Mile Zero
no matter where you go, there you are
Mile Zero is the personal website of Thomas Wilburn. All statements and opinions here are my own, and do not represent the views or policies of my employers at Congressional Quarterly, Ars Technica, or other publications.
Excerpted from the Sonic Rush script on Gamefaqs:
Remember when Sonic didn't talk? When it was just him, and that stupid fox, and maybe Knuckles, but the game was still basically about going very fast? Remember when he didn't teach us valuable life lessons? Wasn't that nice? I miss that.
This is what happens when you start cross-marketing a video game against its Saturday morning cartoon offshoots. And it's why I won't be buying Sonic Rush, even though the soundtrack is from the same genius that made Jet Grind Radio such a joy.
Because frankly, I'll be damned if I'm going to pay $35 for Sonic the Hedgehog and his seven million bland anime-styled friends to tell me to "be yourself."
11:20 x Thomas x /gaming/design/story x link x 1 comment
Composing with Electroplankton, Part Five: Rec-Rec
You may remember that when I first started this project I decided on three Electroplankton types that would be useful on stage: Hanenbow, Luminaria, and Beatnes. After spending some time with Beatnes, it became obvious that it had several notable drawbacks live. In contrast, Rec-Rec (which is quite similar in some ways) has been shown to be much more powerful.
Basically, this plankton is a four-track recorder with drum machine and variable speed. To me, as a looping artist, that's very exciting. I paid $300 for the Line 6 looper, which includes a speed shift and up to 30 seconds of recording, but generally I use it for a recording/overdub of only 2-4 measures. Rec-Rec provides the minimum of functionality for about a fifth of the price, and includes some features that the Line 6 doesn't have (such as the ability to erase and rewrite distinct tracks). I can already see ways to create pop and rock music this way, and I'll put up some .mp3 samples at the table of contents post when I get a chance.
If it has a physical equivalent, Rec-Rec is a lot like a tape loop--the recording time is technically inflexible (two measures), but you can speed up/slow down the playback with an accompanying pitch shift, using left and right on the d-pad. Each of the four fish represents one track, or a tape loop distinct from the others. The drum pattern in the background is the fifth track, since it speeds up or slows down along with the others, but you can't record over it. Instead, using up or down on the d-pad will change between different beats, which NTSC-uk's excellent translation defines as follows, in ascending order:
The time-shift feature is useful and a lot of fun, but it does have a few imperfections. First, the shift isn't very musical--although it's close to a half-step in pitch, the inaccuracies add up, and quickly become atonal. I'm pretty sure that the 200% and 50% shifts will remain in key, but it may be best to use this sparingly. Second, when recording, the speed will always revert back to its normal pace of 120bpm. You can't record something while shifted up or down, thus applying different pitch shifts to different tracks. This is too bad, because one of my favorite looping tricks on the Line 6 DL-4 is to shift the speed down, record a rhythm chord part at half-tempo, then shift it back into normal speed, leaving my chords sounding like a ukelele.
It goes without saying that all of this looping and recording is easier if you've got a clean patch into the DS through the mic jack. The sound is much cleaner. However, if you do run directly into the audio bus, you will need to split the signal--Rec-Rec only outputs the "wet" part of the loop. It doesn't pass what the mic hears, even when recording, probably to avoid feedback. It also drops the output signal while recording a track. You should probably be using an A/B box with Electroplankton anyway. I recommend using the Boss LS-2, an excellent pedal-based line mixer. Set it to "A+B Mix/Bypass" mode, feeding the DS from A Send and routing its output to A Return. You'll always get a clean instrument signal from the B Send or from the Output in bypassed mode, and you'll get the DS and instrument mixed while the pedal is on. You can also route another instrument into the B Return if two people want to play along, but the second person won't be able to record onto Rec-Rec. A second instrumentalist who triggers Rec-Rec while playing another DS (with Marine Snow, Beatnes, or Lumiloop) into B Return would really make for an interesting experience. With three DS systems (one on the LS-2 Input to Rec-Rec instead of an instrument), you could have a complete electronic band going.
08:55 x Thomas x /gaming/society/art x link x 1 comment
The months of December and January are particularly slow at the Bank, so the really good stuff is going to be thinner than usual. However, there were still some fine presentations that they asked us to host.
00:00 x Thomas x /bank/events/bspan x link x 0 comments
Last night I played Psycho Killer at Stacy's with someone who didn't know the chords or the strum pattern. I was reduced to shouting chords on the fly as I figured them out from the bassline. Combined with the way that I play/sing Psycho Killer, which jacks up the crazy factor about as high as it is possible to go, it was probably a unique experience for us all. I've missed playing the song, and I think it's time to add it to my set. Here's how I'm going to do it.
Psycho Killer, like most Talking Heads songs, is pretty simple in structure. According to band history book This Must Be The Place, the Talking Heads would often build songs by recording themselves jamming, extract inspired parts, and then splice those progressions together. This gives many of their songs a hypnotic repetition, and facilitated the call-and-response work that made Stop Making Sense such an amazing collection of work. Psycho Killer was one of the band's first songs (indeed, it was the first song that Byrne brought to Weymouth and Franz), and is constructed more traditionally. This makes it a more challenging loop from a playing perspective, but somewhat simplifies the arrangement process.
I arrange songs to fit the Four String Riot in three basic ways. The first is to use a single loop for the entire song. Voodoo Funk uses one background loop the whole time, as does my cover of Naive Melody and the Zelda theme. Songs where I'm primarily sampling percussive sounds also use this method, like Closer (with its boom-shhhk drumbeat) and anything by the White Stripes. Most pop music, however, doesn't use just one progression, but alters it at least once (for the chorus) and often twice or more (bridges and more intricate verse structures). For these songs, I try to find a way of bringing the loop in and out as emphasis, and use technique or technology to fill space when the bass is solo. For example, my cover of Island in the Sun loops the verse progression for a very full, cheery sound, and then drops the loop out and replaces it with heavily distorted chords in the chorus. In contrast, We Used To Be Friends has a big chorus loop, and I fill space in the verse by combining the bassline with percussive slaps (oddly enough, that song actually only uses two basic chord shifts, and just swaps them around, but that sounds weird in a loop). The temporary loop method gives me more complex structures to work with, but it's more technically difficult to perform: I have to trigger the DL-4 in and out at the right times, while working my other effects and singing, plus the unaccompanied bass shouldn't sound too empty.
Not that I'm complaining. The challenge is the whole point of this project.
So for my third method, which I haven't really implemented so far, I'm planning on incorporating a little bit of the previous two. The loop will be running the entire song, but creative use of the DL-4's playback options will allow me to cover several chord progressions in one loop. For those who aren't familiar with the pedal, it gives me two special options for loop output. The first is the 1/2 speed switch, which also plays loops at 2x speed if you recorded them while in "slow" mode, and will reverse-play a loop in either speed with a doubletap. These are really cool abilities, but not always useful in a song context (it would honestly be much more helpful if I could speed up or slow down the loop by degrees, but that's neither here nor there).
The second playback option is the Play Once button, which does exactly what it sounds like. If the loop is currently playing, it will stop once it reaches the end instead of repeating as usual. If the Play Once mode has already been activated, pressing it again will restart the loop from the beginning and play it (you guessed it!) once. That sounds very limited (and it is), but in a song like Psycho Killer where the chord progression cycles back on itself several times, it works perfectly. Let me show you how. Here are the lyrics and chords for the first verse/chorus of the song:
A A A A G I can’t seem to face up to the facts A A A A G I’m tense and nervous and i can’t relax A A A A G I can’t sleep ’cause my bed’s on fire A A A A G Don’t touch me I’m a real live wire F G Psycho killer, qu’est que c’est A A A A G Fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better F G C Run run run run run run run away F G Oh-oh-oh-ooooh
Hopefully you can see that there are two basic patterns there. The first is A-G, and the second is F-G-C (truncated the first time through). They fit together in a predictable way, i.e. pattern two is almost always preceded by at least one repetition of pattern one. I can create a conglomerate loop that sums up the whole song, minus the bridge, by recording patterns one and two combined (A-G-F-G) and restarting it constantly. This does require fudging the very last part of the pattern, but since A and G are both members of the C major scale, I think I can retrigger the loop there and use the live bass to accent the C instead. It'll become a passing note instead of the dominant chord.
Start loop, press Play Once to prime the loop I can’t seem to face up to the facts Restart loop with Play Once I’m tense and nervous and i can’t relax Restart loop I can’t sleep ’cause my bed’s on fire Restart loop Don’t touch me I’m a real live wire Allow loop to continue through G Psycho killer, qu’est que c’est Restart loop Fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better Allow loop to run through completion, then begin again at the C Run run run run run run run away Allow loop to finish again, restart Oh-oh-oh-ooooh
Add in Byrne's jittery little drum line, complete with slap bass to replace the mid-song bridge and breakdown from the live version, and you have a complete 4SR cover.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/technique/looping x link x 0 comments
You are looking at the new remote control for my computer. When I read a while back that the xBox controllers are just USB devices with a funny plug, I knew eventually I'd be buying one, even though I don't own Microsoft's jumbo-sized console (nor do I feel any particular urge to do so). Much to my surprise when I picked up a used wireless Pelican pad, I also discovered that the same programmer who reverse-engineered the xBox controller drivers had created an effective key-mapper for Windows, including mouse control. I've been looking for one of those for years.
I don't play console games on my PC, and I don't really want to. What I can use the Pelican to accomplish (when it works, because apparently it isn't really the most reliable hardware) is to run my .mp3 player, along with my DVD player and occasional light web browsing. That sounds pretty trivial, but the ability to move around my playlist while the computer is locked, or to pause a movie from across the room (my PC is my only DVD player right now) is uncommonly handy. It's cheaper than a "real" wireless computer remote, and all it took was some soldering.
This is probably how hardcore circuit-benders start. Circuit-bending is the repurposing of everyday electronics for new tasks, often musical--Speak N' Spells that act like synths, Furbys that sing as a chorus, and keyboards that don't really key any more. My xBox pad doesn't do anything near as complex, or require anything near as much skill. But now I've started thinking about new applications for it, just with software. There's a program called Rejoice that controls midi instruments with a joystick--with the dual thumbsticks, could I create a virtual theremin? Could I run a drum machine, even down to individual drums (kick on the triggers, snare/toms on one stick, and hat/cymbals on the other, with samples on the buttons)? What about a synth? And perhaps most interesting, because the gamepad has become pretty a widely accessible control mechanism, could I just hand it to an audience member and invite them to join the show?
Ever since I started working on Electroplankton as a musical tool, I've become more and more curious about using games to redefine the relationship of performers, instruments, and audiences. After all, I could probably give someone a 30-second tutorial in the Luminaria or Lumiloop, and then turn them loose for a jam. There used to be a band called Dog Talk that would pass out percussion instruments during its shows, so that everyone could be a part of the music. If my experimentation works out, audience members for the Four String Riot may be able to do the same, but with a circuit bent twist. If you were there, would you join in?
22:05 x Thomas x /gaming/hardware/control x link x 1 comment
The Guitar Hero controller does indeed work with USB converters, and unlike the Donkey Kongas I also tried there's no unseemly lag. My Hori SNES-style Gamecube pad may still be the best interface, but I'm willing to give this a shot. The buttons map to the Windows joystick interface as follows:
11:02 x Thomas x /gaming/hardware/control x link x 1 comment
My own obsessions are starting to give me the creeps. I have a tendency to focus on a few topics way too much, until finally I get sick of it and find something else to do. This explains a lot about me, really--the broad knowledge of ridiculous trivia, the voracious reading habits, the single-minded conversations. Right now both gaming and music are becoming less interesting to me. I feel really geeky, and not in a good way. I need to cut back. It doesn't help that winter is a really poor motivator for me, so I'm not very productive outside of work, and the Bank pretty much empties until the end of January, so I'm not overstimulated during the workday either.
Theoretically this means I should go looking for more freelance writing gigs. Time to hit Craigslist, I guess.
Update: And new, respectable, non-video-game-related (not that there's anything wrong with that) freelance work is found. How did people ever do this without the Internet?
00:00 x Thomas x /random/personal x link x 0 comments
This is interesting. Via PopGadget, they're contact lenses for Asian women that have a black ring around the iris, making the eyes look bigger. I can't help but wonder what they would look like on someone who doesn't have brown/black eyes.
00:00 x Thomas x /culture/asia x link x 0 comments
I've got an older article (written in March) that I'm going to pitch to the City Paper. It's a short piece on Potter's Violins, which does instrument repair and was a favorite of a photographer friend of mine.
Do you think it's too much to retitle it "A History of Violins?"
13:41 x Thomas x /journalism/writing x link x 1 comment
After spending $300 on a "new" instrument, it's hard to put it aside. The Hohner B2B bass that I acquired from eBay has some genuinely nice features: the upper fret access is really phenomenal, and the weight/portability factor is a lot better than the All-Star's relative bulk. With all that said (and even after I've done my best setup on it) the pickups are still microphonic, the intonation is still a little wonky, and nobody carries double-ball strings. Some of these problems can be solved easily. There are several vendors I could visit online for strings, and the intonation/action issues will only improve as I continue to work on it. The pickups are not a cheap fix. I'd have to find a decent pair that will drop in with a minimum of drilling/routing, and I'll probably want to replace the rest of the electronics while I'm at it. And there's a question of how much the tone can possibly improve: the headless construction of the bass is supposed to eliminate dead spots, but it also has a very strange resonance across the entire instrument when played acoustically.
So at this point, I face a dilemma: should I drop the cash to try to turn this dud into a dynamo? Or should I leave it and save my money for another instrument? It's not the first time I've had this debate with myself. When I first started playing bass, I found myself torn between the idea that I could upgrade (and bass upgrades can be very tempting) and the danger of destroying a fairly expensive piece of equipment. Now that I'm more skilled at the process, I don't think I'd hesitate with even a more expensive axe than the All-Star. Customizing an instrument is a way to make it uniquely yours, and that's important in an age of mass-production. I don't think the Hohner is worth the extra dough, but it'll be a good travel bass and might get me a trade-in discount when I finally find something I like.
Why do I even need another bass? Good question, hard to answer. Musicians call the need for better, prettier instruments G.A.S., or Gear Acquisition Syndrome. Some of it genuinely has to do with trying to find a new sound, or to get closer to the sound I hear in my head. Some is due to a need for physical improvements--better high-fret access, or easier pickup blend controls. The rest is simple lust: did you see the quilted maple top on that Fender? Or the gorgeous natural endangered rainforest woods used to make this Warwick Infinity?
On a semi-related note, I've decided I will be playing Dremo's tomorrow night. A four-song license to Rock will start around 9pm.
10:08 x Thomas x /music/tools/bass x link x 1 comment
You may have noticed that there's been a variety of poorly-behaved commenters frequenting Mile Zero lately. In response, I'd like to make my comment policy perfectly clear, so that trolls can find the line.
What makes a good commenter? I follow a simple rule before I click the submit button. I ask myself: "Does this comment really help explore the original post? Does it give other people something interesting to which they themselves can respond? Or is it just that I want to hear myself talk?" Too many people will leave comments when they don't have anything to say, just because they can. These are especially frustrating, not only for curious visitors, but for the original writers, who feel like their time is being wasted.
It's important to remember that a good commenter faces the same challenge as a writer. They must build credibility and show that they're worth the attention--and if they do so, people will notice. The flip side is you don't start with any credibility at all, which trolls usually forget. Words may sound cutting from that side of the monitor, but to everyone else they're just another anonymous voice with an axe to grind.
10:07 x Thomas x /meta/announce x link x 1 comment
How do we organize ourselves online? I'm not talking about writing style, or subject content, or even virtual spaces like Second Life or WoW. I want to talk about the message in the medium of the weblog, and compare it to something that I see as a contrasting approach: the big L word, Livejournal.
When I first started doing this, I was basically bored with the entry-level work that the Bank was giving me. The Washington Asia Press had just folded, meaning that I didn't have a regular writing gig any more--not entirely a bad thing, since I was burnt out on writing about anti-Communist Chinese-Americans and post-election politics. So I grabbed the least complicated CMS system I could find, tossed it onto the band's old server, and started dropping text files whenever the urge crossed my mind.
I specifically didn't choose LiveJournal or Blogspot. This is largely because I am a control freak, and partly because I don't like being part of a branded community. My experience with the former has come through reading Belle's LJ page. Unfortunately, you probably can't read it yourself, because she's made it accessible only to people on her friends list, and I doubt our readership overlaps much. I remember when I was introduced to the concept of that filtering, and I thought it was odd--I write mostly in a columnist's voice, so I am less concerned that I might be sharing too much with the audience.
But over time I've realized that the friends function of Livejournal is, in fact, its most important feature. Sure, it lets you lock a private diary away, and some people want that. But what it also allows the writer to do is create a friends page, which is basically an RSS feed that collects all those Livejournal streams into one convenient place. If you've got access to one of these for someone like Belle, whose friends are mostly well-educated and witty, it's like having a little Algonquin Round Table right there online. Instant community, albeit one that is pretty much isolated to everyone else firewalled away behind livejournal.com.
Blogs don't typically do that. I guess you could build an RSS reader into the sidebar of a Moveable Type or Blogger page, but it'd be a pain. Instead, you're expected to create your own personal stream, and a blog will have a list of links down the left side. The reader is not allowed to listen in, but has to become an active participant in following the conversation. The advantage is a wider range of inputs, but more work for both the reader and writer. Patches have been created to add more community interaction, like Trackbacks, but I think they're still pretty primitive.
Intrinsic in these two extremes are very different viewpoints--at a basic level, there's a disagreement in the end goal of conversations on the web. Livejournal doesn't want to be a new publishing apparatus, really. It wants to be a way of strengthening existing relationships, and building new ones. My Intercultural Comm professors would have called it a collectivist approach, similar to a lot of Latin American or Asian cultures. Blogs are individualistic: as my copy of Samovar and Porter's "Communication Between Cultures, 4th Ed" quotes, "The loyalty of individualists to a given group is very weak; they feel they belong to many groups and are apt to change their membership as it suits them." They want to be their own little magazine--whether about a given topic, or in some cases, all about the interesting parts of their own lives.
Neither collectivism nor individualism is superior, clearly, and these trends are not absolute between the two online styles. Sites like gameblogs.org, to grasp for an obvious example, serve as the glue between different Blogger-type content producers. Simultaneously, there are sites like Sisyphus Shrugged that do outspoken political writing from the Livejournal platform. And even individual sites will mix things up from time to time, forming communities or going off-topic. I'm also curious about the impact that seemingly hybrid communities, like MySpace, will have. As for myself, I like this approach, but it feels cramped sometimes, particularly as my interests bounce from topic to topic.
In the meantime, I think it would be really interesting to see the results of a study for personalities across the communities. Do people end up in one place or another based on how they want to connect? Does it change your writing style, and your general manner of interaction, to work within one network versus another? Do users of Livejournal really see the web differently than I do? And perhaps more importantly, how will these structures evolve over time? While I'm far too American (one of the world's most individualistic cultures) to feel comfortable as just another group member, I see the advantages as something that needs to eventually cross over. I think it's likely to be the next online killer app, when someone does it right. As more and more people move online, there's going to have to be a better way to organize them.
15:33 x Thomas x /culture/internet/emergent x link x 1 comment
For those who would possibly be interested in rocking, given certain caveats
Can anyone tell me if the Guitar Hero controller will work with a PS/2 to USB converter? I don't own a PS/2 so I would have to play the game using Belle's, but for obvious reasons I'm interested in the controller itself.
00:00 x Thomas x /gaming/hardware/control x link x 0 comments
The sincerest form of flattery
Last night saw another open mic regular attempt looping. This makes two since I made my debut. It is nice to feel like I'm having an influence on the locals, but it's also a little frustrating to feel like they're stealing my schtick.
It was also fun to see a band of kids--fifteen years old, tops--play a couple of their original songs. They weren't great, but they also probably can't shave yet, so they've got lots of time to improve. However, there were three guitarists, a bassist, and a drummer with full kit onstage. It wasn't so bad when they set up, but I'm less amused when they took everything off as the next performer was singing. Then the band, their parents, and an entourage of about six middle-school groupies all noisily left, without giving anyone else the courtesy of an audience. I understand it's a school night, but that's a little rude.
I've had a couple of invitations to jam with people, which will be very interesting if they actually follow through. All in all, though, I think maybe I'll try playing Dremo's or somewhere else next week. A change of pace will do me good.
00:13 x Thomas x /music/performance/personal x link x 1 comment
Reflections on a USB/Gamecube/PS2/Dreamcast adapter from Lik-Sang.
"Now look," James says, as he finishes the last cable tie and emerges around to my side of the white wall. An old laptop stands on a milkcrate, hooked into the cables. There's a blinking Linux prompt on the screen. James runs ps, looks at a list of bizarrely named programs, nods to himself, and then types:
oasis
All those orange status lights flicker at the same time as the Dreamcasts load a fat chunk of code. Fans kick in as they digest it. And then, as the laptop screen clears, every LED in the wall begins to blink in a pattern, forming a seemingly random binary display. "This," says James, "is the farming database for three towns. Now they will manage their crops, check sale prices from their homes. They will be more efficient." On the bed, his girlfriend yawns and turns the page of a cheap fashion magazine.
I scribble in my notebook. Earlier that day James showed me the "computers" that the farmers will use when they "dial in" to the cluster of networked Sega hardware. To my surprise, they are not cased in plastic and resin but in wooden boxes, carefully carved and heavy. Opening one reveals a mish-mash of parts--a hand-soldered breadboard, a DVD drive with the PS2 logo still on the front, a Palm VIII with the backplate missing and the antenna wired to chunks of circuitry I can't identify (though they are vaguely familiar). An old IBM Presario keyboard plugs into the front. I write:
remix culture vs. grim meathook
James tells me that all of the parts came from overseas friends who went dumpster-diving, or bought the technology in bulk on eBay. Some of it is likely stolen, but none of it is really worth anything, so no serious effort was made to catch the thieves. "You throw so much away," he says, shaking his head. "And what did you need it for in the first place?" I ask him if he had heard about the initiatives from a few years back, to create cheap, wireless, hand-cranked laptops for developing economies, and James laughs. "Why would we want that?" he asks. "What would we use them for? To look on the Internet, measure how poor we are?"
I have no idea where to go with this. I just find my train of thought running somewhere along these lines nowadays. The Grim Meathook Future is (c) 2005 Josh "No Relation to Warren" Ellis.
11:31 x Thomas x /fiction/brainjuice x link x 1 comment
The Hitchhikers Guide to Mythology
Apparently visitors to the Clarendon Barnes and Noble are not at all interested in having their books wrapped by two attractive young things practically radiating holiday cheer and pleasant banter. So Belle worked on Mario Kart, and I read the first 150 or so pages of Neil Gaiman's most recent book, Anansi Boys. It's very good, and very funny--Belle can attest to my distracting snickers at various passages. It is, however, very reminiscent of Douglas Adams in tone, with a comfortable level of exaggeration and many meandering asides. If it weren't for the obsession with myth and a skill with juggling points of view that Adams never really mastered, you might even mistake the author. This isn't entirely surprising, since Gaiman knew Adams, and wrote the definitive history of the Hitchhiker's Guide. It is a bit out of character. I've enjoyed Gaiman's books and think he's a fine writer, but I've never thought of him as "funny."
There is a subtle difference between Gaiman and Adams that proves telling, however. It concerns their approach regarding a main character. Both here and in other titles, Gaiman writes about someone who comes into contact with weirdness, and is changed. The protagonists become more adventurous, lose their tolerance for a tedious normal life, and eventually lead a fuller life. We are meant to see this as an improvement. In American Gods, the change is even framed as "becoming alive."
In contrast, the main character of Adams' Guide books was Arthur Dent, a profoundly normal and slightly boring man, who really only wanted to go back to being normal and slightly boring. It is one of Adams' finest subtle jokes, in reflection, that Dent is not only heroic by complete accident, but he wouldn't really want to be any different and he doesn't attempt to become so. We are used to characters that grow more outgoing, distinctive, and ambitious. Western cultures, as I was saying earlier, encourage that kind of individualist approach. Of course, Adams probably didn't mean anything profound by it. More likely he found that a steady, stereotypically-British straight man was the best foil for his particular comedic strength of satiric set pieces and off-beat conversation. Gaiman can clearly write those, but his aim is for a different target.
The lesson that I'm taking away from it is that sometimes the best characters don't have to be heroic. I know that sounds cliched, but it's often hard to remember when writing because we want to root for someone. It's hard to write fiction that's comfortable enough to slack off a little. I think Anansi Boys does take itself less seriously, and the protagonist is stronger for it. In contrast to the bland hero's journey of Richard in Neverwhere, or Shadow's drift through American Gods, Fat Charlie has a better dynamic with his surroundings (particularly with Gaiman's clever use of embarrassment as a motivation), even if he must eventually become less of a mark (I couldn't resist peeking at the last few pages before we left). I'm looking forward to finishing the other 150 pages, and finding out if my theory's correct.
09:56 x Thomas x /fiction/writing/analysis x link x 1 comment
I feel somewhat prophetic, having written about class in games before Corvus announced the new round table about prices and the role of advertising. But I know what you're thinking: "That article didn't really have anything to do with me! I can afford to keep playing, and ads will probably even drop prices for those who are less fortunate!"
Oh, you poor, deluded fools. Only as a lazy writer's attention-getting device could you say something like that, I would hope.
The Internet is to blame for this "ad-driven" economic fallacy, because it's one of the few places where a relatively strict implementation of the model has remained in place. There are cultural reasons for this, as well as a relatively low cost of entry. It's comparatively cheap to start a Yahoo! or a Google, and investors will throw money at you. But games are not, despite their digital nature, the Internet. They are not a search engine that will build its own database once smart people have done smart work making it smart. They are not a set of web applications built on standards that have been honed over many years. They are content-based, and we don't have any cultural or economic reasons not to charge a lot of money for content. In fact, we have a great precedent for it in the cable industry.
Everyone loves to hate cable. Disclaimer: I once worked for a small cable company, which is not the same as working for a cable content provider. It's a very strange market. Your cable company doesn't just set the prices on their own. They buy the channels from the content provider (Disney provides ESPN, for example) at a certain rate per subscriber to that channel. Larger companies can get discounts based on the economies of scale, but the baseline cost is still determined by the channels themselves. Those channels can raise their rates at a specific amount, which is specified by their contract. This increase can be, but is not always, tied to the rate of inflation. ESPN, again for example, knows that a system which does not carry them will hemorrhage customers. The last time I saw an ESPN contract for the National Cable Television Cooperative, which provides purchasing power for small cable companies, the maximum price increase yearly was 20% (more or less--it has been a while). And trust me, ESPN doesn't hesitate to go for the maximum every single year. Something like 10% of your cable bill probably goes directly to that one channel.
Now, cable companies try to balance out the massive increases in their popular channels in a couple of ways. First, new channels often offer incentives to companies as a loss leader to gain market share. Second, not every channel increases at this rate, and so the programmers try to find a balance between different shifting tiers and packages. But let's face it, they're going to have to increase the prices anyway and they want a piece of the pie. So cable bills have traditionally risen much faster than inflation, sometimes up to four times the Consumer Price Index, depending on where you live.
You think you're getting economic value from the ads running on Comedy Central or Sci-Fi Channel? Because I think it's getting pocketed by The Man, personally. And then they raise your rates again. It's hard to imagine that producing a TV show has actually become so much more expensive, particularly with technological advances. Why would it be any different for gaming, where the expenses really have risen?
Now we have the GameDaily article where the Massive, Inc. CMO insists that ads will make for better games, and will subsidize post-publication content. And that may be--although, pessimist that I am, I doubt it. Advertising hasn't stopped Sturgeon's Law from applying to every single other medium available to mankind. But if cable teaches us anything, it should be that ads won't make anything cheaper than it already was. For gaming especially, where the advertising will not pay off unless a large audience is created through sales in the first place, gambling on ads as a revenue-recovery strategy won't play well with the suits. Following the industry standard for another generational $5-10 increase in price will.
See you at the cash register--or maybe not. I'm just about priced out of this market, myself. And whether or not we're actually getting a good value from gaming anymore, as peterb noted the other day, is a whole other can of worms.
Who else wants to talk?
00:00 x Thomas x /gaming/roundtable x link x 0 comments
The logistics of this stun me.
In one of the largest suburbs of a major metropolitan area, where many people take public transportation to and from their 9-5 jobs, the USPS office where they recieve my packages is only open from 8:30am to 5pm. Thanks, bureaucracy! It's enough to make me want to move to Merrifield. And I hate Merrifield.
Don't get me started on UPS, either, because it's not like private enterprise is winning this fight. They're open until 6:30pm, but the office is in Chantilly, a drive that I can't make until 6:45pm at the earliest. Between that, and the way they cheerily leave their notes for me at 5:06pm, it is pretty clear that they are taunting me. One day, when the People's Republic of Thomas finally stages its successful revolution, they will be among the first against the wall.
13:31 x Thomas x /dc/annoyances x link x 1 comment
Music Thing very kindly linked to DrumPad this morning, but they also included a reference to an old post of theirs about an Excel-based synthesizer. It is fascinating. I know nothing about synths, really, but now I'm going to have to learn.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/tools/digital x link x 0 comments
I don't want to turn this into an Excel-hacking extravaganza, but a visitor by the name of Andrew has turned DrumPad into a full-fledged drum machine, albeit one that currently supports only one pattern.
I might expand it to handle multiple patterns, and let you arrange the patterns in a song. Pity I can't figure out how to alter the velocity of the wav.
Hey, I'm still impressed. To run this, you'll need the samples and bass.dll from DrumPad. You can grab Andrew's spreadsheet sequencer here. I'm going to have to move this stuff into the music directory once the link hubbub dies down, because it's not really gaming-related anymore.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/tools/excel x link x 0 comments
Oh, and before I forget: Yo, Cindika! Here's your touch of infamy. Now where's that dinner you owe me?
00:00 x Thomas x /random/personal x link x 0 comments
Download DrumPad here.
Minimum system requirements:
Recommended system requirements:
Features:
Installation notes:
Included in this archive is the bass.dll, which performs sound decoding and mixing for DrumPad. You'll need to put this somewhere that Windows can find it--the /WINDOWS or /WINNT directory will work fine. Not included are samples, because I don't want to be distributing possibly copyrighted or credited audio. However, I've been testing it using recordings of the Korg DDM-110 drum machine, which I found here. Just extract the samples from that page into the same directory as the Excel file, and it should work fine. If you want to use another kit, you can close the DrumPad subwindow and press ALT-F11 to enter the VBA editor. This is also currently the only way to change keymappings. The next version will allow you to alter the configuration from a GUI, and store it in the main worksheet.
Operating instructions:
Opening the sheet, assuming that you've enabled macros, automatically launches the DrumPad window. As long as you've got that pretty drumkit as your active window, the keyboard will trigger samples. Out of the box, the bindings are mapped as:
Hints and tips:
The first thing that you are going to notice is that you're not any good. Don't feel bad--this is a very difficult instrument, and you're lucky: you've probably played computer games that required you to chord and type right under your fingers. Real drummers have to have this kind of coordination across their whole body. It's fun to mock drummers ("What do you usually find on a drummer's music stand?" "Drool."), but we do have to respect at least the process behind the instrument.
That being said, let's start out with a very simple rhythm. We'll call this the "Meg White:" start hitting the kick drum on quarter notes ("1, 2, 3, 4"), and then add a snare hit on the 1 and the 3. Toss in some cymbals and you've now got just about every White Stripes beat up through Elephant. Try playing along with some .mp3s. It's simple, but it feels good, doesn't it?
Now let's shift things up and try a stereotypical rock beat. This will involve three rhythms. The first is a closed hat every eighth note ("1-and-2-and-3-and-4-and"). The second is a bass drum on every quarter note (or on every other hat beat, "1-and-2-and-3-and-4-and"). Finally, you want to add a snare accent on every other quarter note, which shuffles really well on the 2 and the 4 ("1-and-2-and-3-and-4-and"). This will take you a few minutes to get everything moving in concert, but it'll be instantly familiar when you do.
On a more technical note, I recommend using gamepads with all-digital controls for input, if possible. Your goal should be as precise as possible, and the throw of an analog trigger or stick makes it difficult to judge when the drum will respond. xBox triggers register halfway through their travel, which is not too bad but still not optimal. A PS2 controller is better, but may be intimidating for non-gamers (or even some gamers who don't have Sony consoles). My best recommendation, honestly, is an SNES pad, which includes triggers for the kick, plenty of other options for the sticks, but only as much as you could need.
Good luck, and feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions or comments. Work will continue on upgrades as I experiment with the controls and different musical combinations.
16:23 x Thomas x /music/tools/excel x link x 1 comment
Greetings, Hack-A-Day visitors!
It's so nice to see some more intelligent commenters around the place. If you're here for the drum machine that I built in Excel, here are a few other posts you might find interesting:
20:42 x Thomas x /gaming/hardware/control x link x 1 comment
I guess someone didn't like their review. Luckily, the Internet lets people respond directly to their critics--although, let's be clear, real men don't respond when you e-mail them. Instead, they leave even more comments, risking that I'll never discover them. I guess the assumption was that even though I hated a style of music they champion, their opinions might leave me weeping in a corner, crying to the cold, unfriendly stars: "Why, God? I'll never be happy again!"
That's sarcasm. I know you missed it the first time, Store-Bought Fans, so go back and mentally tag pretty much that whole paragraph, and see if it makes more sense to you now.
It's so cute when musicians try to be cutting.
Happy holidays!
Les Claypoop! Oh, the humor! See, he replaced one letter with another and made a scatalogical pun! It is to laugh.
Kids, I've been mocked by Dr. David Thorpe:
I think he's got you beat there.
Making fun of something I intentionally called my pretentious solo project probably seemed like a good idea, but my review of Store-Bought Superhero is still the top Google result for the band, and I'll stand by it--I'm still particularly proud of the "banality of banality" line. If you learn nothing else from the Internet, please realize that trying to intimidate or insult me through my own website isn't ever going to end up in your favor. The phrase "[no] fear of recourse" pretty much describes the Internet.
06:35 x Thomas x /music/capsule x link x 1 comment
Discount CD Roundup, Late September Edition
Two dollar CD specials are the best. What better way to accumulate some new tastes? When they're good, you'll have new eccentric finds to lord over pretentious music lovers. When they're bad, it's like the blues had a baby and they named it Manos: the Hands of Fate. The only section of the used store better than the two dollar specials is the soundtracks, which I will rhapsodize at a later date.
Someone should really make a two-dollar-music drinking game--if I drank, this would be my immediate mission. Write up a list of lyrical and musical cliches (Chorus rhymes against the phrase "I love you!" Maudlin synthesized strings! Ill-conceived "humorous" talking breaks between songs!) and take a shot every time one of them pops up. Extra challenge for the musically aware: when someone notices that the current track has the exact same chord progression as a previous track, everyone else drinks! If you did that with mainstream pop, by the time you reached the end of a Blink 182 album, everyone would have alcohol poisoning.
Since I don't drink, I guess I'll just have to write snarky reviews instead.
Anyway, M&D (see, I'm not even going to spell it out) is a two-person married-couple band, but their (other) gimmick is that they only play drum machine and bass, and they switch bass and vocal duties back and forth between the two of them. The genre is roughly heavy metal pop--it's supposed to be grungy, but there's no real weight to anything. Mommy has a decent voice, but doesn't enunciate, and Daddy's fairly annoying and doesn't enunciate. Their powers combine for a mumbling, shrieking mess devoid of any good hooks or riffs. All in all, it might make good sampling or party mix material, but I can't recommend it as actual music.
SBS is a Virginia band, from UVA if I remember correctly. I believe I've had a run-in with them before, when they pre-empted my band's slot at a local restaurant around the holidays. I didn't actually go to see them or anything--by that point I was in the middle of seeking legal options for escape--but maybe I still nurse a dark, hateful seed of resentment that we were cast aside in favor of a bigger, more popular band.
If so, then it's probably a good thing I didn't go to the show, because Store-Bought Superhero is exactly like every college band you've ever heard. Unrepentantly lightweight punk, @.1337.=^).$$.# has a couple of moderately good songs, but almost immediately fades into the background. You can't actually listen to this album--without thinking about it, you'll start talking over it or finding small diversions to fill the void. It's entirely possible that you could blast this out the window of your car as an impromptu cloaking device, hidden behind its Forcefield of Mediocre +5. Not even a track titled "Noam Chomsky Love Song" can save it from what Hannah Arendt might describe as "the banality of banality." You should only buy this CD if you are a thirty-something slacker trying to relive his or her undergraduate years.
23:41 x Thomas x /music/capsule x link x 1 comment
More songs for the ever-growing army of the undead
There are three new recordings now up at Four String Riot. One of them is just a cleaner version of Voodoo Funk now that I have a USB preamp instead of a laptop soundcard for input. The other two are more interesting.
First is a new original, titled Lazy Sunday Eyes. I tried to get an Elliot Smith-style chorus effect going on the vocals, because I thought it would sound really good lo-fi, but Audacity has basically no facilities for that kind of thing. It's a pretty good song anyway, I think. There are some glaring mistakes left in it, but if I aimed for perfection I'd never get anything online. Belle said she couldn't really hear them anyway.
Also I've added a cover of the Dandy Warhol's We Used To Be Friends, which you may be more familiar with as the Veronica Mars theme song. I think this one worked out very well, and features obnoxious overdubs of my falsetto. I feel a little guilty about that, but note that otherwise all of the new songs continue to follow the basic manifesto for my pretentious solo project: no samples, no drum machines, and no prerecorded backup tracks. Of all the songs I do, We Used To Be Friends probably requires the most footwork for toggling the loop and distortion at the correct times. It's a lot of fun live.
I don't know when I'll be getting more "proper" gigs, because that's a process that requires a lot of work, but with three originals and two hours worth of covers under my belt, it's possible that I could do it fairly soon. As always, it'll be posted here if it happens. In the meantime, I continue to play at Stacy's Coffee Shop on Wednesdays, so feel free to drop in.
08:35 x Thomas x /music/recording/mp3 x link x 1 comment
Why yes, I am interested in winning the lottery
It's that time again: after the last carnival I'm getting a lot of nonsense spam even past my filters, so I'll be following my usual policy and incrementing my mail forward by 1. Those who have corresponded with me can ignore this--you should already have my real e-mail address. For all the rest, the sidebar and mail links for each post have already been changed, and you can use them to get in touch.
00:00 x Thomas x /meta/announce/changes x link x 0 comments
The current Carnival of the Gamers is available at the Game Chair. There are seventeen different blogs participating, and several people submitted a couple of pieces. I don't recognize all of these names, and some of the newcomers are interesting. Perhaps more importantly, I don't read each participant regularly, but it's nice to be able to grab what they've selected as a top example of their work over a month. In other words, contrary to a few vicious detractors at the start of the Carnival, it seems to be managing just fine. Congratulations to everyone involved, and particularly to the Game Chair team for a very creative formatting job this time around.
Update- Favorite line while glancing through the entries so far is from Dubious Quality's look at Guitar Hero:
00:00 x Thomas x /gaming/carnival x link x 0 comments
