Key Of Grey

September 5th, 2010 - Sometimes even your favorite songs become lodged into your head and it's difficult to get them out. That's the problem with catchy songs, sometimes they're too successful. Unhearit is a website that uses brute force to dig that earworm out. By cycling through another catchy song in a random playlist, the idea is that another song will take hold, forcing out the song that's been driving you crazy. Whether this new song will be better or not is ... Read More

September 1st, 2010 - You may not be able to live out your childhood dream of being aboard a spaceship (at least not for a few more years), but you can at least get your music played on a spaceship. It's at least something right? NASA is holding a contest (only available to US citizens I'm afraid), to get your song played during the final missions of the Space Shuttle. Listeners vote up your original music and the top two songs will ... Read More

Photo courtesy of iamaruntimeerror August 24th, 2010 - Gizmodo has a pretty damning article on the state of cheap earbuds. In the article, it outlines how all the companies making fashion earbuds likely use the same manufacturer and don't even have inhouse designers or engineers. Companies in China offer a-la-carte choices, and all you have to do is order a few thousand to sell, and you can have whatever you want made. I'm sure you all know that this kind of stuff happens with ... Read More

Photo courtesy of Native Instruments August 16th, 2010 - I'm a big fan of Native Instruments. I like their FM8 and Absynth instruments, and I have a fairly large Kontakt library. One of my next purchases will be Maschine, and I like Traktor Pro quite a bit. Well, today brings exciting news because they've finally released their own standalone controller, the Traktor S4 system. It's a hardware controller with a built in audio card (no doubt using their line of very well regarded audio ... Read More

August 7th, 2010 - If you've ever cut apart a song for samples, and then tried to a create a song in a different tempo with the pieces, you'll know the frustration of samples that end too early. While you can stretch and warp vocal and melodic samples within reason, percussive samples never sound quite right. AudioTuts has a tutorial that explains a technique to extend the tail of a drum sample. Essentially it involves copying another reversed version of the same ... Read More

Photo courtesy of Alfred Hermida July 31st, 2010 - You might not be a fan of Lady Gaga, and you might not like her music, but knowing the techniques that were used to produce her songs serves to expand your own toolbox. Dave from BoyInABand.com has put up a tutorial of how to re-create Lady Gaga's Poker face using synths in Reason. What I like especially about this tutorial is that he built the synths from scratch rather than loaded up a VST. ... Read More

Photo courtesy of ssp July 18th, 2010 - When Motu Released their Moto BPM software, a small contingent of fans were disappointed that Motu didn't also release a hardware interface that mirrored the software's computer-generated eye candy. An even smaller contingent went out and did something about it...well one person really. User ssp on the MotuNation forum created his own using the MIDIbox platform. From the layout, to the silk-screened graphics, the attention to detail is amazing. The Moto BPM software is a ... Read More

July 14th, 2010 - Was your mom suitably impressed enough by Kid Beyond to send you a Youtube video? Ever wish you could get your family in on the fun you have with looping? MIT has released MmmTsss Playful Looper, for free download. With a super simple and fun interface, everyone will be able to immediately get into looping antics. You definitely won't be at Beyond's level, but you'll still have fun nonetheless. Check out the embedded video below to get a feel ... Read More

July 11th, 2010 - Have you ever watched a movie and thought that the sound felt off? The following clip, with possibly the most ridiculous action a sequence I've ever seen (not to mention continuity errors galore), also contains some of the worst sound effects, dialogue replacement, and foley that I've ever heard. I can't even begin to describe how much it made my day. Read More

July 1st, 2010 - One of the most important things for an artist who is looking to make a living from his art, is control of a brand. This can be a band name, a stage name, or even the name of a studio business. Of course, with many of today's artists becoming known through internet marketing efforts, it's very important to make sure you can leverage your name online. What good is your band name if every variation of the domain ... Read More