filkertom: (Default)
Release The Unreleased is a bunch of things I've written and recorded over the past few years, including a few commissioned songs, a couple of FuMP releases, a couple of traditional Irish drinking songs... it's an eclectic mix.

I'll have the lyrics, graphics for the CD label and the inserts and such, up as quickly as I can -- I hope tonight, certainly something by Friday -- but you can go listen to, and download, the whole album for free right now. (It's another pay-what-you-want deal.) (Subscribers -- don't pay. It's already in your folder, along with something else I think you'll like.) I hope you enjoy it!
filkertom: (Default)
Pay-what-you-want, complete with cover, CD label, and tray graphics. Most notable for Toyboat backing me up on "Rocket Ride", a preview of the no-really-it's-coming Tomboat album. No donation required, any donation appreciated.
filkertom: (Default)
So here's the deal.

I'm not in any danger of being thrown out on the street or anything, but I have got a few pending things that I need some cash for -- dental work, GenCon, stuff like that.

So I'm working frantically to get some new concerts up, and to finish a couple of paid-for projects so I can get back to other projects, including, y'know, long-overdue new albums.

First up is my concert at ConTemporal this year. And I think I've done a pretty good job of spiffing up the package. Best possible audio. Lyrics and notes all over the individual song pages. All the JPGs for the CD, tray, and insert. (Subscribers, I'm uploading the MP3s right now, and later this evening I'll upload a disk image for you, already registered with Gracenote [sans cover art -- that's an ass-pain].)

Aaaaaand it's free. You don't have to pay a thing.

What's the catch?

None. I'm gonna start putting ALL my concerts up on BandCamp that way, and update things on tomsmithonline.com soon as well. The concerts will be free.

Unless you'd like to pay me something for them, to help support an artist.

(I repeat: Subscribers, this is already in your folder or will be within about fifteen minutes. You're good, and thanks again.)

Anyway. It was a pretty damn good concert. We had lots of fun, and a bunch of people hadn't heard my stuff, and we laughed and sang and et cetera and I even improv'd a song about a lady carrying on a conversation right near the stage, and I think managed to not offend anyone or come off looking like a jerk.

48 minutes of Tomedy (... okay, that word dies a quick death starting nnnNOW), free for nothin'.

Thanks to you all.
filkertom: (ThumbsUp)
I am astonished that I still have the badge for my first Origins Game Fair, held on the north campus of the University of Michigan in 1978. That's where I first encountered RuneQuest; that's where I started making friendships that have lasted to this day.

Origins is going on right now down at the MarCon hotel in Columbus, OH, but if you can't be there you can still take advantage of Free RPG Day. New adventures, accessories, quickstart systems! If you've never been in a role-playing game, or it's been a very long time for you, you might want to take a few minutes, find your local game store, and go make some lifelong friends in the pursuit of one of the most dazzling and rewarding hobbies there is.

What are your favorite pen-and-paper RPG rules? Mine, no question, are RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu, GURPS, and Tunnels & Trolls. With a bonus nod towards Chivalry & Sorcery and Bushido. (Yeah, I'm old-school. What?)
filkertom: (ThumbsUp)
At least until Saturday. Anne and I think it rocks -- good voice acting, fast-moving tight script, good animation, Black Widow's cheekbones -- what else do you want?
filkertom: (Default)
I'm going to update the main web site next week, some new live shows and a few other things. In anticipation of that, you can go here to download a free live show, my MarCon concert for this year. (The file is about 170 MB.) This is good until I wake up on Monday Morning, so have at it.
filkertom: (Default)
Toontrack has released EZdrummer Lite and EZmix 2 Lite for free. (You do have to sign up for a Toontrack account if you don't already have one.) The authorization process is a bit of a pain. Available for both PC and Mac.

And, if you have an iDevice, especially an iPad, you should try Zap Guitar, a free app that lets you "strum" a "guitar". It's pretty cool. (Although not quite as cool as its big brother, Songful, that comes with a huge database of songs. But that app costs $2.99.)

Any other cool software we should know about?
filkertom: (Default)
No, the pollution hasn't gotten that bad. Air Ignite is a rather amazing program which allows you to put together song ideas in the most natural way I've found yet.

I've found a few interesting attempts at this lately. Stagelight is inexpensive (only $9.99) and surprisingly powerful -- basically a micro-DAW. Its workflow as a sketchpad is good but could be better. Same thing with Studio One Free, another micro-DAW, although it doesn't let you use VSTs -- you have to get one of the pay versions for that. And JamDeck tries to do what Ignite does, but is much more cumbersome and much less powerful about it, and costs $39.

So what does Ignite do? Ignite lets you create both audio and MIDI clips, and arrange them into a song. It has a wide selection of internal instruments, and several basic effects with a lot of presets. (It does not use VSTs.) It also works in a number of time signatures, so you can, for instance, do that 7/4 or 9/8 piece you've been considering. And it exports to .WAV, .MP3, and .MID, kicks your song into a folder with separate audio tracks so you can work on it some more in a DAW, or uploads direct to SoundCloud.

If you've bought an M-Audio keyboard in the past year or so, you likely have a copy, but you can also download it for free (not quite 1 GB). It's available for both Windows and Mac, and there is a playlist of instructional videos which will get you up and going in about an hour.

Any other new music toys, or new music, we need to know about?
filkertom: (Default)
I'll post later about ConFusion (short form: excellent!), but I wanted to take the chance to emphasize something I mentioned in the Home Recording panel.

I said that the only real hardware you need to start with is a good microphone. (Decent headphones and speakers are also important, but you can get those later if you're really working on the cheap.) And I suggested that Musician's Friend is a good place to look, especially their Stupid Deal of the Day.

Which, today, is a decent-quality Audio Technica USB microphone for fifty bucks, half-price.

There were also a few cheap and free programs I pointed out:
  • First, of course, is Audacity, which may be enough for all your basic recording needs and certainly is enough for all your audio processing needs.
  • For those who would like to quickly lay out a song, but aren't ready yet to shell out for Band In A Box, the inexpensive and quite handy all-MIDI auto-accompaniment program ChordPulse does a nice job, and also has a free version.
  • Sony's free Acid Xpress is great for beginners, as long as you don't need to use third-party VST plugins.
  • Open Labs' StageLight is easy to figure out and surprisingly full-featured for only $9.99.
  • KVR Audio is the place to go for news about new products, forums with lots of information, product sales, tech advice, and a fairly nice community of musicians from around the world.
  • Even more tech advice and gentle hand-holding can be found at AudioTuts+ and The Recording Revolution.
  • Some of the best information on the indie music business can be found at IndieGuide.com.
  • Last but not least, there are many sources for excellent free VST effect and instrument plugins. Some of my favorites include:
    • Camel Audio, where you can get the Camel Crusher effect and the fantastic Alchemy Player
    • Variety of Sound (especially epicVerb, Thrillseeker, and TesslaPRO)
    • u-he (mostly commercial products, but two superb free synths, Zebralette and TyrellN6
    • HG Fortune, your one-stop shop for all things electronica and ambient -- he's got a lot of free versions of his synths, and even the full-price versions are pretty cheap
    • Okay, I lied -- depending on the type of ambient you like, you may need some of Krakli's stuff, especially Harm, Gargoyle, and Cygnus
    • And, the Antress Modern series of effects plugins is constantly expanding.
Any other cool audio stuff we need to know about?
filkertom: (Default)
The nice folks at GoldWave have a brand new audio/video editing program, VideoMeld. They've released a 1.0 version which is Free For A Very Limited Time Only. While this is often a fancy-schmancy way of saying Still In Beta Ha Ha Ha, it seems to have a lot of potential.

Any cool freebies we should know about?
filkertom: (Default)
The Amazon Cloud, specifically. For those of you looking for an absolutely free gift for yourself, it's not a bad day to check out Amazon's selection of free MP3 albums and singles. You can download 'em right away, or stream 'em to your various devices.

I'll have a few other musical freebies/cheapies of note in the next couple of days.

Any particular online freebies we should know about?
filkertom: (Default)
Download and vote. Most stuff for Windows, some for Mac and Linux, all free.
filkertom: (jawdrop)
I use lots of different music tools. Just as there are game companies that I tend to buy from en masse, e.g., Popcap, there are certain music software companies that just do most everything right -- solid products, solid support, excellent sound. Cockos, Cakewalk, PG Music, Camel Audio, MeldaProduction, XLN Audio (the lameness of Addictive Keys notwithstanding).

And IK Multimedia.

For reasons that escape me, IK has something of a bad rep. I have no idea why -- I've used SampleTank and Amplitube for years, and I've never had a problem with software nor web site. Their service has always been excellent, they've really streamlined their product registration, and -- by far the most important of all -- their products sound great. If there is a flaw with their products, it's that you have to buy them on sale, because they've been way overpriced for a long time now.

Ahem.

IK has just overhauled their price structure. And come up with a couple of bundle deals that you simply cannot let pass.

Okay, actually, unless you fervently hate a stupid good deal on effects, you technically can let pass the really great deal, and just get the Total Workstation XL, which has some 43 GB of instruments for $299. Whoops, did I say $299? Until Oct. 31, that's $199.

But Total Studio 3 (normally $399 under new pricing) gives you all that plus Amplitube 3 (with the Metal and Jimi Hendrix expansions), the T-RackS 3 Deluxe effects suite, and Classic Studio Reverb, all for $249 until Oct. 31 -- that is, an extra fifty bucks.

If you create music on a PC or Mac, you really should look at the Total Studio 3 deal. Fortunately, you have a month and a half to do so before the price goes up.

What computer noisemakers do you like? I'll throw in a couple more, just for fun -- and best of all, they all are free or have free versions!
  • the ambient music synths of H.G. Fortune
  • TyrellN6 by u-he (definitely check out the rest of their stuff)
  • Applied Acoustic Systems' Swatches (e-mail sign-up required). I love AAS's stuff, but you have to get it on sale.
  • Variety of Sound (another great bunch of free effects)
filkertom: (Default)
Busy busy busy:
  • The past several days have been filled with Real Life (my sister has a Master's Degree -- IN SCIENCE!), and I've been delayed on finishing up some music. Ideally, I should have a ton of stuff -- literally, two or three new concert sets and at least four new tracks -- by the end of the week. Thanks for your patience, subscribers.
  • Thanks, too, for everyone waiting for me to update the main web site. That's also coming this week.
  • And I've got a couple of commission songs going. 'Sfunny, but this time just four months ago I would've been -- was -- emotionally paralyzed, unable to do jack on anything. Now, I'm just warming up.
  • The extra-spiffy free Piano One VST/AU for PC and Mac has been updated to version 1.2. They've improved CPU usage, and added a preset system.
  • If you want a hit of instant nostalgia, and have nine or ten hours (or days) to spare, check out the online archive of Radio Shack catalogs. I used to go through those like I go through the Micro Center and Sweetwater catalog nowadays, and it's wonderful remembering all that stuff. It's a fantastic resource. And you will look at the prices for computers and parts -- especially hard drives -- and laugh and laugh and laugh until you cry as you remember that you paid those prices back then.
  • Last but no way least, Steve Jackson's Ogre Kickstarter has four days to go. The original $20,000 goal has been smashed to jelly; they're currently well over $600K. If they get to $700K, SJ Games will launch another Kickstarter for a new edition of Car Wars. They've added donation levels for people to get cool T-shirts for this.
Anything else? Open thread.
filkertom: (frog)
For everyone using the Audacity open-source audio editor, it's now officially at 2.0. For everyone not using it, it's a superb free editor for Windows, Mac, and Gnu/Linux, with a smallish download (<20 MB for the full Windows installer, <8 MB for the .zip), and the newest release squashes bugs and adds new features.
filkertom: (jawdrop)
If you're in the market for a web site design and content management suite, one of the biggies is FREE, today only. Image-Line's EZGenerator can be had for the download and registration at Giveaway of the Day. (Yes, Image-Line is the same company that has FL Studio, the former Fruity Loops.)

(Note that when I say "registration", I mean you have to create an account at Image-Line and download a small registry file, which you activate by double-clicking it. A number of the ungrateful children in comments at GAOTD seem to think this is a problem, and I suppose in their own way they are Sticking It To The Man or something. GAOTD comments are nearly as bad as Yahoo comments, honestly -- people complaining about free commercial software is never pretty, especially when it's too complex for them. One guy honestly recommends that, rather than download this web site software, people should learn to code HTML with a text editor. Which is a useful thing, but I can only assume he also likes assembling toothpick Taj Mahals. But I'm not cranky.)

Any other cool freebies we should know about?
filkertom: (skyrim)
The Creation Kit (the newest version of the venerable Elder Scrolls Construction Set) hasn't even been released yet, and there are already well over a hundred mods to try for the PC version of the game at Skyrim Nexus. May I recommend a few?
  • FXAA Post Process Injector will improve your graphics quality amazingly. I installed the version with "Lower Saturation", and a touch of the Pause key shows you the difference between the original (lighter and blurrier) and the new (darker and sharper). There are also a number of profiles people have posted to get their preferred visual quality, lower the hit to frame rate, etc. -- you just have to replace one file with their file.
  • Display time on loading screen puts a little clock on the load screen so you have some idea of what you should have been doing in the real world before you started playing Skyrim.
  • There are already a number of retextures, including (of course) a few nudes. I won't even begin to suggest which ones you might like or not. But Enhanced Blood Textures and Enhanced Night Skyrim are very cool.
filkertom: (Default)
All Windows unless otherwise specified.
  • Until the end of September, BFD Eco (normally $149) is $29. (You can buy it downloadable at audioMIDI.) I've been waffling on whether to eventually buy JamStix 3 (PC) or MDrummer 4 (Mac and PC), both of which do a lot at very reasonable prices, but I hadn't even considered BFD, which is too frickin' pricey. But BFD Eco sounds amazing, rich and full and easy to use, and at this price it's an absolute no-brainer.
  • Samplitude 11 Silver is a free version, with 8 tracks, each of which can use up to four VSTs.
  • Melda Productions, the MDrummer people, have a new EQ in beta.
  • Native Instruments has updated Kontakt to version 5, and that means a new version of the free Kontakt Player for Mac and PC as well.
  • loops de la crème has a bunch of interesting sounds at good prices (better if you use the discount code cream1 before the end of September), and the Clap Pack, Kick Pack, and Worlds Sounds Vol. 1 are free (or, more properly, Name Your Price).
Any new audio toys you've found? Please specify links and OS.

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