Offcuts

You'll rarely read posts from me urging you to check out an artist at all costs - In fact, this is the first time I believe. But when I do, you should take it seriously.

If you're reading this before Friday 30th March 07, go to Mary Anne Hobbs' BBC Radio 1 "Listen Again" page and immediately click on the "5 mins" button, four times (to fast-forward 20 minutes into the show) - too late!

Create music to fit a specific scene in the upcoming new series of "Skins", and - if you win - have it actually used in the final cut of the TV show to be aired on E4 (sister station to Channel 4, a major UK TV channel, with attitude).

[UPDATE: Just saw it! See below... if you're really interested that is!]

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 will see a brand owing at least some of its success to the "freedom-fighters" of the web: the software crackers.

A side to the warez debate that often goes overlooked is it 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 video editing... 'cos there wasn't any! What we're left watching is 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:

Well, if you needed further proof of the growing popularity of TheWhippinpost, then yesterday was it.

Bandwidth Exceeded!

If you tried visiting here within the last 12 hours (or so), that's the welcome message you would've seen - Apologies.

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.