February 20, 2010

From New Gear, New 'Tones

Fast and furious today. Here are some of the fruits from Gear-induced experimentation yesterday.

The Source: Exotic Percussion and Brilliant Brass, released by Directional Sound (DS-5006), a division of Premier Records.
Performed by The John Evans Orchestra with "...actual birds and jungle animals..." that "...become part of the orchestral spectrum."
Liner Notes by Nat Hentoff.

The Culprit: A phono player, Korg Kaos Pad, Waves MultiRack with, well, stuff.

Crunchy, nasty, spooky--I think I'll call it "Recorded in Aggro-Fi"

3 flavours:
k08 Exotic Percussion in "Aggro-Fi" iphone mp3 wav

For Karnaval, German Drinking Songs and the Sounds of Angels

The prodigal ringtoner returns. It's been too long--here's a start back into things.

The first, lifted from an Album of old German drinking music. In honor of the Cologne Karanaval last week.

The second, a happy accident while exploring strange MIDI instruments. In this case, the Psaltery. Each posted in 3 flavors.

k06 German Beerish iphone mp3 wav

k07 Psalters of Angels iphone mp3 wav

July 16, 2009

Ringtones 1-5 reposted for iPhone

I have discovered thru a bit of beta testing with friends that iPhone ringtone-ing is actually a lot easier than I thought, and certainly a lot easier than it used to be. To that end, here are the first 4 ringtones, plus one more that I don't have much to say about that hasn't been posted yet. It is just a telephone. Backwards.

Right/Control click each one to save to your HD, then just drag it into Ringtones in iTunes and it should work fine. From now on I will post mp3's and m4r's, which will also make it easier to try before you buy.

May 6, 2009

From Sitar Bridges on Banjos to Prepared Piano

Brainstorming about what to make the next ringtone, I had been thinking about what a banjo would sound like with a sitar bridge on it, as the strings are similarly made of metal. And the banjo is such an ancient instrument--from there I wandered to prepared piano, which seems just odd enough to warrant ringtone-ification.

This is an original composition, entitled, "Pick up your phone, John Cage". Two technical side notes, this one will overload the speaker on your iPhone if you turn it up too loud. Despite my attempts to figure this out, I have not quite gotten it yet. So don't turn your phone all the way up. Also, a slightly different distribution, the zip file contains an mp3 and a garageband project. For iPhone, just open the gb file and Share. For all others, apologies, I am quickly, it seems, becoming somewhat iPhone centric. Oh well, it's my only testing platform.

I still want to modify my banjo with a piece of camel bone.

k04Call4PrepPno.zip

PS. If I really wanted to pay homage to John Cage, I should have made a ringtone called 14 sec. that was dead silence, but I will refrain from getting totally impractical just yet.

April 28, 2009

How to put ringtones on your iPhone

A little known fact (at least it was to me until someone pointed it out) is that you can make anything you want into a ringtone for your iPhone. All you need is GarageBand '08 or '09 and iTunes, which, if you have a mac, you probably do. Not sure if there is a way to do this on a PC, so sorry about that. But here's how to do it on a mac:

1) Download the ringtone from here and unzip it.

2) Open GarageBand. Drag either the mp3 or wave (if there is one) into the big space in the window, creating a new track.

3) Click the cycle button. This is how you decide how long your ringtone will be.



4) Drag the edges of the cycle bar (in yellow) the beginning and end of the ringtone file. It won't let you ringtone-ify it without this step.




5) From the 'Share' Menu, choose 'Send Ringtone to iTunes'. And that's it! It will name it in iTunes whatever the GarageBand file is called, so you can rename it in iTunes to be more descriptive if you need to.



6) Sync your phone. Voila!

You can save this GarageBand file or not, it doesn't matter b/c now it is in your iTunes collection, and properly registered as a ringtone. I believe that internally it is really just an AAC file, but if you try it any other way, it will end up in your music collection, not your ringtones. Unless your phone is unlocked, but I don't know anything about that.

love fries

here is a french (actually belgian) frie-inspired ringtone, and a reminder to myself (and anyone else) that there is a new (to me, not to people who know it) fry place in town, off st. marks. Bonus is, not only can you get fries belgian style, you can also get poutine, fries Quebecquer style!!

Fantastic. I must go try it.

Just the mp3 file on this one, the wave is too big. It's a creeper tone--starts small, gets bigger, and then makes sure you hear it at the end.

k03FriesWithThat.mp3.zip