Coises

I’m not a hardware expert, so I certainly might be missing something... but I’m wondering why you’re running PC2-5300 (DDR2 667) and not PC2-6400 (DDR2 800) in this board. If you’re getting new RAM (which your initial post implied), I’d suggest moving to the board’s full rated memory speed. And you might not want or need it now, either. I was just pointing out that 32-bit operating systems generally can’t “see” a full 4GB of RAM. That board runs its memory dual channel, though, so you do want to work in matched pairs. I’d be inclined to start by replacing what you have with one pair of 2x1GB DDR2 800 (PC2-6400) sticks (e.g., Kingston KHX6400D2LLK2/2G) and looking at some of the other suggested upgrades before going above 2GB memory or changing to 64-bit; or, if you’re set on eventually going 64-bit and/or to or beyond 4GB with this machine and don’t mind an extra $40, put in a matched pair of 2GB sticks (like Kingston KHX6400D2LLK2/4G) instead. In either case, you move yourself up to PC2-6400 low-latency memory and still leave 2 slots available for future expansion.

What’s the motherboard, and the power supply? You do realize that a 32-bit operating system won’t be able to make full use of 4GB of memory? A good, simple check to see what’s bottlenecking a Windows system is to open the Task Manager (right-click the task bar to get to it), select the “Processes” tab and from “Select Columns...” on the “view” menu, add “Page Faults Delta” to the columns shown. Then load the system in a typical fashion enough to make it drag a bit and watch what happens. If your CPU Usage is going to the high percentages, your CPU can’t keep up. If CPU is low but one or more lines show PF Deltas frequently hitting the high hundreds or even thousands, the amount of RAM you have is insufficient. (“Page Fault Delta” counts the number of times in each update interval — usually set to one second — a program tries to access memory that is not actually in memory and must be “paged” in from your hard drive.) If neither of those things happens, something else, like disc drive throughput or video card performance, is probably the limiting factor. That’s not a foolproof diagnostic procedure, but frequently it will give you a good idea whether CPU, RAM or something else is the weak link in your system, and hence suggest what to upgrade first. Once my impending move is done and I’m settled, I’m hoping to do a sound card upgrade myself; my 8-year-old Audigy is getting flaky. In looking around, I’ve seen two devices that get really good reviews. E-MU 1616M V3 PCIE Digital Audio System: The word is that the preamps in this thing are spectacular, and since it uses an internal PCIe card with a breakout box, it gets the best of both worlds — the low latency and high throughput of an internal interface and the low noise of an external box. Tascam US1641 USB 2.0 Audio and MIDI Interface: Loads of inputs, good price for that many inputs, and USB 2.0 means it’s not tied to a single computer... it can even work with a laptop. I don’t know how good the preamps are, though. I’m looking to do away the need for my mixer (a 17-year-old Tascam M-1508), though, because it’s old and getting erratic. If you’re happy with your mixer and you only care to record the 2-channel stereo mixdown (not the direct channel outs), you could get by with a much simpler sound card. The Echo Gina3G seems to be well-liked, but there are many 2-input choices; something as simple and inexpensive as the Cakewalk UA-1G might do the trick.

John, Thanks for cleaning up after us. Lazz, What happens when you click this link? http://www.coises.com/recordings The expected result is that you should see a list of mp3 files (and one folder). If you get that, what happens when you click on one of the mp3 files? The expected result depends on your system setup; it could open a player within your browser, it could download the whole file and then open an external player, or it could cause your browser to ask whether to open or save the file. You said you are using Google Chrome. I installed that and tried it, and my pages with the embedded player worked as expected. The m3u link flashed a new tab, as you described, but then put a little box at the bottom showing that it had downloaded the m3u file; clicking on that box launched Windows Media Player, which played the song. So I don’t think Chrome is the reason. Did you get the box at the bottom and the downloaded m3u file? What operating system are you running, and what is your default media player for mp3 files and for m3u playlists?

In the spirit of the previous post here (“Artists Make More Money In File-Sharing Age Than Before It”): “But if you really do cultivate a fanbase, and offer them a way to support you, it's often quite amazing what they will do... and that's exactly what Jason discovered.” — Techdirt post about jazz musician Jason Parker Again, probably not so helpful for those of us (like me) who never expect to perform or to make recordings other than demos, and thus won’t have fans... but it might be an interesting read for musicians whose product is... actual music.

If you have the patience to help me figure this out... what happens if you click directly on this link? http://www.coises.com/songs/clown.m3u

OK, I think I see what you’re doing. Am I correct that rather than starting with a triad and adding to it, you’re looking at chords in a major key as being derived from all seven notes of the major scale, stacked up in thirds? So the I chord in the key of C major is "C-E-G-B-D-F-A"; and since the only one of those notes that requires qualification to write it in standard guitar chord nomenclature is the B-natural, you call it Cmaj7. I believe that’s what you did with every chord above except the VII — wrote it as a 7th chord, but noted all the alterations that would be required to keep the notes of a 13th chord in the scale. I think the VII was an oversight: going by everything else you wrote, I presume you meant to say it was a VII m7(b5)(b9)(b13). You then recognize a chord as major if has a major 3rd, a perfect 5th and a major 7th, and minor if it has a minor 3rd, a perfect 5th and a minor 7th. That leaves V (which has a major 3rd but a minor 7th) and VII (which lacks a perfect 5th) as neither fish nor fowl. It makes sense — the 3rd and the 7th are the only notes in a chord we call major or minor, rather than flatted, sharped, diminished or augmented, so they must both be major to have a major and both be minor to have a minor. The dominant seventh fits neither, so you consider it a type of its own. I tend to think of everything as beginning with a triad — the common ones, with a perfect 5th, have their character determined by the 3rd: major, minor or suspended (replacing the 3rd with a 4th), while the less common diminished and augmented are off by themselves. The (unqualified, hence minor) 7th note added to a major or minor chord seems to me not to change the character of the underlying triad so much as to lead... downward, by either a half step or a whole step. The major 7th affects a major triad quite differently; it softens and blurs it somehow, not unlike what the 6th and 9th do, but it doesn’t lead in either direction more than the other. (I’m guessing that you think of a 6th as a 13th with the 7th, 9th and 11th omitted?) It’s not clear to me that either system is a more useful way of thinking than the other... nor that there would be any way to reconcile the two into a single explanation that wouldn’t be more confusing than either alone.

What happens when you try? Are you seeing an embedded player to the right of the lyrics? If so, but you can’t get it to play, does it give you any information if you right-click it and select “Error Details”? Are you getting a notification (like the yellow bar that comes up above the page in Internet Explorer) asking you to allow the Windows Media Player plug-in to run on the web site? If all else fails, each of the song pages that has a player also has a “Download this song” link; you can right-click that, save the file, and then play it, or copy the link target and open it from an Internet-capable media player. Someone else recently told me she couldn’t get my songs to play, but we don’t yet know why. (Downloading did work for her.) If you would, let me know what, if anything, you are seeing (besides nothing), and what, if anything, does work. Thanks.

If you follow the link from the Hollywood Reporter story through to the Us Magazine story, that says nothing about YouTube but does say the song “hit the top 50 iTunes list” and that Dodson got half of the proceeds. So all this speculation about YouTube might be missing the point.

I was going by the diagram at the Wikipedia link I gave for the Circle of Fifths. In that diagram, chords/keys (the circle of fifths can be viewed either way, as chords or as key signatures) are positioned like these numbers on a clock face: 12 -> C / Am (no flats or sharps) 1 -> G / Em (1 sharp) 2 -> D / Bm (2 sharps) 3 -> A / F#m (3 sharps) 4 -> E / C#m (4 sharps) 5 -> B / G#m (5 sharps) 6 -> F#-Gb / D#m-Ebm (6 sharps or 6 flats) 7 -> Db / Bbm (5 flats) 8 -> Ab / Fm (4 flats) 9 -> Eb / Cm (3 flats) 10 -> Bb / Gm (2 flats) 11 -> F / Dm (1 flat) So any form of G major to any form of C major is moving from 1 to 12 on the clock face: backwards, or counter-clockwise. Begging your pardon, but... you have this all mixed up. There are many more than five types of chord, but the usual place to start is with the four types of triads: major, minor, augmented and diminished. “Dominant” is not a type of chord; it’s a scale degree (the fifth). You probably meant “dominant seventh,” which is a type of chord, and G7 is a dominant seventh... I’m being picky here only because the terminology gets hopelessly muddled if one is not picky. Once you get into sevenths, though, there are over half a dozen types. However, every seventh chord consists of a triad plus one more note. My comment was that when you add the seventh degree (minor seventh, though I didn’t state that explicitly), the resulting chord (which is a dominant seventh) has a strong pull to go counter-clockwise (that is, to the major chord built on the fourth degree of the root of dominant seventh). G7 (G-B-D-F) and Gmaj7 (G-B-D-F#) are both seventh chords built by adding one note to a G major triad. In terms of the circle of fifths, chords build on a major or minor triad function mostly like the triad on which they are built, so G7 and Gmaj7 both function a lot like plain old G (major). Gm7 (G-Bb-D-F) functions like a G minor chord. I don’t find the circle of fifths to be much help in figuring out what to do with augmented and diminished chords. The how you can hear by playing them (once we’re using the same definition of counter-clockwise). As for the why... probably partly tradition, and partly the fact that the only dominant seventh chord — which is what you get when you add the (minor) 7th to a major triad — that can be built from the notes in a major scale is the one built on — you guessed it! — the dominant degree of the scale, which is “resolved” by a return to the tonic (a perfect fourth up or perfect fifth down from the dominant, which means one step counter-clockwise in the circle of fifths).

The Cliff’s Notes on Alana’s post: * If you don’t know what the Circle of Fifths is, try it out (clockwise and counter-clockwise, e.g., as a circle of fourths). * You should also know what minor key/chord is related to each major key/chord (it’s easy: the relative minor is three half-steps down from the major), because the minors can frequently substitute for the majors. * Go wherever you like, but when you get stuck, try moving to a chord adjacent (either clockwise or counter-clockwise) in the circle. The further you jump in the circle, the stranger the sound. If you’re going to jump more than two spots (e.g., C to Eb), you’ll probably need to give your listeners a lead-in (such as having the bass play C-D-Eb to help them adjust to the transition to Eb). (Try it; try C to Eb cold, then try it with the bass emphasizing C under the C chord, passing to D and then sounding Eb under the Eb chord.) * When you add the 7th to a major chord, it pulls hard to go counter-clockwise; e.g., G7 resolves well to C, but G7 to D is jarring — not necessarily wrong, but difficult to make work. It can also skip two points clockwise to to the relative minor chord (e.g., G7 to Dm or Dm7 — G7 to F isn’t impossible, but it’s not so comfortable as G to F or G7 to Dm), but that in turn pulls hard to go right back to the same chord and eventually counter-clockwise (e.g., G7-Dm7-G7-Dm-G7... it has to go to C, or Am, sooner or later, or heads will explode). * And finally, as all old musicians know... never play a maj7 chord in a bar that’s named after an animal or a firearm.

In your profile, you list only voice; do you play any instruments? If not, my immediate advice would be to learn, now — like learning a language, the younger you begin, the easier it is. You don’t have to become good enough to perform; just some basic familiarity with a piano or a guitar will give you a grounding in how music “works” that’s very difficult to get from voice alone. At 14, your voice is still maturing, and you have time yet before you’ll be able to make the most of it; use some of that time to learn to play. If you do play, what instruments? Do you read music?

Techdirt is an excellent and valuable blog for those interested in the reality of business in the current climate. They picked up the same story, but it was hardly even news over there. File sharing is hurting two groups of people: the gatekeepers (major record labels) and the tiny, tiny fraction of artists whose names are household words (and not even all of them). The vast majority of musicians never made doodly-squat from selling physical copies of their recordings: they make their money like everybody else, by working (performing) and giving people something (the experience of seeing you in person) they can’t get any other way.

Can anyone suggest good sources of information for non-drummers who want to add a MIDI-based percussion track to their mixes? I’ve never so much as held a drum stick, but some of the songs I compose seem like they need percussion, so I’ve been flailing in the dark trying to add something that works. Now, I don’t expect that I can use a keyboard and a VST and sound like John Bonham, any more than my keyboard-based MIDI guitar line is going to sound like Eric Clapton. But what about the basics? What should I know to construct a simple percussion track that sounds like something a real drummer would play, and works to make a good demo of the song? I work under the assumption that everything I produce is a songwriter’s demo, not a marketable track. Keyboard-generated guitars, drums, clarinets and saxophones... they’re always going to be lame. I just want to create something good enough that someone with good musical sense can hear the intent – I’m not asking to replace the real thing, but I don’t want my productions to be so far off that the disconnect is distracting, either.

Three things have helped me: improvisation, accompanying myself “by ear” to songs I know, and writing things down. It seems like I’ve loved to improvise almost since I started playing piano. Early on I learned that when improvising, there are no mistakes — never stop, just keep going and look for a context that will make that clunker fit. (A friend and I used to joke that you could judge how bad a clunker was by how many times you have to repeat it before it sounds like you must have meant it.) Playing “by ear” while you sing songs you know (but don’t know the piano for) will teach you how to find something halfway interesting to do besides plink out the melody in the right hand and chord in the left... though perhaps you’re already playing bass lines with the left hand and spelling out the chords, with passing tones, in the right. You’ll still be playing a lot like a guitar, but like a finger-picked guitar with some walking bass and transitional notes. Soon, you’ll be doing some things you’d never be able to do on a guitar. When I really want a strong piano part that’s more than just bass, chords and an occasional passing tone, I sometimes find it’s best to write it out on staves. These days I use a notation program instead of pencil and paper. I key in the melody first, then with keyboard at hand, work a few measures at a time to develop a line that complements the melody. That allows me to use more transitional chords and counter-melodies than I could ever keep straight in my head, while being certain that they work with the melody rather than distract from it. (A main rule is to try to keep the piano relatively still while the voice is moving, and put something melodic in the piano when the voice is holding a note or silent.) An example of a song I wrote this way is Just Bring Me Home. (That’s a link to the sheet music — there is no recording yet. True to form, I’ve written a piano part that’s too difficult for me to play well... and it really needs a female voice.) Improvising and playing by ear are the big things, though. When you can improvise an accompaniment to someone else’s melody and chords, you’ll be able to write one to your own. It’s just easier to start with something you can already hear clearly in your mind without trying to write at the same time.

The songs I’ve written are released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0 license. I’ve done this for a simple reason. I know that the chances that my work will never be heard at all (outside of a few friends, and maybe some people on these message boards) is infinitely greater than the chance that I’ll write a song that will bring in the big bucks. The vast majority of musicians don’t hit the lottery — they earn their living like everyone else, by working their asses off day to day, playing and touring. Health, psychology and talent are all against me there: I am not, and will never be, a performer. Asking how can I make money from my compositions is just silly — it ain’t gonna happen; rather, I ask, how can I get what I write to matter at all... to be anything but musical masturbation. By profession I was a computer programmer (I’m disabled now), and what programming I still do has led me to a great respect for the free software movement. The economy of physical objects (chairs and caviar) is not the same as the economy of ideas and innovations; we are, and will be, stuck in the new Dark Ages until we find a way to integrate the two without trying to warp the latter to make it behave like the former. What I want to ask is mostly directed to those with some affinity for the free culture movement. The Creative Commons Sampling Plus license still exists, but it’s no longer accessible from their License Your Work page. They don’t say they’ve discontinued or deprecated it, but something seems to have happened. Is this license a bad choice? Should I select a different license to maximize the chances that someone else will be able to use my work? The thing I particularly like about the Sampling Plus license that is not found in any of the core licenses is the provision that “You may not use this work to advertise for or promote anything but the work you create from it.” That is important to me. I suppose it goes against the principles of free culture, but it would piss me off if somebody found a way to use one of my songs as a background for, say, some propaganda to support the war on drugs or deny equal protection to gays. That’s a veto power I’d like to keep. On the other hand, I hate to think that some guy who is able to get out there and play every night might run across one of my songs and want to perform it, but figure that his use is “commercial” and find the prospect of clearing the rights to be just a bit too daunting to bother. I know I’d be easy to deal with, but he doesn’t — that’s the problem with permission culture: everything becomes so intimidating that even what can be done doesn’t get done.

I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may intimidate me.

My name is Randy Fellmy, but on the Internet I generally go by Coises (pronounced as if Curly from the Three Stooges were saying Snidely Whiplash’s line, “Curses... foiled again!”). I was born in 1958, which I guess makes me a wee bit longer in the tooth than most folks here — and makes the picture beside this post almost half as old as I am. In recognition of those facts, I think I’ll introduce myself with this song, which also happens to be my newest (performed with tongue firmly in cheek).