Podcast Informatique

This here is an entry for providing a brief description and technical details of my new fang-led pod-cast. It may be updated now again as things change.

A Pod-Cast?

A pod-cast is essentially an audio show of which there are regular new episodes. If you subscribe to a pod-cast in iTunes* you will automatically receive the new episodes as they are released. These shows may also be automatically transferred to your iPod so that you can catch up with a show at anytime you like. You can un-subscribe from a pod-cast at anytime by deleting it from iTunes.

There are pod-casts of all kind’s and there aren’t necessarily any rules. Some are like the audio equivalent of a blog, someone ranting through a mic at you. Some are like music radio shows, sprouting obscenities at you in between playing their favourite choons from the hit-parade. Some are DJ mixes.

The That Kid Podcast on Itch & Be Merry

I’ve been writing stuupid electonica tracks for too many years to remember, since I was 11 or 12, I dunno, but it started off with this primitive tracker program on the good ‘ol Commodore Amiga called Protracker. And it wasn’t just me, it was me a friend my brother and his friend. But it wasn’t long until the others had given up (sensibly) and there was only me left to carry on the wee hobby. I guess I just enjoy it? “That Kid” is the silly name for this musical mis-adventure.

Once a week usually a Monday or a Tuesday I will be posting a different song from my back-catalogue. Some will be recent, some will be very very old, some will be embarrassingly bad, and some you might even like.

You can subscribe from within iTunes by going to Advanced->Subscribe to Podcast and entering… “http://www.itchmerry.com/podcast.xml” (without the quotes).

How the tracks are chosen

This is warts-and-all. I have shuffled my songs and as such will be picking them at random, even if it is a track of mine that I absolutely hate I will still post it. It might even be un-listenable. So be warned.

Most songs will be between 3 to 6 minutes. Some may be a bit longer. If a song is between 6 and 8 minutes I may crop it. A couple of my efforts are VERY long, upto about 25 minutes. When one of these “epics” come up I will split it into chunks and post them over subsequent weeks.

For each song, I will state which software was involved in the production of it. I may also include some of the plug-ins used, if i do this it doesn’t mean they were the only ones used.

Technical Details

These songs are encoded in iTunes own format that is, they are AAC’s with the .m4a extension. Other players such as winamp and windows media player should also be able to play them but you may need to download a plug-in. Check the relevant vendor’s web-sites for details. Unfortunately, not many portable players other than the iPod have the capability. Sorry.

They are encoded at 192kbs. This may seem a bit excessive but really it only adds an extra 1 or 2 MB over that of a typical 128kbs file. This is the bitrate they are encoded in within my own collection and I’m too lazy to redo them for this site.

The Creative Software

The earliest songs, from roughly 1992 to 1994 were written on the Commodore Amiga, using a piece of software called Protracker. This was a breed of musical software called a “Tracker” songs were built up from short samples, such as the sound of a hi-hat or the sound of note being held on a keyboard. Instead of tradition musical notation, you would order the notes down the page like a list. Protracker was only 2 tracks per channel. Which ain’t much. It was also 8-bit. Very Hi-Fi.

From around 1994 I moved from the Amiga to the PC and used a DOS based music software called Scream-Tracker. As you can probably guess this was very similar to Protracker. With the only major differences being that it was a horrid shade of Brown and provided 16 stereo-tracks to play with. Oh and it was 16-bit. Wooo.

From Screamtracker I went to FastTracker. Again DOS based, but it was more pleasant on the Eyes. I could also, for the first time “Mix Down” the tracks to wav files, which was certainly handy in the CD-R age. Also this made using multiple audio apps possible. And after a little while and to add a little more ambience to the music I started adding some filters and effects to the music by loading up the resulting wav files in Cool Edit.

From around 1997 I started using Buzz, a powerful but awkward piece of software which was plug-in based. The idea was that you had generators (to produce the sound) and effects (to modify the sound) and you plonked them down and connect them up like you would in a real studio. It crashed a hell of a lot though, and it wasn’t very elegant when it came to scoring the music. Like the trackers you would plonk the notes down in a list, but this didn’t particularly lend itself to the flexibility of the whole generator/effect idea. Still, it’s pretty damn powerful for something totally free.

From around 2000 odd I started using Fruity Loops, but only for a short time as I thought the GUI was a bit silly. It did however have a surprisingly meaty sound.

Shortly after, I started using Reason. Reason quickly became very popular because of it’s ease of use and because you get a lot of instruments to play with out of the box. It’s not bad, but i don’t find it’s sequencer to be terribly good.

Steinberg’s Cubase was next. It’s very powerful, but with quite a steep learning curve. I also find it not to be the most immediate of things, quite often you’ll have forgotten your great musical idea by the time it’s loaded up and set up to start playing some notes. The true power, compared to those I had been using previous came with it’s plugins. It uses VST’s, similar to Audio Units, there are a lot of incredibly impressive instruments and effects available. They also range in price greatly, from say 30 quid to 40′000 quid, so you only have the flexibility that your wallet can provide. And my wallet is very slim. My favourite instruments are probably those made by Native Instruments. Not that I can afford of of the ones that I want.

I’m now tinkering with Ableton Live, which I have fallen head over heels with. Unfortunately I haven’t much in the way of creative urges. I haven’t written a single bloody damn thing in many many months.

* There are other media players.