We Should See Other Blogs

Apparently I’ve taken it upon myself to scrutinize the structure of my previous attempt. I present the longer, smoother, better-tasting, “Gardiner Version 2″. Still needs compression, mastering, etc. Oh, and some more structure. But I digress.

The Structural Integrity of the Gardiner Expressway Comes Under Scrutiny (v2)

Just a short instrumental, perhaps suitable for that short film you’ve always wanted to make:

The Structural Integrity of the Gardiner Expressway Comes Under Scrutiny

A new song snippet for you all… please keep in mind that this is like KDE 4: still in heavy development and perhaps not very good just yet.

Flurries In Washington

Thanks to Freesound for the samples, and to Laura for not letting me call it “Furries in Washington”, which, it turns out, is a totally different thing altogether.

New song. Take a listen. You might like it, as I’m not singing in it at all.

For Albatross

He might sound something, a little something, like this:

If Steve Reich Was Happy (mp3)
If Steve Reich Was Happy (Ogg Vorbis)

Also, I’d like to digress: “Ogg Vorbis” sounds like it should be an unmentionable bit of human anatomy. Not an audio format. No matter how often I say “Ogg Vorbis”, I still lower my voice as if I’m afraid my parents might overhear.

Welcome to the Nodcast: A podcast so boring it doesn’t even have an RSS feed.

Nodcast 1: A Reading From Truman Capote (Ogg Vorbis)
Nodcast 1: A Reading From Truman Capote (MP3)

I really wanted to get this down on the hard drive… and I didn’t realise how bad the piano recording was until I had got to singing. So i just gave up and didn’t bother correcting any of the (obvious) flaws in the levels. It isn’t pretty, I tell you.

Scatterbrain – Ogg Vorbis
Scatterbrain – MP3

Everything I record these days seems to have a ringing noise at the high end… anyone have any ideas how to fix this problem?

Well, I got the itch tonight and had to relieve it. The result is the following song, a very rough demo type thing. Before posting, however, I have to express thanks to the people whose work enabled this:

• Ubuntu, the best operating system for me, bar none. Seriously, try it out, see if you like it.
• Hydrogen, a wonderful little drum machine. One of my favourite applications.
• Ardour, a digital audio workstation. Free, open-souce, and I’m pretty sure I’m only using about 1% of its functionality. Is better for me than Audacity was ;)

With no further ado (as none is needed) I present the song as both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis.

Ghetto (OV)
Ghetto (MP3)

This work is licensed as per:

As some of you already know, the Amarok team is building the next version of their music playing software with the QT toolset. That is to say, it should compile well as a cross-platform application (instead of just for Linux and other Unix variants).

Some of you may also know that I think Amarok is one of the better reasons to switch to Ubuntu, but let’s be honest here, it’d be nice not to have to. And from what I’ve seen, the digital music playback segment on Windows is dominated by iTunes (and oh my word, how iTunes sucks) and WinAmp (show its age really badly). Amarok 2, on the other hand, does everything iTunes and WinAmp do with music, and does it better and easier and — you have to realise that for an open source application this is major news — has a beautiful user interface to boot.

The above is a screenshot of Amarok 2 on Windows. Please do be aware that’s not the finished product.

But I’m still excited. Soon I can stop using WinAmp at work. Finally.

Again with the Notion, and again with the staying up well past any sort of bedtime. But this little ditty is the result, and for once I quite like what I’ve made.

Chroma (MP3)

Tell me what you think, peoples.