Offcuts

You'll rarely read posts by me urging you to check-out an artist - in fact, this is the first - but when I do, you're in for an intimate education.

I recently heard Grimewatch on Mary Anne Hobbs' show on BBC Radio 1 and immediately thereafter had to masturbate... I urge you to join me.

It's been a while since I last read a good 'ole warez debate on the forums.

Press play.

Think of any popular brand in software - Cubase, Reason, FruityLoops, Photoshop, Dreamweaver etc - and you see a brand owing at least some of its success to the "freedom-fighters" of the web: the software crackers.

A side to the software piracy debate that is often overlooked is the scene can potentially be worth $millions to the right company with the right software. I'm gonna show you how this works using a forum post written by a member called Prime:

I was watching a Reason tutorial video the other day and there was this dude who obviously hadn't learnt the art of editing video... 'cos there wasn't any! We're left watching this guy sitting at his PC figuring out where to go with this sample that was looping... and looping... and looping!

We've already discussed a few tips to find the key of a song which invlolved mainly trial and error.

But as with anything, practise makes perfect and with this piece of kit from Solfege, you can train your ears to recognise chords and timing intervals, plus more by the looks of it:

Reason ReWire and Cubase Tutorial Updates

It's difficult to balance the spinning plates these days, what with trying to roll-out the dedicated online video tutorials for musicians service, the usual maintenance and upgrade projects that cook behind-the-scenes, and writing tutorials blah, blah, blah...

Last week I wrote about the upcoming new Microsoft Vista operating system - Specifically; what the new Vista audio engine will mean for musicians.

Well, had an email from NormC (though why you lot are too shy to leave comments, I don't know - especially those of you that are members!), who is asking why I didn't mention the WaveRT (wave real-time) port driver...

Unseen Video Footage

Mark King shouldn't need any introduction, but just in case he does... well, let's put it this way: if you like bass, Mark King owns bass! And the band he fronted - Level 42 - also owned the arena back in the day too.

But here, in this hitherto secret and previously unseen rare video footage, shot exclusively in my Mega-Bowl Arena - back in the day - I show Mark who has the Title Deeds, in this moving, and thought-provoking slappin' and jammin' session.

This is cool and qualifies as one of those, 'Oh why didn't I think of that!,' simple ideas that change the way people do stuff.

Let it be known that henceforth, TheWhippinpost was officially "relaunched", live, on 20th Nov 2006, BO!