Tag: soundcloud

hearthis.at

The search for a Soundcloud alternative has lead me to another European site, This time it’s hearthis.at. I’ve uploaded the 37 finished songs from 50/90 so that I had a lot of stuff to play with. So far the interface is wicked clunky. Not very pleased. I created a set and added all of the songs (which was a bear to do) and when go to the set’s page it doesn’t play them in the order I added them. It’s mostly reverse order, but not quite.

Just wondering if I can use the site to post here.

Testing:

I think we can consider that a solid no.

But wait! There is a mention of a shortcode plug in. Does that work?

[hearthis]https://hearthis.at/roberjames1971/30-killer/[/hearthis]

Doesn’t look good, does it. Oh well.

April Fools Pranks

There was a time when Google rolled out the best April Fools pranks you could ever hope to find on the internet.  These days, you still get the feeling that April Fools is like Christmas, New Years, and your birthday all rolled into one for many Google employees, but the pranks are not what they used to be.

They have a couple of decent ones today.  I’ve only found two, but I’m sure there are more.

Google Nose (Beta)

Gmail Blue

I have also heard that some one posted that the Red Sox have signed Curt Schilling.  That’s a good one.

I saw one last night too and that threw me off completely.  Soundcloud’s blog posted something that seemed ridiculous.  I thought it was an April Fools joke that leaked early.  A minute ago it dawned on me that Soundcloud is based in Germany.  The joke wasn’t early, I was.  Oh well..

Three New Songs

I sat in the car, waiting for the kids to get out of karate class, and I mixed three songs.  I am such a dork.

First, Out of Control.  Written in 1997 by me, Mike, and Maria.  Unlike the other songs I’ve taken from the Prime Meridian set lists, this one was actually written for and by Prime Meridian.  We had a number of different singers over our three years together.  One of them used to call this song, Out of Control Like a Tootsie Roll.  It took huge willpower not to sing that line today.

Second, The Monica Song.  More than any other song I’ve posted online, the lyrics to this one make me cringe.  A lot.  This song is me, a not quite 21 year old, musing over a picture from a Sports Illustrated Swim Suit Calendar.  If memory serves it was April ’92.  I lacked the confidence to ever explicitly write a song about a woman, so I wrote this crap as a sort of exercise. It is a little painful to listen to now.  However, I still really dig the way the guitar part grooves.  I believe this is the one song I’ve tinkered with the most of any as far as arrangement is concerned.  When I first wrote it, it was a heavy rocker.  While working at Northeast Broadcasting School a couple of years later I flipped it on its head and made it an acoustic song with just one guitar, one voice, and one saxophone.  This arrangement is meant to be a bit of a hybrid of the two others.  I don’t know if I like it or not.

Thirdly, The Sky.  Speaking of embarrassing, back in ’94 or ’95 Mike and I were playing in a band with a drummer named Dan.  The band never got a name, but we were occasionally very good.  I think that period might have been the best I’ve ever been as a guitar player.  Anyway, we made a 24 track demo at Northeast Broadcasting School.  Three of the four songs we did have been re-recorded by me this month, including this one.  Although at the time it had very different lyrics.  On two of the songs on that demo, Jim the Keyboard Hero contributed freakin’ fantastic keys.  This song was one of them.  Unfortunately, I totally suck on keyboards so I had to seriously dumb down Jim’s awesomeness in order to at least have some organ on the track.  It’s kind of painful to think how much better Jim’s part was.  Still, I always had fun playing this song, even though it’s pretty cheesy.

Early Morning Visit

Look who came out for a visit this morning.

HipstaPrint

The rest of this post is yet another music home demo recording nerd post.

I have three songs in the works right now.  Thanks to the acoustic guitar that suddenly needs a new nut (uh oh) and the leaky, mostly out of tune sax, one of them is ready to be mixed.  A second is missing just a lead guitar.  The third still needs all guitars and vocals.  That one might not get finished until next week.

So I seem to be on a pretty quick pace right now.  I have posted four songs since March 1st, which followed the 14 from February.  My free soundcould account is going to run out of room again.  That means this year’s RPM will get deleted and all of those previous posts that include embeded soundcloud files will lose their audio.  Oh well.  I think I might make a new page for playlists of recent music.  I will use bandcamp to host the playlists, and keep soundcloud for works in progress kinda things.

I’ve also decided that the four songs I have finished this month, and two of the three I’m playing around with now do not belong with the left over songs project.  I started a new playlist for the re-recorded songs.  That is meaningless to everyone on Earth except me, but what are ya gonna do, right?

I will take my lunch break at 1:00.  My MacBook and my Les Paul are ready and waiting to finish tracking another song.  I might be posting two new ones tonight.  We’ll see.

Prime Meridian Revisited

Former Genesis lead guitarist Steve Hackett has twice released albums called Genesis Revisited which include newly recorded versions of old Genesis songs.  I figure if it’s good enough for Steve then it’s good enough for me.

I have two newly recorded Prime Meridian songs that I could use for Prime Meridian Revisited, if I ever wanted to do one of those, you know?

Dead Sheep is my white suburban pretentious college student attempt at analyzing the inner city gang situation of the early 90’s.  I wholeheartedly apologize for my younger self.  Really.

Overexposed was co-written by me and Mike the Bass Player.  The lyrics are about how freakin’ sick we all were of seeing OJ Simpson’s face on the television.  I still wanna puke a little just thinking of all the media coverage.

Maybe I’ll start on a Tempest Fero Revisited too.  That’ll be good for a laugh.

Uploads

I am such a content whore.

The new RPM album can be streamed from three places. My first choice for you to visit would be alonetone, where every home recording I’ve made since 2007 is located, as well as some older stuff.

Next I would say try soundcloud. I liked that site when I first visited, but the free service is kind of limited, and their latest re-design is really bad. They took all of the intuitiveness they had and flushed it.

Finally, you can stream the new music from my bandcamp page. There is a catch to this one though. In order to get unlimited streaming time (like I ever would have run out) I had to put the music up for sale. For the love of all that is holy, please please pretty please DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM MY PAGE. I most definitely do not want your money. Listen if you want. If you like it then you’ll be my friend for ever. If you don’t like it then you probably have excellent taste in music because my tunes are crap. Just please, don’t buy anything from me. I’m putting this stuff up for all (re: no one) to hear, that’s it. Don’t try to buy my brain droppings.

While I’m at it, I wonder if I can embed a playlist from bandcamp…

Did that work?

Eventually I will have the record on my RPM Challenge jukebox page along with last year’s submission, but I haven’t gotten that far yet.

Until then… Listen, don’t buy.

Thanks.

Finished

The 2013 RPM Challenge album is finished.  Or at least as finished as it will ever be.  I’m done, I’m toast, I’m fried.

I was debating on whether or not to drop one of the 14 songs.  I came close.  Last year I actually dropped two.  This year… ah screw it, I’ll keep ’em all.

I kinda think its kinda cute that you have to wait until track three to hear 4/4 time.  Neat, huh?

Here’s the soundcloud.com playlist:

Here’s a link to what I consider the “official” home of all of my stuff, alonetone.com.  Unfortunately the WordPress.com police won’t let me embed alonetone’s playlist.  If they did, you’d never see a soundcloud playlist ever.

(just for snitzengiggle’s let’s try embedding it and see what happens…  Nothing, just as I expected)

I need to head out tonight and get a disc in a jewel case and a padded envelope so I can mail this sucker into headquarters tomorrow.  I also need to find the design a CD cover website I used last year and then print it out at work tomorrow (when no one is looking).  Then if I can drop it in a mailbox tomorrow it will be on its way.

One Final Radio City Thought

This is an experiment.  The audio (assuming it links) is Rush playing at Radio City Music Hall on September 18, 1983.  One of the shows in the run that so impressed me and has forever left me wanting to see them at Radio City.

Of course, soundcloud in its infinite wisdom decided to not upload tracks two and three, meaning we go straight from the intro music to Freewill, skipping The Spirit of Radio and Tom Sawyer.  Figures, huh?  Now this soundcloud account is maxed out (for the free service) so I can’t add them back in.  Hey, live with it.