July 13, 2009 - Reading time: 7 minutes

UPDATE: tunesBag is dead.

Currently in beta, tunesBag is a free browser-based media player that allows you to (legally) upload your music, play it online, and share with other people.

Think of tunesBag as an online version of iTunes that grants you access to your full audio library from any computer with an Internet connection. Since it’s entirely web based, it lacks features such as CD ripping and iPod syncing, but that’s not really the point. What it does offer is the ability to sit down at any computer and immediately have your full music library at your disposal.

Here’s the main window. Hard to believe this is all running in a browser, huh?

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December 18, 2008 - Reading time: 8 minutes

Podcasting is the practice of distributing media files online for subscribers to view. Since it is Internet-based, it is similar to simply posting on a website. Many podcasts are distributed as episodic content – such as weekly radio or television shows.

This brief tutorial is focused toward people who have never created an audio podcast before. I put it together for an electronic music class that I teach, and thought it could be of use here on TipsFor.us.

Required Tools

Software

• Digital Audio Workstation Software

If you’re only recording speech with little or no music, you likely won’t need software like this. Something like Audacity will suffice. For more complicated editing and mixing, you’re going to need digital audio workstation (DAW) software. Read more

December 16, 2008 - Reading time: 2 minutes

I think I finally found a good solution to my dilemma. The best part is, it’s open source and available for windows, linux, and mac.

Songbird - DEAD, unfortunately

I had tried it in its early beta, and decided to try it again. It can easily do everything iTunes does (except for all the stuff you don’t want iTunes to do). Any feature it’s missing is typically available as a plugin. It has some flaws, but they are already set for later releases (such as CD burning, but heck why not just use infra recorder for everything). Just take a look at the features and “coming soon” section of the page. Read more

October 13, 2008 - Reading time: 9 minutes

(What the common person should know about their MP3 players)

(simplified of all technical junk you don’t need to know, techies: keep walking.)

File Formats, and what’s the difference?

Why use file formats? The answer to that is simple: space. The CDs you buy have the audio recorded at the highest quality they can fit on a single disc. Imagine if you were to direct transfer a full CD to your hard drive. We’d be talking 500-700 megabytes. That means roughly 30 CDs could fit on your 20 gigabyte iPod. That would be pretty disappointing. So we had to find a way to make the files smaller.

The answer: The MP3 format (Yes there were many compression formats before that, but this is just the high points)

How does an MP3 file work, conceptually? The “compression” takes the form of removing data to shrink the file size. This trimming, and the amount removed is what we mean when we say Bitrate. The higher the bitrate, the less data lost; the lower the bitrate, the more data trimmed away. Consider bitrate being the amount of the good stuff left. Read more

September 19, 2008 - Reading time: 9 minutes

(A Post for the musically disaffected)

I’m sure a lot of people will disagree with me, but for those meager few who don’t, this should be useful. I detest ID3 tags and library interfaces that use them. I spent hours googling for alternatives and turned up virtually nothing, except for a few people voicing their anti-ID3 tag thoughts and getting forum flamed. So I will attempt to put together some lifestyle alternatives for the ID3-hating minority. This article is skewed towards a Windows audience, as less freedom is usually present amongst proprietary software.

Reasons Why I Have ID3 Angst

1. I’m a minorly-disorganized person who owns way too many CDs. As a result, I can rarely find the CD I want when I want it. I find it’s quicker to just download the CD than to go find the actual physical disc (In my office, in storage, in my car, etc.)

Why is this a problem? No one seems to ever be able to agree – despite internet databases – on how to spell a band’s name. If I load up my music library via ID3 tags, take a look at a few examples of what I get: Read more

May 6, 2008 - Reading time: 11 minutes

This document describes how to use Sibelius to play Propellerheads Reason on a Mac

There are 4 primary things that need to happen in order to allow Sibelius to play samples from an external program (e.g. East West Gold):
1. A path (i.e. bus) between applications must be opened so that MIDI data can travel from Sibelius to the external sampler. (The “path” is known as a “bus”).
2. Send Sibelius’ MIDI data down this inter-application bus.

3. the gate must be opened in the sample program so that it can receive and play the MIDI data that has come down the bus from Sibelius.
4. Route the audio outputs of the sampler program so you can hear or record the performance. Read more