900 into 5

After just one week of mixing on CC Mixter, a mix i did of the talented Frank Carter was used and applied to a short video blog called T Shirts For Cambodia on the Jumpcut site

It's only 46 secs long from the intro but was played over 900 times in five days. Makes you think does it not ?

Absent Friends

One of the 40 remixes that i did over at Realworld Remixed last year, called Absent Friends was made in honour and rememberance of a nephew of mine, Andrew McCartney who sadly died in 2006.

He was an amazing landscape photographer, among other things, and has left a stunning legacy of images which are now being used to help raise funds to further brain tumor research.

Image Copyright © 2007 The Andrew McCartney Trust Fund

There is now a registered charity set up in his name and a web site where you can see some of his amazing work and purchase cards and soon calendars .

Take a look. I know you will impressed and make a donation if you can or buy something if you like.

If you need further incentive then there is also another tune i wrote on the site called `Andrews Theme' for you to listen to.

Sing It Loud

Over the years i have met various singers who had not one bit of musical ability or funds to gain studio time or knew musicians to work with or get ideas from.

Several of them fell prey to the what is known locally as the Music Mafia.

Small or home based studios promising a demo for a small fee but often taking thousands and giving little in return with badly recorded or self indulgent backing tracks. In many cases it's a Midi driven cover or worse a track off a Karioke CD.

Now there are some good studios out there who do offer a proper service so its not all bad.

But there is an alternative. Instead of paying for a lame demo post your vocals to a site like CC Mixter and if its good your vocal work will be turned into a variety of musical styles.

Admitted you are going have to produce your vocal in some way by recording it your self and singing it in tune and set too a least a click or metronome track at a marked tempo.

But the money you will have spent on a poor demo will be better directed to purchasing a good mic, learning some know how and recording it yourself.

You have nothing to loose. Your work will enter under the Creative Commons banner but you will have possibly have 10 well produced demos or more you can play to people and your own microphone or a small digital recorder at the end of it.

There are thousands of PC based musicicans who can't sing a note, desperate for vocal stems to work their magic on . So if you have a voice let it be heard and get it online.

You can't get scabby knees surfing the net

It seems inevitable that the more time you spend on the net , the more you want try out stuff like this.

Blogging, RSS feeds. It's like you are a social outcast if you are not part of some community, Bebo or Myspace or do not have the latest gizmo in net technology.

So how did i counter this feeling of digital savvy inadequacy recently ? . I got my bike out for the first time in two years and said screw it and went for a ride that's how.

Now i am not getting younger, but being balanced up there you suddenly remember that if you come off it is going hurt. What's more a fall can screw you up in more ways than one. Time off work, money lost, doctors bills. Much easier when you are a kid with nothing to worry about with the wind in your hair and the risk of maybe the odd scabby knee.

But you know what occurred to me, which may seem obvious saying it , but we really are not built to sit at a screen all day, letting our muscle tissue waste away.

While i was thinking about this i remembered Woody Allen's film The Sleeper i think it is , ( someone will put me right if i am wrong ) where the brain is nothing but a brain in a room functioning without a body.

Now that was a 70's comedy and meant to be a far fetched image of the future, but you know what, it's pretty much close to the truth these days.