60 is the latest production from Spinneyhead Presents at Venn.tv.

The industries of Stock Photography and Stock Music have a lot of similarities.

Stock Agencies

Both rely on artists submitting their creations to agencies. The agencies are changing the way in which the artists interact with the customers of the art. Importantly for the artist, the agencies are devaluing the art resulting in the art becoming commoditised. Unfortunately, the artist is at the end of the chain and is also becoming commoditised.

Some of my other activities have led me to produce a Proof-of-Concept for another project. It's called Awesome Amps and has proven how quickly I can get a multi-site Drupal installation up and running.

The Concept

The idea started as part of the gift ideas for guitarists series. I was thinking of money-is-no-object amplifiers. As well as that, it fits with the activities over at Earn More Than Before.

It's odd what you don't notice when looking at the detail.

I used to check my site stats every couple of days. I knew this wouldn't continue, but I've had some fun trying to guess what readers were actually searching for, despite the search terms entered.

Part of the reason I wanted to move away from looking at them so often is that I quickly lost sight of what brought readers to this site. I could see from day to day, but not what counts over a few months.

Audio samples for submission to libraries.

The Audio Clip

These files are copyright 2009 Award Sounds Ltd.

I've been writing the series of articles on Musical Creativity and how to overcome composer's block for a while now and I'm always curious about the creativity part of it. No matter how well I prepare a composition, some of the best compositions become better by improvising a new melody.

Dr Charles Limb's research into the brain's activity during jamming and improvisation is enlightening.

Sometimes it's easy to get lost in more complicated structures and then a song brings back the joy of a simple structure. A lot of pop/rock songs have been based around three chords, hey some popular songs had only two. That should be no surprise. I'd expect most readers to already know that.

But when was the last time you wrote a song using just three chords?

So you've got Kontakt to work with Logic and now one of the instruments is a bit too loud in one section so you want to automate.

Great, reduce the volume (using track automation in arranger) for that instrument. Only thing is, one of two things happens:

1. All of Kontakt's instruments change volume
2. None of Kontakt's instruments change volume

There is a way to control each instrument separately. It takes a bit of setup, but once it's done, it will soon become second nature.

Templates

I'm glad that Kontakt and Logic work together. I just wish it were easier.

Versions

The upgrade to Logic 8 has helped a lot. For me, the Logic upgrade was a no-brainer. I waited a couple of moths to see what the bug reports were coming through, then took the plunge. Regardless of how it interacts with Kontakt, the Logic upgrade was worth it. If you include the tighter integration, then it becomes even better.

Templates

Guitar Player featured an article back in April 2006 about 99 ways to Play Better Guitar.

I've just read it again and it's still as relevant now as it was then. I'm now curious how many of them I do on a regular basis.