After several years of daily jostling in my pocket, my Olympus WS-200S stereo voice recorder started distorting in one channel. So I cracked open the case and discovered this scary dust-bunny invasion. Perhaps it was shorting out the mic? Grabbing an old toothbrush, I flicked off most of the linty debris. But then, with a sickening snap, I accidentally severed...
As part of today's feature article on making movies out of still photos, Michael W. and Debra Jean Dean whipped up this funny demonstration of good and bad background music. It contains five brief examples. See if you can figure out why each helps or hurts the presentation. Debra Jean reveals the answer after each segment. I burst out laughing...
Normally, flow is a good thing. A lot of my time as an editor is spent trying to make ideas and words connect smoothly to tell a story. But while editing a recent podcast, I had an important realization: Sometimes breaking the flow of one element increases the flow of the whole. To hear a good example of this, listen...
After three years of tweaking, I finally dropped off the files for my new book, The Moon Princess, at the printer today. One of the last design challenges was creating a drop cap for the opening word, Long. The white space at the L's right edge broke the flow. Googling around for ideas, I found this vintage screencast by O’Reilly...
One of the hallmarks of amateur podcasts and screencasts is extraneous sound in the voiceover. Here are two DIY solutions for making quality recordings on the go and on the cheap.
Clicking an MP3 link is annoyingly unpredictable. Will the file blank out the page? Will it start to download? Will it throw an error? You never know. So, inspired by Del.icio.us Play Tagger, I whipped up this one-click Web audio player.
At last year's NAMM show, Korg told me it plans to take over the world with its KaossPads. These slick X-Y touchpads now control everything from effect processors to mixers. I reviewed the current flagship, the KP3 KaossPad, for Electronic Musician last year and had a blast playing its synth sounds. So I was intrigued to read on Create Digital...
Here's an intriguing new site: FreeMusicSoftware.org compiles links to free samples, VST plug-ins, and, yes, music software. Apparently the work of a blogger named Crispin, it has a personal feel you don't get at more extensive sites like Don't Crack, with mini-reviews of the programs and even some tutorials. The list of free samples is one of the most extensive...
Being temporarily illiterate seems to have heightened my other senses. Here in Japan for the holidays, I'm noticing a world of user-interface sounds.
O'Reilly just released Windows Vista Annoyances and you can read the multimedia solutions chapter online for free.
