Over the holidays I had a look at all the entries for the Fake It cliche video. They're sweet, but I think we still need some more, so I'm going to extend the deadline out indefinitely.
A few people suggested I put together a Youtube video begging for more submissions, so my crappy beard and I have done that here:
Beard out!
I tried doing a podcast a few years ago and failed. I just wanted to share some music I was into but compiling the podcasts was time-consuming enough that it got pushed aside almost immediately.
So I've started another podcast on Sellout Central which I'm planning to put out every Monday.
This time though I've spent some of my vacation time figuring out how to automate most of the process.
The nerdy details:
Using sox, flite, lame and a bash script, all I have to do is export a playlist from Foobar2000 and run a script. Sox crossfades the songs and compiles them into one big WAV file, flite generates the speech synthesis for the intros and outros and then lame compresses them into an MP3 with appropriate ID3 tags. So basically, I export the WAVs and then run:
./podcastit.sh [episode #] [# of songs]
And get back a shiny podcastable MP3. Whether anyone will like the songs I like is a whole different matter.
If you want the script, let me know and I can package it up.
Update: and here is the script all packaged up.
I just break all my resolutions but here are general goals I'm thinking about for this year:
What are you folks up to?
I'm not doing much of anything this holiday other than hanging with family plus getting nearly barfed on by the new puppy (who is still cute and still unnamed).
It's weird, I sort of have no idea what the new year will bring. I have no real live show right now, lots of music sitting around needing to be finished and a lot of fairly decent work to do. I guess I'll let the universe pull me wherever.
I'm happy with how my new record did in 2008 and all the cool people I got to meet. Thanks to everyone, hope you're all having a great end of the year.
Over the weekend I broke up with my band. It wasn't them, it was me. Thanks to Bruce and Matt for the awesome support and good times. I'm trying to figure out what's next and I'll probably be looking for ideas on here.
How does a “one man band†do a rocking live show that isn't boring as all hell?
Gonna go out on a limb here and say the show last night in Denver effing blewww. It was amazing. I don't really want to suggest it was legendary but I had a difficult time through security back to Canada and am thinking word might have gotten around.
I also don't want to characterize a particular Denver sound man as “a douchebag†but I'm not sure how to finish this sentence without doing exactly that.
I will likely blog more about some lessons I learned once my brain unpacks.
It was nice to meet Jeff though even if it was just shouty bar conversation. NICE TO MEET YOU JEFF.
This past Friday was the occasion of my birth. I am now old enough that I wasn't sure what age I'd be turning. Thanks for all the kind wishes.
I am in “crunch mode†for the Denver show on Thursday. I am also “nervousâ€. This'll be only my third solo show but it'll also be the first one where I'm not doing my own sound. So maybe that will be good? Maybe I have nothing to worry about?
Very much enjoyed this video for Dropping out of School that Brian Ross just sent me:
Clowns++
There are some upcoming Brad Sucks shows:
November 7th & 8th: Playing two nights at Kelly's Welcome in Manotick, ON. Full band.
November 20th: The Bluebird Theater in Denver, Colorado. Solo.
There's a pretty good possibility I'll be doing some touring in the new year, so be sure to put yourself down on the map on my live page.
Hey, Out of It is now in the iTunes Music Store! (thanks Jesse)
Why it's $9.90 instead of $9.99 is a mystery to me, but whatever.
Also I noticed this censored auto-complete hilarity when I searched for it:
Oh Apple.
Holy cow, Zap Your PRAM was great. It would take some sort of endless series of biographical novels to explain it all.
Basically it was roughly 50 super interesting people (and me) in a beautiful historical Prince Edward Island cottage slash hotel. All passionate, all thoughtful, all interesting, no shills. Even (maybe especially) when I didn't think their fields of expertise were things I was interested in, I wound up being fascinated.
Thanks to the adorable silverorange team for all the hospitality and amazing dessert per day ratio. I don't know that there's a nicer group of people to have yell “bum sex†at you on the street.
I was nervous about giving my first ever talk/presentation but it seemed to go well and lots of people said nice things about it. It was both awesome and intimidating to be talking to such a knowledgeable crowd. Seems like it'd be easier to talk to dumbasses, but the feedback wouldn't be as rewarding.
For a general list of what went on, Stephen DesRoches has an excellent write-up and some beautiful photos.
My camera actually died as I sat in the Ottawa airport getting ready to go. So all I have is a crappy cell phone picture of the metal cow in the Charlottetown airport. Which is above.
Out of It's travelling around out there, which rules! A brief recap:
Remixes and stuff:
Extra places you can get it:
There are a lot of things I'm missing, but this will have to do for now.
Album release has gone well, thanks everyone! Decent sales, lots of positive feedback. Still lots of work to do, which I am working on doing.
I rewrote the guts of the music submissions/you section and added all the new album tracks and source in there. Still haven't added all the items I was sent from the new album release, but that'll come soon.
Some stuff I need to blogs:
Yes!
Okay I haven't figured out much of a bandwidth solution so let's just party. All the source for Out of It is now on ccMixter here. Also there are acappellas on ccMixter separate from the source if you only want those. Here are the source files direct from me. I pray to the lord my server will survive this:
You should upload anything you make to ccMixter and I'll list it on the song pages and like… you'll be part of song HISTORY!
Okay, I thought I was going to post all the Out of It source today but I'm honestly a little concerned about my server right now and ccMixter only takes 10mb uploads so I can't make it their problem.
So for now here's track 1: Dropping out of School [33mb zip]. I'll see what's what, but the rest is definitely on the way, sorry for the wait.
Update (9/10): The vocals for all the tracks on Out of It are now on ccMixter. Working out getting the full source up shortly.
My new album Out of It is (FINALLY) out! Please listen to it! Please spread it around! Please like it! (And perhaps please purchase it!):
It's got ten songs, you can pay what you want, it's available in CD, MP3 & FLAC. There's no stupid DRM and it's Creative Commons licensed. CD purchases get instant downloads and the full audio multi-track source will be available in the next day.
Some thoughts:
A lot's changed since I started putting music on the Internet way back in 2001. Artist-endorsed free downloads were shocking. Flexible pricing was still an untested novelty. It was rare to find source files from artists and sharing music wasn't encouraged by new artists.
Recently I was asked if I'd do anything different this time around. Would I still give the music away for free? Would I still give away my source files? Would I still be easygoing about copyright? Surely I could pull back now and try to cash in.
And I honestly couldn't imagine why I'd do things different. The only reason I, a dude who made an album by himself in a country basement, has had any sort of success is because people took it upon themselves to share my music with their friends. They remixed it, they used it in their videos, they played it on their podcasts, they included it in software and games and it took on a life of its own.
To sabotage that would be a huge, retarded mistake. Instead I'll be grateful if Out of It worms around the world in even close to the same freaky way I Don't Know What I'm Doing did and continues to.
Anyway, this is a long way of saying I love you Internets. Thanks for all your support and I hope you like Out of It. I'm going to bed, good night!
Welp, I had a good time at the CD release party last night. Thanks to everyone who showed up and anyone who jumped on stage at the end there during the crowd-participation part of “Out of Itâ€.
Besides the talented Dave Norris and the Harvey Cartel who played, musicians in attendance were Jesse Dangerously, Claude from The Peptides, TheHipCola, Meredith Luce and MC Frontalot was on a phone in IM capacity.
Various Songfighters and REAPER users came out of the woodwork, which was awesome.
Out of It goes on sale for everybody out there tomorrow night at midnight (EST). Woooooooo.
First batches of pre-ordered Out of It CDs are away! Release is just around the corner! Some people said they don't hate it! I'm nervous as can be!
Thankfully I've got a lot of mail processing to do, website and source to get ready as well as rehearsing for the CD release party this Friday, so that's keeping me a bit distracted.
I had it in my head that I'd write a bit more about the process of getting to this point but there just hasn't been any time. So maybe you can use your imagination?
The track I did with MC Frontalot (“Livin' at the Corner of Dude & Catastropheâ€) is now apparently available for download in Rock Band as part of the PAX Pack. Proceeds go to Penny Arcade's Child's Play charity till the holidays.
Milton writes:
Re: What might just be my greatest achievement…
0600 hours on September 2nd
Livin' At The Corner Of Dude & Catastrophe
Expert vocals...371,588, 100%.I AM A GOLDEN GOD
Go Milton!
Update: Josh sends in a video of it (thanks Josh):
Lotta bagging on rap in the comments, did we not get over that in 1995?