GreyMatterIdeas

The first was an easier way to update the news and updates section of the front page. I could always pop it into Dreamweaver, but that could be a bit of a hassle. What I wanted was something almost Twitter-like, but NOT a twitter feed (I’ve done that before). What I have is a simple two field form that I can view on my BlackBerry and submit things.

The second one was a database of characters names for my writing efforts. I get a lot of clever names in my Spam box and the ones with the more interesting names become character names. They were getting stored in Yahoo initially, then moved to Google Docs. Now, they are in a database. It’s a little bit easier to control them this way. Plus, I can empty my spam folder out a lot more often.

In other news, editing on “The Family Business” (my 2008 NanoWrimo submission) is going very well. I expect that to be complete by this weekend. I will set it aside for about a week, then read it once more straight through…after that, I will lay it out it in InDesign in a nicer book form, then look at Lulu and Amazon for distribution. An e-book from my storefront will also be available as well.

Following up on “The Family Business” will be editing on “The Trials of Elijah Marcus Ash”, the second book in the series. A third novel (moving forward in the timeline) and a fourth novel (moving sideways) are planned, but not for the 2010 NanoWrimo contest. I want to try my hand at writing a different genre or at least a different story.

“Until The Dreadknocks drink low fat smoothies, make mine Marvel! Yo Joe!”

I have hauled around a Multi-track cassette recorder whereever I have lived ever since 1988, when I was introduced to the concept. It has allowed me to express my musical ideas with a certain degree of success. I stopped using it to record in 1995, though, when I was constantly running out of tracks.

An 8 track recorder (different from an 8 track player that most people are familiar with) would cost almost $2000. For that kind of money, I could buy a good computer system with a killer sound card that would offer multiple inputs. That was what I chose to do. My soundcard was an Echo Layla, from Echo Audio and ran me $600, which got me 8 in and 10 out. I ran Cakewalk Pro Audio 9, from Cakewalk for quite a while, due to a bandmate’s suggestion.

These days, I still use Cakewalk, although the product is called Sonar, and I’m also looking at using ProTools, by Avid. The issue that I had was almost 60 master tapes for that old four track recorder. The original one (My Fostex- 800 dollars) died somewhere around 1999 / 2000, so I had to get another one. One of my students had one sitting in a garage in his ex-wive’s house. He shipped it down and we gave it a shot. It didn’t work at first, but then we tried the Tape Speed Lever. Once it was on high speed, it worked just fine. It was a Tascam. I paid him the 400 dollars promised.

Unfortunately, the tape mechanism gave out on it earlier last year. Getting a replacement would be difficult to do, since the industry has moved onto much better technology than cassette tapes. Then I got lucky. Trolling through a Goodwill, I saw another Tascam unit like mine, being sold As Is for 30 dollars. I snapped it hope, hoping that it would play tapes. It did. Next was to find a way to record 4 input sources at once into Sonar. I initially tried a Behringer UCA 222 USB interface but it wound up putting a wall of noise in the recording for those two channels. Don’t get me wrong; I love Behringer equipment. Most of my studio is made up of their gear. However, in this case, either I wasn’t doing something right or you get what you pay for ($35 vs. $200)

Next up was the generosity of a friend. He wasn’t using his M-Audio FastTrack Pro anymore, so he let me borrow it. I kept it in the office the entire time, just in case, but it proved to work very well. On 5/11 I started transferring my master tapes to Sonar (it allows multiple audio interfaces in the PC and lets you choose which inputs map to which tracks- ProTools doesn’t let you combine interfaces like that). Today, 59 tapes later, I’m done.

I gotta say, it’s been an interesting trip down memory lane. 59 tapes of my original music and ideas, and the recordings of other peoples ideas as well. (Those I have plans for…stay tuned…it’s coming soon..)

Some of the songs and ideas are pure crap. Others are really good, worthy of relearning and redoing (also coming soon…)

However, I’m glad to be done with this project. It’s started to get old. I will tear through the shed looking for any straggler tapes, but I’m pretty confident that I got them all. They are all now on DVD (7 of them, totaling almost 16 GB worth of ideas) and stored in more than one place- the biggest concern about the tapes.)

Last week, my kid hurt his knee-dislocated it, actually, and as we were heading home from the urgent care, he started texting. My wife asked him who he was talking to. He replied with a friend’s name stating that he was seeing if his friend had any crutches he could borrow. I was floored. My son didn’t ask where we could buy some crutches from or ask where he could get some. He started communicating with his network of friends, using the methods HE was familiar with. Granted, it was texting, but the moment he got home, he was on Facebook presumably asking the question and chatting with his friends who were concerned about him.

Now, if I were CVS or Walgreens, I would make sure that I had an active presence on these social media sites. If we hadn’t already had crutches available to us, we would’ve been going to the store. The question is: which one? Is there one that takes the time to adjust them to my kids height or do they just ring them them up and send them on their way.

I realize that that is a customer service issue, BUT, if I had to use crutches and someone took the extra time, I would CERTAINLY let others know about it. If that store had a Facebook Company page or fan page or some other sort of community, I would post on there as well.

The extra touches of customer service do get noticed, and they get mentioned to friends. The question is, how many friends do YOU want hearing that message?

Something to think about…

Yesterday I had several conversations about things, that separately, don’t really reveal anything all that interesting, but collectively, act as a warning. The short version: be wary of changes in your career and look towards the future, or else, you’ll be left behind.

The long version:

My first conversation was with someone who is quite talented at what she does, and in spite of a Masters degree, is taking on the task of learning new things (editing and web design). Very impressive. She made the comment (and this is the part that stuck with me) that her career was turning into a job. She was lamenting the fact that someone here at the TV station was moving on to other things, thus leaving a hole in the duties that are done. This means additional duties for everyone else.

My reply to that was that the career is broader in scope (e.g. Broadcasting) while the job (TV Producer) is more defined, and constantly redefined (usually based on budget cuts). The IT business is the same way. The technology constantly changes and you have to realize that you will have to change with it.

Speaking of which, the second conversation was about Blockbuster Video and how they are circling the drain. We passed one this morning on the way to work and they are closing the store. Blockbuster’s main issue is that they are having trouble generating revenue. This is in large part to services like NetFlix (we have several people here at the station who drop their videos in the outgoing mail), Video on Demand from the cable company, and now Red Box, where you can get a video for a dollar a day (or at least, that’s what the deal seems to be. I personally haven’t used the service.) The salt in the wound for Blockbuster is that they were the kings of their industry, buying out every little mom and pop video rental store to the point where they usually didn’t have any competition.

Here’s where their downfall started. They forgot about the customer experience. People sometimes forget to turn the movies in on time, or they’ll drop it in the slot after the store closes, yet they’ll still get charged a late fee. Other video stores didn’t charge until the movies from the night before were rotated back into inventory and then, after that, if your movie wasn’t back in time, they charged. That happened to me several times, to the point that I stopped using Blockbuster and went with the competition, who understood that if the store was closed, that they still couldn’t rent MY movie back out until they opened the next morning. Blockbuster eventually changed their late fee policies, but it was too little too late.

The next salvo came in the form of Net Flix. Check your mail, there’s a movie, watch it tonight, or tomorrow night , or next week, or whenever, and return it for the next one. Awesome business idea, and one that just shot to the moon. Blockbuster countered with a similar service, but again, too little too late. The latest round in the video rental wars is video on demand. You only have to push a few buttons on the remote and you’re watching a film. Most of the older ones are free, and if it’s not through your cable provider, it’s available through various websites. I just watched Career Opportunities (from 1992?) on YouTube. Someone had posted the movie in 8 parts. Didn’t cost me a dime. It’s no wonder Blockbuster is closing their doors.

What happened the video kings? Weren’t they on top of the world? Yes…for about ten seconds. The funny thing is that the world kept changing, and they forgot to keep up. Someone moved their cheese for them, and they failed to change, to adapt. Soon Blockbuster will be a distant memory in your town. This is the lesson to be pulled from this story.

The third conversation happened with my bosses boss. He is losing a TV engineer to retirement, and while he will hire someone else to take his place, he thought that it might be a good idea to see if one of the IT folks (that would be me) would be interested in learning something about the broadcast side of things. It gave me the willies. I am a network engineer, not a TV engineer. I can push buttons in software that runs on servers, but if I don’t know what the options mean, I am little more than a monkey pushing buttons. I don’t see where this will help anyone in troubleshooting a broadcasting problem. To learn what all of the options mean, would take two years or so. The issue with this?

The broadcasting world is changing. There is going to be less of a need for TV/broadcast engineers and more of a need for Network engineers. People are changing the way that they are entertained. They can hook up their laptops to their TVs and watch videos from YouTube or Hulu in 60 glorious inches. Several months back, I watched an entire series that was strictly on the web called “Pink: the series“. Other than each episode being no greater than 4 minutes long, it was great. I would like to see more. This is the future of television and broadcasting. The sun is setting on the old ways of doing things in the broadcasting world. Even in the production end of things, it’s changing to where the people who are employed are those who can write, shoot, direct, edit and webcast their stories, all by themselves. You have to understand that in order to shoot two people talking about whatever, it requires 2 camera operators, a technical director (to switch between the two cameras), a director, at least one production assistant, a graphics person (so we know who is talking), a teleprompt operator (so the people talking can follow the script) and a writer. Oh, and we need a TV engineer (to make sure that the camera signal follows the spec and standards and rules of the FCC regarding broadcasting), a network engineer (to make sure that the servers are running and the webcast is started correctly) and a web designer (to build the page /site where the webcast will be viewed). That’s ……um….carry the two…and …10 people…not counting the talent (or an editor, if it’s required. We were dealing with LIVE TV). 10 people, who will want a paycheck so that they can eat. This is two people talking about ….who cares…it’s not even like a movie, where you have a crowd of people (extras) and explosions and special effects and …..that’s a WHOLE lot of other people.

The days of the specialist in this scenario are numbered. People will have to assume other jobs and duties, to cut back on the production costs. maybe we can do this in the future with three people, instead of ten. Three is cheaper. Cheaper is better.

A discussion last year with the General Manager of the station revealed that content is king. You can still make money by broadcasting, but you can make a WHOLE lot more money by producing the content. The distribution methods change but the need for content doesn’t. With cable companies and websites like Hulu and Amazon On Demand promising more and more offerings, content production is even more important than ever. A scan through the TV listings reveals just how bad they are hurting for content. Everyone and their brother has a reality show. Most of it is crap. Still, it’s way better to be in the content business than the broadcasting business.

Change is the only constant, and you have to be mindful of the direction for the changes YOU make, in order to keep up. It’s important to go towards the future, and not to be hindered by the past.

Something to think about…How is YOUR career changing?

I have a small laundry list of things to do in order to work in Pro Tools. One of them, recording audio, was accomplished Feb 6th, 2010 Pro Tools beginnings. The next thing to accomplish was to get Midi data into it. DONE!

The results (short though it may be) is found at my music page, at http://www.greymatterideas.com/music.htm. It was done 2/27/10. All of the sounds you hear are virtual instruments from within Pro Tools (the XPand2 plugin) and sound pretty good. The drums were tapped in using my AKAI LPK25. I like it, because it’s so small, but still pretty industrious. I tried the Korg NanoKey, which was $10 cheaper than the AKAI, but it felt like it was plastic and a toy. In fact, I took it back and forth a few times to work (tossed in my Bag of Holding), and one of the keys fell off.

The AKAI feels a lot sturdier to me and plays better. However, being a Midi controller, it makes NO sounds on it’s own. I’ve had other Midi Controllers, which were tied to a synth that DID make sounds; however, I haven’t made sounds using the laptop.

Until this past weekend. I’m pleased to report that it works quite well and will reside at my office. I brought the bigger Midi controller home last week. Tomorrow’s test is to see how I can get Midi data using a legacy Midi device (meaning Midi In and Out ports vs. a USB plug) to get into Pro Tools. After that , is importing a video file and playing along to it. Then I start focusing on how to edit some of the data I’ve put into Pro Tools.

Time to get to work…

There are a lot of jobs out there. Granted, some require certain training or educational background, but there ARE a lot of jobs out there. The question is, especially in these trying economic times, which one? High school students just graduating are looking around at the world and wondering just what the hell they’re going to do with their lives. Their parents are urging them to “go to school, get a job, get out of my house…etc”.

OK. They’re cool with that. The question is, which job? When they hear on the news that some factory closed and X thousands of people are out of work, some after twenty plus years, how can they have any faith that the system works? They’re already cynical anyway; this isn’t helping matters.

Obviously, you need to do something that you like doing. “Do what you love and the money will follow” goes the adage. “Wait, you mean I can get paid for being a lump on the couch? COOL!”…Ok, you know what i mean.

Here’s what I think: I think that you should do the type of work that befits your personality. If you’re rocking the ADHD (like yours truly), then a routine data entry job or factory job isn’t for you. You’ll slit your wrists in a week with the plastic spork that came with your to-go order. You need something that changes constantly. Not saying that those jobs are bad; they’re just not for me. Therefore, I work in computers. Others that I know, would love nothing else than to have a job with a routine, set schedule. This works for them.

Ok, we’ve covered the type of work environment. What about the type of job? I think that if you want to survive another recession, you need to be employed in a necessary industry. All jobs are important. Don’t get me wrong. It’s just that when the financial chips are down, people cut back. I have pursued work in the entertainment business as a musician. This is one of the first things to go when people are broke. They’ll sit at home and watch TV or other things that don’t cost them money. My plan B is working with computers, specifically fixing them and the networks that they run on.

Necessary work. You need to have a car. The car salesman is suffering right now, but not the mechanic. He’s doing great. The Electronics Stores (big and small) are suffering, but not the people that fix them. Offices are letting go of middle level managers with college degrees, some with Masters degrees, left and right. The payroll clerk, however, or the book keeper? They’re still collecting a check. The Gym manager? He’s stressing, but not the doctors office. Necessary work. People NEED to get paid, need to have a working computer, need to stay healthy, need to have a working toilet and lights, need to have car that takes them to their jobs and to the grocery store. People WANT to go to the movies, they want to go to the mall and shop, they want a new car. Needs vs. Wants.

If you want be recession proof, find a career field that people NEED…and don’t kid yourself. If you’re a real estate agent, you will try to tell yourself that “People need me to help them find a house to buy.” You and I both know that’s not what I’m talking about. That’s why the couple spends every evening riding around in neighborhoods, looking for “For Sale” signs. Without you. Because they “need” you. They do, however, need that car to work. Unless one of them is mechanically inclined, they NEED a mechanic. They NEED their computer to get on the Internet. They NEED to be in good health, in order to go to work. Needs vs. Wants.

The solution to being recession proof: find a need and fill it.

I got Pro Tools 8 M-Powered on Thursday. I installed it on the laptop that afternoon and on the work PC on Friday morning. Today is Saturday and it’s really the first time I have had to play with it. The intention was to go through tutorials (which is still an option) and to read the reference guide from cover to cover (which is still going to be done.) However, sometimes the only way to get started is to just dive in. After a slightly rocky start, I have produced the first piece. It’s just a rough idea, more me screwing around than anything, but it represents what I can do now in Pro Tools.

The drums are from Hydrogen. I created 3 patterns, then clicked on the boxes (each box is 1 bar in the song), so the song is 12 bars of pattern1, 4 bars of pattern2, 12 bars of pattern1, 8 bars of pattern2, then 4 bars of pattern3, then back to pattern1…etc. After I put it in SONG mode, I exported the song as a wav file.
Over in Pro Tools, I inserted and converted the wav file from Hydrogen into a new track. It brought the entire thing in. This means that I can create drums in either Hydrogen, FL Studio, my Alesis SR-16 or anything else, and not have to touch drumsticks. This is a good thing.

After that, I added a guitar track. I also put effects on the guitar and drum tracks as well. All internal to the laptop. Not too shabby for the first real effort. More to come (and better too…)

Caleb wanted to record a new song that he wrote earlier in the week. I said “Sure”, as that would give us some quality Father/Son time, as well as showing him how the studio will work and working the kinks out of the process. I decided to try Sonar 7 for this project, instead of defaulting to Audacity. This would give us the ability to add some Midi tracks to it if need be. We wound up not doing any Midi, only audio.

We started with him on bass (since that’s what he wrote the song on). I recorded a very basic drum machine beat with the Alesis SR-16, just your basic 2 and 4 at 100 bmp, simply to keep him on track. I had to disable the metronome in Sonar, though…it was getting out of synch with the SR-16. No issues after that. He sang the vocal while playing bass, although the vox weren’t recorded…at least, not yet. That was the next track to put down. I set the laptop output to Alt 3-4 on the board (so it would output to the headphone amp instead of the speakers-had to turn off the speakers as well to avoid feedback/doubling loops etc.)

That technique successful, we switched jobs. He took over the engineer spot, setting a good level for the drums, while I played on the skins. We wound up ditching the sub mixer and opting instead for a condenser mic just grabbing everything in the room- the drum levels were much more balanced, although we lost control over the sound of the kick and snare…trade offs, I guess, for good levels without distortion.

Next, we went inside to record the guitar and keyboard parts. This is where things started to go wrong. He wasn’t exactly sure of what his bass part was, so the guitar part was a bit rough. The keyboard parts were even worse…three different tracks of those, with only parts of each that we like. We decided, after three hours of going at it, that it was time to take a break from it. The nice thing (at least for me) is that the studio workflow is coming together nicely. That’s important, because now I can concentrate on some ideas that I have and write some more tunes, plus I can branch out a bit more and go after some commercial stuff.

The rough draft of what we accomplished can be found at http://www.greymatterideas.com/zm/audio.htm. It’s the one called Rough Draft…

Browsing through Yahoo news (where I get the bulk of my news) and I run across this little tidbit.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100131/ap_en_ot/us_amazon_macmillan

Basically Amazon.com is having to pull all of the books published by Macmillan publishing, due to the fact that  “the digital book industry needs to create a business model that provides equal opportunities for retailers.”  Amazon has broken through on the e-book reader and according to their figures they sell about 6 digital copies for every 10 physical copies. As the e-book reader price war heats up due to increased competition, this only points to MORE e-books being sold,  not less.

So what exactly is the issue here? Well, it seems that Macmillan wants to charge between 13 and 15 dollars for new e-book releases, vs. Amazon’s 10 dollars. Wait a minute…

They didn’t have to print anything, buy any paper, or ship anything to Amazon via truck. It didn’t change the cost of ANYTHING in their production process, other than adding a small step to turn what is already an electronic file into an e-book. They still have to pay the layout person, the writer, the graphic designer, the illustrator, and the cover artist in order to produce a physical book. But they’re bitching about not making enough money due to the increased popularity of e-books?

If I were Amazon, I would step up to the plate and start a publishing company. Oh wait, they’ve already done that…it’s called Createspace (https://www.createspace.com/).

Here’s the thing, Macmillan. You may be the largest publisher and the oldest, but the consumer (who, as an author,  I want to sell my book to) is generally going to go to Amazon.com first. You’re cutting off your nose to spite your face. I could see where you would want to raise prices if production costs were rising and Amazon took a bigger piece of the action on the physical books. But this isn’t the case at all. Your costs don’t rise; rather, you get an expanded market share for an existing product.

Welcome the land of NOW. Times change, markets change and companies change. Or rather, companies who want to remain in business change. You’re trying to make money on an old model. Didn’t work for the recording industry (just look at the decline in CD sales from major labels) and it’s not working for you. Time to get your head out of the sand and look around. Or else the world will pass you by.

I had my second lesson on the upright bass this weekend. It was the first real lesson, as the very first one is more of a “get to know you” kind of thing. (I’ve taught music lessons before.)

Anyway, I realized this morning, after rehashing the lesson contents last night (practice- 30 min each day), that, after 25 years of playing the bass, I don’t know anything about it at all. See, I spent that long on electric bass. Logically, the electric bass is an upright bass turned on it’s side and shortened. You would think.

However, this is NOT the case at all. It’s a completely different instrument all together.  And I have NO idea how to play it. Everything I’m doing is wrong.  I gotta tell you: it’s rather humbling…

So, with 30 minutes of practice a day, every day, it’s like starting on a new relationship. There is the excitement phase, where you are kind of nervous. Then you start to have fun with it, then you get frustrated because it’s not going quite like you thought it would, then you decide to either quit or commit. Once you decide to commit to the relationship, you get settled into the groove, with occasional patches of stubbornness (where you just can’t seem to grasp the concept you’re trying to learn), followed by anger and self doubt. This seems like a good time…

In the end, though, it’s all worth it. You will overcome that rough patch, that plateau, and you will be better for it. Also, you won’t forget the lesson learned. You worked too hard to get it. I think about my grandfather, who has been playing guitar since he was fifteen (he will be 92 this April). He’s gotten a lot of enjoyment out of playing guitar his entire life. While he has not pursued other lessons, he got to the point where he wanted to be, and he’s happy.

Happiness. I think that’s a pretty good goal to have in any relationship.

Whether it’s a romance, or simply an upright bass.