Working on Joe The Flow
Waiting for another take
I want to send out a HUGE THANK YOU to all my visitors. It’s been a blessing to see this blog grow as it has.
Due to the growth I’ve been working hard getting the permanent Joe The Flow Blog up and running. I thought I would do it over the holidays and most of you probably won’t have the time to visit. In the mean time, I will be double-posting.
If you have this site bookmarked, please go to the new site and bookmark that one instead, as this site will soon disappear.
Again – THANK YOU ALL FOR VISITING and have yourselves a MERRY CHRISTMAS.
- Joe
Macworld’s favorite podcast tools
At one time it was possible to pass off a podcast created with the barest of tools—the microphone built into a MacBook or iMac and a free audio editing application. While some podcasts are still created that way (and succeed almost entirely because of the quality of their content rather than their less-than-pristine production) the world expects better sound from today’s podcasts. To produce that better sound, a higher class of tools is necessary. That said, you don’t need to bust your bank account to make a podcast with decent sound. Here are some tools we like and recommend. [read]
The Ultimate Studio Chair
A good seat to park your ass on while you work is important. Like Uber important. It was #2 on this list.
The BEST or ULTIMATE studio chair is up for debate, there’s a lot of choices. IMO it should meet these criteria:
- Adjustable height to allow your arms to be at a comfortable position for typing and mousing.
- Wheels. If not then tank tracks or the ability to hover.
- Reclining (inclining?) for power naps
- Comfortable. Do I really need to explain this?
- Removable arm rests. It’s hard to sit and play guitar with the chair arms getting in the way.
Not every chair meets these requirements. A Lazy Boy is comfortable and reclining (a little too far) but no wheels, height adjustment and can’t play guitar in them. About 50% of office chairs will meet the requirements but perhaps not the removable arm rests.
Most studios have several generic leather full back chairs like the one below. They’re decent, but you have to sit on the edge to play guitar and can get sweaty before long. I prefer a mesh back chair personally. [read]
PreSonus StudioLive 16.4.2 Digital Mixer
PreSonus is doing its part to further meld the worlds of studio and live audio with the introduction of the StudioLive 16.4.2 digital mixer. Up until now, no company has released an affordable digital console with the ability to digitally record tracks at the studio, at home, and during the show. With this mixer, PreSonus has bridged that gap.
Features
The PreSonus StudioLive 16.4.2 is a digital console with 16 XMAX microphone preamps, four groups, six aux sends and a stereo bus. It has two internal effects units featuring 32-bit, floatingpoint stereo DSP engines with reverbs, delays, and time-based effects and a dual 31-band graphic EQ (the latter of which is for the stereo bus only). Each channel has independent 48v phantom power, polarity reverse switch, and high-pass filter (HPF). The HPF is on every input and output — busses, auxes, internal effects returns, and channels; it is part of the Fat Channel (more on that later). Further, a gate, compressor, and limiter are available on each channel, gate, and bus, including the internal effects returns. Semi-parametric 4-band EQ with selectable frequencies is available on all inputs and outputs; high and low EQ is selectable as shelving or peaking, and high-mid and low-mid are selectable for either high Q or low Q. Each band can be individually enabled or defeated. [read]
Video Game Timeline: A 2-Minute Crash History Course
It’s a great divide. Many of our readers watched as video games were born and developed to this day. Others never knew a world without friends lists and Live accounts. Regardless of your background, this timeline will catch you up.
(Click image for full-size pop-out.)
A number of notables are missing, from 3DO to the Jaguar to even the infamous Virtual Boy. But you should gain some perspective all the same while we wait for the inevitable Failed Video Game Timeline follow-up. [Gizmodo via Online Education via GoNintendo]
Last Romance with Film
In this post Kim Brebach from Get the Picture shares a story of his last experience with film photography.
A decade after CDs became the norm for music replay, plenty of music buffs would argue until the cows came home that the sound of vinyl was superior, crackles, pops and all. It was only a matter of time before analogue to digital conversion hardware with more bits and smarts silenced those voices.
Only a few years ago, plenty of photographers argued that digital photography would never match film. Once again, it was only a matter of time, or rather of more bits, bigger sensors, more pixels and better firmware. Kodak stopped making film this year but a few pro shooters maintain that digital has taken the magic out of photography, and that even a monkey can take great photos with today’s point-and-shoots.
Presenting the Chevy Volt Dancers
How quickly dreams can become nightmares.
Just a few days after the engineering team behind the Chevrolet Volt triumphantly rolled out the production version of its much-anticipated car for journalists to test, the folks in marketing [who should probably be fired or publicly flogged] followed it up with folk music, break dancing, and what looks like a few rejects from a 1986 high school production of the “Pirates of Penzance”.
Click here for VIDEO of the Chevy Volt Dancers
Word that General Motors had commissioned a theme song for the car called “Chevy Volt and Me” first turned up last week on gm-volt.com, an independent blog dedicated to the development of the car.
With lyrics that include lines such as “what will get us out of first gear? A better EV. Not that that’s a big idea(r)”, the milquetoast tune seemed anathema to the high-tech, next-gen image GM has been crafting for the car up to this point.
Now there’s the video.
Although it looks more like a “Saturday Night Live” skit, the dance routine that was performed on the Volt display at the Los Angeles Auto Show is all too real. Captured by a visitor who uploaded the video to YouTube, three females wearing puffy shirts and the aforementioned break dancer, who also plays air guitar, shake just about everything on their bodies for the duration of the song. Often out of sync. Reportedly, the cringe-inducing interpretation of an electric-powered future took place every hour during the ten days of the show.
When asked about it during a web chat with journalists on Monday, GM’s newly-minted head of marketing, Susan Docherty said she hadn’t “yet seen the Chevrolet Volt song and dance but it sounds like I need to spend some time tonight on the web viewing this.” [Duh! How does this get past the HEAD of marketing?]
She’s not the only one.
Source: FoxNews.com
Leaders should act like artists & artists should act like leaders…
From Kem Meyers Blog – Not sure if I completely agree with this entry. Personally, I have found that ‘artists’ are either the best or the worst people to work with. I love to throw ideas, concepts and vision out to other artists, for feedback, inspiration and thought. I have surrounded myself and continue to seek out those people that share that same thought, but they aren’t so easy to find. Maybe I’m going out on a limb here but I would say that there are better than 50% of ‘artists’ that don’t share, collaborate or even want other artists around. THEY have a vision, THEY know what is needed. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, unless you want to be around them.
In addition, my opinion is that often the better the artist the more likely the will share themselves with others. Just my thoughts. Read Kem’s blog and make up your own mind.
[read]
The Surprisingly Deep Benefits of Walking
Written on 12/14/2009 by Mark Harrison – Readers of my previous articles will know that I try to live as effortlessly as possible. This all started (in a conscious way, at least) when many years ago, as a teenager, I discovered the ancient Chinese idea of Wu Wei – ‘action without action’ or ‘non doing.’ The discovery came quite by accident – as most good things in life tend to happen.
I was on holiday with some friends and one day I went for a walk alone. I came across an old, second hand book shop, and as I glanced over the disordered titles, I came across a translation of the Tao Te Ching, by R. L. Wing called ‘The Tao of Power
Great Online Music Sequencers
Ah, Lazy Sunday afternoon. It’s wet and rainy out, so what to do? How about making some music with some fun online sequencers. Snag a comfy chair at Starbucks and kill a few hours making music on your laptop. Perfect!
What I love about these is I can quickly and easily come up with something cool musically, while I find trying something similar in a DAW to be so much more work. Once you’ve become addicted to these, the trick is getting your DAW to work like them while infinitely opening up your palette of sounds. I haven’t quite figured it out yet, but getting closer. FL Studio used to be this inspiring, but over time it lost that fun factor for me. [more: Audio Geek Zine]
