I got about 28 songs up there, a few are even keepers. Of my stuff, I feel good about these:
This URL will take you to all my songs.
This player has everything that was uploaded. Steal the embed code if you want this on your site.
Here are some of the most listened-to songs from the month: 247 0203_bruce_2nd_time.mp3
196 0204_bruce_3rdwave.mp3
192 0201_derek_a_song_a_day.mp3
190 0205_bruce_shouldabeenalespaul_.mp3
176 0201_greacen_oh_hell_oh.mp3
173 0203_greacen_istanbul.mp3
163 0202_derek_jury_duty.mp3
163 0202_bruce_timesup.mp3
160 0204_greacen_trouble_sleeping.mp3
159 0215_bruce_base.mp3
158 0203_derek_where_is_walt.mp3
158 0201_peter_all_that_i_can_feel.mp3
157 0206_bruce_thank_you.mp3
152 0204_bruce_whatthe.mp3
149 0202_greacen_2wo.mp3
147 0204_derek_disneyland.mp3
146 0203_ryan_in_to_the_night.mp3
146 0201_seth_the_best_place_in_the_world.mp3
145 0131_seth_the_day_before_song.mp3
143 0209_greacen_master_of_the_mall.mp3
142 0203_peter_twothreeohnine.mp3
140 0213_derek_hawaii.mp3
140 0205_greacen_bring_it_back.mp3
139 0216_greacen_watching_all_the_good_ones_go.mp3
139 0202_peter_all_of_them.mp3
136 0212_bruce_alone.mp3
132 0208_greacen_wafflepalooza.mp3
129 0212_derek_taxonomy.mp3
Pretty evenly distributed. I remember Bruce's stuff got a lot of attention last year too, but it seems like the earlier songs are still getting plenty of play.
We're almost to 13000 song streams at this point and if the traffic followed last year's pattern, people will still be listening for a few more days.
Starting to think about Song-A-Week for the rest of the year. Email me if you want in on this.
This is my recipe for rock guitars:
For the basic "loud" sound here's what I'll do:
Set the ZVEX amp to brighness: middle, thickness: normal. Volume knob is about 3/4s+. There's only 1 knob on this amp I get it into the distortion space, but not all the way up. The amp is relatively quiet, the sound is a little mid-rangey, but it sounds good in the room.
Mic the guitars pretty close. About 4-6 inches away from the cabinet's grill. I'm using a large cap condenser for this. I've been leaving the mic in the omni position lately. The sound is a little more open. That proximity effect wasn't doing anything to help the sound IMO.
At this volume, I trim the Aardvark's preamp to "6.5" (not sure if this is a db level or something specific to the Q10) so there's a strong signal and still a fair amount of headroom.
Play with heart and desire -- and fat fingers. I'm not a great guitarrist, but I think pick technique plays a small part here. I'm working toward my ideal guitar sound which is distorted, but clear, with lots of bright overtones. Most of my favorite punk albums had some combination of this. I've learned to get some of those overtones by sticking my finger onto the vibrating strings as I pick. Do you really want to know about this? Just ask and I'll ramble on and on about it...
I'll usually double the main part of the song, then add one more color track, often with a different distortion and pickup setting.
1 guitar up the middle, usually cleaner (distortion-wise). Might use a little EQ to fill a gap in the wall of sound. Posssibly with a bit more of the send- verb too.
Group all the guitars. Use light compression with the RCL on the group. Might shelf the bass a little (I'm monitoring with NS-10s and I've found that if I can hear the bass at all there will likely be a problem on other systems.). I'll usually add a touch of room verb as a send effect.
Here are the compressor specifics:
The overall mix is important too of course. The drum sounds are reasonably loud, but offer some space. The bass has a few EQ notches (where? I'll check) to carve out space. I haven't been too happy about the vocal sounds on the full-band songs this year, so no help in this dept.
Here's the Dirty Little Secret: Bus compression is the evil Multiband thing. Yeah, there it is. It's out. What are the settings here? Hard to tell what all these mean. I'm basically choosing the "FM" preset and trying to dial it back just a bit.
Actually, now that I look closely to a randomly picked mix, it looks like I'm just using the default 'FM Radio' setting for 'Trouble Sleeping'.
That's about it. Here's a guitar-only mix for Trouble Sleeping: http://gr eacen.com/media/greacenzone/20090222_guitar_mix.mp3
You can hear slight variations on this on a bunch of this year's songs:
For me, it's time to turn to other instruments, other family members, more wine, plagarism... you get the idea.
I have a few comments in no particular order.
If you know anyone else interested in playing along for the rest of the month, invite them over.
Finally, I made a few changes to the RSS feeds on the site. There are actually 4 feeds worth knowing about. Here's the skinny:
What sort of nefarious things can one do with feeds (nefeedarious?) like this? Well, that MRSS feed will now work with more flashy mp3 players that take RSS feeds as playlists. Like this:
A few things for folks using the website:
Also, the facebook page was a great idea (thanks Seth!). There's an audience slowly but steadily growing there. People listening out there. I've been able to measure ~1700 streams during the first week. Not too shabby! Here's the breakdown:
156 20090203_bruce_2nd_time.mp3
106 20090201_derek_a_song_a_day.mp3
100 20090204_bruce_3rdwave.mp3
95 20090205_bruce_shouldabeenalespaul_.mp3
85 20090201_greacen_oh_hell_oh.mp3
81 20090202_derek_jury_duty.mp3
80 20090201_peter_all_that_i_can_feel.mp3
77 20090202_bruce_timesup.mp3
73 20090131_seth_the_day_before_song.mp3
72 20090203_derek_where_is_walt.mp3
72 20090203_greacen_istanbul.mp3
71 20090203_ryan_in_to_the_night.mp3
70 20090201_seth_the_best_place_in_the_world.mp3
65 20090202_greacen_2wo.mp3
65 20090203_peter_twothreeohnine.mp3
62 20090204_bruce_whatthe.mp3
60 20090202_peter_all_of_them.mp3
60 20090204_greacen_trouble_sleeping.mp3
53 20090203_ryan_sleepy_slap.mp3
51 20090203_ryan_bonsai.mp3
51 20090204_derek_disneyland.mp3
43 20090206_bruce_thank_you.mp3
41 ryan_sick_jam_as_in_seriously_not_feeling_well_today_jam.mp3
35 20090205_greacen_bring_it_back.mp3
27 20090205_derek_jury_selection.mp3
16 20090205_bruce_shouldabeenalespaul.mp3
7 20090206_greacen_put_down_that_bag_of_rocks.mp3
6 20090201_greacen_testing.mp3
Thanks for reading. I need to go mix.