Slashdot Mirror

I just turned around a song out of my studio in just over 13 hours. Tracked, mixed, everything, most of all mastered to 16 bit CD format.

This was a very good lesson in how much is lost- even with the most hardcore esoteric wordlength reduction.

The tune is "Take A Number". This song was actually inspired from Slashdot- it comes out of those Columbine/Hellmouth threads and civil liberties threads, with lyrics like "and if any classmates are scary or fey/some nice men will come quick and take them away". Anyhow, I went through the entire recording process with this. It was recorded to a digital multitrack machine, but the summing was passive analog, and while setting up tracks I generally cranked up the instrument I was working on, heard it right up front clearly.

These 'solo' tracks, turned up loud, provided the clearest sound picture. I got familiar with exactly how each track sounded. Then working with the full mix over the passive analog mixer was an impressive experience- this is through analog 2-buss compression, but before any form of digital limiting or processing. The sound of this was freaking gi-normous, and that is what I'd like to dump to SACD. It was just huge, despite the digital sources. Technically the passive combining results in an effective resolution (minimum resolution to completely describe every sound) that is outlandishly huge, with no added noise to boot.

Capturing this to SPDIF, and monitoring over even 24 bit A/D to D/A, changed things a lot. The depth shifted somehow- the focus became more on the upfront things, and the massive scale of the analog/passive rig got quite a bit smaller.

Mastering that to 16 bit, even with highpass dither and IIR noise shaping, was another change in scale. If the same tonalities and balances were kept, the sound ended up a bit dull but without the energy or scale it'd had. Enter the mastering engineer- and the solution was to bring the focus still nearer. Result, a CD mastering that had as much of the liveliness of the original as possible- but the scale of the thing is totally, way off! It's like a choice- when you're down at 16 bits, you can have the scale, or you can have the liveliness- you can't get both at once. There's not enough data to carry it off, even in a best-case scenario.

Then of course I made an mp3 out of it, but there's no point even griping about that, it's so far from the original ;) with luck it can still blast out of people's stereos okay.

But I just wish I had access to SACD authoring. To do what I do the way I do it, I could take advantage of that. Not everybody could, but I do stuff the way I do it for a reason.

Like hell I don't! I can only speak for myself, but for me it's AUTHORING stopping me from trying to put out SACDs. I build my own gear, including a high-end passive attenuation resistance mixer, and I can max out the information on a 16-bit CD. Hell, I've had to write wordlength reduction software to get around the aggravating limitations of the medium. It's not so much the high frequency limits that bug me (though I can easily overwhelm that too, with real-world signals such as certain types of distorted guitar and certain guitar techniques), it's the resolution. Without hardcore wordlength reduction, CDs are grainy and as thin as cardboard- you can't get the sense of ambience out of them. (there's ambience in some of my recent work such as 'Houston, We Have A Problem', you should hear the original masters.) I would LOVE to go to SACD, completely independent of any concerns of copy-prevention. SACD puts the resolution where it is useful- progressively higher res as the frequency drops, increasing distortion as the frequency rises. Can you hear 10% harmonic distortion on a 20K tone? Thought not. Can you appreciate that there's some kinda content going on at 40K? Hell yes. The super highs don't need to have such low distortion figures, but the super lows really benefit from it- THOSE overtones are well within the range of easy hearing.

I concede that with kickass dithering you can get a lot out of 16 bit. I do that all the time. SACD would still be better. (DVD-A is more of an incremental gain, with explosions and special effects going boom and sounds swirling around your head, plus a cheesy subwoofer ;) )

I'm one of the people who's supposed to be concerned about this kind of thing. I'm a musician. I produce sounds as art, and I write songs which are copyright to me. You'd think I'd be like 'whoa, slow down' with this stuff, the p2p.

Here's why I'm not.

Music has long been an avenue for social commentary. From 'What's Going On' to 'For What It's Worth' and 'Ohio', not to mention stuff like Tom Lehrer's 'So Long, Mom' and 'Who's Next?', it's been a way to put across a perspective using art. It doesn't have to be really detailed- in fact, art that's really specific that way tends to suck, polemical to the extent that it's haranguing you. Some of the best art with political importance has been, like 'For What It's Worth', relatively vague. It paints a compelling picture in little words, the details can be filled in by real dialogue. It's about using music to open someone's mind to the POSSIBILITY of dialogue.

Now currently in the USA, we literally have the authorities shutting down communications on the grounds of 'supporting terrorist activities'. These are the same people who spent government money to drape a statue tit- they are not oblivious to art, they are just determined to make it behave. We're now looking at a situation where it is a real concern- it wouldn't be much of a jump to see these guys categorize dissident art and music as 'aid to terrorists', and to see them methodically expunge it from the Internet wherever they find it.

That's where it starts to get on my turf. I'm an American- 34, grew up middle class, normally you would think I would get to produce whatever art or music I wanted. Maybe. But the spectacle of a manufactured war with Iraq so appalls me (hell, when the Joint Chiefs of Staff are against it too, I don't think I'm alone there) that I can't sit around experimenting with instrumental music anymore.

Like I said in an earlier post, I've cut a recent song, "Blood on the Sand", directly about the Iraq situation. I wrote it hardcore and kept it as simple as I could, I played it hardcore until I had blisters on my fingers, I mixed it and put it out, and now by Bush's own rules I'm aiding the terrorists- because if it's gotta be 'us vs. them' and 'us' means what he's doing, NO WAY am I getting behind that, and that makes me 'them' and yeah, I'm trying to support the point of view against this Iraq overthrow.

How does that relate to streaming p2p? I would think it was obvious but the point can't be made too often. We are in a situation RAPIDLY approaching suppression of political dissidents. Already the government is shutting down web sites on political grounds- you cannot so openly express your support for those the government considers active enemies. How far away is the next step, suppressing stuff that doesn't actively support the government? That's where the rising tide begins to drown me- I don't specifically support anyone the government considers terrorists, but I can't condemn them as blindly as I'm asked to. I grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, considered the birthplace of American Revolution, and now I have to wonder whether the desperation shown by those New England patriots is now echoed somewhere in the Middle East- and even to think such thoughts is less and less permitted.

I am unfamiliar with firing a gun, and I am unfamiliar with hand to hand combat. In a war, in a revolution, I'm not that much use to some things. But I'm an artist- and when I can no longer hide and entertain myself with purposeless artistic stuff, my art becomes my weapon, and the harder I work the better a weapon it becomes. It's my only recourse.

So, I view all forms of p2p as samizdat- on the one hand, organizations like the RIAA consider they have ownership of a lot of art and their grounds for suppressing its communication is on the grounds that it's their property. It's important to remember that the government can consider art's content as grounds for suppressing it- we're 90% there already. At that point, p2p (including streaming) can be the only method for suppressed ideas to get a hearing. Doesn't mean the ideas will all be good or worthy- but to somebody expressing ideas in danger of being suppressed, p2p is hugely important.

Like me. And I could go farther- and may have to if my conscience so demands, and it comes around with a song that needs to be heard.

So, more p2p, please! :D

Chris Johnson

I'm one of the people who's supposed to be concerned about this kind of thing. I'm a musician. I produce sounds as art, and I write songs which are copyright to me. You'd think I'd be like 'whoa, slow down' with this stuff, the p2p.

Here's why I'm not.

Music has long been an avenue for social commentary. From 'What's Going On' to 'For What It's Worth' and 'Ohio', not to mention stuff like Tom Lehrer's 'So Long, Mom' and 'Who's Next?', it's been a way to put across a perspective using art. It doesn't have to be really detailed- in fact, art that's really specific that way tends to suck, polemical to the extent that it's haranguing you. Some of the best art with political importance has been, like 'For What It's Worth', relatively vague. It paints a compelling picture in little words, the details can be filled in by real dialogue. It's about using music to open someone's mind to the POSSIBILITY of dialogue.

Now currently in the USA, we literally have the authorities shutting down communications on the grounds of 'supporting terrorist activities'. These are the same people who spent government money to drape a statue tit- they are not oblivious to art, they are just determined to make it behave. We're now looking at a situation where it is a real concern- it wouldn't be much of a jump to see these guys categorize dissident art and music as 'aid to terrorists', and to see them methodically expunge it from the Internet wherever they find it.

That's where it starts to get on my turf. I'm an American- 34, grew up middle class, normally you would think I would get to produce whatever art or music I wanted. Maybe. But the spectacle of a manufactured war with Iraq so appalls me (hell, when the Joint Chiefs of Staff are against it too, I don't think I'm alone there) that I can't sit around experimenting with instrumental music anymore.

Like I said in an earlier post, I've cut a recent song, "Blood on the Sand", directly about the Iraq situation. I wrote it hardcore and kept it as simple as I could, I played it hardcore until I had blisters on my fingers, I mixed it and put it out, and now by Bush's own rules I'm aiding the terrorists- because if it's gotta be 'us vs. them' and 'us' means what he's doing, NO WAY am I getting behind that, and that makes me 'them' and yeah, I'm trying to support the point of view against this Iraq overthrow.

How does that relate to streaming p2p? I would think it was obvious but the point can't be made too often. We are in a situation RAPIDLY approaching suppression of political dissidents. Already the government is shutting down web sites on political grounds- you cannot so openly express your support for those the government considers active enemies. How far away is the next step, suppressing stuff that doesn't actively support the government? That's where the rising tide begins to drown me- I don't specifically support anyone the government considers terrorists, but I can't condemn them as blindly as I'm asked to. I grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, considered the birthplace of American Revolution, and now I have to wonder whether the desperation shown by those New England patriots is now echoed somewhere in the Middle East- and even to think such thoughts is less and less permitted.

I am unfamiliar with firing a gun, and I am unfamiliar with hand to hand combat. In a war, in a revolution, I'm not that much use to some things. But I'm an artist- and when I can no longer hide and entertain myself with purposeless artistic stuff, my art becomes my weapon, and the harder I work the better a weapon it becomes. It's my only recourse.

So, I view all forms of p2p as samizdat- on the one hand, organizations like the RIAA consider they have ownership of a lot of art and their grounds for suppressing its communication is on the grounds that it's their property. It's important to remember that the government can consider art's content as grounds for suppressing it- we're 90% there already. At that point, p2p (including streaming) can be the only method for suppressed ideas to get a hearing. Doesn't mean the ideas will all be good or worthy- but to somebody expressing ideas in danger of being suppressed, p2p is hugely important.

Like me. And I could go farther- and may have to if my conscience so demands, and it comes around with a song that needs to be heard.

So, more p2p, please! :D

Chris Johnson

You can't speak for me, however, because the very war you're talking about is what forced me back into the studio- I'm a musician and maybe I'm not good for much but it's the only weapon I got, and I cut the hardest rock tune I could around the hook, 'How much for a barrel... of blood on the sand?'. Got it right here. Ampcast, which I'm using, would allow me to try and charge a buck for a full download- maybe some of you, maybe YOU, would understand why that's the last thing I'd want to do. Currently I have absolutely no way for people to 'reward' me for this work- yes, I did have 'blisters on me fingers', especially after the bass part- I just want the ideas out there. It's painting a picture of where the Bush cronies are coming from, as if briefing some diplomat who's being sent to the Middle East only to pillage it and declare war on it.

I also cut a 'radio edit', both to bring it under three minutes and to experiment with 'modern major label style' loudness maximizing- that one is also free download and likewise there's not a thing you can do to pay for it- later I'll get a CD out, full resolution, couldn't wait that long to get this track out there. It says what I needed to say about the whole "Let's have a war so the 'axis of evil' can all die" mindset that really makes me sick at heart. Question the ethics? Let's talk 'get horribly stressed and feel helpless and powerless to freaking stop it'.

That said-

You should note that this my only weapon against this insanity, is taking place through the distribution of mp3s- and if I should happen to write something SO compelling that it seriously made me a problem (I wish- will keep working tho) and the government came and took me away and ordered my ISP and Ampcast to not distribute material that aided terrorists (WHICH! IS! HAPPENING! And it could happen to me as well), then p2p services, notably Gnutella, could continue to circulate my ideas if they were worthy.

This is nothing more than samizdat as practiced in other repressive regimes that marked off whole positions or areas of discourse as forbidden.

Now that the United States is openly one of them and will repress words that are challenging enough to the government's aims, all this 'sheltered' fuss over the DMCA is not as irrelevant as you think. It's the copyright industry wanting to stamp out uncontrolled copying. However, uncontrolled copying can be the last refuge of the patriotic dissident.

It all ties together- we all have to shovel the shit on OUR doorstep. For some people, DMCA weighs more heavily on them than a thousand dead Arabs, all of whom have names and mothers, none of whom you know. Rather than condemning someone like that, how about letting them fight their own battles? I can tell you right now that from my point of view as a musician and songwriter, it matters that people fight DMCA- theoretically defending my copyright values is a piss-poor bargain for losing the ability to have a global communications network that can take suppressed music and art and still get it to where people can think about it. The RIAA/MPAA dreamworld is also a tool for political control rivalling the Cold War USSR, and that matters, especially now.

Dissident Stallmanist musician slashdotter #580, signing off.

You can't speak for me, however, because the very war you're talking about is what forced me back into the studio- I'm a musician and maybe I'm not good for much but it's the only weapon I got, and I cut the hardest rock tune I could around the hook, 'How much for a barrel... of blood on the sand?'. Got it right here. Ampcast, which I'm using, would allow me to try and charge a buck for a full download- maybe some of you, maybe YOU, would understand why that's the last thing I'd want to do. Currently I have absolutely no way for people to 'reward' me for this work- yes, I did have 'blisters on me fingers', especially after the bass part- I just want the ideas out there. It's painting a picture of where the Bush cronies are coming from, as if briefing some diplomat who's being sent to the Middle East only to pillage it and declare war on it.

I also cut a 'radio edit', both to bring it under three minutes and to experiment with 'modern major label style' loudness maximizing- that one is also free download and likewise there's not a thing you can do to pay for it- later I'll get a CD out, full resolution, couldn't wait that long to get this track out there. It says what I needed to say about the whole "Let's have a war so the 'axis of evil' can all die" mindset that really makes me sick at heart. Question the ethics? Let's talk 'get horribly stressed and feel helpless and powerless to freaking stop it'.

That said-

You should note that this my only weapon against this insanity, is taking place through the distribution of mp3s- and if I should happen to write something SO compelling that it seriously made me a problem (I wish- will keep working tho) and the government came and took me away and ordered my ISP and Ampcast to not distribute material that aided terrorists (WHICH! IS! HAPPENING! And it could happen to me as well), then p2p services, notably Gnutella, could continue to circulate my ideas if they were worthy.

This is nothing more than samizdat as practiced in other repressive regimes that marked off whole positions or areas of discourse as forbidden.

Now that the United States is openly one of them and will repress words that are challenging enough to the government's aims, all this 'sheltered' fuss over the DMCA is not as irrelevant as you think. It's the copyright industry wanting to stamp out uncontrolled copying. However, uncontrolled copying can be the last refuge of the patriotic dissident.

It all ties together- we all have to shovel the shit on OUR doorstep. For some people, DMCA weighs more heavily on them than a thousand dead Arabs, all of whom have names and mothers, none of whom you know. Rather than condemning someone like that, how about letting them fight their own battles? I can tell you right now that from my point of view as a musician and songwriter, it matters that people fight DMCA- theoretically defending my copyright values is a piss-poor bargain for losing the ability to have a global communications network that can take suppressed music and art and still get it to where people can think about it. The RIAA/MPAA dreamworld is also a tool for political control rivalling the Cold War USSR, and that matters, especially now.

Dissident Stallmanist musician slashdotter #580, signing off.

I can't help but think that photographer should simply leave the cameras at home and go out to weddings with scenery and LIGHTING... amateurs simply do not understand lighting... she could charge the same price for simply directing photographic situations. A full complement of lights, the right setting, and it's *tweet!* bring over all the amateur digicam people and have THEM do the photo taking. It'd come out much better than their usual stuff. She could have some prosumer digicam herself, but not consider for a moment that the resulting images were what she'd be charging for.

I've been fooling with studio building for a long time now- and currently my focus hasn't been on assembling a bunch of recorders and stuff- people can do that in their homes so easily that it's a tough sell even if I can trounce their quality levels. Instead, I've been getting TOYS. Guitars, basses, now an electronic drum trigger kit (eventually a real acoustic drumkit). People can have all sorts of (half the time warez) software for recording, but they will NOT typically have a mesh-head drum trigger kit to bash away at. I'm hoping to expand that out until I can get business as a studio- NOT for having recording equipment, maybe some people will even want to bring their PCs and use their own! Instead, it will be for having a killer SETTING and the environment that you just don't see in most pocket studios.

It's like that. I hope like hell I'm making the right call here but I honestly don't see how else to do it. The actual media is next to valueless, but making the environment for the media to be produced can be all the difference.

I once produced some totally pro-looking product shots for guitar boxes I make, on an old Connectix Color Quickcam (640x480 webcam). Did it by using the sun for lighting, using a big curtain for strong diffusion where needed, taking lots of identical (except for lighting variations) pictures and averaging them together in software... couldn't overcome the resolution issues but dynamic range ended up being phenomenal, easily pro level...

And of course, there was a time when I could've told you that in a book and probably sold lots of them because it's such a killer effective trick, but now in the digital age I've just replicated those words God knows how many times over the internet for basically nothing, and have to hope that (a) it'll benefit people to know about PTAverage and averaging near-identical digicam pics together for dynamic range, and (b) if I keep giving good ideas, people might figure out that I tend to have them, and record in my studio or something :)

It's really quite a braintwister figuring out what constitutes work and value in an age of digital replication. It's like, to go into the future we need to DESTROY the idea of value for individual collections of bits and somehow reformulate business around expertise and convenience. In that light, the whole 'piracy' thing is counterproductive because it's a concerted attempt to teach people that copying is morally wrong, when it's still effectively costless and effortless.

What would the world be like if ALL copying was completely permitted and there was no IP at all, but then people had to seek out the producers of any particular new thing they wanted produced? Would it be abundance? Would it be drowning in media all of which was worthless?

The other thing is, the SACD player won't play non-watermarked CDs? So if I want to play music by my friend Dave, I can't? To hell with that. Why would I buy such a restrictive player, when everything else on the market says "plays CDR & MP3!"

ampcast.com/chrisj

And if you get the CDs you can rip whatever you want off them in any format you want and even dupe the whole CD- the words 'please copy this CD for your friends' are literally written on every CD.

I mean it. I do this stuff to be listened to, and I can afford not to sell it- I subsist other ways. Play me. I can't pay you to do so, but neither will I sue your ass :D

When the price of used CDs suddenly go up $2 or so and the sales clerk tells the customer "the money's going to the record industry, they bought themselves a law... if you don't like it, call your Congressperson..." the public will get the idea very, very suddenly.

While Joe Sixpack wouldn't recognize "first sale" doctrine... he knows that once one sells something to somebody, that if that person resells it, he has no right to a profit from the item. He's going to start asking loudly and nastily just why the record industry gets to play by a different set of rules.

You think piracy is big-time NOW? When nobody has any further respect for record industry copyright, I predict that ripped CDs will become far more popular than ones purchased in stores.

This is going to piss off a lot of musicians as well. If one doesn't like music, one doesn't try to do it for a living. Once the musician finds out that the record industry is collecting royalties for the second and subsequent resales of a CD that is being passed along to him as a customre and that he will never see a single cent of profit from this, he's going to go ballistic... and many will suddenly realize that with CD-on-demand (try Ampcast ), they don't need the record industry for international distribution.

As for political impact... watch the Democratic Party stampede in all directions away from Hollywood as the GOP finds they've been handed a new campaign issue... they've been pissed off for years about the fact that the entertainment industry never considered the GOP worth buying.

I think the record industry is shooting itself in the head with this law. If anyone knows anybody at MPAA, tell them about this wonderful new idea and to make sure movies are included as well.

I've been playing guitar, building gear, fooling with synthesizers etc. for years and years (see URL link), and after doing music on the Net for a little while, I stumbled across something unexpected. It was called 'Noise'. I went, "hey, really? I bet when I was a stoned teenager I did better 'noise' than that", and then I looked into it a little. And wow! One guy was putting wireless mics in a clothes dryer with bricks. Someone else had written a passionate statement of what NOISE, true NOISE really was. It was uncompromising- no beat, no melody, you had to be getting into producing a blast of brutal sound or you weren't Noise... and I realised, hey, that was part of MY musical background. There were other people into that. It didn't matter that any sane person would turn the result off with a spastic lunge at the 'OFF DEAR GOD TURN IT OFF' button. What mattered was, there were people who WANTED what I used to do with sound.

Result: Hard Vacuum. Knowing there were people who were hardcore fans, I took some of my gear (a three-band compressor I'd built and a shortwave radio) and, in just one long intense session, recorded a whole CD's worth of noise performances, making heavy use of shortwave interference, satellite noises and circuit disruption. For one of the tracks I pulled the plug on the equipment to stop it, resulting in a classic 'weeeeoooooooSNRK' dying electronics noise. It was great! I drew on all the twisted teenager delight in abrasive unmusical noise, combined with a lot of years of musical development telling me when to change it up, keep it moving, go for different effects and results.

That album has been one of my most successful albums. There's stuff I've done where I spent days laboring over detailed little sequenced parts or played until my fingers were blistered, that still hasn't been as popular as this crazed noise crap that was seemingly effortless and talentless.

Why is this? Because there are people for whom raw noise expresses their feelings, their selves- seemingly normal people whose inner 'music' is like RAARRRRRRSSSJJJKKKKKFFTTTTZZZZZBK and most people can't do that, not sincerely, not with understanding. You get people trying to do 'noise' by making little techno ditties using noises for beats, and it is like comparing a wolf with a poodle- somehow even insulting, you want to go 'do you even understand this?'. And with me, it's the wild breed of Noise in its purest form, and anyone into Noise instantly gets a hit off of that and instantly KNOWS 'yeah, this guy gets it'. And I keep meeting people like that. One guy wanted me to come out to do live gigs with him. You'd think there wouldn't be many people into this, but the ones that are, are seriously into it.

And that's what this 'lowercase' stuff is about. It's not the same genre (though I bet they'd understand my noise work, even if it's way too loud for them), but it's the same deal. If you don't like it, well congratulations, join the majority, and you forfeit any possible claim that you understand what's going on here. It's not being done for you. It's never gonna be done for you. If they wanted to make music for YOU, they'd be doing something completely different.

I've been starting up a guitar effect box business and the products I'm making are loaded with innovation, up to and including the sheer minimalism of them, which demands matching innovation from the player (get the sound out of your fingers, not by twisting knobs and choosing presets). In this day and age with 'auto-tune' and Pro Tools, this approach is entirely innovative, plus it sounds a hell of a lot better. What it DOESN'T do is start an argument about intellectual property. You don't have to be pissing somebody off to be innovative :)

-1, insufficiently ontopic ;)

Check out ampcast.

Of course, there are financial concerns inherent in choosing indie music distributors rather than the big record companies with their economies of scale.

In order to be able to play real CDs that are not booby-trapped to destroy your computer... you will have to pay less. :D

But I'm sure we will be understanding if you cannot afford this, and feel you have to pay twice the money to companies who take the money and spend it on ways to make the 'discs' destroy your computer when you attempt to play them. Better the devil you know than the starving, talented, honest and cooperative musician you don't, huh? >;)

Chris Johnson

Sorry, I tried a song (at the mirror!) but the result comes nowhere near The Mighty Stephen Hawking.

While you're talking about doing that and figuring out graphics for installers, I have got...

ten thousand copies of the GPL onto Macintoshes with my CD mastering program, Mastering Tools

Three hundred and seventy copies of the GPL onto an entirely different set of Macintoshes with Filmpaper, a new program I just put out a couple days ago, for screenwriting.

Both of these are seriously hardcore programs aimed at markets that are jammed with software so proprietary that in some cases it uses dongles and key disks. Both pro audio and professional screenwriting are full of relentlessly un-free, user-hostile software- some of the best apps in terms of performance have some of the worst copy-protection. Every copy of one of my programs that goes into such a market goes with source, 'COPYING' and a glimpse of another world- a world where you aren't jerked around by 'godlike software developers' but are allowed to take matters into your own hands if you need to, a world where you could take an active instead of a passive role with the software you use- not to mention a world where your software won't expire, annoy or selfdestruct.

It's pretty funny, actually, when you think about it- lots of Linux open source coders, deities at kernel hacking and C++ multiple inheritance, capable of coding back-end that REALLY WORKS, sitting around trying to figure out why GFX tweaks aren't loving The GIMP or why Windows consumers aren't rushing to grab ISO images of Linux for free. It's simple- DO WHAT YOU LOVE. And if all you love is heavy-duty code-monkeying, do back-end coding. But if you want free software to really build up steam, get passionate about something other than coding and apply your coding skills to it.

The important thing is to have the ONE BEST PROGRAM in any given situation be a Free Software program. I have done this in part with my CD mastering software- the area where it beats anything else out there is output sound quality, so far I can't get other aspects up to professional quality (like workflow, realtime audio and response to control adjusting). Someday I'll have that stuff together too.

You will never, never get to be the 'new Photoshop' by targetting the 'masses'. Ever. Not happening. Forget it. Guy Kawasaki had it figured out back when he was getting the Mac started- you target the TWEAKS. Do everything to target the uber-tweak heavy hitters, the early adopters, the influencers. If you are writing an OSS 'Pro Tools', talk to people in LA and Nashville- better still, BE one of the people in LA and Nashville, and code what YOU need, only then will you get it right. You have to be coding what you personally will need to put hours of use on.

We gotta find more reinassance-geeks. Biotech, robotics- I have sound engineering pretty well covered, but don't use a DAW- if you're writing a spreadsheet it had better be because YOU need to make heavy, heavy use of a spreadsheet, not because 'people in offices use these!'

This pep talk has been brought to you by Chris Johnson, who's placed over 10,000 copies of the GPL on computers where it had never been seen. He's going to continue doing this whatever you do- but if you want to show some freaking support, don't be paying for the SOFTWARE, instead go look into some of the stuff Chris cares about a lot, like his music... be totally unlike most people and buy a CD while you're at it, or just download + rate tunes left and right. Or please yourself- but that would be a BIG help

But you're thinking too small.

Start to MAKE music of your own! Not only do you have the freedom to do so, not only do you probably already have a CD burner that is the modern-day equivalent of a million-dollar mastering lathe in the 60s and 70s, but more and more software for working with music data is not only out there at no cost, but even Free.

I know I'd benefit if people started a movement to consume only music-libre artists, but to consume is not enough. I have people writing me to say "My tastes are really strange so it probably is a bad look-out for you, but I loved your bizarre music!" and I would be still happier to have people saying, "Since listening to the music you do, I decided to go out and make my OWN music!". So far, I don't seem to have motivated anyone to go out and compose, play, record themselves. But if I was to be remembered for something that is about the coolest thing I could ever have done...

So get out there and get more involved than just consuming!

(side note: mind you, I would still be quite happy if people decided to dig through my 10-CD discography and pick out something to buy- for one, I really worked on the uncompressed Red Book CD versions, for two I'm freaking starving, and for three, when I do have money I always spend it on gear, and I'd be growing my GPLed music software more quickly if I was compelled to, for instance by being able to get a newer Mac and having to port the software to OSX, which would be significantly closer to an easy Linux port. I am NOT pleading with people to not buy my CDs- it's more like what Tim O'Reilly said once, that if information sharing meant that he couldn't be a publisher anymore he would willingly give that up rather than try and stamp out information sharing. I'm ready to accept that music is worthless and costs money to do, if that's the true reality, and it wouldn't stop me from occasionally doing it. But it's too early to tell, it really is...)

Go to the URL right next to my 'user 580 info' there and you will find music you can download and KEEP, for free. Go to the artwork section and you'll find the COVERS for burning free CDs of the different albums. And all those 'buy now' buttons and crap are for ACTUAL RED BOOK COMPLIANT NEVER-BEEN-COMPRESSED HIGH-RESOLUTION-MASTER CDS. Real CDs done right.

And on every CD is written: please copy this CD for your friends.

The CDs have bonus tracks, every time- and why not? But I totally encourage people to rip the CDs in any format you'd like to see around- 256K mp3? Ogg Vorbis? WMA, which I despise? Go nuts, you are free to do so! And then share the fsckers on Gnutella or whatever else pleases you. I mean it.

There are some artists (while he lived, John Lennon was very much one of them) for whom living right is more important than kaching! Mind you, if I wanted to get economically raped, I'd solicit a major label contract instead of keeping rights to my own work ;) but you HAVE to be able to imagine where all this is heading.

In a world where digital information is completely fluid, trying to fix a representation of the information is absolutely pointless. It's fucking crazy is what it is, excuse the strong language. It is the equivalent of wanting to charge for individual electrons in the electricity that powers your house. It's wanting to charge for water molecules in a rainstorm in the middle of the ocean. (damn good analogy actually, as most of the water is undrinkable, the value of really good water is high, yet it's falling from the sky all around you anyhow)

When ultimate broadband, ultimate storage, ultimate compression and encoding and playback happen, what will we have then? You will log onto the internet and someone will put up a file on a website or whatever. "Recorded Music (235T)" Oh, it's the archive of the complete history of recorded music! 235 terabytes. Gee, that's only a five minute download, *click* and so you have the history of recorded music on your Holo-Uber-Optical-Drive.

Now what?

The kind of incredible, unbelievable liquidity of information we're headed for (quick question: over your current modem or broadband, how long does it take you to download more written text literature than you could ever possibly read in your life?) changes the whole concept of the entertainment industry. It is no longer a one-to-many situation. Information storage and processing is expanding so fast that the new problem is not distribution, but overchoice.

At Ampcast, I have an album that is 'noise' music. It's the raging shrieks and staticy roars of a processed shortwave radio picking up things like satellites and atmospheric disturbances. Some people really like this kind of stuff, but most sane people would hate it. Some people really hate Britney Spears but most sane people would acknowledge the cynical competence of her production and tap their foot along to the artifical pop tripe. Yet, in data form, both sorts of music take up about the same number of bytes. And not only that, but an increasingly manageable number of bytes- no sort of problem to keep around. The future will mean you will have every imaginable music and film at your fingertips- and the question will not be 'how can I get this', but 'what do I actually like?'

In the past it was difficult enough to deliver music, that you had to go with what would appeal to a broad cross-section of people. This problem is DEAD... so on the one hand the future contains an ever-widening bunch of genres and musical/artistic styles (try understanding modern electronic dance music forms! Incredible forking and proliferation of distinct stylized forms...) and on the other hand it becomes virtually impossible to sort out what actually interests you from the 20 million other musics and arts that don't do anything for you...

If the entertainment industry had any clue at all they'd be trying to get a handle on this. What they're actually doing, for instance by cracking down on webcasting that tries to intelligently predict listener tastes, is destroy it. But they CANNOT destroy the need for it- because with information as liquid as it's gonna be, the amount of overchoice produces a compelling need for this new approach.

We will end up with a succession of entirely synthetic (possibly CGI!) worldwide superstars- whose appeal is so relentlessly broad that it has no depth or staying power at all- and everything else will be CHAOS... and choice. And just a hint of that meritocracy that the entertainment industry's been outgrowing.

Music by this longwinded geek
Even less commercial music
Who told him he could sing?

Chris Johnson

Go to the URL right next to my 'user 580 info' there and you will find music you can download and KEEP, for free. Go to the artwork section and you'll find the COVERS for burning free CDs of the different albums. And all those 'buy now' buttons and crap are for ACTUAL RED BOOK COMPLIANT NEVER-BEEN-COMPRESSED HIGH-RESOLUTION-MASTER CDS. Real CDs done right.

And on every CD is written: please copy this CD for your friends.

The CDs have bonus tracks, every time- and why not? But I totally encourage people to rip the CDs in any format you'd like to see around- 256K mp3? Ogg Vorbis? WMA, which I despise? Go nuts, you are free to do so! And then share the fsckers on Gnutella or whatever else pleases you. I mean it.

There are some artists (while he lived, John Lennon was very much one of them) for whom living right is more important than kaching! Mind you, if I wanted to get economically raped, I'd solicit a major label contract instead of keeping rights to my own work ;) but you HAVE to be able to imagine where all this is heading.

In a world where digital information is completely fluid, trying to fix a representation of the information is absolutely pointless. It's fucking crazy is what it is, excuse the strong language. It is the equivalent of wanting to charge for individual electrons in the electricity that powers your house. It's wanting to charge for water molecules in a rainstorm in the middle of the ocean. (damn good analogy actually, as most of the water is undrinkable, the value of really good water is high, yet it's falling from the sky all around you anyhow)

When ultimate broadband, ultimate storage, ultimate compression and encoding and playback happen, what will we have then? You will log onto the internet and someone will put up a file on a website or whatever. "Recorded Music (235T)" Oh, it's the archive of the complete history of recorded music! 235 terabytes. Gee, that's only a five minute download, *click* and so you have the history of recorded music on your Holo-Uber-Optical-Drive.

Now what?

The kind of incredible, unbelievable liquidity of information we're headed for (quick question: over your current modem or broadband, how long does it take you to download more written text literature than you could ever possibly read in your life?) changes the whole concept of the entertainment industry. It is no longer a one-to-many situation. Information storage and processing is expanding so fast that the new problem is not distribution, but overchoice.

At Ampcast, I have an album that is 'noise' music. It's the raging shrieks and staticy roars of a processed shortwave radio picking up things like satellites and atmospheric disturbances. Some people really like this kind of stuff, but most sane people would hate it. Some people really hate Britney Spears but most sane people would acknowledge the cynical competence of her production and tap their foot along to the artifical pop tripe. Yet, in data form, both sorts of music take up about the same number of bytes. And not only that, but an increasingly manageable number of bytes- no sort of problem to keep around. The future will mean you will have every imaginable music and film at your fingertips- and the question will not be 'how can I get this', but 'what do I actually like?'

In the past it was difficult enough to deliver music, that you had to go with what would appeal to a broad cross-section of people. This problem is DEAD... so on the one hand the future contains an ever-widening bunch of genres and musical/artistic styles (try understanding modern electronic dance music forms! Incredible forking and proliferation of distinct stylized forms...) and on the other hand it becomes virtually impossible to sort out what actually interests you from the 20 million other musics and arts that don't do anything for you...

If the entertainment industry had any clue at all they'd be trying to get a handle on this. What they're actually doing, for instance by cracking down on webcasting that tries to intelligently predict listener tastes, is destroy it. But they CANNOT destroy the need for it- because with information as liquid as it's gonna be, the amount of overchoice produces a compelling need for this new approach.

We will end up with a succession of entirely synthetic (possibly CGI!) worldwide superstars- whose appeal is so relentlessly broad that it has no depth or staying power at all- and everything else will be CHAOS... and choice. And just a hint of that meritocracy that the entertainment industry's been outgrowing.

Music by this longwinded geek
Even less commercial music
Who told him he could sing?

Chris Johnson

Go to the URL right next to my 'user 580 info' there and you will find music you can download and KEEP, for free. Go to the artwork section and you'll find the COVERS for burning free CDs of the different albums. And all those 'buy now' buttons and crap are for ACTUAL RED BOOK COMPLIANT NEVER-BEEN-COMPRESSED HIGH-RESOLUTION-MASTER CDS. Real CDs done right.

And on every CD is written: please copy this CD for your friends.

The CDs have bonus tracks, every time- and why not? But I totally encourage people to rip the CDs in any format you'd like to see around- 256K mp3? Ogg Vorbis? WMA, which I despise? Go nuts, you are free to do so! And then share the fsckers on Gnutella or whatever else pleases you. I mean it.

There are some artists (while he lived, John Lennon was very much one of them) for whom living right is more important than kaching! Mind you, if I wanted to get economically raped, I'd solicit a major label contract instead of keeping rights to my own work ;) but you HAVE to be able to imagine where all this is heading.

In a world where digital information is completely fluid, trying to fix a representation of the information is absolutely pointless. It's fucking crazy is what it is, excuse the strong language. It is the equivalent of wanting to charge for individual electrons in the electricity that powers your house. It's wanting to charge for water molecules in a rainstorm in the middle of the ocean. (damn good analogy actually, as most of the water is undrinkable, the value of really good water is high, yet it's falling from the sky all around you anyhow)

When ultimate broadband, ultimate storage, ultimate compression and encoding and playback happen, what will we have then? You will log onto the internet and someone will put up a file on a website or whatever. "Recorded Music (235T)" Oh, it's the archive of the complete history of recorded music! 235 terabytes. Gee, that's only a five minute download, *click* and so you have the history of recorded music on your Holo-Uber-Optical-Drive.

Now what?

The kind of incredible, unbelievable liquidity of information we're headed for (quick question: over your current modem or broadband, how long does it take you to download more written text literature than you could ever possibly read in your life?) changes the whole concept of the entertainment industry. It is no longer a one-to-many situation. Information storage and processing is expanding so fast that the new problem is not distribution, but overchoice.

At Ampcast, I have an album that is 'noise' music. It's the raging shrieks and staticy roars of a processed shortwave radio picking up things like satellites and atmospheric disturbances. Some people really like this kind of stuff, but most sane people would hate it. Some people really hate Britney Spears but most sane people would acknowledge the cynical competence of her production and tap their foot along to the artifical pop tripe. Yet, in data form, both sorts of music take up about the same number of bytes. And not only that, but an increasingly manageable number of bytes- no sort of problem to keep around. The future will mean you will have every imaginable music and film at your fingertips- and the question will not be 'how can I get this', but 'what do I actually like?'

In the past it was difficult enough to deliver music, that you had to go with what would appeal to a broad cross-section of people. This problem is DEAD... so on the one hand the future contains an ever-widening bunch of genres and musical/artistic styles (try understanding modern electronic dance music forms! Incredible forking and proliferation of distinct stylized forms...) and on the other hand it becomes virtually impossible to sort out what actually interests you from the 20 million other musics and arts that don't do anything for you...

If the entertainment industry had any clue at all they'd be trying to get a handle on this. What they're actually doing, for instance by cracking down on webcasting that tries to intelligently predict listener tastes, is destroy it. But they CANNOT destroy the need for it- because with information as liquid as it's gonna be, the amount of overchoice produces a compelling need for this new approach.

We will end up with a succession of entirely synthetic (possibly CGI!) worldwide superstars- whose appeal is so relentlessly broad that it has no depth or staying power at all- and everything else will be CHAOS... and choice. And just a hint of that meritocracy that the entertainment industry's been outgrowing.

Music by this longwinded geek
Even less commercial music
Who told him he could sing?

Chris Johnson

The real independent music sites are now places like ampcast, javamusic, and electronicscene. The one I use is Ampcast, and my music page can be found by a sufficiently determined search next to my user #580 info :)

I'm by no means saying you're wrong to go shoveling through the music on mp3.com- I myself got some fantastic shakuhachi music there last year. Just know that mp3.com's probably one of the weakest indie sites out there (as well as being RIAA now). I'll give 'em this, however, the really specialized stuff is well represented.

KOMPRESSOR mp3 downloads

This isn't an abstract comment- I'm soaking in it ;) for example: I make music and distribute it online. I use Ampcast for this- they let me m produce very high quality CDs. At that page, near the bottom, you'll find a tune called 'Horse'. (At the moment, their streaming software is sometimes broken by VBR mp3s, so only the download link works. If you _do_ download it and put up with the site-registering, maybe you could rate the tune while you're at it? It'd be a help)

The reason I point out 'Horse' in spite of knowing there's technical glitches with the streaming versions, is it helps to make my point. Horse is off an album dedicated to animal themes expressed in music. I wanted to do something big, maybe a bit grandiose, reminiscent of schoolgirl horse obsessions and that kind of exaggerated lushness and grandness. There's music out there which is like this- namely, Pink Floyd's "Atom Heart Mother", which has parts that were literally called 'theme from an imaginary western' by the band as they were doing it. I think they in turn were drawing from movie soundtracks. It was the mood and sweep of this music I wanted, not an exact cloning. I ended up using similar but different chords- intentionally making the progression go somewhere else, using strings and piano to give an upward swoop to the progression, and laying down possibly the best guitar solo I've ever played, which thanks to the chords has lots of David Gilmour flavor (not an easy thing!). The result is 'Horse'- and while it plainly 'feels' like Atom Heart Mother, it just as plainly IS NOT.

This is permissible already. George Harrison got in trouble for (inadvertently) copying 'He's So Fine' almost exactly- had he changed the basic melody of the hook, the lawsuit would have been a nonissue. So- where is the need for a GPL-type license when you CAN ALREADY take and modify melodies?

I can see that it gets more complicated when you are dealing with, say, Puff Daddy heavily sampling the Police's "Every Breath You Take"- taking and making use of someone else's actual recording, with their playing and sound engineering as well as just the notes and rhythms. Wanting a license that will permit this as well is reasonable. But how many people consider just asking? Is your ability to use someone else's RECORDING so compellingly important that it needs to be covered by a license to protect your rights? When you can 'cop' the feel of the music, change some things, and be home free?

That said, I have heard some disturbing things- having trouble finding it, but I've heard of jazz recording sessions where a soloist would be stopped during improvisation if they quoted the intellectual property of a representative of an IP holder. Like *tweet!* "That's too much like 'Kind Of Blue', outta the pool!". I wish I could find the reference to this: if this sort of thing actually becomes common, it'd be a big problem. I'm _sure_ I ran across this somewhere, but now I can't find it. Well... good! Means it's not a problem yet ;)

Yeah. Go to www.ampcast.com/chrisj and go nuts, I have a LOT of samples up. What I do at this point is I put all but one track up on each album "officially", and have no gripe if anyone fills in by putting up the missing tracks later. Gotta get the CDs out first tho, or there's nothing to rip from. I also have weirder stuff, and some pop/rock type music that's fairly old though I need to be coming out with some new songs-with-actual-words-in. Lastly, my mastering software (Mac, but GPLed anyhow) is at www.airwindows.com/dithering.

Try not to be too freaked out by the variety of music on my ampcast pages :) I like a LOT of different stuff. I've done brutal instrumental rock, sorta sedated trancey retro stuff, demented lowfi electronic goofiness, touching melodic pop, stagnant atonal droney ambience, seriously challenging polymetric electronica, stomping country-rock and the best freaking Noise (in the hardcore uncompromising sense) out there :D however, there is no living human who likes ALL that stuff but me, so be warned. God knows what I'll do next. Easy listening, maybe. Oh, I forgot the fretless guitar Frippertronics soundscapes, silly ME. ;)

Cheers. I think you can stream stuff if Ampcast bugs you about registering. They only want to keep people from cheating as THEY, not you, pay me a royalty on downloads. I hope to bring them in some money with my CDs when I get them all up there- we have to start doing actual business and selling CDs if they're going to continue the royalty-paying. Oh, and you can 'rate' stuff if you make a myAmp account: there's charts of a sort, pretty decent really, you can rate stuff up or down and it affects the chart.

Yeah. Go to www.ampcast.com/chrisj and go nuts, I have a LOT of samples up. What I do at this point is I put all but one track up on each album "officially", and have no gripe if anyone fills in by putting up the missing tracks later. Gotta get the CDs out first tho, or there's nothing to rip from. I also have weirder stuff, and some pop/rock type music that's fairly old though I need to be coming out with some new songs-with-actual-words-in. Lastly, my mastering software (Mac, but GPLed anyhow) is at www.airwindows.com/dithering.

Try not to be too freaked out by the variety of music on my ampcast pages :) I like a LOT of different stuff. I've done brutal instrumental rock, sorta sedated trancey retro stuff, demented lowfi electronic goofiness, touching melodic pop, stagnant atonal droney ambience, seriously challenging polymetric electronica, stomping country-rock and the best freaking Noise (in the hardcore uncompromising sense) out there :D however, there is no living human who likes ALL that stuff but me, so be warned. God knows what I'll do next. Easy listening, maybe. Oh, I forgot the fretless guitar Frippertronics soundscapes, silly ME. ;)

Cheers. I think you can stream stuff if Ampcast bugs you about registering. They only want to keep people from cheating as THEY, not you, pay me a royalty on downloads. I hope to bring them in some money with my CDs when I get them all up there- we have to start doing actual business and selling CDs if they're going to continue the royalty-paying. Oh, and you can 'rate' stuff if you make a myAmp account: there's charts of a sort, pretty decent really, you can rate stuff up or down and it affects the chart.

Yeah. Go to www.ampcast.com/chrisj and go nuts, I have a LOT of samples up. What I do at this point is I put all but one track up on each album "officially", and have no gripe if anyone fills in by putting up the missing tracks later. Gotta get the CDs out first tho, or there's nothing to rip from. I also have weirder stuff, and some pop/rock type music that's fairly old though I need to be coming out with some new songs-with-actual-words-in. Lastly, my mastering software (Mac, but GPLed anyhow) is at www.airwindows.com/dithering.

Try not to be too freaked out by the variety of music on my ampcast pages :) I like a LOT of different stuff. I've done brutal instrumental rock, sorta sedated trancey retro stuff, demented lowfi electronic goofiness, touching melodic pop, stagnant atonal droney ambience, seriously challenging polymetric electronica, stomping country-rock and the best freaking Noise (in the hardcore uncompromising sense) out there :D however, there is no living human who likes ALL that stuff but me, so be warned. God knows what I'll do next. Easy listening, maybe. Oh, I forgot the fretless guitar Frippertronics soundscapes, silly ME. ;)

Cheers. I think you can stream stuff if Ampcast bugs you about registering. They only want to keep people from cheating as THEY, not you, pay me a royalty on downloads. I hope to bring them in some money with my CDs when I get them all up there- we have to start doing actual business and selling CDs if they're going to continue the royalty-paying. Oh, and you can 'rate' stuff if you make a myAmp account: there's charts of a sort, pretty decent really, you can rate stuff up or down and it affects the chart.

I'm just finishing the last stages of a massive remastering spree- taking TEN albums, pretty much my entire catalog, and bringing them up to that standard for selling on Ampcast. Sometimes that's a lot of work.

I'm a vinyl record freak myself- I don't intrinsically like CD sound, much less mp3. I have written dithering software to MAKE my CDs sound good enough that I think they represent what the master tape was. I've gone in and done spectral noise gating on certain masters originally from tape, or with hissing guitar preamps present. I've built from scratch a binary-coded passive attentuation mixing console to sum the tracks with unlimited resolution, and bought expensive audiophile input caps (Hovland Musicaps) for the inputs of my A/D converter, a modded Lexicon.

That only gets you so far- after all, my CDs do literally say on them "Please copy this CD for your friends" so obviously, while I accept what will happen anyway, I must also figure out what MORE to do. Beyond 'respect' or 'loyalty'. What can I give people that's cooler even than that?

And so I turn to packaging. I've been wrestling with Ampcast, persuading them to allow me to specify the total form of every piece of artwork on the CD case. I want it to be like when you have a record and you put the cover where you can see it while listening to the record. I want there to be no dotcom banners and small print all over the fucking album cover. I want classic album art purity- and since I'm dealing with an indie and not the RIAA, and since I'm willing to trade off being in Tower Records for producing my artwork RIGHT (NO bar codes!), I may get it- and I'm proceeding as if I can have total artistic freedom.

The most extreme case so far has been my "Postcards From Tehigue" CD. The music is up as mp3s (128K VBR) and the CD is full 44.1/16 dithered with fancy techniques from hi-res masters, but it's funny because it's a wonderfully hi-res capturing of the sound of an antique Apple IIgs making really strange proto-electronic music- done back in 1986 or so. The actual music is pretty well represented by the mp3s, though you miss out on a bit of antique electronic SKRONK that way- so what is to be done with the packaging to match the goofy coolness of this bizarre music?

Answer: I scanned the actual motherboard of a IIgs at pretty high resolution (had to reduce to 1425x1425 for the cover- I used free software from Helmut Dersch, "Panorama Tools", to do the reduction with 256x256 sinc interpolation for REALLY SHARP reduction- again, taking effort to do stuff as 'right' as possible), and I made the tray liner so that the spines are no more or less than the END of the circuit board- some jacks and stuff, metal bits, also scanned with great clarity. No logos. No listings of the producer's girlfriend and dog (separately or, um, overloaded ;) ), no pointless enumeration of the street address of the recording company- no names or numbers on the spine, either! The package looks as much as possible like a small circuit board stuck in with your CDs, with ONE exception I couldn't resist- on the CPU chip, I used Photoshop (cloning and several overlay modes) to copy the exact appearance of the printing on other chips, down to the color and the texturing of the surface of the chip, to write as if it'd been printed there:

POSTCARDS FROM TEHIGUE
CHRIS JOHNSON

...so small that you can't possibly see it in the cover art.

I really think that if you are trying to make ART (of whatever sort- even if it's kind of weird) there is always a way to keep following that out to where you're producing something that DOES have a value of uniqueness- even in a world of Star Trek Replicators where NOTHING can be 'unique'. In that world, what you end up doing is producing something so iconoclastic that you end up with just a few people totally floored by it- who're ready to pick up your version of it simply because, well, it's not that much more expensive than copying every detail, and it's YOUR version- the closest they can get to what you actually touched and did.

If you could buy a beautiful painting with a bar code, and download jpgs of the beautiful painting with its bar code, etc. and you had a chance at getting a copy WITHOUT the bar code- would you do it? If you could get a clone without bar code, versus a print that the artist had produced with his own hands (rather like Andy Warhol's screen printing experiments), how much is that worth to you? How much is it worth to a rabid fan of the artist? How much is it worth, if the art is so idiosyncratic that nobody else will make it for you the way you like?

I'm just finishing the last stages of a massive remastering spree- taking TEN albums, pretty much my entire catalog, and bringing them up to that standard for selling on Ampcast. Sometimes that's a lot of work.

I'm a vinyl record freak myself- I don't intrinsically like CD sound, much less mp3. I have written dithering software to MAKE my CDs sound good enough that I think they represent what the master tape was. I've gone in and done spectral noise gating on certain masters originally from tape, or with hissing guitar preamps present. I've built from scratch a binary-coded passive attentuation mixing console to sum the tracks with unlimited resolution, and bought expensive audiophile input caps (Hovland Musicaps) for the inputs of my A/D converter, a modded Lexicon.

That only gets you so far- after all, my CDs do literally say on them "Please copy this CD for your friends" so obviously, while I accept what will happen anyway, I must also figure out what MORE to do. Beyond 'respect' or 'loyalty'. What can I give people that's cooler even than that?

And so I turn to packaging. I've been wrestling with Ampcast, persuading them to allow me to specify the total form of every piece of artwork on the CD case. I want it to be like when you have a record and you put the cover where you can see it while listening to the record. I want there to be no dotcom banners and small print all over the fucking album cover. I want classic album art purity- and since I'm dealing with an indie and not the RIAA, and since I'm willing to trade off being in Tower Records for producing my artwork RIGHT (NO bar codes!), I may get it- and I'm proceeding as if I can have total artistic freedom.

The most extreme case so far has been my "Postcards From Tehigue" CD. The music is up as mp3s (128K VBR) and the CD is full 44.1/16 dithered with fancy techniques from hi-res masters, but it's funny because it's a wonderfully hi-res capturing of the sound of an antique Apple IIgs making really strange proto-electronic music- done back in 1986 or so. The actual music is pretty well represented by the mp3s, though you miss out on a bit of antique electronic SKRONK that way- so what is to be done with the packaging to match the goofy coolness of this bizarre music?

Answer: I scanned the actual motherboard of a IIgs at pretty high resolution (had to reduce to 1425x1425 for the cover- I used free software from Helmut Dersch, "Panorama Tools", to do the reduction with 256x256 sinc interpolation for REALLY SHARP reduction- again, taking effort to do stuff as 'right' as possible), and I made the tray liner so that the spines are no more or less than the END of the circuit board- some jacks and stuff, metal bits, also scanned with great clarity. No logos. No listings of the producer's girlfriend and dog (separately or, um, overloaded ;) ), no pointless enumeration of the street address of the recording company- no names or numbers on the spine, either! The package looks as much as possible like a small circuit board stuck in with your CDs, with ONE exception I couldn't resist- on the CPU chip, I used Photoshop (cloning and several overlay modes) to copy the exact appearance of the printing on other chips, down to the color and the texturing of the surface of the chip, to write as if it'd been printed there:

POSTCARDS FROM TEHIGUE
CHRIS JOHNSON

...so small that you can't possibly see it in the cover art.

I really think that if you are trying to make ART (of whatever sort- even if it's kind of weird) there is always a way to keep following that out to where you're producing something that DOES have a value of uniqueness- even in a world of Star Trek Replicators where NOTHING can be 'unique'. In that world, what you end up doing is producing something so iconoclastic that you end up with just a few people totally floored by it- who're ready to pick up your version of it simply because, well, it's not that much more expensive than copying every detail, and it's YOUR version- the closest they can get to what you actually touched and did.

If you could buy a beautiful painting with a bar code, and download jpgs of the beautiful painting with its bar code, etc. and you had a chance at getting a copy WITHOUT the bar code- would you do it? If you could get a clone without bar code, versus a print that the artist had produced with his own hands (rather like Andy Warhol's screen printing experiments), how much is that worth to you? How much is it worth to a rabid fan of the artist? How much is it worth, if the art is so idiosyncratic that nobody else will make it for you the way you like?

I'm just finishing the last stages of a massive remastering spree- taking TEN albums, pretty much my entire catalog, and bringing them up to that standard for selling on Ampcast. Sometimes that's a lot of work.

I'm a vinyl record freak myself- I don't intrinsically like CD sound, much less mp3. I have written dithering software to MAKE my CDs sound good enough that I think they represent what the master tape was. I've gone in and done spectral noise gating on certain masters originally from tape, or with hissing guitar preamps present. I've built from scratch a binary-coded passive attentuation mixing console to sum the tracks with unlimited resolution, and bought expensive audiophile input caps (Hovland Musicaps) for the inputs of my A/D converter, a modded Lexicon.

That only gets you so far- after all, my CDs do literally say on them "Please copy this CD for your friends" so obviously, while I accept what will happen anyway, I must also figure out what MORE to do. Beyond 'respect' or 'loyalty'. What can I give people that's cooler even than that?

And so I turn to packaging. I've been wrestling with Ampcast, persuading them to allow me to specify the total form of every piece of artwork on the CD case. I want it to be like when you have a record and you put the cover where you can see it while listening to the record. I want there to be no dotcom banners and small print all over the fucking album cover. I want classic album art purity- and since I'm dealing with an indie and not the RIAA, and since I'm willing to trade off being in Tower Records for producing my artwork RIGHT (NO bar codes!), I may get it- and I'm proceeding as if I can have total artistic freedom.

The most extreme case so far has been my "Postcards From Tehigue" CD. The music is up as mp3s (128K VBR) and the CD is full 44.1/16 dithered with fancy techniques from hi-res masters, but it's funny because it's a wonderfully hi-res capturing of the sound of an antique Apple IIgs making really strange proto-electronic music- done back in 1986 or so. The actual music is pretty well represented by the mp3s, though you miss out on a bit of antique electronic SKRONK that way- so what is to be done with the packaging to match the goofy coolness of this bizarre music?

Answer: I scanned the actual motherboard of a IIgs at pretty high resolution (had to reduce to 1425x1425 for the cover- I used free software from Helmut Dersch, "Panorama Tools", to do the reduction with 256x256 sinc interpolation for REALLY SHARP reduction- again, taking effort to do stuff as 'right' as possible), and I made the tray liner so that the spines are no more or less than the END of the circuit board- some jacks and stuff, metal bits, also scanned with great clarity. No logos. No listings of the producer's girlfriend and dog (separately or, um, overloaded ;) ), no pointless enumeration of the street address of the recording company- no names or numbers on the spine, either! The package looks as much as possible like a small circuit board stuck in with your CDs, with ONE exception I couldn't resist- on the CPU chip, I used Photoshop (cloning and several overlay modes) to copy the exact appearance of the printing on other chips, down to the color and the texturing of the surface of the chip, to write as if it'd been printed there:

POSTCARDS FROM TEHIGUE
CHRIS JOHNSON

...so small that you can't possibly see it in the cover art.

I really think that if you are trying to make ART (of whatever sort- even if it's kind of weird) there is always a way to keep following that out to where you're producing something that DOES have a value of uniqueness- even in a world of Star Trek Replicators where NOTHING can be 'unique'. In that world, what you end up doing is producing something so iconoclastic that you end up with just a few people totally floored by it- who're ready to pick up your version of it simply because, well, it's not that much more expensive than copying every detail, and it's YOUR version- the closest they can get to what you actually touched and did.

If you could buy a beautiful painting with a bar code, and download jpgs of the beautiful painting with its bar code, etc. and you had a chance at getting a copy WITHOUT the bar code- would you do it? If you could get a clone without bar code, versus a print that the artist had produced with his own hands (rather like Andy Warhol's screen printing experiments), how much is that worth to you? How much is it worth to a rabid fan of the artist? How much is it worth, if the art is so idiosyncratic that nobody else will make it for you the way you like?

I would _love_ to jam live on synthetic sounds- though my facility is much more with guitar and bass. It doesn't have to be pushing buttons to play premade loops.

Some types of music, like Techno in the strictest interpretation, may be all about calculation and forbid messy human expressiveness, but that is NOT about the technology. To me the exciting thing about technology is when it can let you project emotion beyond what traditional instruments allow...

I took an old FM synth module (Yamaha FB-01) and programmed it so it made a mellow, voicelike tone. Then I did something I couldn't do with other instruments- I mapped the modulation wheel to a really, really fast squarewave vibrato, like 50 hz maybe. That gave me a solo voice that could play notes, could pitchbend, but could ALSO pitchbend half of itself and leave the other half fixed, except instead of making a double note it made a weird composite sound like tracker 'fake chord generating'- except, THAT is done with harmonic notes...

I ended up with a solo voice where you can ride two separate 'bend' controls to produce a weird diffracted sound that can range from a moan to a prismatic spray of inharmonic tone color (and now I've told you how to make one for yourself ;) )

But playing it- ahhhh. Do you want to make a note or a vocalization? Are you ready to wrestle with the pitchbend as the thing breaks up and refuses to 'diffract' to the note you're trying to hit? This is what really makes it an INSTRUMENT- yet it is totally synthetic, can't exist in nature, and doesn't even model any analog process. Technology in music can mean more than thumpa thumpa thumpa. AND it doesn't preclude alive improvisation and interaction.

If anyone is interested in hearing my take on the instrument I've described- tsk, you should be making your own music using it! ;) but if you DO want to hear what it sounds like, I have this tune (always been pretty popular really) called "Rain Dragon" that uses it as a lead instrument. In that tune I make it moan and angst around like a sick animal and also do some of the twitchy diffracted-note-hitting stuff I was talking about, it's in the higher registers and you can hear it sometimes struggling to hit a note that keeps diffracting off to the sides- bit hard to describe really. But this is COMPUTER stuff. It's played as if it was some tricky acoustic instrument like a saxophone, but it's a computer process that just happens to be complex enough to give rise to unexpected and twitchy behaviors that you can use in your improv...

(by the way: gotta explain something about 'Ampcast'. The site actually will give me a nickel for each of you who goes and downloads a track completely- but if you think about it, this explains why they have you make a 'myAmp' account- doesn't cost you anything but people would cheat if there was no way to count how many NICKELS they're supposed to pay me, get it? They can't just go by server logs. I know 80% of you guys could whip up a script to fake 3,000,000 downloads if you wanted- and please don't fake downloads on my account- and that's why they gotta take note of which myAmp account DLed what. Also, not that ANYbody ever notices, but you're also allowed to RATE stuff at Ampcast, and this is pretty much the only thing that will boost people in the 'Ampcast Charts' which aren't that bad for an OMD chart system- so if you want to see ol' Slashdot User #580, the GPL-using free software writing noisy indie-supporting musician here, doing well and being listened to, then take the effort to 'rate' the tunes! If that bugs you, then stream stuff (which doesn't pay anybody anything, might not ask for a registration) until you find something of mine you HATE, then register just to give it a BAD rating. Fair enough? ;D )

(since I own copyright to that one, and God knows nobody else will have written anything like that, I COULD actually license it ;) or maybe "Bone Dragon" with its perky marimbas and short-circuiting electronic device solo?)

...just another actual musician...

(since I own copyright to that one, and God knows nobody else will have written anything like that, I COULD actually license it ;) or maybe "Bone Dragon" with its perky marimbas and short-circuiting electronic device solo?)

...just another actual musician...

But also- there just seems to be something not right with asking directly for support like that, money crunch or no. I mean, support over and above what they produce... even though they do certainly work hard...

As it happens, I DO have a money crunch, and I too have been working my butt off. If you go to ampcast and poke around, you'll find loads of newly remastered stuff all of which is going to have proper CDs available. I understand you can stream stuff just at random- if you register w. the site (I know, but hear me out) you can download it all free and I get a nickel for each DL without you having to pay for it, and if you _rate_ the tunes I can appear on the 'charts' they have- I ask for bad ratings too if that's your honest opinion, it's all feedback and there's somebody to like everything.

Plus (and this is where the money crunch comes from) I've been placing orders for electronic parts. I'm the guy who puts out the GPLed mastering app Mastering Tools (which I use on all my stuff for Ampcast), and I've been building stompboxes and mixers and stuff for over a decade- and I'm onto a design that promises to be a _really_ slick mini-guitar DI that comes in three gain levels. Just a teeny box with two jacks on it, and you control volume from the guitar- the Anti-Line-6-POD- so I'm rationing food because buying 10 project enclosures, 50 .1 polypropylene capacitors, 100 battery clips etc was of course WAY more important. (any true geek would understand this without having to be told ;) )

So yeah- I'm in a money crunch too. But here's the difference: _I_ saved enough money that I can buy cat food, some boring human food, etc. I paid all my bills at the beginning of the month and I completely paid a debt that had to do with a retroactive rent hike.

So I'm not in a threatening money crunch- and I can afford to mouth off and make fun of my own foolish situation because I PLANNED IT and I'll get by even if everyone goes "God, not HIM again!" and scrolls on with an elegant shudder of geeky distaste ;)

But there's a deeper level which I'm not sure if I can express. For starters- I've worked to the brink of RSI on my GPLed Mastering Tools program- but THAT is not for sale. That's free. I've got 7 finished Red Book CDs next to me, which are going to Ampcast to be duplicated on demand, and THOSE are for sale. My business is making them so good, making the packaging and the art and everything so nice that it's _worth_ having a proper one instead of some cloned thing with magic-marker label. I'm trying to make these guitar stompboxes- THAT is tangible, and my efforts of designing them are 'sunk costs' like the coding on Mastering Tools- it's what I can produce that people CAN'T just clone effortlessly, or the ways in which I can at least reward someone's good will (like in buying a CD). I'm OK with people having that good will but nothing I've done or ever will do will entitle me to it, and I refuse to ask for it without also wising off and de-hard-selling it ;)

That said- it is not THAT unreasonable to encourage people to buy Mandrake dists. I'm Mac-based, and I bought the LinuxPPC dist, and kept it even though it didn't work on my main machine. Now I have another old Mac and this one will run it, so it's now installed on one of my machines. But if you asked me to donate money to LinuxPPC- well, I don't know. I'm not sure I like that as a motivation. I sure don't do my OSS work so I can ask for DONATIONS. I do it to make other stuff that I do, better. Then I share that part of the work.

Coincidentally, when I loaded this comment page, the first thing that I saw was a ThinkGeek ad. It's the one about tiny radio-controlled desktop tanks for $58.99 that can play laser tag with each other. I know, because I went STRAIGHT to ThinkGeek to look at them. And if I wasn't in a serious money crunch, that would be terribly compelling- an argument to give money to ThinkGeek because they'd come up with something to sell me that was SO COOL that I just couldn't resist it.

I don't know when or if I'll be on that level- to out-cool tiny robot tanks is quite an order, though my tiny two-jack guitar-amp effect box sounds some of the same notes (miniatureness, elegance, effectiveness, more miniatureness etc), but to me THAT is the area to emulate. That's where Mandrake should be heading... if it is even possible, with a Linux dist. It's just that 'toss a few bucks my way because _I_ am worthy' is a hell of a lot more nebulous than 'toss a few bucks my way and you can have one of THESE'... with the latter, it's a simple question of whether the thing is really cool or not, where with the former it gets into your evaluation of WHY the person is supposed to deserve support when there's a million people out there who deserve to pursue their work without money headaches...

Is this art?

It's music- instrumental, some with electronic synthesis, some with live playing of keyboards or guitars, sometimes crazed and difficult composing like putting seven notes in the space of 5/4 and breaking up the second and third into 'triplets' using custom-written software because the regular sequencing software just can't deal with time distortions that outlandish. Weeks of recording. Months of rewriting and improving mastering software, and remastering it all. Years of work. Decades (well- two) of dedication.

Yet- and attend, please...

You might HATE it, should you be forced to cough up money for this?

Here's the deal: you can always find someone who'll jerk you off, artistically, for money. Popular music is like that. Usually, when someone says 'give them money so they can make a living doing art' they mean the REAL guys, the people with weird hollow stares, twitching with the burning of their creative fuses, unable to work normal jobs because they drum on counters and can't relate to normal people. Van Gogh crossed with Andy Warhol. "Art".

And that's perfectly valid- but PEOPLE DON'T NECESSARILY LIKE THAT.

Is this art?

It can be art- by a lot of standards it qualifies as art, even good valid art, certainly not hogtied to any particular popular genre, cross-rhythmed enough with 5/4, 7/4 etc time signatures that you'd break your ankles trying to dance to it half the time, composed like an arrow shot at a half-seen target that may only exist in the mind of the composer... but the question is, is this entitled to payment just for being genuine art?

I made it- and I don't think so. I'd love to convince myself otherwise, but just personally my life has never persuaded me that I was owed anything much- just on that personal note, journeys through homeless shelter, psych ward, a whole palette of 'gee, how artist-like' experience has not persuaded me that life owed me anything. To me, my art is worthless, utterly worthless except that I have to do it because there are sounds I just WANT to hear, even if I have to make them myself.

About one time in a hundred, somebody else hears it and is just blown away. I've had some pretty head-inflating reactions. Other times it misses the mark- which is normal.

Do you give anyone who claims to be an artist, money, just in CASE they will do something that really makes it for somebody?

As for me- I have four more CDs to send in to Ampcast- the CDs are Red Book from high res masters, not from mp3s. On every last one I've made for Ampcast, are the words "Please copy this CD for your friends". And I mean it- because I've given up ever hoping to get anything back other than maybe finding some more people who appreciate where I'm at. Kind of the opposite of your vision except that mine isn't a vision, it's a reality. I get a couple bucks off sales of the CDs I put on Ampcast. God knows I work for it, but the work isn't strictly about getting paid or I'd do more commercial music, which I am fully capable of. I'd just spend it on more music gear anyway...

I don't know what the position of the artist in the post-information-age society should be. I just know what my position is. I don't know if that's useful to anybody.

I do know that, of all the people who'd like to have someone 'give them money so they can make a living doing art', a very small number will go to my music page, and even fewer will put up with creating an Ampcast 'myAmp' account for the purpose of downloading entire songs- at no cost to them- even though each download will make me a nickel.

And this is not so wrong, because to many people my art is NOT worth the time it takes to do something in order to have someone else give me a nickel that doesn't even come out of their OWN pocket.

That's not a slam- on me, or on them- because Internet-scale diversity means you won't like most of what you find. The question is, how're you going to track down the 27 people or whatever who WILL get off massively on what I do, and pry them away from their old Mothers Of Invention records and make them listen?

If I ever figure that out, I'll tell you ;)

Is this art?

It's music- instrumental, some with electronic synthesis, some with live playing of keyboards or guitars, sometimes crazed and difficult composing like putting seven notes in the space of 5/4 and breaking up the second and third into 'triplets' using custom-written software because the regular sequencing software just can't deal with time distortions that outlandish. Weeks of recording. Months of rewriting and improving mastering software, and remastering it all. Years of work. Decades (well- two) of dedication.

Yet- and attend, please...

You might HATE it, should you be forced to cough up money for this?

Here's the deal: you can always find someone who'll jerk you off, artistically, for money. Popular music is like that. Usually, when someone says 'give them money so they can make a living doing art' they mean the REAL guys, the people with weird hollow stares, twitching with the burning of their creative fuses, unable to work normal jobs because they drum on counters and can't relate to normal people. Van Gogh crossed with Andy Warhol. "Art".

And that's perfectly valid- but PEOPLE DON'T NECESSARILY LIKE THAT.

Is this art?

It can be art- by a lot of standards it qualifies as art, even good valid art, certainly not hogtied to any particular popular genre, cross-rhythmed enough with 5/4, 7/4 etc time signatures that you'd break your ankles trying to dance to it half the time, composed like an arrow shot at a half-seen target that may only exist in the mind of the composer... but the question is, is this entitled to payment just for being genuine art?

I made it- and I don't think so. I'd love to convince myself otherwise, but just personally my life has never persuaded me that I was owed anything much- just on that personal note, journeys through homeless shelter, psych ward, a whole palette of 'gee, how artist-like' experience has not persuaded me that life owed me anything. To me, my art is worthless, utterly worthless except that I have to do it because there are sounds I just WANT to hear, even if I have to make them myself.

About one time in a hundred, somebody else hears it and is just blown away. I've had some pretty head-inflating reactions. Other times it misses the mark- which is normal.

Do you give anyone who claims to be an artist, money, just in CASE they will do something that really makes it for somebody?

As for me- I have four more CDs to send in to Ampcast- the CDs are Red Book from high res masters, not from mp3s. On every last one I've made for Ampcast, are the words "Please copy this CD for your friends". And I mean it- because I've given up ever hoping to get anything back other than maybe finding some more people who appreciate where I'm at. Kind of the opposite of your vision except that mine isn't a vision, it's a reality. I get a couple bucks off sales of the CDs I put on Ampcast. God knows I work for it, but the work isn't strictly about getting paid or I'd do more commercial music, which I am fully capable of. I'd just spend it on more music gear anyway...

I don't know what the position of the artist in the post-information-age society should be. I just know what my position is. I don't know if that's useful to anybody.

I do know that, of all the people who'd like to have someone 'give them money so they can make a living doing art', a very small number will go to my music page, and even fewer will put up with creating an Ampcast 'myAmp' account for the purpose of downloading entire songs- at no cost to them- even though each download will make me a nickel.

And this is not so wrong, because to many people my art is NOT worth the time it takes to do something in order to have someone else give me a nickel that doesn't even come out of their OWN pocket.

That's not a slam- on me, or on them- because Internet-scale diversity means you won't like most of what you find. The question is, how're you going to track down the 27 people or whatever who WILL get off massively on what I do, and pry them away from their old Mothers Of Invention records and make them listen?

If I ever figure that out, I'll tell you ;)

Is this art?

It's music- instrumental, some with electronic synthesis, some with live playing of keyboards or guitars, sometimes crazed and difficult composing like putting seven notes in the space of 5/4 and breaking up the second and third into 'triplets' using custom-written software because the regular sequencing software just can't deal with time distortions that outlandish. Weeks of recording. Months of rewriting and improving mastering software, and remastering it all. Years of work. Decades (well- two) of dedication.

Yet- and attend, please...

You might HATE it, should you be forced to cough up money for this?

Here's the deal: you can always find someone who'll jerk you off, artistically, for money. Popular music is like that. Usually, when someone says 'give them money so they can make a living doing art' they mean the REAL guys, the people with weird hollow stares, twitching with the burning of their creative fuses, unable to work normal jobs because they drum on counters and can't relate to normal people. Van Gogh crossed with Andy Warhol. "Art".

And that's perfectly valid- but PEOPLE DON'T NECESSARILY LIKE THAT.

Is this art?

It can be art- by a lot of standards it qualifies as art, even good valid art, certainly not hogtied to any particular popular genre, cross-rhythmed enough with 5/4, 7/4 etc time signatures that you'd break your ankles trying to dance to it half the time, composed like an arrow shot at a half-seen target that may only exist in the mind of the composer... but the question is, is this entitled to payment just for being genuine art?

I made it- and I don't think so. I'd love to convince myself otherwise, but just personally my life has never persuaded me that I was owed anything much- just on that personal note, journeys through homeless shelter, psych ward, a whole palette of 'gee, how artist-like' experience has not persuaded me that life owed me anything. To me, my art is worthless, utterly worthless except that I have to do it because there are sounds I just WANT to hear, even if I have to make them myself.

About one time in a hundred, somebody else hears it and is just blown away. I've had some pretty head-inflating reactions. Other times it misses the mark- which is normal.

Do you give anyone who claims to be an artist, money, just in CASE they will do something that really makes it for somebody?

As for me- I have four more CDs to send in to Ampcast- the CDs are Red Book from high res masters, not from mp3s. On every last one I've made for Ampcast, are the words "Please copy this CD for your friends". And I mean it- because I've given up ever hoping to get anything back other than maybe finding some more people who appreciate where I'm at. Kind of the opposite of your vision except that mine isn't a vision, it's a reality. I get a couple bucks off sales of the CDs I put on Ampcast. God knows I work for it, but the work isn't strictly about getting paid or I'd do more commercial music, which I am fully capable of. I'd just spend it on more music gear anyway...

I don't know what the position of the artist in the post-information-age society should be. I just know what my position is. I don't know if that's useful to anybody.

I do know that, of all the people who'd like to have someone 'give them money so they can make a living doing art', a very small number will go to my music page, and even fewer will put up with creating an Ampcast 'myAmp' account for the purpose of downloading entire songs- at no cost to them- even though each download will make me a nickel.

And this is not so wrong, because to many people my art is NOT worth the time it takes to do something in order to have someone else give me a nickel that doesn't even come out of their OWN pocket.

That's not a slam- on me, or on them- because Internet-scale diversity means you won't like most of what you find. The question is, how're you going to track down the 27 people or whatever who WILL get off massively on what I do, and pry them away from their old Mothers Of Invention records and make them listen?

If I ever figure that out, I'll tell you ;)

mp3.com is HORRIBLE. Plus their 'DAM' CDs are burned off of 128K mp3s- this is arguably still Red Book, but it's misleading to claim it is Red Book.

There are better options. I personally use ampcast.com for two major reasons- one, the contract is sane and fair and two, they have common sense and run a good business. I've had material up on besonic.com as well, but they're gradually deleting it because they're moving to a paid-hosting arrangement like Ampcast (only BeSonic is continuing to provide small free accounts for hobby musicians- Ampcast does not). Finally, I've heard some good things about javamusic.com, though I can't speak personally to that- I do know it's another site that hosts and can produce Red Book CDs (from Red Book masters?) like Ampcast.

Don't use mp3.com. Don't use farmclub.com. Don't use any of the major-label controlled sites. I'm not saying this over ideological reasons, though that's a good reason to avoid them. I'm saying it in terms of sheer self-defense. Farmclub offers a 'play on our national TV show!' deal to sucker people in- it's supposed to be 'exposure'. I've talked to someone who's been offered this- it is contingent upon your signing the 80 PAGE CONTRACT they present you with, a contract that flat-out fucks any hope you might have of pursuing a career in the music business by its restrictiveness and insane abusiveness. The person I talked to read the contract, refused to sign, refused to play and bailed out of the whole Farmclub scene. Of course, Farmclub still part-owns the material they'd submitted...

Be careful out there!

www.airwindows.com

www.ampcast.com/chrisj

The deal is, the first is my web hosting and the second is my music. If you visit them, YOU do not pay- it's like a printed fanzine or something, I pay for the hosting.

I understand that bandwidth costs muchos, but I still dislike the idea of being charged solely for information- particularly if I'm not keeping it around. I pay for paper magazines- MacAddict, Cinefex- but those are kept. Someone had to print 'em up. Even then, they're heavily paid for by advertisers...

I just think some people are imagining a heavenly land where everyone on the Internet is paying them a penny because they're so wonderful, and this is wishful thinking... in order to charge people you gotta really be GIVING them something, and it's not enough to just have good information. There's tons of information, everywhere. What else ya got?

I've been using OMDs (internet Original Music Distributors) for some time now- was with mp3.com for a while until they got bought out by Vivendi and changed their contract in really negative ways, have stuff on BeSonic, and now I'm setting up shop on Ampcast.com.

I get FIVE CENTS per full download from Ampcast. (This is why they have you register- otherwise artists would cheat)

That is more than twenty times the royalty the RIAA is willing to pay...

Why, how? First, Ampcast really wants to be selling its CDs (a primary reason I like them so much is that they burn-to-order from genuine (rippable) Red Book CDs. The one I have for sale there is a Red Book, full 44.1/16 from high-resolution masters (done with my GPL mastering software Mastering Tools), I'm trying to negotiate a cooler tray-liner artwork but it's 'live' and buyable right now. If you buy one, I get a few bucks, and Ampcast gets a few bucks, and the RIAA gets absolutely fscking nada, zip, zilch, zero, thank you for playing. Secondly, Ampcast ain't a free OMD or trying to be one. It charges a fee like a hosting service, and that's where those five centses come from, plus from the CD sales. They're good that way- they have sense and have managed their budgeting intelligently so they have control of their business.

I'm still putting up other work and remastering my back catalog, but go check out 'Full Day', buy the CD (with a little bonus track not listed on the page) if you like it. And then ask yourself: is it fair that RIAA major label artists get a less than a twentieth of the download-royalty I'm getting from Ampcast? That _stinks_. The RIAA has _more_ money than Ampcast! They could well afford to do a HELL of a lot better than that. It's pathetic, outrageous, insulting. I'm not saying my music isn't as good- I put a lot of work into it- but TWENTY times as good? I think NOT... yet that's the discrepancy in pay.

By the way, if you don't like the idea of me getting paid off downloads, the streaming plays don't pay anything, you could check out those. Or, if there are people who've bought the CD, I write right on it "please copy this CD for your friends" and it's totally rippable, so you could look for the tracks on Gnutella or something- I hope people do share my music that way. If someone has a problem with dealing with Ampcast registration etc. and wouldn't buy my CD anyway, they should still be able to have mp3s of it... I don't need their nickel that badly that I should insist on putting them through a hassle...

If you haven't already, you've got to hear the illustrious M.C. Stephen Hawking's take on creationism.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you'll see it.

Yeah, you know me!

For the unintiated, MC Hawking lyrics follow.

MC Hawking is Stephen Hawking, physicist and gangsta rapper. Despite three critically acclaimed albums and nearly ten years on the mic, Stephen Hawking remains virtually unknown as a musician. mchawking.com is devoted to Stephen Hawking's career as a lyrical terrorist.

Harm me with harmony.
Doomsday, drop a load on 'em.

Entropy, how can I explain it? I'll take it frame by frame it,
to have you all jumping, shouting saying it.
Let's just say that it's a measure of disorder,
in a system that is closed, like with a border.
It's sorta, like a, well a measurement of randomness,
proposed in 1850 by a German, but wait I digress.
"What the fuck is entropy?", I here the people still exclaiming,
it seems I gotta start the explaining.

You ever drop an egg and on the floor you see it break?
You go and get a mop so you can clean up your mistake.
But did you ever stop to ponder why we know it's true,
if you drop a broken egg you will not get an egg that's new.

That's entropy or E-N-T-R-O to the P to the Y,
the reason why the sun will one day all burn out and die.
Order from disorder is a scientific rarity,
allow me to explain it with a little bit more clarity.
Did I say rarity? I meant impossibility,
at least in a closed system there will always be more entropy.
That's entropy and I hope that you're all down with it,
if you are here's your membership.

Chorus
You down with entropy?
Yeah, you know me! (x3)
Who's down with entropy?
Every last homey!

Defining entropy as disorder's not complete,
'cause disorder as a definition doesn't cover heat.
So my first definition I would now like to withdraw,
and offer one that fits thermodynamics second law.
First we need to understand that entropy is energy,
energy that can't be used to state it more specifically.
In a closed system entropy always goes up,
that's the second law, now you know what's up.

You can't win, you can't break even, you can't leave the game,
'cause entropy will take it all 'though it seems a shame.
The second law, as we now know, is quite clear to state,
that entropy must increase and not dissipate.

Creationists always try to use the second law,
to disprove evolution, but their theory has a flaw.
The second law is quite precise about where it applies,
only in a closed system must the entropy count rise.
The earth's not a closed system' it's powered by the sun,
so fuck the damn creationists, Doomsday get my gun!
That, in a nutshell, is what entropy's about,
you're now down with a discount.

Chorus

Hit it!
Doomsday, kick it in!

I saw it on the sneak preview and laughed my ass off. There were some people there who hadn't seen any Kevin Smith movies and they laughed their asses off. It's just a funny movie. Go see it.

Fight the MPAA!

Also, as my song on Ampcast shows, computer code can be music, too!

I DON'T HAVE FUCKING TIME TO PERSONALLY AUTHORISE EVERY LITTLE DOWNLOAD!

_Apologies_ to anyone who is offended by this strong language- but I am _very_ angry here. As copyright holder it is UP TO ME how I want to license my stuff. As it happens, I use the statement "All commercial rights reserved- noncommercial copying OKAY", because I fully intend to completely permit ALL FORMS of fair use copying and EVERY sort of copying and sharing and trading that doesn't actually involve someone charging people for my stuff. That is MY RIGHT under the law. _I!_ am the one who says what people can do with it.

Even _if_ the idea of this isn't 'submit your song to the RIAA to have Napster given permission to let YOU host it on YOUR computer only', even if the idea is that Napster keeps the records, I am really angry and finding this suggestion absolutely intolerable. As copyright holder _I_ have the right to authorise every listener I have to share my stuff on Napster. I've even asked people to do just this, repeatedly- I thought it would not only help me but would also add to the argument that Napster links to lots of different kinds of content.

I am not trying to get a free ride off the RIAA, okay? I'm not even _seeking_ fame and money and record contracts that are fair. I am perfectly content to do all the work for producing my own music, to seek out places like besonic and ampcast that aren't ripping me off, to accept that I may not sell zillions of CDs even once I finish the work of making them available from Ampcast. I'm not asking for help with all this, and I'm not getting any. I have to do it all myself and that suits me fine.

But I draw the line at having to be a _fucking_ performing rights organisation too, just because OTHER PEOPLE can't deal with the idea that people can exchange their artworks without paying. I am completely offended at this to the point that I begin to understand the feelings of some slashdotters and anarcholibertarians when confronted with unions: I am more socialist myself but here's a situation where I am forbidden to license my stuff under my own rules because that would mean people could legally share it on napster without my _personal_ authorisation. And I'm looking at a possible future where, every time some new sharing program or P2P thing comes around, I have to PERSONALLY go and give them an 'it's okay to share my music' before they're permitted. Goddammit, I write that on my CDs! I do not have TIME to piddle around being a performing rights organisation. The record companies have time and resources to do this kind of crap, and I do _not_.

And I am _pissed_ that they are even suggesting it. Sorry for all the strong language. I am _so_ pissed at this suggestion. I'm sorry, I put a great deal of effort into checking out the resources available to me (like ampcast, and for that matter CafePress) that let me offload some of the work in being an active, productive Internet artist and musician, and this ability is absolutely central to increasing the fluidity and efficiency of the Internet age and allowing people like me access to the world's commerce and media. It is _crucial_ that I am allowed to set my own terms on copyright and that this is _respected_: requiring me to authorise each new little P2P startup is refusing to honor the copyright licensing I already make that specifically authorizes noncommercial copying! I _must_ be allowed to authorise just-plain-listeners to share my stuff on P2P networks etc, do anything with it as long as it's noncommercial- because _I_ don't have the time to run around being a Publishing Rights Organisation and an IANAL and a publicist and an advertising flack and a suit. It's just not reasonable. Why the hell can't they at least let _me_ do my work and allow the random forces of the net to bring me whatever publicity or sales turn up? Why do they effectively plan to _force_ me to operate as a rights agent and individually authorize every little P2P thing that might turn up? I am so angry...

OK, that was messy and a lot of extrapolation but I've got a lot of work to do which these nice people at the RIAA are _not_ helping me do in any way shape or form, so I'd better go off and do it and hope other people can keep the RIAA from loading even _more_ compulsory work on me for the privilege of trying to distribute MY OWN music... I _so_ don't have the time to track down the relevant people and scream at them... if anyone wishes these views cleaned up for broader publication I'd be more than happy to do so and promise not to say F**K...

Ampcast's taking steps to allow artists to have an even _more_ professional presentation, including artistic control of the _whole_ CD package including tray insert and CD media print, and will be able to burn CDs to order that are clones of professionally done Red Book Audio CD masters- meaning that if you get an Ampcast CD it will be _equivalent_ to the major label product as uncompressed audio, not simply a CD burn of mp3 files.

Excellent. I notice a clear quality difference between uncompressed CD audio and many/most MP3 files. CD-quality CD audio is a good and welcome selling point. Thanks for the link.

On the other hand, ampcast.com is in the final stages of going live with a CD program that features CDs that you can buy burned from CD audio rather than burned from 128K mp3s like mp3.com. Yes, the mp3.com DAM CDs are just what you'd get if you burned them yourself from mp3 downloads, only with a better case. Ampcast's taking steps to allow artists to have an even _more_ professional presentation, including artistic control of the _whole_ CD package including tray insert and CD media print, and will be able to burn CDs to order that are clones of professionally done Red Book Audio CD masters- meaning that if you get an Ampcast CD it will be _equivalent_ to the major label product as uncompressed audio, not simply a CD burn of mp3 files.

Mind you, for inexperienced artists without a lot of resources, they'll still allow minimal album graphics and CDs burned from mp3s, just like mp3.com. But for the heavy hitters out there in the indie world, ampcast is in the final stages of giving them _unprecedented_ ability to put out a fantastic, professional quality product.

That said- now GO READ THE STUFF the nice fellow posted for you about why the record industry must die! He's probably referring to the famous rant by the great Steve Albini. Read it! Just because people are doing something positive does not excuse you from educating yourself about how totally unacceptable the music business is and how little alternative there seems to be. I hope guys like Jim at Ampcast can make an alternative, but if he gets his kneecaps broken for it I'd hope some people were paying attention to the fact that the traditional music business is a bunch of _criminals_, and that defying them is a good way to get blacklisted, locked out of pressing plants like Negativland, or even getting beat up. Did you really think it was like the computer industry? The music business has a dark, dark past. Even superstars like Bob Marley had record company thugs threatening DJs to get their records played. The record industry DOES need to be destroyed, stopped, replaced. Merely supplanting it is not enough.

I'm trying to get a recording studio off the ground (obMusicLink), and putting a lot of effort into it. I _have_ to keep airwindows.com out there publically and I get all its email, every dictionary-attack spam on the domain- and I need a solid memorable unsurprising email address to give people if they want one- chrisj@airwindows.com.

It's like some of the mp3-fan reactions to the threat of the format being suppressed- I don't care if you can hide mp3s in zips, or hide email addresses in geeky obfuscation or ever-changing 'stale address discard' rules. I don't have that luxury and never will have it- I'm stuck operating on the outside with my domain and my fledgling business (for which I keep all records of income and expense- not gonna hide from IRS either). I have no option but to use email and web resources straightforwardly and unobfuscatedly- and I won't be able to keep up with the load of spam forever unless the spammers are cracked down on. The spamload could easily just keep accelerating exponentially if nothing is done to stop it- as it seems more mainstream, more will do it, and so on.

(random side note- remember how mp3.com changed its agreement and made it evil? Well, a new music site called ampcast.com recently changed their agreement- and, get this, changed it to be MORE favorable to the artists! Color me flabbergasted. I'm still happy with besonic, myself, but who knew? Kudos to ampcast, just found out about this today :) )

That's a major problem- mp3.com is not dealing with it, instead mp3.com is adding 'name' artists to the same pool, tightening the screws even farther and provoking even worse behavior. I recently saw the first email download scam chain letter pyramid scheme- originated by 'artists' on mp3.com desperate for a slice of the pie. I don't think anyone anticipated things would get quite this ugly and embarrassing when PFP started.

Others, like myself, bailed when mp3.com changed their contract- it now gives mp3.com rights _perpetually_ that survive termination, and it is changeable without confirmation by the artist on only 5 days notice, and it's on the artist to keep checking that nothing changed, and then get a competent opinion if terms are changed. Only recourse is to quit. Many people are.

Me? *g* I am finding that I'm happier _without_ the financial interest (naturally, being known is great). Some mp3.commers moved to ampcast.com but I ended up on BeSonic, so my page (with a couple songs still being sorted out) is at...

http://www.besonic.com/chrisj (hooray!)

...and there is one big change- on BeSonic I do not get paid off downloads. I prefer it that way! Read the Salon article linked above to get some idea of why. I did OK at mp3.com, made some money, but it goddamn ate my soul- I could not communicate with other musicians about fun music-geeky compositional stuff because the money got in the way- there was always someone to get _angry_ because I was too hungry for attention and obviously only out to get PFP money by boasting. *spit*

Well, a little of that goes a long way. Since I left it's kept getting worse until now mp3.com is a cesspool. If you care AT ALL about being an artist and doing good work, be somewhere else. I learned from mp3.com how linking downloads (listens) with money corrupts the motivations- the fact that I was OK with not getting rich was NOT ENOUGH, I got treated as if I was just out for greed. Well, now I'm on BeSonic- anyone who wanted to listen to any of my stuff but felt it was mercenary should go filch away as I do not get paid off BeSonic downloads. Anyone who liked what I had on mp3.com should go redownload it from besonic as all the mp3.com stuff was BladeEnc and the besonic stuff is all new mixes and encoded with Frau and LAME, so it sounds way better now :)

Anyway- forget the mp3.com unsigned artist community. It's the walking dead, and you can't make it on the merits of your music on mp3.com at this point. It's a very useful lesson about capitalism mixing with art: there's always a better way to make money than by making the best product you can. mp3.com means spam, marketing, gaming and total vacuity now- ironically, every bit as bad as the _mainstream_ industry that's taking it over- but the indie community killed itself. Over money.