The PsychoVoyager Journal

Song I've worked on and off (mostly off) since May 2008, using the program Energy XT2 in Windows XP. It's probably about done, though I will likely tweak it just a li'l bit, before I'm satisfied.

Plug-ins used; GTG DPC 3 (drums), SoHaSonata (synth), Classic compressor, Classic phaser, Classic EQ, classic flanger, Bionic Delay, as well as the program's own Synthesizer and FX DelayReverb.

A Demo was made back in 2006:



Lyrics:

I don't think you realize
just how proud I am
Just how impressed I've been
You've got the drive within
you're so long overdue
and you've long paid your dues
no one here gets an apology

sorry won't cut it
It's not in the budget
they want regrets
but they can forget it
you're doin' it your way
your way is the highway
blazin' on down the only road that gets you home

and that's why
I continue
to believe in you

and
you
should
too

takin' it underground
like you're fighting Manchus
showin' off your skills
as though you're good at kung-fu
The Five Deadly Venoms
couldn't get through your defences
forget the seven sins
your top priority is

You but not for you alone
for your strength will set the tone
and lift the hearts
of all of those around you
even those who put you down
and would see your failure crown
the doubts they've always bowed down to

and that's why
I continue
to believe in you

and
you
should
too

you rock well
and nobody does it better

(c) 2006-2009 George Isaacs


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Labels: Creative Commons, DAW, downloads, Energy XT, guitar, lyrics, music, plug-ins, Windows

I stopped checking for it a few days ago, but lo and behold; Ubuntu Studio has arrived. I haven't downloaded it yet, but I will soon. I need to save my data from my Agnula partition first.

Edit - figured I'd add the release notes...

Ubuntu Studio is a multimedia editing/creation flavour of Ubuntu. It's built for the GNU/Linux audio, video, and graphic enthusiast or professional.

The Ubuntu Studio team is proud to announce its first release: 7.04 for Intel i386-compatible processors. With this release, which you can download for DVD in little over 860 MiB, we offer a feature that is somewhat reminiscent of Ubuntu Server: on installation, you can choose between the Audio, Graphics or Video tasks; and choose also to install a number of plugins, which for this release is mainly aimed at audio production.

We have endeavoured to keep as many of our packages in the standard Ubuntu repositories as possible. Certain packages, such as wired and our art packages, are kept in an external repository and fully up to Ubuntu packaging standards. Be aware however, that this is only a temporary solution and we will be pushing all our packages into Ubuntu for the next release.

The Audio task also provides a different kernel to the Video and Graphics tasks, which has low latency to enable easy JACK work, and for Gutsy we will be providing a fully realtime enabled setup. We have built upon the usability and support of Ubuntu as a foundation, and are certain that this was a wise choice, for we have access to a wide range of packages in the repository, and a stable base system.

For the video task, we have chosen the GStreamer-based PiTiVi as our central NLE. PiTiVi is written in Ubuntu's favourite scripting language, Python, and the GStreamer back-end enables it to use all the GStreamer-compatible codecs that are installed, and thus taking advantage of Feisty's Easy Codec Installation. It also uses our favourite widget set, GTK+, and thus keeps with the theme and flow of the Ubuntu Studio desktop, and tries also to stay usable in any environment, in keeping with Ubuntu Studio's aim that media production should be simple and accessible.

We have also packaged Ardour 2, which will debut on our disc. Our theme is heavily based around the dark style of Ardour and many other audio applications, and we are trying to have a release that is as integrated as possible with all of our applications and tasks.

Finally, the Graphics task deserves some attention. We have included a very wide range of very high quality applications that are also very well known. What we have done is added to this selection (with Enblend, for example), and brought them all together into a coherent set. Some main packages to note are the GIMP, Inkscape, Blender, Hugin and Scribus, which are all provided with a default install of the Ubuntu Studio Graphics task.

As our wiki page at [WWW] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio states: "Our aim is to make it more accessible for new users to get into the tools that GNU/Linux has to offer for multimedia creation/production. We also want to spotlight what's out there. Show users tools they might not have know existed." We have certainly fulfilled that aim with our first release with 7.04, and can only continue to improve.

Thanks to all who helped in Ubuntu Studios creation! Bring on the show!

Labels: downloads, Linux, Ubuntu

Given permission by this song's author to exploit it, commercially, I revisited Above It All and found some things I wasn't comfortable with. Most notably, my voice. So I decided to polish it up a bit, along with a bunch of other songs from the past couple of years or so, for a new album. If I was gonna charge money for it, I might as well make it sound as good as I'm able, right? The original mix will remain free, as well as the separate instrument tracks, should anyone else want to tackle this tune, either for covers, remixes, or whatever.

Those tracks, which are found on Archive.org, were the basis for the new mix, since I couldn't locate the disc I thought I burned (they may actually be on my hard drive, somewhere on the Agnula partition). I downloaded those and imported them into Sonar. I'd normally blog the same day I record or work on a song, but I hadn't felt like it over the last couple of weeks. I did take the following notes, though...

April 14th, 2007

Recorded new lead vocal. Didn't care for the old one. Recorded harmonized "oohs" for the
choruses. One set, then cut and pasted two more times.

April 17th 2007

Cakewalk FX Reverb into an effects send bus. For bass acoustic, 1 electric guitar track, and vocals. BlockFish Compressor and SpitFish de-essor onto new lead vocal track.
Eq'd a bass boost on the bass itself.

April 20th 2007

Spitfish on one of the background vocal tracks. Cakewalk FX Expander/Gate on lead vocal. Cut out silences on various tracks. Almost finished.

April 27th 2007

Lowered volume a little. Added Sonitus: FX Gate to a harmony track on the first chorus to
reduce some hiss. Did the same to the bass and acoustic guitars, but also used Sonitus FX:
Equalizer to remove hiss from the instrument sounds themselves.

Currently, this song can be purchased from the PsychoVoyager Music Store at the top of this page. It won't be submitted to any of the major music e-tailers until a full album is put together.

As of this writing, you can listen to the whole song on MySpace. It can also be streamed at the Podsafe Music Network. Due to it's being recorded at 48000kh or whatever it is, and a bug in Flash, the song plays slower than it should at Podsafe. I actually like how it sounds, so I'm not changing it yet. Plus I don't feel like re-encoding it. The Myspace and PsychoVoyager Store version play at the proper 80bpm.

Labels: Above It All, buy my stuff, covers, Crystal Walters, downloads, effects, Sonar

Played around with various settings, levels, etc. Added automation to the fifth vocal track, so that it plays during the laughter at the beginning, fades out and re-appears during the final chorus through the end. Used the Classic Compressor and the Classic Phaser to punch up and then crazy up that track a little, and then played around with panning it back and forth, but decided to simply pan it far right.

I fixed the reversed conga and bongo sounds in Audacity. I didn't want to spend the time figuring how to do it in Sonar. The sounds end sharply with a click, so I removed the clicks by selecting the segment of the audio and then faded the sound out at the very end. It probably wasn't neccessary, but I also normalized the wav files (These were the original exported files from PSP Rhythm). I deleted the audio in the Sonar tracks, inported the altered wav files (drag and drop) and then split the tracks. When I fixed the audio, I only faded out one instance. The same notes play over and over throughout the song, so I took the fixed parts, split them apart from the clicky bits, and then Groove-clipped them (an Acid like feature where you can take a one bar phrase, drag and stretch it to loop as much as needed).

Muted the woodblock and closed high hat sounds. The high hat wasn't needed and the woodblock couldn't be heard and there was no need to force the issue.

Added one of Cakewalk's own reverbs to the snare, which isn't very snare like, but whatever.

Played some more with levels and whatnot till I was relatively happy and then mixed down the audio.

Opened up the audio in a new project. Might not have been necessary, but again, I was too lazy to find out. Applied Classic Compression (used the "mix down" pre-set) and Classic EQ for just a wee bit o' tweaking.

The finished song can be bought at my little store at the top o' the page. You can also listen to it at my Podsafe page which is a higher quality than the version on my Myspace page and closer in quality to the sold version.

Labels: April Fool's Day, buy my stuff, downloads, effects, online retailers, PSP Rhythm, Sonar

Another way for me to sell (or not) my music. Snocap has a new partnership with MySpace, which is how I came across it. I signed up. I have the Snocap store inbedded atop this page and Edshugeo The GodMoor, as well as on my MySpace page. There's a thirty dollar annual fee that's waived on the first year. By next December, I'll know if it's worth it for me.

In the meantime, I should go about creating some new music, no?

Labels: downloads, music, music business, online retailers