Wooot - First Open Source Musician Podcast live-stream episode!
Just want to thank everyone for tuning into the podcast today. I think Dan and I both agree that doing a live
show is much more exciting then a regular episode. The interaction with the IRC room really takes the show to
a whole other level of fun.
Aside from some bandwidth issues and flaky wifi (my sincerest Canadian apologies) the show went off pretty good for a first go at it (lol - listeners may disagree). For me, it was a success because the issues that came up should be solved by sticking a wired connect to my icecast server as well as tweaking bit rate and stereo vs mono etc. We may also setup an additional stream server or stream to a full time hosted icecast server.
That being said there are a few unknowns at this point - like editing the show may be a bit more challenging since we still plan on releasing the show the way we usually do which means dragging in the audio files from each of our ends of the conversation and the listener segments and intro track and song that plays out the episode - it may be more tricky but possibly not, looks like Dan is handling this edit so we shall see how it goes.
Anyways - we will see if we can hammer out a regular time slot people can expect to be able to tune in on. We should be pretty busy with regular OSMP episodes in 2 week intervals and the live streamed music gig in between those episodes.
Catch you later.
Steve
posted at: 16:19 | path: | permanent link to this entry
Butt + IceCast on Linux ftw
So I have been wondering if I would play more music if I had a regular obligation to play - say a weekly streaming show of me
just playing music - voice and guitar.I am not quite sure if I am going to go through with that, but it did get me curious as to how to setup the infrastructure to do that. What did I find? Well, it's surprisingly easy to do.
The helpful links that I pieced things together from:
IceCast setup
butt homepage
download butt
When I make reference to editing a file or issuing a command, this is usually suggested to be done from a terminal window.
Step 1: Skim through the above links - note the icecast tutorial is for windows but don't run away because of that.
Step 2: Yum install or aptitude install icecast.
Step 3: Edit the /etc/icecast.xml file - your distro may put it somewhere else - all I changed was the source,admin,relay passwords. Save it.
Step 4: As root, issue: icecast -c /etc/icecast.xml -b
Step 3: Download butt from http://sourceforge.net/projects/butt/files/
Step 4: Untar/bzip the downloaded file into a folder... you can install it or do as I did from cmd line and issue: ./butt
Step 5: Configure butt from the GUI.
Click Settings to expand the settings - in the Main tab, Choose your audio device, for Server - click Add, Choose IceCast radio button, Name:localhost, Address:localhost, Port: 8000, password - note: this is the Source password you assigned in the icecast.xml file. Mountpoint: /stream.ogg, Click Save.
Click Add for Scream info, fill in whatever you want here, this is info that shows up, Click Save.
Go to Stream tab, Assign bit rate and sample rate etc, codec should match your mountpoint extension - in my case it was OGG.
Go to Rec tab and configure - the really neat thing about Butt is that you can have a lower bit rate for the stream so less bandwidth is eaten up, but a higher bit rate for the recording. When finished in the Rec tab, go back to Main tab and click Save Settings.
Step 6: Test locally OK, so you are very close to being a hero. Not so fast cowboy, just a few more steps. Click the Play icon in butt - we are not going to bother recording because this is just a test. As long as that is all good, go into a terminal window or music app that can connect to an icecast server and point it to: localhost:8000/stream.ogg.
Note: If you don't get a connection then I probably skipped a step and you should email stevegbaer (at) gmail.com to let me know about it. If it seems to connect to the stream, then speak into your mic - what am I listening for you ask?? If this is successful, you will hear your initial speaking, then about 8 to 15 seconds later, you will hear it again - that will be the stream part.
Step 7: Win - OK, so you got your local stream going... I want to open this bad boy out to the world so they can hear me rant or sing or go about housework at a regular scheduled time. You are going to need to open up TCP port 8000 on your router to this streaming PC so that peeps can go to your external IP (whatsmyip.org) :8000/stream.ogg and hear your stuff.
Hope that helped out - let me know if I left something out that tripped you up that you managed to resolve at the email listed in Step 6.
Cheers,
Steve
posted at: 20:16 | path: | permanent link to this entry
Confessions of a Distro Hopper?
About 2 weeks ago in a possibly hasty maneuver, I torched my / partition of slackware 12.2
and replaced it with Fedora 10. At the time I had had enough of compiling my own applications and resolving my own dependencies. I also came off of patching and compiling my own real-time 2.6.29.6 kernel which seemed to go well, yet I was still having audio sync problems.
If I had dug in and tried to figure out why this was happening, I would have found out what I know now, that I had seen this problem a few months ago and resolved it by clearing some HD space on the partition I was recording to.
Am I devastated by this news?
Not really.
Since installing F10, I have enjoyed being able to 'yum install' almost any app.
I also like the fact that I can run apps like gwibber without searching out all the dependencies, so I do appreciate the time saving aspect but, where I am not happy is that the audio packages are DUSTY. Which meant that I had gone back to the same sync issues between Ardour and Hydrogen that were solved by running more current versions of both.
Sigh - so it appears I am no further ahead - in some regards I'm further behind. I have all these audio apps to choose from, but I still find myself only using Ardour and Hydrogen -which would be fine, but they don't stay in sync.
So - what is ahead in the future. I'm not sure...
I have compiled a more current version of Hydrogen and will do the same for Ardour. But I'm not sold on Fedora 10. After using the GRML live CD, I think running a stripped down Debian Testing system might be the way to go. Either way, I will do a little more thinking before my next move as the problem here isn't really Slackware or Fedora necessarily, but my haste in jumping to the next thing before trying to fully resolve the trouble on the existing platform.
posted at: 14:34 | path: | permanent link to this entry
Tin Whistle Brewing - Killer Bee Dark Honey Ale
This beer is from a brewery in Penticton, BC, Canada.
The beer pours a dark brown with a head that quickly dissipates.
The aroma is sweet like caramel. The taste reveals a subtle flavour profile containing a mix of honey, molasses and rich roasted malt.
This is a very nice beer. It is similar to a beer from Rogue Brewing in terms of the mouth feel which is full in body and weight on the tongue.
Strong B to B+ beer.
posted at: 00:49 | path: | permanent link to this entry
I have my co-worker Greg to thank for this brew.
The beer does indeed pour a black with slight browny hue yielding a reasonable healthy head which dissipates fairly slowly.
The aroma is spicy. But the first sip is surprising because I don't find it is all that connected to the aroma.
What is a nice surprise is this is a very good beer. A strong B to B+ effort and probably the best Okanagan Spring brew I have ever had. They have indeed raised the bar for themselves.
One of the things I love about this beer is the mouth-feel, it has a nice weight to it, with mild carbonation. The flavour profile contains hints of chocolate and malt. I suppose they call it a black lager because the flavour is milder then a ale or stout yet does have some characteristics of a dark brew.
This is a very interesting beer indeed and a beer I will likely buy in the very near future.
posted at: 00:53 | path: | permanent link to this entry
Songwriting - All this work for a 3 to 5 minute detour that may or may not effect someone.
Recently I got in a conversation with one of my Musician friends about the amount of effort that goes into writing and recording a song, and wondered whether anyone thinks about this aspect when they listen to music.
What exactly am I getting at here? Well, the amount of time and effort you have to put in to reach for that 3 to 5 minutes of musical bliss is quite a large investment. If I wasn't somehow strangely compelled to do this - (curse the gods), it would seem like a really inefficient way for me to spend my time.
Well, I don't claim to be a particularly good or efficient songwriter, nor do I claim to speak for anyone other then myself, so bare that in mind.
Anatomy of a Song. In my experience, a song can take 10 minutes to what seems like forever to write. Not all songs will be finished - Many attempts at songs will be scrawled in a book, and although many songs will be written, possibly only a small percentage of them will be good. However in order to write a good one, you have to write through the filler in between. While I think all songs have value, they may not have enough value to everyone else for them to be shared.
Songs I write that come mostly all at once will still require a few, or many revisions to either strengthen a message, avoid a cliche, or sometimes enforce a cliche, establish a better pentameter, rhyme a word, or change a word because it doesn't sound right when it is sung.The frustrating thing I find about songwriting is that it requires patience. The gods above don't care if I am 1 stanza short of a masterpiece. I'm not going to get that inspired last line unless its time. I can sit down and try to write it, and I'll either get something good or I won't.
So this is only just a part of the writing of the words - there's other things involved in making this magic - there's the music. I would say for me the same situations above in lyric writing also crop up in music, although I feel a lot more guilty taking the easy way out on a lyric then I do putting in a somewhat stock guitar line to finish something off. I figure this is because you can't hide behind a bad lyric when the bulk of an audience are singing along to the words. All the same, taking shortcuts never makes me feel good so I try not to.
When a Song Crops Up: For me - often words and music happen at the same time but not always. Writing of both can happen when I sit in front of an instrument with paper and pen, or a text editor, or in my head on my morning commute to work. The important thing is to be able to capture it or remember it - inspiration can be cruel and fleeting so you will want to be armed with tools and strategies to deal with this. For me, I will sing into a cell phone if I have to. If that's full and I'm out and about I just hope that something similar will occur to jog my memory when I get home - of course I do my best to recall what showed up in my head during the course of the day.
The Demo: Ok, so I've captured my song ideas, either in my head, in a book or in a digital document, the next thing I do is make a demo recording of the song in progress. The baffling thing here is that any of these steps above can happen in any order. But lets assume that you have the chords and melody and words and you want to explore the song some more.
This is one of my favorite parts in this entire process because you really start to see where the song is headed and how you can realize its potential. You don't need an amazing setup - just something that will allow you to record several parts, mix and play them back. I have a SM57 microphone, and a mixer and that goes into the sound card ins - these days, its popular to buy a USB break out box , plug a microphone into that and do it that way. Software programs are available - such as Audacity, Ardour, Reaper that will allow you to record with ease and at minimal to no cost.
These days I will record the vocals and guitar at the same time - calling this a scratch track to a click or metronome. If you don't play to a metronome or click track, you are going to be on a slippery slope even if your timing is good. Another important tip is to be tuned proper. If you neglect to do this and decide that you want to add some keyboards later to your guitars, you could find yourself wishing you took the time to tune your instrument when you are re-recording those parts.
Now is the time to experiment. Sync up some cool drum samples, or record the guitar with a flanger, or sing in the shower for reverb - try anything that seems natural - use your instincts and go for that harmonica solo, then try throwing some distortion on it later and see how that sounds. Anything that serves the mood you keep.
Proper Recording: If your lucky enough to have a good setup at home you can turn your demo into the finished product just by continuing the process of refinement. If you need to pick up and record elsewhere, then you have your demo to guide you - that said - still be open to new things happening to the song in the studio that you are visiting to recreate and improve the piece.
Final Thoughts: Although songwriting takes time and effort, I can't not do it. It's a big part of the joy of living for me, and I hope anyone who is interested in the process may have found something useful above.
Happy songwriting. :)
dbguit.
posted at: 03:42 | path: | permanent link to this entry
I found an awesome Linux Audio Editing Setup that runs off of a CD-R.
It solves all my problems linking my software Drum Machine into the Recording software on my PC. The software is all free as in libre (source code is all available and if u were a programmer you could change it to your liking) and also free as in beer - meaning you can get it and use it without the law cracking down on you to pay a license fee. This of course doesnt mean you shouldn't make a donation to the project if you appreaciate it of course.
I really think you might want to take a look at it... The care the people involved in the project took is really cool - they provide all the audio and midi apps you need and a nice lightweight interface to run them.
Here is the website where you can take a look at it: http://www.musix.org.ar/en/index.html
If you download the ISO image from this address: ftp://codigolivre.org.br/pub/musix/musixbr/musixbr1r2_musix1r5/musixbr1r2_musix1r5.iso
You would then use Nero or Roxio or CD Burner XP and choose to burn a CD-R from an image file. Once you do that, reboot your PC and hit space bar and the CD should start to load an OS all in RAM - you will want to type in the command as shown on the splash screen to get English etc.
If all goes well it will boot to a login screen, click the non-root user (top choice) and click login (no password required). It will then take you to the main screen. NOTE: None of this is effecting your Windows install - its loading the software all from CD.
He has grouped the audio apps together at the bottom - the colourful letters give you a desktop of application choices - I think the Musix Start Menu also has them in there somewhere - anyways - launch Hydrogen and its a cool drum machine, and Ardour is the Recording software.
If you like what you see or are intrigued, there are lots of tutorials found on google or youtube on how to take the outs of the Hydrogen drum machine into your Ardour and get it to record that to a track, along with your guitars, vox, bass or any instrument you like at the same time to separate tracks.
Also, you could save the project you were working on to your Windows hard drive, or a USB stick (project file or WAV file for continuing to work on it later).
I should be more productive in the new year now that I have discovered this awesome suite of programs. I haven't installed it to the hard disk as it runs pretty well from CD in RAM, but there is an option for that and that of course would make it easier to work on projects and have more hard drive space to do them - it would perform better in general - just be careful u don't wipe out your windows if you still want to run it.
Hope you are enjoying the holiday season - and if you are into Music or Audio editing, check Musix out. ;)
Steve
posted at: 14:29 | path: | permanent link to this entry
Music Collaboration over the Internet
I've embarked on an experiment with a friend - we are writing music together over the internet. This is a first for the 2 of us and it has proven to be less speedy then writing if you were in the same city - which I suppose isn't all that surprising. Another twist is that we are not sending each other finished songs that require say a guitar solo or that sort of thing. We are starting the songs off with a riff, and evolving it organically - sending it back and forth.
How is it working?
Well, we check in weekly using Skype and email to track the progress of things.
We use a shared folder that we both have write and read access to - a service called Dropbox (www.getdropbox.com) to post the update files to.
The cool thing about dropbox is that if I make a change and he has his computer on, his Dropbox icon will note that there is a change and in what file and he can pretty much immediately check out what I posted.
Since I'm a techy at heart, I'm enjoying the whole techy aspect of this project.
Perhaps if anything decent comes out of it I may have some sound samples to post in the Media section. For now it's a fun process and we will see how thigns evolve.
Steve
posted at: 02:16 | path: | permanent link to this entry
First blog post
Welcome to the first post in blosxom.
Steve
posted at: 01:01 | path: | permanent link to this entry
