Ok, so let me start out by describing what my goal was with Xbox 360 achievements and why I even set this specific goal for myself. I currently work as a Sound Designer for a company that is building an Xbox 360 game in Atlanta, Georgia and I can’t tell you much about this game we are working on except that it will be on the 360 at some point in the future. Well, when I started with this company I didn’t even own an Xbox 360, I had an original one but that was it. Previously, I played Xbox 360 with my friend Jon who had been playing for years on this system and had a very good understanding of the games released on this platform. So as I soon discovered there was a system in place called “Achievements” that allowed a gamer to get points for doing or achieving certain goals or milestones in a game. These points then allowed you to have a gamer score that was the total of all these achievements. At first I thought who f’in cares about this sh1t? But then I thought to myself, “oh I get it!”, it’s another game all in itself outside the actual games themselves and this system of points let’s gamers have something to show for all the games and long hours they have spent in a game or series of games. You can learn about this concept of games and game design in Jesse Schell’s book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses. So here is where it all comes together describing why I even had an achievement goal. I decided to challenge my friend Jon who had been playing for years on the Xbox 360 system that I could beat his gamer score in 8 months. Yes that’s right I can beat Jon’s gamer score in 8 months! I had to beat not just his current score but whatever his score was 8 months from now. A moving target! Jon had 25,000 achievement points at the time and I had none. I was starting from scratch and as you elite self righteous gamers like to call it, I was a “n00b” destined to be “Pwnd”. I knew in advance that the best way to learn something is not to dilly dally around, but instead jump right in head first and take on a challenge oriented, goal based mission on what it is you are trying to learn. In my case, I was learning as much as I could about the Xbox 360 and all of it’s game designs and implementations (Specifically Audio and Sound) in a very short period of time. For me I now had a self imposed goal that gave me a narrowed focus, “Play as many games as I could in a very short period of time”. I could now play lots of games whether they be good, bad or ugly and have something to show for it. On the outside the appearance is that I have just accumulated achievement points to show for it, but what matters most is that I built up a very diverse game experience and history that allowed to accurately judge what is in fact a good game and what is in fact a bad game. Not based on just personally preference but yet instead, based on technical merit and game design mixed with the sound design and audio implementations.
I ended up beating Jon’s gamer score in 8 months, and to be honest it was a lot of fun. I played so many different games and genres that I can now say with certainty I know about a very diverse array of games and game designs on the Xbox 360. Sure I could have played only the “cool” games that everyone else is playing at any given time (Borderlands, cough cough). But for me, I chose to sacrifice through some of the worst games ever. Not just to get achievement points. No, better yet to get a deeper knowledge and understanding of why some games are terrible and conversely why some are great.The achievement points were a byproduct of lots and I repeat “LOTS” of game play. I will say that Microsoft did a good job of creating a game outside of the game and it’s no surprise that other gaming systems copied them. So anyways in short, I now know a lot about Xbox 360 games and anyone who decides to call me an achievement whore might want to think about the statement again. Instead ask yourself, are you a gaming snob? Do you know everything there is to know about gaming? Are you willing to learn more about gaming than you do now? I don’t care how much you might think you know about gaming and game design, there is always room to learn more. Sometimes it’s good to set goals and challenges for ourselves :) I promise that you can learn a lot from playing games like Afro Samurai and then right after that playing SpongeBob's Truth or Square. You see, just because a game might be a kids game doesn’t mean that there isn’t still something to learn. In fact SpongeBob's Truth or Square along with lots of other kids games ended up being far better than some of the big name titles that got released on the Xbox 360 platform. Sometimes it’s all about you buying into a brand and the perception that your game is great because everyone else thinks so. That’s fine, all I’m saying is this, don’t sell yourself short. Learn as much as you can while you can. Apply that mentality to everyday life and you might be surprised!
Sidenote: I know some of you game purists might disagree with me about my goal oriented achievement mission, but really I don’t care wtf you think. Who are you to decide what game is worthy of playing or not, in fact I might even go as far to say I now know what games are good and bad more than you elites now based on the amount of games I’ve played and experienced. It’s all relative and I would recommend to anyone that you go outside your perceived coolness zone and play other games to expand your game experiences. You might just learn something!
Recently, I was faced with a situation at work were my Vista 32-bit install was corrupted and I needed to reinstall my OS on the M17x Alienware laptop I use. Since Windows 7 RTM was just released I figured I give that a shot, only this time I was going to install the 64-bit version of Windows to get full access to all 4 gigs of RAM on my laptop instead of the 3 gigs max I had on 32-bit Windows. I download the Windows 7 64-bit RTM and burn it to disk and get ready to install. To my dismay, the Windows 7 installer would fail after about 5 minutes of hanging and a disk icon blinking on and off. I continued to try over and over again hoping it was something small, but nope it would fail always the same way and at the same spot. I finally did some research on Google and discovered that the issue might be the fact that the new RTM versions of Windows 7 doesn’t have any Raid Drivers for my machine and the reason it was dying every time is that it can’t find any drives to install the new OS to. So after more research and lots of trial and error I finally concluded that the best way to get my machines Raid driver into the Windows 7 installer was to use the Windows 7 OEM Pre-installation Kit. .
I can just tell you right now, that it took me a while to realize that in order to Slipstream windows 7 you need to use this OPK or Pre-installation kit. I am just letting you know the end result of lots of trying and failing :) So once I got the the Pre-installation kit installed I got down to business and below are the steps I went through to get all latest 64bit drivers for my Alienware machine injected into the Windows 7 installer so that it would work for me and see all my drives using the Raid controller.Also let it be known, I only slipstreamed third-party drivers. Some people think slipstreaming is only for service packs, however I am here to tell you, slipstreaming is for just about anything you want to modify on your Windows installation. Also at the time of this blog post nLite didn’t support Windows 7, so this how I got it to work successfully.
Steps to Slipstream Windows 7 with your Third-Party drivers:
1. Find and download all of your latest drivers for your machine (32-bit or 64-bit) depending on the installer version. Either way gather all of your drivers for your new install organized and ready for slipstreaming. Please note sometimes you can find a dedicated Windows 7 driver already, if so use that one, otherwise the vista driver will also work. However, in the case of a Raid controller I only want to use the windows 7 driver and not the vista one.
2. After installing the Windows 7 OEM Pre-installation Kit you will need to have your Windows 7 installation disk or .iso available. In my case I had the .iso since I used the MSDN download.
3. I chose to extract my .iso using WinRar but there are so many other makers of .iso extractors it will be easy to extract the iso. If all you have is the DVD, then you can use UltaIso to make a duplicate image of your disk into an .iso form. I am only telling you what In used. If you are doing the disk version you can extract the image again after you make your image or you can copy the files of the disk directly, I would recommend making the image and then extracting it.
4. Locate install.wim in your extracted windows 7 files and folders “\sources\install.wim”. The install.wim is the files that you are going to modify and inject drivers into using the Windows 7 OPK / DISM.exe utility. I found it best to copy the install.wim file to another folder. This way I can work on this file and know I have the original install.wim exactly as it was before I started modifying it.
5. Next locate your DISM.exe file. This is what actually mounts the install.wim image and allows you to inject the .wim file with your third-party drivers. It then seals the image back up and let you copy the new install.wim file back to the place you originally took it from on the extracted .iso folder in case you forgot it was ““\sources\install.wim””
6. In order to run DISM.exe you will need to access it from an elevated command prompt. At first I was like ok, sure run cmd. Nope. It’s not exactly like that. I finally found that an elevated command prompt means to run the CMD from the exact location of the file or .exe you are running. in my case I had to run an elevated command prompt from the location or folder that the DISM.exe was in. All I did was hold shift while right clicking the folder that container DISM.exe. after the command prompt was displayer I typed DISM.exe and it opened the command line interface for DISM. FINALLY, I was able to mount the install.wim image and get to work. This is where the actual driver injection took place, right here in the DISM command utility.
Note: This will recurse and add drivers from the organized driver folder we have in step 1.
9. I commit and unmount all the new driver changes I made to this wim file:
Dism /Commit-Wim /MountDir:C:\test\offline
10. Copy the new updated install.wim to the extracted Windows 7 iso folder. put it back in the same place you got it from before working with it and updating it. Obviously, in order for the new installation to work you will need to overwrite the install.wim file.
11. Burn a new updated and Slipstreamed Windows 7 DVD that has your new install.wim. What’s funny is this is the part that actually was the hardest. In order for me to do this without just making frisbee. I had to make a bootable disk. Unfortunately just checking bootable in your disk burning software isn’t enough (nero sucks btw). You have to extract the boot file from the original disk or mounted image and then reinject it into your new .iso image at burn time. How did I do this? I used again the UltraIso utility. To be honest, this was far better than any .iso tool I found for this job of boot file extraction and reinjection.
12. Once I was able to burn a DVD with the proper boot file that was extracted from the original disk image, I was able to install windows 7 properly with all boot settings configured in my bios. At this point I have successfully Slipstreamed my Windows 7 64-bit install using DISM.exe and install.wim and UltraIso.
13. Ahh, success. It feels good to finally get a good install of Windows 7 RTM on my Alienware m17x laptop. Of course, the other alternative would have been to install 64-bit Vista and wait until Alienware decided to make a Windows 7 installer. But my experience has been Alienware support sucks. So why wait, just do it yourself :) Also, I’d like to thank my friend Tony for his support in testing frisbee after frisbee for me.
Screen Shots of the Tools Used:
Dism
DISM is installed with Windows® 7, and it is also distributed in the Windows OEM Preinstallation Kit (Windows OPK) and the Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK). It can be used to service Windows Vista® with Service Pack 1 (SP1), Windows Server® 2008, Windows® 7, Windows Server® 2008 R2, or Windows PE images.
DISM.exe is a new command-line tool that is included both in a default install of the Windows 7 operating system and also as part of version 2.0 of the Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK). It says one can use DISM.exe service Windows images, including both Windows Image (WIM) files and Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) files. While DISM.exe is primarily intended for servicing offline (not running) Windows images, some of its functionality can also be utilized to service online (running) Windows operating systems.
Quote – “Last week at Flash on the Beach 2009 in Brighton, England, Flash authoring product manager Richard Galvan demonstrated some of the improved integration planned for Flash CS5 and Flash Builder 4 (formerly Flex Builder). Like most of the ActionScript developer community, I've been waiting for better integration of the two tools for years, so I tracked Richard down after his presentation and pulled some additional information out of him. If you use Flash Builder as your main programming IDE, but still use Library symbols from a .fla file for graphics, your compiling and debugging process is going to be significantly more convenient in Flash CS5/Flash Builder 4.”
I just saw Kenny Bunch’s Tweet and thought I’d check out Myna. Since Kenny said “myna may just be the best online app I've seen.” I had to check it out for myself and it’s insane alright. Really, I am amazed myself at how cool this Flash / Flex app is and after using it, it really just shows the future of Audio Applications and what’s to come. Thanks Kenny for mentioning this and really great work Alan.
Here's an example music remix made in Myna (Click "Open in Audio Editor") to edit the project directly. Myna, a powerful online audio editor, makes it simple and easy to upload, record, and remix audio clips online. Whether you are new to audio editing or a professional you can get started right away on Aviary.com. Along with the release of Aviary's online audio editor we are happy to announce a partnership with APM Music and their Quantum Tracks library which contains thousands of professional stems, loops and beats will now be able to accessed by anyone using Myna to try for non-commercial purposes.
Highlights of Myna Features
Powerful Clip Editing Trim, Loop, Stretch and Reverse your audio clips, width editable loop points, and interactive time stretch capabilities.
Automation Easily add fade-ins, fade-outs, pan from left to right, and modify gain over time, with editable control points.
Effects Add non-destructive effects to your audio clips including Pitch Change, Reverb, Delay, Parametric EQ, and more.
Import / Export Import your own audio files, or search one of our provided libraries. Mix it down and export directly to your desktop or publish back to your account.
Share and learn Collaborate with other users. Follow step-by-step tutorials to learn new skills. By providing a powerful audio editor online along with access to a library of professional content online you can have access to powerful tools. We look forward to see and hear what people create using Aviary's online applications.
More About Aviary.com Aviary (www.aviary.com), based in Hewlett, N.Y., has created a suite of browser-based creation tools, accessible and free for all to use. Whose mission is to "make creation accessible to the world." Aviary's online software offers anyone with internet access the ability to create digital content directly from their favorite browser. Current list of applications can be accessed http://aviary.com/tools Additional released apps include: * Phoenix , an online layer-based image editor * Raven, the world's first online vector editor * Peacock, an online effects editor * Toucan, an online color editor * Talon, a screen capture app * Falcon, an image markup and simple image editor
More About APM Music: http://qt.apmmusic.com/pr/apm/qt/about-us.aspx APM Music (APM), is the largest provider of music for use in film, television, radio, video games and new media production is a joint venture of EMI, the world's largest independent record label, and BMG, the global music division of Bertelsmann AG. APM Music provides the United States and Canada with music selection services and exclusive licensing rights to libraries of music specifically for use in film, television, radio, recording, new media and video games. http://www.apmmusic.com/
Frankie Loscavio - “Here is an interview with Adam John Newberg, a very talented electronic music producer and DJ. I really wanted to get some insight into how Adam works and what some of his techniques are. Along with that I also wanted to see what inspires him and where he is at right now in his music production. Adam was very forthright and willing to share with us his methods of working and how he does what he does. He has been around for a long time and I actually found myself listening to mixes from Coresplittaz and DJ G.I.S way back in the day and hearing tracks I thought were hard as F@K but didn’t know at the time those tracks were actually Adam John’s! Well, lets get to it hear some of what Adam John’s all about :)”
Q: Hey Adam. Can you tell us where you live and how old you are?
I can! I live in Arizona, around the Phoenix area and I'm 29 years old.
Q: What go you into electronic music and how old were you etc..?
An old friend of mine by the name of Dave Janossy, hope I spelled his name right. At the time I had just started college and was in and out of bands as a drummer. I was active with DCI (Drum Corps International) for a couple years as well, and during that time my friend had been introducing me to electronic music. He noticed my frustration with not being able to find a stable band - all I wanted to do was write music. So he played me some records from DJ 3D and B Boy 3000 - I was floored! That was the first time I had heard drum and bass. I was about 19 y/o at the time, and prior to then the only electronic music I had heard was really, really cheese cheerleader style music. When I was younger in High School & Jr. High I mostly listened to Hard rock, Grunge, Metal, Ska, Punk Rock and some Hiphop. When Dave introduced me to Jungle and Drum and Bass I was thrilled - I finally found a style of electronic music I liked, and according to him, it was something I'd be able to pick up quickly.
My inspiration typically comes from life experience and other forms of music. Sometimes I get stuck where I'm just not feeling creative, and I think many artists probably go through the same experience. Typically when that is happening I just try to get out more - go camping, spend more time with friends/family, watch more movies and just listen to new music in all kinds of styles. My friends Noel & Frank, of The Outside Agency, are also pretty influential and inspiring in my work. Both of them are hard working, solid producers who write in various styles - their work helps push me to challenge myself and try new things, whether it's writing music in other genres or working out new techniques to create better sounds.
Q: What tools do you use to produce?
Currently I'm using Ableton Live as my main production environment. I'm in the process of preparing to do some live performances down the road, so be on the look out for that.
I love using Massive to create bass sounds. I use it for Bass, Leads and random SFX for the most part. I also use Absynth to create lush sounds and pads, or just strange noises that I can glitch out later. Kontakt is another one I use for a Sampler, but I do find myself using Ableton’s built in sampler often as well. It really depends on what I’m trying to achieve and which tool will give me the best outcome.
Q: I first heard your tracks in some older DJ G.I.S mixes but didn't know it was you at the time. It seems your style has evolved and changed since those days. You seemed to use more processed Amens back then and less of those now instead using cleaner harder hits?
This is true, over time my style has definitely changed and evolved. When I first got into production I was enthralled in the idea of chopping up breaks and trying to glitch them out. I did a lot of my early beat chopping using CoolEdit Pro and SoundForge, before there was a Dr. Rex! After awhile I had been listening to more experimental music and other genres and I just wanted to do something different. So I started trying out new styles of writing, just getting more experimental. Lately I've been making a lot of experimental music and Dubstep under my name, Adam John, as well. I've been tossing around the idea of working on some Drum and Bass / Darkstep along the lines of what I used to make back in 2002-2005. We shall see, anything can happen! Could be fun, it's been awhile since I did a proper amen tune.
Q. Describe the life of one of your tracks. How dos it begin, how does it evolve roughly and how do you get to the mastered piece that users can purchase? I think some readers will like to hear your mastering process as this is usually the hardest in some peoples minds.
Tough one! Honestly all my tracks tend to start differently. Some of them start with me just messing around creating breaks or keying out long, sustained melodies for a background or even a lead. I'll have moments, which I'm sure many artists have, where and idea just hits me out of nowhere, and I'll quickly key out the drop as I'm hearing it in my head. There were times when I first started where I'd actually sketch out the idea on paper - kind of similar to when I wrote percussion pieces in College and High School. As for mixing, I am working on that progressively while I'm writing it - I like to have my levels and a good range when I'm writing the music because it allows me to easily fit in new sounds as I go. When I think it's ready for mix down, I'll usually take a break from it before I go back and put in the final mix, making sure all the sounds and levels are right where I want them. I'll also go through and A+B the tune with other songs I like.
I keep my over all mix at about -3db before I send it to mastering. My goal is to get the mix, without any compression/limiting on the master fader, to sound as good as I think I can possibly make it. Once I get there, I render out a 32bit wav - sometimes a couple versions, and send those off to someone to be mastered. I don't technically "Master" any of my music - but I do a bit of compression and EQ for the tracks I bounce out just for DJing. Usually I'll run a hi-cut at about 17-18KHz, cutting out all the real high end. I also run a low-cut around 30Hz to get rid of any unnecessary low end.
Currently I lack the tools and the listening environment to do any real mastering - when I need that, I find a professional with the right equipment and space.
Q: Any tips on how you get some of those clean hard drums like in "Foreign Skin"
Layering and Eq! I look for and use the best sounds I can get. I layer in other drums as I see fit and use subtractive EQ to get rid of unwanted frequencies. Those are some of the key things - I make sure, for instance, that on my hi-hats I remove all the frequencies below say, 300-400Hz or so, because there is no need to have those low end sounds on a hi-hat. I'm sure other people out there that have those samples where you have all this unwanted low end that just muddies up everything else. I find it in Snare samples sometimes as well. I just try to get my drums to sound as clean as I can, making sure all the levels are nice and using compression when needed. I bus all my drums to one channel and put a compressor and EQ on there - it helps beef 'em up and round out the sound. If the drums sound shitty with the original samples, it's probably going to sound shitty in the tune.
Kid Kryptic – Foreign Skin
Q: Can you tell us about how you got the Nasally synth in "Northbound". It's sick and that in particular was one of the tracks I first heard of yours.
I'm assuming you mean the sound that runs on top of the bass? Actually that wasn't to hard a sound to make :) I just took a couple 808 sounds, one of which I added a TON of distortion and did some extreme EQing to get that sound. At the time, I thought it sounded sweet - and I still like it now. Just one of those days where I was messing around and came across something really quickly that I liked. I was pleasantly surprised to find out other people where digging it as well - it's always a nice feeling when someone tells you they like your music and enjoy listening to it.
Q: Adam do you perform live? If so how do you go about your shows and performances?
Currently I don't do a Live PA, but that is something I'm currently working on. At the moment I just DJ when I play out - it's fun, but I want to get into the live show aspect - the possibilities with what you can do seem endless and I'm excited to dive in.
Q: Who have you performed with and who or where was your favorite show you played at.
I haven't had the opportunity to play along side many big name artists, but a couple of the best shows I had where out-of-state. I got the opportunity to DJ at a club in Texas with UFO! and Friction. Both of those guys where great to hang out with and very humble people. Another fun show was in California with DJ Hidden. That guy is a great artist and it was nice to finally meet him in person and party a bit. Most recently I've played alongside Danny the Wildchild and E-sassin. A few years ago I got to play a show in Tucson with Stu from C4C, that was definitely a wild time. Out of all the shows though, the most fun I had was when I got brought out to San Diego - those guys know how to party!
Q: Do you make a living making music? If not what else do you do?
I wish I did! No, right now I work in a print shop to pay the bills - I spent my evenings and weekends working on music and DJing. Most of the extra income I’ve made throughout the years has been solely from shows. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been much money for me on the sale of tunes.
Q: When did you first hear Dubstep?
First heard Dubstep in 07-08 from a couple local producers, UltraBlack. They are friends of mine and had been sending me these tunes they had been making - when I heard it I was pretty interested. It was something different from what I was writing most of the time, so I started to investigate the genre more. It took me about a year of digging before I had a solid collection of Dubstep I liked and really started working on making it. With anything I write, I have a particular ear for what I'm into and what I create - Dubstep has such a wide selection, it reminds me of the versatility in drum and bass as well. The genre is very open to make just about anything you want. I was attracted to the space in the music and the incredibly deep, evolving bass as well - it just felt so open and the bass on a proper system is amazing. Now when I DJ out I tend to bounce around between Dubstep and Drum and Bass..
Q: What got you into Dubstep? Were does Drum & Bass and Dubstep go from here?
That again would be my friends from back home, Ultrablack. First AZ group I heard to really get it going out here and they brought the genre to my attention. As for where the genre goes, who knows! That is the beauty of the music - it can go wherever the artists want to take it. It's already in so many directions now, but honestly I wouldn't mind if some techstep sounds from back in 2003-04 started to come back. Maybe I'm just nostalgic for it, but to me that was some great music. Both styles influence my music, and you can definitely here the DNB influence in my Dubstep. There seems to be some hate out there for producers who are doing that, but I honestly don't care. It's fun, and that is the point of writing music in my book - having fun.
Q: What do you listen to on a daily basis. What tracks or artists get you hyped?
I usually listen to thrash metal/hip hop in the car. Lately I've been listing to this Lazer Sword CD, Nosaj Things new album, Drift, and a bunch of stuff from the members of the Glitch Mob and artist on glitchhopforum.com. I found this great group of artists called Omega Clash and was able to find their latest EP to pick up.
Q: I know you use Propellerheads Reason. Now that they are coming with "Record" that allows you to use reason and record audio together. Do you ever wish they would just add vst support directly instead of making people use rewire?
I do - The new audio functions sound good, but since I've been using Ableton I can't see myself going back to reason until they upgrade the sound engine and add VST support. I can definitely hear a difference in sound quality between Ableton and Reason.
Q: What advice would you give to kids and aspiring electronic music producers that are serious about making music? If you're like me you learned the hard way. Are there any tips for them that you learned in your journey they need to know?
Practice! Take time to learn your instruments, eqs, compressors, etc. Learn about the art, take recording classes if you have the time and money. I found them to be very useful when I started out - helped me better understand frequency ranges and EQ my tunes better. Study music as well, listen carefully to the styles your into and try to write as much as you can. There are many times when I start a track and then end up rewriting entire sections of drums or bass all over again because I no longer like the way it goes. You don't have to own your original idea, feel free to change things up if you want. Save multiple versions of a tune incase you don't like the changes you made! Always SAVE! It takes time to get good at producing music, so don't get discouraged in the beginning.
Q: Ok, let's take your track "Foreign Skin". It might be one of my favorite tracks you made. Can you tell us about this track and maybe go over how it was made, where you were in your life when you made it and how it was received by other DJ's. How long it took to make, tools used etc.. I personally thinks in clean hard hitting and very well produced structurally. I listen to this track a lot in my car, it just seems to get me hyped.
If I can remember most it! I wrote that track almost 5 years ago, so it's hard to recall exactly what was going through my head. I was in a lot of dark times in my life when I was making most of my drum and bass, especially when I made that tune. I wrote that one with Reason and did the mixing for it in Nuendo, though I don't use that program anymore. That one went through a few changes before I finally finished it - the final was probably the 7th version I made. My goal was just to make something that would work on the dancefloor and hit heavy as hell and to get out some of that frustration and anger I had in me. Most of the DJ's I sent it to gave me a good response, but there are always people who weren't into it. Mostly because of the style, it was better received in the Darkstep / Techstep circles. I made that tune around the same time I wrote "The Way", so they both have a similar feel to them.
Q: Do you have any upcoming events people should know about?
I have a show at Earthdance in Phoenix on Sept 25 where I'll be playing Dubstep and glitch, then on Oct. 30th I'll be playing my first show in ATL, which I'm very excited about.
Q: In general where do you think electronic music is headed? I know this is a very general topic but maybe you have some feeling based on how fast technology has changes and even how people use Ableton for live performances etc.. instead of vinyl. Are there things you see in your future that you are trying to achieve we should know about?
Hard to say, it's evolved so much already! I like how Ableton allows people to do more of a live show with their music, and that is a direction I am looking to take my future productions. I'd like to incorporate more live vocals into my sets by working with local artists in my town. I'm excited to take that up and it's just going to take some time on my part to get everything ready. When I first started DJing I used vinyl exclusively, I only moved to CDjs because it was more cost effective and it allowed me to play my newest music out without having to drop $50 on dubplates. Soon I want to just do completely live shows and on-the-spot remixing with Ableton. There are some local crews, like Crusher Sound System, that incorporate live instrumentals & vocals with a DJ on stage - it's a great time when they have a show!
Thanks for the opportunity to have this interview people can find my mixes and free tunes of mine at adamjohnmusic.wordpress.com. I also have a myspace page at myspace.com/kidkrypticaudio where everyone can hear some of my new stuff.
As always, I appreciate all the support from the labels that release my music, and most of all from the fans who support what I’m doing.
Ok, I normally don’t even remotely consider blogging anything related to Apple but since my friend Kenny Bunch has just released this game I have to support him since he is someone I respect greatly and really everything Kenny makes is top-notch. I haven’t played this game and probably never will since I will never own an Apple product and therefore will never play it on an iPhone I own. Maybe on someone’s iPhone at work but you get the idea. Anyways, I’ve watched the video and talked to Kenny about it and it really does look cool. I’d go so far as to say it’s one of the best games I’ve seen for the iPhone. So if Bear on A Wire seems like a game you’d like and you are Mac / Apple fan (or Cult follower hehehe) then go ahead and support Mr. Kenny Bunch. This guy works hard and I can tell you right now if he worked on it, it’s good!
Below are the descriptions from his website describing the game etc…
The Game
Our first IPhone game, previously code named Poor Bear is officially available in the app store today under the name Bear on a Wire. For those of you who followed the progression of the game on our site (1, 2, 3, 4) know that this game didn’t start with designs, requirements, deadlines, or the promise of gold bars. Instead it was built on the premise that we could make something fun that we molded just how we wanted it. That mold shifted and turned over time. Even at the starting gate, we didn’t even know what type of game we were making. The game really grew organically and took on a life of its own. I’m personally blown away with the outcome, especially considering this was Chad’s (the developer) first game and he went into it not knowing Objective C. The design is a work of art as well. However, for those of you know Trevor (the designer), know that you could expect nothing less. Words can’t do justice to what 1 designer and 1 developer have done with this game. It is simply amazing and even though it is our own game, none of us can stop playing. That was the point though. We built something we loved. We hope you will too!
Support Us
We appreciate any support you can give us. For those with an IPhone grab the game now, rate it, and review it! APP STORE: http://itunes.com/app/bearonawire
For those wanting to get the word out. Here are some links to blog, twitter, AIM, tell someone on a subway, etc. We will have flyers too that you can print and post on bathroom walls, telephone polls, and anywhere in eyes view. SHARE THE BEAR!
About the game: Our green hero, Bearzo, has had it! No more performing for “THE MAN” day in and day out. What! Do you think he is some kind of dancing bear? NO… he is a high wire bear, and it’s time for him to make his great escape from the Big Top. He loves his fans and his work, but he just wants to be free and feel his scarf blow in the wind as he shreds wire with the most insane moves ever attempted … on a Moped… on top of high voltage power lines. Get ready to feel the power of the 49cc, two stroke, and single cylinder stallion!
As you tear off on the wire, try to balance Bearzo and keep him from fallingdown into the 1.21 gigawatts that alternate through the wires below him (Ah, the smell of burnt bear hair). While balancing on the wire, acquire crazy mad points by using the different stunt key combinations to generate some MOPED MAYHEM (ECO..ECo..eco) Bearzo’s stunts include no hands, half twist, full twist, bear buck, back roll, front roll, jump roll, grinder, spin roll, spin buck, spin buck grinder, coat tail, coat tail kick, and the next to impossible coat tail kick spin grinder. Combine these stunts with full flips, double flips… triple flips…? Now you are just being crazy! Collect coins and rack up even more points. I know…you never saw collectable coins coming. Don’t get caught hibernating b/c it’s about to get all GRIZZLY up in here!
Like taste and smell, color is a sense that is processed by our brains in multiple dimensions. (Visit our ”Learn about color” section for more information.) Yet traditional methods of choosing colors on computers are limited to obscure sliders and flattened two-dimensional viewers. With ColoRotate, you can work with colors in 3D, in real time, and in a way that matches how our minds process color.
A rainbow of benefits
ColoRotate gives you the freedom to let your imagination fly.
Intuitive: In 3D, you can quickly see the multidimensional nature of your colors and the relationships between colors in a way that matches how your eye and brain perceive color.
Agile: Change your colors one at a time, blend two colors together, or transform a full palette of colors all at once with contrast and color joysticks — adjustments that previously have been beyond your reach.
Reliable: Take the guesswork out of setting up color harmonies or color contrasts by adjusting the distances between colors in 3D.
Efficient: Use ColoRotate’s quick drag-and-drop to adjust hue, brightness, and saturation. Import and export in Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE). Soon, you’ll be able to save even more time with our Photoshop Plugin.
Piggyback: Browse themes created by the community, or search by tag, title, or creator to discover new color ideas.
Community: Post your palettes, and tag palettes to engage with the ColoRotate community, or discussions. In the future, look for features like comments and ratings.
ColoRotate has an intuitive interface that eliminates the need to memorize or jot down color combinations or numbers. Indeed, you can traverse across an open three-dimensional color space and choose (or design) the color palette that fits your needs. In the process, you can uncover color relationships that give your designs an aesthetic balance that will please the most discriminating eye.
The members of the ColoRotate team have always drawn outside of the proverbial lines. Their rainbow of talent, creativity, and innovation reflects their dedication to creating new technologies that are both useful and cool. http://about.colorotate.org/our-team.html
Since color is inherently three dimensional, it's always bothered us that all color pickers are flat. That led to the design ColoRotate, a 3D editor that aligns with the way our minds process color. We've also put together some background information about the nature of color, perception, and color models -- http://learn.colorotate.org/
This was my second year attending the Career Day at Marietta Center for Advanced Academics and it was just as much fun. This year I attended as a Senior Sound Designer since I am working on a XBox 360 game for Xaviant a game developer from Alpharetta, GA. Although I could have gone over much more than sound for this career day I wanted to show the kids something they could interactively participate in on the spot without running out of time, so I ended up showing them how to record audio, process and clean up the audio recording and then use FaceFX to analyze the audio and generate facial animations based off the preconfigured node setups for facial movements. The technology is very advanced but visually for the kids it showed them instant feedback and was easy to explain and show them in literally just a few minutes. Well, I want to thank everyone at the Marietta Center for Advanced Academics for having me. You have to be a very smart kid to be in this school and for me to show them what I do is truly an honor, since I just might be working for one of these kids one day!
Yes it’s true, it really is a backup copy. A few years ago I purchased the Native Instruments Kontakt 2 Training DVDand watched it maybe once. Well, I actually had a need to watch it often as I am doing Sound Design on a daily basis for an Xbox 360 game. I need to refer to this DVD often as Kontakt is a great tool for Sound Design. Well, it just so happens that my laptop is built in such a way that I can’t have my data drive and DVD drive in at the same time since they both are using the same Drive slot. It’s a weird setup and it can be a real pain in the ass to take out my D: drive and put in a DVD drive and vice versa. Especially when I need to access the data from my D: drive and play the DVD at the same time. I mean come on, this s a training DVD. External DVD drives are ok but again I am on a laptop and I need to be mobile.
“I paid For this DVD and I want to watch it”
from my hard drive while I am on the go. Well, after copying my files to an external drive and then putting them on the D: drive after I took out the DVD I realized that this training DVD won’t play unless the actual DVD disk is in the drive physically. Why? Why? Why? I’m sure that Native Instruments is just trying to make sure that the DVD get’s pirated. I can understand that, but when your paying customers suffer then you have a problem.
Well, the “Start.exe” on this training DVD must have either had the encryption key built in or something because I could not get it to play from a hard drive unless the DVD disk was in. For me this was really frustrating since I paid for this DVD and had issues having a hard drive and DVD in at the same time. Well, I figured I guess I’ll just play the DVD and record the screen and save it as an MPEG-2 file. This at first seemed to work until the DVD glitches occurred every few minutes. YEAY! I have a DVD that won’t even play right when in the DVD drive and I can’t play it from the hard drive and when my DVD is in I have no D: drive. Not the best situation since this was no regular DVD. It’s not the kind of disk that plays in your DVD player on your TV, so having a TV next to me wouldn’t work either. Not to mention I have a laptop which is meant to be portable.
Anyways, I could go on and on about this and how I as a paying customer I am the one who gets to suffer from all the disk encryptions and copyright protections. I could even write and entire blog post about how insanely retarded companies are for making dongles. They can suck my dongle! LOL! Moving right along, screen recording had the glitch that the DVD had and even the screen recording was shitty. So that kind of worked out but man, come on Native Instruments! I paid for this DVD and I can’t watch it from my hard drive without the disk being inserted? Well, I had another idea!!!! What If I made a drive image like an .ISO and mounted it to Virtual Drive? Ok, I thought this will work. Well, to my dismay it did not. In fact many Disk drive copy protection systems check for this. The copyright protection on the disk say
“Emulator Detected!”
. Ahh wow, now I know they are bending over backwards to suck their own dongle. Well, I must be shit out of luck right? I should just quit now right?
Nope. No Way. I am very persistent and usually will not stop until I find a solution. After some research and many attempts to make a working backup copy I found a real working solution. I found that you can’t just make any disk image and mount it to a virtual drive. You have to actually detect the security encryption (SafeDisk, SecuROM, etc.. etc...) and insert it into the DVD image while it creates the image. What this does is it still retains the security encryption but it embeds it right into the disk image itself. One application that will do this for you is Alcohol 120% and it worked well. I was very excited that I finally got it to work. It’s not really that significant except that I solved a major problem that should not have been a problem in the first place. I personally think that paying customers are the ones who get the shaft. It happens all the time, for instance the WAVES VST plug-ins. They really like to make their paying customers suffer. Or how about Steinberg? Even worse, their dongles keys break the first week. And if you lose your key, well you basically lost the app and can never get it back again. That’s seriously retarded! I know this because we actually use legit versions of these programs and because of their security encryption it takes 5++ minutes to load them as they check to see if the Syncrosoft and iLok devices have the correct licensing. Are you kidding me? 5++ minutes to load an application! These people should realize they are only hurting their paying customers. I have learned of some things to make them load faster but come on.
Why don’t they think about those who keep them in business – THE CUSTOMERS!
4. Choose “SecuROM” or whatever the disk encryption is from the “Datatype” drop down menu in the bottom left.
5. Choose output destination
6. Click “Start” to burn image ( This will create two files a .mds and a .mdf )
7. Right click the image and “Mount Image”
8. Access your files and movies as if the real disk was there ONLY IT ACTUALLY WORKS WITH ENCRYPTED DISKS!!!!!
Now after I mount the .mds image it shows up like a DVD drive and I can run my Native Instruments Kontakt 2 Training DVD and the copy protection thinks it is actually the real DVD disk. I never have to remove and swap out hard drives to watch and save etc.. etc.. as I can now have my paid version of the DVD play from the hard drive and I can also access my data files at the same time. Oh yeah, what good is an Audio Training DVD if the drive your swapping out has all your sounds and Data? Now it all works and I am happy. But this would not have been possible without Alcohol 120%. I never realized the difference in Disk Image Makers and Virtual Drive Emulators until now. Alcohol 120% actually burned the disk encryption right into the Image file.
“Data Position Measurement: New protections like SecuROM 4.8x work by positioning the data irregularly on the spiral track of the CD. This irregular positioning is measured, and emulated while the image is mounted.
Please Note: Data Position Measurement is only used with the "Securom *NEW (4.x/5.x)", "StarForce 1/2/3" and "VOB ProtectCD V5" datatypes. The best results are obtained when the DPM reading speed is kept as low as possible.
Datatype: You have to make sure what kind of datatype the source CD is, and select the correct datatype. If you are not sure which datatype your source CD is, you can find detection software on the Internet. Another powerful source of information is our Support Forum at: http://forum.alcohol-soft.com.”
Alcohol 120%
Alcohol 120% is an optical disc authoring program and disk image emulator created by Alcohol Soft. Alcohol 120% began as a direct continuation of the defunct Fantom CD CD-ROM drive emulation software.[citation needed]
Alcohol 120% can also mount disc images, with support for their proprietary Media Descriptor Image (.mds/.mdf) disc image format.
Remember this is strictly for backup purposes only!
