Why 2015 is the Year of Community Not Competition

[…] What is it about the music industry that fills us with such self-doubt, we feel upset when other artists succeed instead of optimistic? What is so broken about the indie music scene that we literally laugh off the idea of making money? Of all of us finding success instead of a chosen few?

[…] At the end of the day the only thing I’m sure of is this: Community is my antidote for cynicism. Social media and networking groups have changed my life in the last year, mainly because I let them. Putting myself out there like the new kid at school, with no expectations and no real plan, has given me the faith in myself that I struggled to find for years.

Community not competition is my motto for the year. I hope you’ll join me.

via Guest Post by Rorie Kelly: Why 2015 is the Year of Community Not Competition – CyberPR Music | CyberPR Music.

potential futures for sound publishing and distribution

This development is exciting, revealing potential futures for sound publishing and distribution away from the download culture and immediacy of the worldwide archive of sound towards a more personal interaction delivered by post and performed by the listener. Thus the future of sound curation, so hotly debated this year, could lie in sculptural works of sound, texts and images that entice participation and instruct my listening through a tangible materiality and a physical presence.

In this jouissance of the material thing, there’s the danger of fetishism: that as we abandon the repository online we might start an archive of objects offline instead, their beautiful feel and touch requiring not my listening but inviting their preservation by leaving them unperformed and mute. But if we keep an performing what we hear, see and read, and engage with the aesthetic of the craft by crafting a listening response, we might just avert this fate and instead fast forward to a future where work is savoured in its materiality by performing its process while touching and singing its words.

— Salomé Voegelin, Papering Over The Cracks, The Wire (Jan 2015)

ArpArp at 90%

It was somewhat long Sunday in the studio, and I’m excited. It was a new experience writing a track with a ‘synth player’ in mind – how will she play this or that preset, how much time there is to change a program on the instrument and the fact that there is only three octaves on a keyboard (google:microKorg). The track feels very confident in its almost electro sound. I’m imagining it to work well on a dance floor. I like the kind of tight robotic funk of it. There are number of details to be done and fixed: many transitions seem still imprecise, perhaps even hasty, there’s some dynamics to be taken care of (I’d like that velocities – volumes – of hihats vary and change in time), the bassline that comes in second half of the track is all but acceptable, but all in all this seems to be at 90%, and that means I can pretty much start focusing on next track.

The deadlines are looming in, I pretty much need to finish minimum 8 songs till November 1st.

listen:

download arp-arp-141005.ogg

I’m hungry for feedback. Leave a comment or write.

wpid-wp-1412580690505.jpeg

Garmin Nüvi 255 on Linux

Was asked by my family if I can update their Garmin device, so I searched the net how to do it without getting into buying much software and possibly work with free maps.

Get the maps

Go to garmin.openstreetmap.nl and select what data you want on your map.

Start by choosing a type of map – for example “Generic Routable” (seems good for this model of Garmin), then select a predefined country from a dropdown menu (for example in a dropdown “Europe” you can choose Austria, or Slovenia).

If you want more territories add some additional tiles, click “Enable manual selection” checkbox and click around the map to select or deselect tiles. You can also click+drag to select multiple tiles. Once you are done, add your email address above the map and click “Build my maps” and follow instructions.

When you open the link in the second email, download the “Compressed file that contains a single image that can be placed directly onto the SD-card of the GPS.“, usually called something like osm_generic_new_gmapsupp.zip.

Add the maps to your Garmin

Plug your Garmin Nüvi 255 to your computer using a simple mini-usb cable (it looks like this).

Wait till it ‘boots’ – wait for progress bar and a beep.

After that there should appear two possibilities to mount in your Nautilus. One of them is the Garmin device itself and the other is the microSD card plugged into the Garmin. If names of devices don’t give enough clues about which one is which one, you can recognise them by their contents if you mount them. The microSD card will have only one folder called ‘garmin’ while Garmin device will have more folders and files. Mount the microSD card. (Alternatively, you can take the microSD card out of Garmin and mount it on computer using an SD card reader).

Backup (copy) the file or the ‘garmin’ folder from microSD card onto your computer just in case something goes wrong.

Unzip the contents of the zip file you downloaded from OpenStreetMap – this will give you a single file: gmapsupp.img. Copy it to the microSD card into folder ‘garmin’, overwriting the file that is there.

Wait for the transfer to complete and properly unmount the microSD card and the Garmin device. Once you are sure they are unmounted you can unplug the Garmin device from your computer.

That’s all. When Garmin starts it will include the new data together with old data for areas that you didn’t choose (or so it seems – untested yet). If you want to use just the new map, and not the old data (or just to test if the new map is installed), go to Tools > Settings > Map > Map Info where you can turn on and off maps as desired.

Alternative method: replace the maps

The above method seems to “add” new data for selected areas. In other words, what you put on the microSD card is then used in addition to the maps that are already on the device.

It seems that it is possible to replace the maps that are already on the device by actually replacing gmapprom.img file on folder ‘Garmin’ on the device (not on microSD card!) with the contents of gmapsupp.img. That is, rename gmapsupp.img to gmapprom.img and with it overwrite the file on the device (do not forget to backup anything you will override).

Sources

http://askubuntu.com/questions/377599/update-garmin-n%C3%BCvi-255-maps
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Garmin.OpenStreetMap.nl:Manual
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=133042

Ubuntu Studio 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) on ThinkPad X220

I went and installed a fresh install from the USB: first I downloaded a DVD image of Ubuntu Studio 14.04.1 and then used UNetBootin to create a bootable USB stick. I was able to boot into live version (Try Ubuntu Studio without installing) and then installed directly from that session.

I was able to shrink the root partition from existing install (also Ubuntu Studio, 12.04) which was 28 GB into 14GB and that left me with new 14GB space for a new install. This way I could dual boot and boot back into old system in case of emergency.

After install I had a problem connecting to my home WiFi with the default NetworkManager. I’m already used to using WICD network manager, so I booted back into old system and downloaded packages: python-urwid_1.1.1-1build2_amd64.deb, wicd-curses_1.7.2.4-4.1ubuntu1_all.deb, python-wicd_1.7.2.4-4.1ubuntu1_all.deb and wicd-daemon_1.7.2.4-4.1ubuntu1_all.deb into a fresh empty folder, booted back into new system and installed them with

Then you can control your wifi in terminal with wicd-curses

It’s cool to stop NetworkManager (first) and remove it after wicd is working ok (sudo apt-get remove network-manager) and possibly restart wicd with

Window Manager

I use awesome window manager

and enable text-only login by setting in /etc/default/grub:

don’t forget to

start your awesome WM with startx (part of xinit package), with your ~/.xinitrc containing something like

audio setup

a jackd instance in a terminal (jackd -d alsa -d hw:0 -r 44100 -p 512 -n 3 -i 2 -o 2)
pulseaudio (currently not autospawned – echo "autospawn = no" > ~/.pulse/client.conf)
jack-module for pulse audio

in fact a big problem was an old ~/.asoundrc file. once removed, jack was easy to start. jack_control still not behaving right, but i wrote a little script to start jackd and pulseaudio:

jack_pulse.sh, put it in ~/bin and make it executable:

Firewire (using an ExpressCard) sound card (Edirol FA-101) works out of the box. Just use:

Also, EchoAudio Indigo xDJ express-card works out of the box. After pluging it in it’s usually found as hw:1, so:

more system tweaking

Some necessary tools:

I (quite haphazardly by opinion of some) turn of sudo password check, by adding the following into /etc/sudoers file:

Suspend through xfce4-power-manager does not work. the solution with installing pm-utils as per http://askubuntu.com/questions/460101/xfce4-power-manager-suspend-not-available-for-lid-close makes this problem go away. So,

Returning from suspend sometimes makes certain programs lagging in display updates (Chromium browser and Renoise, observed). This can be eliminated by simply switching to text console (Ctrl+Alt+F1) and back to Xorg (Alt+F7).

audio/video stuff

install renoise

install SuperCollider:

Click [Configure] and then [Generate]. You might get some submodules via git (git submodule update, +..)

quirky Pure Data

If your PD patches use [plugin~], nothing will be shown. This can be avoided by starting PD with a unset LANG. This means that before you run pure data (pd-extended), you first do

Gtk grey/green theme is not applied well to all different widgets

the main culprit is the gtk3.
everything is solved if one takes a good theme that includes gtk2 and gtk3 themes, download and extract into ~/.themes/ and creates symlinks like this:

one can fix font size using lxappearance and qt/kde apps using qtconfig

suspending from within LightDM doesn’t work. Reports “No kernel support”

my workaround is not using lightdm at all. i turn it off with wajig stop lightdm and start my awesomeWM session using startx. Fonts seem nicer (more correct to my eyes). I don’t know exactly why is the font different tho. However, this brings some other problems, usually connected to permissions – especially sudden inablity to mount usb keys through nautilus for example (pmount works) and scanning.

Slovene keyboard

My custom slovene/en keyboard layout – see slovenian keyboard layout.

other software checklist

sylpheed

  • dropbox: just apt-get install nautilus-dropbox. It includes an autodownload of dropbox from their site.
  • mega client: mega.co.nz
  • nautilus-open-terminal
  • pidgin
  • skype

    Things to fix:

    * permissions to be able to mount usb keys via nautilus
    * permission to be able to scan

What If SenseStage notes/log [sept 2014]

With a new system (Ubuntu Studio 14.04.1, 64bit) suddenly the SenseStage didn’t want to run. Especially the ./run_local.sh script was giving me pain. It turned out the culprit was virtualenv which had to be setup anew. Since I’m not fluent in python and/or virtualenv it took me a while, but thanks to online community (stackoverflow.com, virtualenv.readthedocs.org) I managed to fix it:

backup old virtualenv:

install a systemwide virtualenv tool:

create a new virtual environment:

copy some packages into new environment:

don’t forget to re-install pyOSC:

plug the controler bee, make it (/dev/ttyUSB0) accessible:
either add user to group dialout

or change permissions (temporarily):

run the controller script run_local.sh in ~/src/SenseStageLeben/transmittance/minibee

Troubles with SuperCollider

Due to change of system, a LADSPA plugin for SC was not found. Had to compile it.

Build that machine

“How can you make money? Don’t worry about money. That comes after you have an audience, which comes after you learn how to make beautiful things.

“Hobby Artists” (people who don’t make a living from their art) have a very idyllic view about art and money. They think artists should never work with brands, that money and art should be separate, that art should live in purity inside a vacuum. That’s why they’re not professional artists. Professional artists constantly live at the intersection of art and money. Making money is half their job. Being a professional artist is 50% making art, 50% building a machine whose input is art and whose output is money. Half your job is to build that machine. It’s different for everyone, it will take a long time. Have low overhead. Be lean. Use what you have. Reuse it.”

— Jack Conte, via TechCrunch

Kaskade: Free The Music

[…]

When I signed with Ultra, I kissed goodbye forever the rights to own my music. They own it. And now Sony owns them. So now Sony owns my music. I knew that going in. Soundcloud is beholden to labels to keep copyright protected music (read: all music put out by a label, any label) off their site unless authorized by the label. Am I authorized to post my music? Yep. Does their soulless robot program know that? Not so much. So some stuff they pulled was mistakenly deleted, but some tracks were absolutely rule breakers. The mash ups. (Read about those little beauties in “Politicking of a Mash Up”.) I post mash ups mainly because I don’t need to keep these things tucked under my pillow, pulling out my little Precious only to be played at gigs. You want to hear it? Grab it. Like it? Great. The end.

But the labels, they aren’t feeling this approach so much.

There’s always been this cagey group of old men who are scared to death of people taking their money. Back in the day, they were upset that the technology existed to record onto cassette tapes directly from the radio. “What! (Harumph!) Why will people buy music if they can just pull it out of the air?!” Yet, people still bought music. Because it was more accessible. Because more people were exposed. Because Mikey played it for Joey on the corner and then Joey had to have it. It’s music, and we buy what we love. We can’t love music we haven’t heard.

Innovation helps the music industry. The industry only needs to make the effort to keep up and adapt. Make no mistake: exposing as many people as possible to music – all music – is a good thing. Everyone wins. The artist, the audience, even the old guys who just want some more cash.

The laws that are governing online music share sites were written at a time when our online and real-life landscapes were totally different. Our marching orders are coming from a place that’s completely out of touch and irrelevant. They have these legal legs to stand on that empower them to make life kind of a pain-in-the-ass for people like me. And for many of you. Countless artists have launched their careers though mash ups, bootlegs, remixes and music sharing. These laws and page take-downs are cutting us down at the knees.
And yo, musicians definitely need knees.

We have moved beyond the exhausting notion that our greedy hands need to hold onto these tunes so tightly. The world just doesn’t work like that anymore. I’d happily parse out the pieces of every song I’ve made for others to use. Remix that. Use that. Think you could do it better? Show me. It’s laughable to assert that someone is losing money owed to them because I’m promoting music that I’ve written and recorded. Having the means to expose music to the masses is a deft tool to breathe new life into and promote a song. It’s the most compelling advertising, really.

But it’s more than advertising. It’s sharing. If a person likes one song, then you know what’s likely to happen? They’ll press the download arrow and own it for free. You won’t believe what happens next! They become familiar with the artist, and seek out other material. Maybe they buy that. Maybe they talk about it online. Maybe they go to a show. Maybe they simply become a fan and tell a friend.

I’m cool with that. The labels should be too. It’s exactly what they’re trying to accomplish by funneling endless money for Facebook Likes, Twitter trending hashtags, and totally ridiculous impotent advertising campaigns. Let the people have the music. Or, to put it in language that makes more sense for the ones who can only speak dollar bill – Free the music, and your cash will follow.

(via thisisadynasty.tumblr.com/post/87945465547/brb-deleting-soundcloud)

 

Five to the one & A Boza A Boza

After last post things got pretty intense in Rovinj with all the kids running around and stuff, plus, suddenly we’ve been left without internet for a couple of days. We are now back in Ljubljana, trying to establish a work routine and moving forward in search of words, utterances, letters, sentences, images, mental ambiences… It’s not easy to change a place and find balance quickly enough in order to continue work. But today I came up with two more drafts.

The “5 toys to the 1” track started with “regular” bass melody on every beat, with 5 notes repeating. Since 3 repetition makes 15 beats and not 16, I shortened the pattern to these 15 beats and also created 5 beats as a basic measure (bar?) and created a beat to that. Here’s a result with two variations of a beat.

 

“A Boza A Boza” is something going more into a mellow direction. This is very sketchy and I’m not sure how it will develop and transform in the future (if it will be used at all).

 

We had a little discussion today about if these sketches/drafts have their intensities to the max. The thing is, when I’m starting with some idea then it’s mostly play, trying things out. And I frequently ‘max’ things out, throw layer upon layer, remove some of them and then go on. But it’s important to understand that these sketches will change considerably once it is more clear how many elements there are (vocals! live synth! etc) and what happens in the time-structure.

both tracks in renoise xrns sources in a zip: 5toys_a_boza

10 things you should NEVER say during presentations

At our TNW Conferences we see a lot of presentations and I have given a fair share of presentations myself. I often see people making the same mistakes and cringe when I hear the same excuses or basic errors when people get on stage.

The easiest way to lose an audience is to make a mistake in the first minute, and that is exactly where most mistakes are made. Here is my list of 10 things you shouldn’t say during presentations:

1: I’m very jet-lagged/tired/hungover

Not sure where this comes from but one in five presentations at any conference will start with an excuse. ‘They only invited me yesterday’, ‘I’m really tired from my trip’ or another lame excuse that the audience really doesn’t want to hear. We, the audience, just want to see you give it your best. If you feel like shit and can’t give it your best than maybe you should’ve cancelled. Take a pill, drink an espresso and kill it!

2: I’ll get back to that later

If you happen to stumble upon an audience that is eager to learn and interact you should always grab that chance and enjoy it. If someone has a question that you will address in a later slide just skip to it right away! If someone is brave enough to raise their hand and ask you a question you should compliment them and invite the rest of the audience to do the same. Don’t delay anything.

3: Can you hear me? Yes you can!

This is how a lot of people start their talk. They will tap a microphone three times, shout ‘can you all hear me in the back’ and then smile apologetic when it becomes clear that, yes, everybody can hear you but nobody raises their hands.

It isn’t your responsibility to check the audio. There will be people for that. If you speak into the microphone and you get the impression that it’s not working, just relax, count to three, and try again. If you still think the sound isn’t working just calmly walk to the edge of the stage and discreetly ask the moderator to check for you. Smile at the audience and look confident. Assume it all works until the opposite has been proven, then stay calm and wait for a fix.

4: I can’t see you because the lights are too bright

Yes, when you are on stage the lights are bright and hot and it will be difficult to see the audience. But they don’t have to know about all that. Just stare into the dark, smile often and act like you feel right at home on there. Feel free to walk into the audience if you want to see them up close. Don’t cover your eyes to see people but politely ask the lights people to turn on the lights in the room if you plan to count hands or ask the audience a question. Even better, talk to the lights people in advance so they are prepared when you are going to ask them.

5: Can you read this?

The common rule is to make the font size on your slides twice the size of the average age of the audience. Yes, that means that if you expect the audience to be 40 on average you are stuck with a font size of 80 points. You won’t be able to fit a lot of text on the slide that way, which is a good thing, and brings us to the next point.

tnw conference 730x331 10 things you should NEVER say during presentations

6: Let me read this out loud for you

Never ever, ever, ever in a million years add so much text on a slide that people will spend time reading it. And if you do, make damn sure you don’t read it out loud for them! The best way to lose your audiences attention is to add text to a slide. Here’s what will happen when you have more than four words on a slide; people will start reading it. And what happens when they read it? They will stop listening to you!

Only use short titles on your presentations and memorize the texts you want them to read. Or, if you MUST include an awesome three-sentence quote, announce that everybody should read the quote, then shut up for six seconds so they can actually read it.

7: Shut off your phone/laptop/tablet

Once upon a time you could ask an audience to shut off their devices. That was a long time ago. Now people tweet the awesome quotes you produce or take notes on their iPads. Or they play solitaire or check Facebook. Times change. You can ask if people turn their phones to silent mode but apart from that you just have to make sure that your talk is so incredibly inspiring people will close their laptops because they don’t want to miss a second of it. Demanding their attention is just not going to work.

8: No need to write anything down or take photos, the presentation will be online later

It is really cool that you will upload your presentation later. But if it’s a good presentation it won’t contain too many words (see point 4) and it won’t be of much use to them. For a lot of people writing something down is just an easy way to memorize something you’ve said. The act of writing down a sentence also embeds it in your brain and who knows, they might be really inspired and come up with something they’ve heard in between your lines that might change their business. Allow people to do whatever they want during your presentations.

9: Let me answer that question right away

Of course it is awesome if you answer a question right away, but you need to do something else first! Very often the question from an audience member will be very clear to you but not to the rest of the audience. So please say “I’ll repeat that question first so everybody hears it and THEN I will answer it”. Make it a habit to repeat questions also because the extra time it takes to repeat it gives you extra time to think about an awesome answer.

10: I’ll keep it short

This is a promise nobody ever keeps. But a lot of presentations are started that way! The audience really doesn’t care if you keep it short or not. They’ve invested their time and just want to be informed and inspired. Tell them “This presentation is going to change your life” or “This presentation is scheduled to take 30 minutes, but I’ll do it in 25 minutes so you can go out and have a coffee earlier than expected.”. Now all you have to do is keep that promise, which brings me to the last point.

Bonus tip: What, I’m out of time? But I have 23 more slides!

If you come unprepared and need more time than you are allowed you’ve screwed up. You need to practice your presentation and make it fit within the allotted time-slot. Even better, end five minutes early and ask if anyone has questions, and if they don’t invite them for a coffee to talk one-on-one. Giving an audience five minutes back will earn their respect and gratitude. Taking an extra five will annoy and alienate them.

Conclusion: come prepared, be yourself and be professional. The audience will love you for being clear, serious and not wasting their time.

I wrote a follow up post to this one titled “10 Ingredients for the perfect presentation” which you will surely also like.

(via The Next Web)