronto and
finish in LA on June 29...anyone
remember their version of the Doors
song 'People are Strange' on the sound
track of 'Lost Boys
RealNetworks yesterday launched RealJukebox, free software that allows users to listen to -- and
record -- MP3 and other CD-quality files. The RealJukebox site features an Offspring song in a2b
format. You can check it out here (rocknews)
...but it's Win 95/NT only
Jaroslav Kysela, one of the key figures in the
ALSA project is now working for SUSE. The deal
is he gets to work on the ALSA project for
around 60% of his time. Does this mean that
SUSE will be first off the blocks with ALSA?
The USA songwriting competition offers
$20,000 in cash and merchandise to
lucky (did I say lucky?) winners.
A variety of genres are encouraged.
You can find it thro keyboard online.
Radiohead have begun recording their follow up
to '97's OK, Computer at a house in the UK.
They're using the same producer and there are no
set dates for completion.
Following on their announcement re mp3s
Tori Amos and Alannis Morisette have
announced they will tour together from
August 18 for 26 dates.
Wups! Former Fairport Convention musician Dave Swarbrick
read his own Obituary in UK's Daily Telegraph this week.
His wife Pegg said " It's a glowing obituary and he's
very pleased with what they have said."
The Cemetary in Paris where Door's vocalist
Jim Morrison's remains are had planned to
ship his remains back to the US because of the
large traffic and damage to the surroundings.
And now, apparently, they're not.
Alanis Morisette and Tori Amos have signed with mp3.com
according to USA today. I imagine it's for less than the
standard 50%.
A new recording just released by Sony Classical
inludes ...'Alanis Morissette, James Taylor,
Perry Farrell (Jane's Addiction, Porno for Pyros), Linda Ronstadt,
(and) the late world music superstar Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
(in one of his last recordings)' in a project called the
Prayer Cycle which 'is a soaring, soulful orchestral
prayer that transcends boundaries between peoples,
cultures, and music'.
Most searched for artist on www.sonicnet.co
m is Jewel followed by Korn, Britney Spears, Jay-Z and DMX.
Aren't you glad you know that?
The ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) sound drivers project is now at:
www.alsa-project.org
following the registration of a domain name.
Mailing lists addresses are now:
alsa-devel@alsa-project.org
alsa-user@alsa-project.org
The Propellerheads will join an upcoming tour
with The Beastie Boys and Wiseguys of the UK
and Europe in May.
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