Home Demos Please! Free Music Composition Software.

Not having a single reader can be a great thing.  It gives me an opportunity to write about whatever I want while I try to get into the habit of blogging every day.  I'm a bit of an amateur musician, and I'm also cheap.  I'm not currently in a band, really, and I don't get many chances to play with other musicians.  That's where music composition software comes in so handy.  

Granted, I'm not trying so achieve release-quality sound, although I'm sure it could be done, but rather make decent home demos so I can hear how a song in my head would translate into audible signals.  It's nice to be able to whip up a drum track to go with the guitar part you've been playing with.

There are a TON of programs made for music composition, and most of them are pretty damn expensive.  I, as I have previously mentioned, am a cheapskate.  So naturally, I went looking for the free alternatives.  The following list contains everything you would need to make a decent rock demo.  Well, everything except a guitar, a microphone...maybe a bass.  Hell, a real drummer would be optimal, but I'm not one.  So here we go.

NOTE:  This setup is for a Windows setup.  I've only used them with XP, so I'd love to know if they work with Vista or Windows 7.  If you're using Mac or Linux, check out AlternativeTo, a great website for finding software.

• Linux MultiMedia Studio

"Wait. I thought you said this was for a Windows setup?"

It is.  Fortunately for me, and anyone who has used Fruity Loops, LMMS is available for Windows.  In fact, it has been for almost a year.  I guess I should have looked into it.  I nearly crapped my pants when I found this out.  Naturally, it is also available for Linux as well.  The interface is similar to Fruity Loops, but anyone unfamiliar with both may be in for a rough ride.  If you are new, check out the LMMS wiki, which has a tutorial for beginners.  I use this to make drum tracks, as it has a pretty intuitive interface for making beats/drums.

• FreeSound.org

Once you've gotten used to LMMS, you'll need some better drum samples, because the ones that come with LMMS are a bit lacking.  There may well be better sites out there for free drum samples, but I've used FreeSound for a variety of projects, and they have a ton of great sound effects available for free.  If you have some sound effects you've made, be sure to donate.  Sign up is free, so why not.  All of the drum samples in the following clip come from FS.

Not the best fake drums every, but absolutely not the worst.

To add other tracks, I exported the drums to a WAV file and imported it into my favorite multitrack software:

• Kristal Audio Engine

Kristal is completely free and developed by Kreatives.org  It supports up to 16 tracks and is super easy to use.  It also supports VST plugins, which is fantastic.  If you have any experience with multitrack software, this should be pretty easy to get used to.

Now to add guitars.  There are many ways to go about this.  If you can afford it, a USB guitar input is a great way to go, but I can't afford one.  Also, I've seen 1/4" instrument to USB cables online and at target.  They contain a tiny analog-to-digital converter.  They cost around $30-40.  If anyone has any experience with these, let me know.  I usually just go directly from the guitar into the mic input on my sound card.  THIS IS BAD.  The signal will be weak.  If any real sound technicians read this, they will certainly vomit after reading that bit, if they haven't already.   For my purposes, though,  it's alright.  I won't be selling any CDs of my home demos.

For the bass, the best option is to use a bass.  I know, that sounds like a bit of a dumb statement, but there are other options.  LMMS gives you the ability to create a virtual bass track, and I have been known to play the bass part on the guitar and shift the pitch down an octave. Remember, this is not going to be a studio quality recording, but it will sound alright.

Free VST plugins are available all over the Internet.  These are super handy to have.  My favorite place to find these is http://www.kvraudio.com/.

Anywho, here's the final clip:

There you go.  This should be all the software you need to make a home demo of that song that's been stuck in your brain.  If you have any recommendations about free music software, feel free to leave me a comment.

Television? On my computer?

I've been in a new apartment for about a month now, and I don't have a TV. A couple years ago, I would have burned something down if I had to go a month without a television, but now seems like a perfect time to do it. A couple years ago I went a year with only rabbit-ears. That got pretty tough, although I did gain a great appreciation for Ken Burns. Now there are many options for viewing TV on your computer, completely for free.

Of course, by now, you have heard of Hulu. NBC...Fox...Disney....blah blah blah. Hulu is great. It has a lot of great traditional TV shows available shortly after they air. This is the easiest way to keep up on shows like The Simpsons, Family Guy, The Daily Show, House, etc. Hulu has a bunch of movies, too. Many videos are available in 480p, which is pretty sweet.

My favorite discovery since going TV-less is Miro. Miro was formerly known as Democracy Player, and is completely open source. It has a sleek interface and thousands of "channels" available. Instead of streaming content, Miro downloads episodes entirely before you can watch them. This sounds bad at first, I know, but after a short wait, you get a much higher quality video than you could get with Hulu. Miro claims to have "the most free HD"., and I don't doubt them. Miro doesn't feature as much mainstream content as Hulu, but it does have a lot of great programming. Most interesting to me is the fact that you can start you own channel if you maintain a video podcast.

My favorite channels on Miro come from Revision3 in California. If you were a gigantic fan of the old TechTV mainstays The Screen Savers and Call for Help (like I was), these channels should be right up your alley. Here, you can regularly see the faces of your long lost heroes; Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht on Diggnation, Patrick Norton and Roger Chang on Tekzilla, alongside Veronica Belmont, and more Patrick Norton and David Calkins on Systm. I enjoy these shows a lot, and the nostalgia only adds to the experience.

Oh yeah, there's also Joost. Joost was created by the creators of Kazaa and Skype. It is definitely worth checking out. Joost has been striving to make deals with major content distributors, like Viacom and CBS. Joost uses P2P technology to distribute content, which should be expected from the creator of Kazaa.

Anywho, these three are my recommendations. There are non-free options out there, but I'm cheap. Check them out, and maybe you can drop the satellite and pocket a little extra cash.

Learning Magento

Maybe you've heard of Magento. Maybe not. Magento is an Open Source eCommerce framework made by the fine folks at Varien. At the time of this post, Magento is in version 1.3.1.1 and is growing every day. While it's community is not quite the size of an older framework like osCommerce, it still has a fairly active community of developers. I've been using Magento for about a year now, and I though I'd share my experience and some tips.

Magento is slick. Often, when you ask someone to describe Magento, that's the first word out of their mouth. The default layout is impressive, and the administration section makes osCommerce look like it was drawn with crayons.

I'll be frank. Developing for Magento confused the hell out of me for a while. Magento is based on the Zend Framework. Anyone who has used Magento or Zend can tell you that once you're used to the file structure and OOP PHP, it makes perfect sense and is easy to use. Until you've got the hang of it, though, it will rock your world. It rocked mine for quite a while, until one day I had a eureka moment, and it just made sense.

The documentation for Magento is dismal. This is widely acknowledged as one of Magento's biggest flaws. Searching for information on classes and functions will most certainly lead you to the wiki, which is about as organized as a dumpster, or the forums, which are fairly active, although I've had a number of posts go unanswered. The developers are rarely seen, but there are some fantastic developers which spend hours a day in the forums helping out newbies.

If you haven't has a eureka moment yourself, or have no experience with Magento at all, these resources have helped me out a lot, and still do:

• http://t.wits.sg/category/howto/

The 8 step tutorial on this page has helped me more than any other tutorial. It walks you through the creation of a custom module with all the trimmings. A must read for all new Magento developers.

• http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/

If you can find what you are looking for, most posts in the wiki have been scrutinized by multiple developers and most have accompanying threads in the forum to answer questions.

• http://inchoo.net

Inchoo is an ecommerce development company with tutorials on many frameworks, including Magento. They are definitely worth a look when trying to figure out a problem.

• http://www.exploremagento.com/

This blog, maintained by Digital Surgeons, is young, but is adding new content all the time. Check it out to pick up some useful tidbits, as well as some great posts about the basics of Magento.

• php|architect's Guide to Programming with Magento
  

I bought this book shortly after it came out. Though it is a bit lacking in detail, it does a pretty good job of explaining the basics of Magento, as well as walking you through the creation of a new Module.

There are a couple of other books either out now or on the horizon. William Rice's Magento: Beginner's Guide is currently available. O'Reilly has also released a Magento book, entitled Online Shops mit Magento (Gebundene Ausgabe). Unless you speak German, it won't be of much use.

If you are just getting started with Magento, good luck, and don't get disheartened if it takes a bit to understand the framework. Magento is a powerful platform for eCommerce, and it's worth the time to learn the ins and outs.