I had my 34th birthday this last Saturday, it was awesome. Many guests and good presents.
Here is a video of two presents I got, a meeblip and a rockband3 keytar.
The meeblip was an easy build, and the Keytar smarter and more capable then I thought. I’ll be rocking the house soon.
I read a blog posts by Derek Sivers about how easy it was for him to become an entrepreneur after accepting the facts of living as a a musician. This got me started thinking about how there are things that are similar, but that you implement very differently.
If you make a song or an album, most of the time you’re trying to say that it’s unique or at least new and fresh from whatever the prospective fan/music listener has ever heard before. You’d never do that with an application or a car. Imagine how stupid it would sound if you tried to sell an iPhone app only by telling that it is “new, fresh, and you’ve never used anything like it before”
When you made an app, you know that this is not the end, it’s rather the beginning of the life of the app. You now need to tell the world that it exists. As loudly and proudly as you can. Music often travels a very short way from the artist. Just adding it on the Internet does not make it spread. Not many songs are viral, not even the hit’s you hear on radio.
When someone tells you that you’re app doesn’t work on blah blah blah, you listen to them and try to fix the bug. When someone tells you that they don’t like you’re music, you possibly hate them and call them poseurs. What if you listened to their critique as if it was a bug and then (if you want them as costumer) tries to fix it next time. It could be that the super loud snare really isn’t all that great.
If someone critiques your music, it’s often to late to change anything, and if you do have the time to change stuff you think real hard about if you want your song to move the way that where suggested. If you’d apply this on app-making instead of adding every single feature asked for you might end up with a better app.
As a musician it could be that you only send you’re songs to some record companies and hope they will like it enough to give you money. This would be as if an app developer only sent their application only to (apple, google) and hope that they press “show in market”. That would be stupid, send it everywhere.
If you’re making an app, you might try to act all corporate and hide behind a web-page. If you are a rock ‘n roll band you put your faces on the front page and tell everyone what you’re favorite food is. If you’re a small company you might as well act as rock stars, it’s less douche.
I’m sure there are more, but I want to go take a bath now, if this at all resonates with you, feel free to think about it and utilize it as you like.
Christian sometimes talks about advertisements for books. Especially when we pass one where the add say “the best book about…” and what they really mean is “The best book in Swedish by a Swedish author about …”. Get the _best_ book for what you are interested in. Not the best Swedish book. Everybody should know this!
Snail egg
You could do this also if you have an eggbot. I will write more about the eggbot later, for now you have to be satisfied with the pun.
I ordered a Kaossilator Pro as soon as they where announced, but Sweden didnt get that many and my order also accidentaly got lost so I decided not to buy one (used the money for something else instead).
A year later or so I got one cheap from someone who got one already and lost interest in it. It was in mint condition when I got it.
It’s a nice toy, but should not have been called Pro, but rather “Big Bro” or “Larger but no batteries”.
There are a loads of reviews on it on the internet but if you’re wondering if you can make noise on it, the answer is yes. Drone? yes. Dubstep? not really.
The main downer for me is the echo’s and reverbs, why these where not broken out and gotten an on/off switch I do not know.
Sooner or later I’ll post an album made on the Kaossilator Pro, but not today, I’ve only got 7 songs so I’ll have to make 50 more before there are enough good ones.
Also, it would be cool to try it out with a real band, like, sampling on the fly and such. But I’m glad I did not pay retail on the releasedate – price for it.
So I’m beginning to feel a little to big. This is my plan to change that:
1: Full size mirror by the bed, you know, one of these that you can see your whole self in. It’s from IKEA but I couldn’t find it so no picture.
I place this mirror at the middle of the bed, so when I get up in the morning (by sitting on the middle of the bed) I get to watch my own pale and fat body. Topped with that newly-woken look that is so flattering. When I can se myself in the mirror in the morning and not have a pot-like belly I will call it a success.
2: I will place a scale just beneath the mirror (and pen and paper) so I can record my woken up weight every day. This should be the most scientifically correct measurement I can think of. Same amount of clothes and the body being somewhat “reset”.
3: Candy and soda only on Saturdays. This is hard. I like watching TV and eating candy at night. For now I settle on fruit, but that will have to go to.
4: Move a little more, perhaps start running. This is not very formulated as of yet. But I need to do some sort of exorcise.
Next Monday I will go and buy the most advanced scale ever created. It does have wifi-connection and all other sort of goodies. You can share your wight on twitter and facebook (not that I will do that)
TC-Helion’s iPhone App Voice-jam looses songs so I wrote them this letter.
“Hi there
I bought voice-jam a few days ago. While it is nice and I really like it it has on destroyed three of my jam sessions. That is three songs I will never ever get back.
It seems that it does not save jam-sessions, nor does it warn you that you are recording over something you’ve recorded before. When you “save to new” it does not save the jam-session.
The way you’ve implemented this feature is so bad that I just couldn’t believe that someone of your caliber had done such a sloppy job. Surely this is not the first time you hear this?
Is there some way you can bring my songs back?
Also on your supportpage, there are no Product that fit’s Voice-Jam.
/Johan”
Also, you cant get support unless you create an account with them.
I just wanted to wish you all some happy holidays.
I know there is a truth somwhere in that sentence. perhaps it should be:
is this at all correct English?
Sprak is on it’s way to the app-store, you might remember it from this post http://www.larsby.com/johan/?p=817 but it now resides over at http://www.tinkerteam.se/?page_id=87
I’m trying to get a hold of the guy’s that gave insightful comments over at the first post so I can send them promo-codes to the finished thing.
And in other new’s I’m helping Rosa Menkman with an swutit’s like application, but different. To be shown in museums and on conjunction with her papers.
And a few other things you might like! soon to be revealed!