Besides being a totally amazing watch, The Popular Demo is extra cool because they released the tools to make your own demos with the engine. The quality is pretty stunning, I don't think a video made with it and rendered at high quality would be out of place on television. I wish I had the time to try and jam one of my songs in there because that would be super awesome.

Well, that is now in the bag. It was a pretty good experience in that I learned an awful lot since I had 100% no clue about live sound. I got some real helpful advice and a better idea of what the hell the deal is with playing live. Didn't really make me feel like a flawless rock god, but that I guess is what the booze is for.

The first Brad Sucks live rehearsal at a real place where bands play with real PAs and so on is in like two hours from now. Kinda nervous, kinda looking forward to it, I hope it all goes okay. Playing live is what I've been working on lately instead of recording new songs. If all goes well, I'll be able to start playing live shows, stop worrying about translating my songs into live format and start putting down some new material.

Wish me luck!

Joe Taylor points to the Internet Archive's New FreeCache project. For musicians this means a free and easy way to offload the bandwidth of their hosted songs. You just put "http://freecache.org/" in front of your URL and it does its thing. For instance, here's the freecached version of Making Me Nervous.

That is both handy AND dandy.

Engadget shows how to make your own pirate radio station with an ipod. Great, great stuff. Makes me wish I had an iPod.

Pitchformula, by Loren Jan Wilson, is pretty awesome:

This project combines a computer science background and a songwriting hobby with an unhealthy obsession for popular music reviews. In it, I attempt to come up with a new computer-assisted songwriting method which takes music critics' opinions into account. By writing software to statisically analyze the content of several thousand record reviews from the Pitchfork music website (www.pitchforkmedia.com), I generate a set of compositional guidelines based on the musical preferences expressed by the critics. I then use those guidelines to write and record a couple of original songs, discussing in detail the relationships between the songs and the data that I have collected.

The word lists and their values and the songs he made which I do think sound a fair amount like the sort of music the average Pitchfork reviewer would go for.

Here's a batch of new remixes: Borderline (Bill Berry Mix) - Bill Berry, who did a really cool Making Me Nervous cover electrona-fies Borderline.

Borderline (Alike Mix) - A Borderline remix which does funny things to my mind with its rhythm, almost dub/reggae-ish.

Making Me Nervous (Paranoia Remix) - Specialneeds remixes Making Me Nervous, plenty of cool electronic sounds in here.

Thanks! Also I made a listing in the extras section for the source that's currently available.

I've been working away on my one-man live show. Full recorded rehearsal/run-through at a real live venue is this weekend. Hopefully it will go OK and I won't just flat-out die. I've been looking around for a lead instrument I could play with my mouth while playing guitar. I'm no good at harmonica and I wanted something that just gave a simple tone that I could process. I've been trying to make the kazoo work for me with mixed results. It's been a pain trying to set up a decent mic setup.

But today a friend of mine found the Kazooka electric kazoo on eBay:

It's a kazoo with a pickup in it that you can just plug straight into any old guitar pedals or effects processors. You can listen to demos here, it's pretty awesome. I ordered one for $14 and I'm looking forward to getting it. Seems unlikely I'll have it by the weekend though so I'll just have to pretend I guess, pawing sadly at the air where my super awesome kazooka should be.

SexyJosh, who contributed the cool Making Me Nervous cover the other day sends in the Borderline (SexyMix)

Hetesi Peter Pal sent in the Making Me Nervous Cyberpest Mix and the Borderline Cyberpest Mix.

Here's a Quicktime video of famous producer Steve Albini giving a talk to the MTSU Recording Industry Audio Engineers Society. I haven't watched it all yet, but from the intro I think the gist is going to be about running a recording studio and also that digital recording sucks. Update: There's a bit of digital recording sucking in there, but all in all he seems like a pretty balanced guy who prefers analog. Cool video, lots of interesting stuff.

And here's my Borderline (Stutterbug Mix). I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out. It keeps a lot of the original but turns into more or less a whole other song. I think.

Bill Berry sent in this pretty awesome remix of Making Me Nervous, which uses parts of the unfinished remix I did the other day.

HalfLifeRadio's SexyJosh sent in this acoustic Making Me Nervous cover which is pretty cool.

Some of the Songfight! fellas are taking the Album A Day challenge. Sonofsupercar's blue lang did Beautiful Lunchbox

Jute Gyte put together Jennifer

And my pal Glenn Case is doing his as-yet-untitled one today and has finished track #4 as of this posting.

How Copyright Law Changed Hip Hop is a real interesting interview with Public Enemy's Chuck D and Hank Shocklee on sampling and copyright and remixing.

Stay Free!: As you probably know, some music fans are now sampling and mashing together two or more songs and trading the results online. There's one track by Evolution Control Committee that uses a Herb Alpert instrumental as the backing track for your "By the Time I Get to Arizona." It sounds like you're rapping over a Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass song. How do you feel about other people remixing your tracks without permission?

Chuck D: I think my feelings are obvious. I think it's great.

Chuck D is pretty cool.

Borderline - Justin McGonigle Remix is now online for your enjoyment and feedback.

I got my Digitech VX400 last night and played around with it this morning, it's pretty fun and I think it'll do the trick for the live vocals. The effects are okay, but most of the novelty ones are kinda dopey and I'll have to see if they wind up having any practical use. Here's me jamming like an idiot (1 MB).

Making Me Nervous (MindOverMatter Mix). Barry from wrote about his process on his blog:

I really liked the song already, and I'd been looking for an excuse to sit down and actually learn how to use GarageBand. I decided to see what I could do using only Brad's source tracks and the loops included with GarageBand. (I'd like to say I wanted to do this for the added challenge but it was really because I was too damn lazy to play in any new parts myself.) BTW, I found that it required approximately zero brain cycles to convert Brad's tracks to the GarageBand format using the AppleLoops SDK.

I've heard a lot about GarageBand but don't have a Mac so I've never gotten a chance to try it. I've linked this in the forums for discussion. Thanks Barry!

Making Me Nervous (Mandola Mix). Adam Sampson writes:

I thought it'd be fun to do an acoustic mix of Making Me Nervous, so here's one. The only instrument's my no-brand cheap mandola, with the "pickup" (an old tieclip mic and some Blu-Tak) attached to different sides for the two parts. I was originally hoping to do this in one take per part but failed miserably; it actually took a couple of takes and some editing, about three hours in total. Multitracked, edited and mixed down using Audacity on Linux.

This open source music thing is cool. :)

Thanks Adam!

I'm starting to post all these remixes to the forums if people want to discuss them.