Riffing on the participation media meme: I recently created a myspace profile (partly for work) to see how it all worked and to link up with some friends that were using the service. After about a week I thought it might be cool to post some demos of the tracks I’ve put together as we audition for folks to join my new band.

As far as I can tell, you can’t upload music to myspace unless you are registered as an “artist” but to do so you have to use a different email address. In other words, I had to create a whole new profile. So I did (luckily I have a plethora of email addresses to choose from).

Today I went to Purevolume to check out The Devoted Few’s new profile there. Barry suggested creating a listening profile too, so I went to the sign-up page. The first question they ask: are you an artist or a listener.

I’m both. And it annoys me that I have to choose between them. I’m not sure if I have to create a whole new profile for PV like I did in myspace, but I do find this an unnecessary distinction, and quite annoying ‘coz I then have to remember a whole new set of credentials, and maintain two separate spaces on these sites. It would be so easy to support multiple profiles per sign-in…

Anyway - enough of my griping - I’d recommend checking out Purevolume - there’s some cool music to be found. Last.fm is another promising site that’s been around for a while, but seems to be gaining traction at the moment, as is Pandora (haven’t had a chance to check out either yet).

Update 07/03: Amy says it’s possible - I couldn’t find any options like this. Anyone know how to do it?

Update 08/03: So, in the comments Amy shows how easy it is to convert a myspace profile. Who woulda thought to use the “help” link. G’ah! Very much a case of RTFM - I should have dug a little deeper before posting…

Update 09/03: Actually, I was just thinking about it. What I am after is not what Amy’s pointer does. What I want is a single sign-in with multiple profiles, not the ability to change a profile to something else. At the moment I have to still remember two lots of sign-in details. This may not seem like much, but it gets incredibly annoying when you have to repeatedly sign-in and out of the system to make changes to each profile (incl. accepting friend requests). But anyways, I’ve said enough already. It’s a reasonably small issue in the grand scheme of shit, so not really worth harping on about…

The new M-Audio Axiom keyboard looks pretty sweet - the built-in triggers are exactly what I need! And it maps directly to Ableton Live. Noice!

I as chatting to a friend I bumped into the other day, and he mentioned a band called Pivot in passing. The mention piqued my interest so I checked out their site and liked what I heard (I checked out their MySpace profile too). I thought - “cool, I’ll grab that CD sometime soon”.

Fast-forward a week and I’m trawling through JB HiFi at Leichardt and find their CD, “Make me love you”. I pick it up, but don’t get a chance to check it out that day.

The next day, Ang and I rock up to a cafe we’ve never been to before just near King Street Newtown. I’m digging the tunes playing in the cafe. The first track as we’re walking in sounds good. Then another. Then another. One track Ang and I swear we’ve heard recently, but neither of us can place it. I ask the waitress who’s playing, but it’s just a burnt mix CD and they don’t really know. I walk away thinking “damn - I really liked those tracks, I wish I knew who it was…”

I get home later that day and chuck on my freshly purchased Pivot CD. First track sounds familiar. Then we hit track five, “La Mer”, and suddenly it clicks - yes, indeed, the track we couldn’t place at the cafe. Then I remember that the track that first caught my attention at the cafe is the title track of the CD.

I’ve listened to the CD a couple of times over the past 24 hours and I’m really digging it. I hope that it holds out over the next few listens (you know how CDs or tracks that instantly grab you often become tiresome after a few listens?). Well worth checking out if you have a moment.

Nullsleep [via Cool Hunting via MAKE blog]

Electronica on Nintendo Gameboy and NES. And it doesn’t sound half-bad. Reminds me a bit of Sigue Sigue Sputnik back in the day…

Well, back in town after being away for about 10 days. Enjoyed the break too.

Other things will probably pop into my head about the trip, but one of the standout thangs was seeing That One Guy at Woodford. Absolutely brilliant!!! Next time he’s around your way, check it out.

More info, including a blog and samples on his page at My Space.

One of my favourite Mac utilities (I don’t use it heaps, but it’s invaluable when I do) is Sound Studio, which shipped with some Macs a little while back. I just stumbled across Freeverse who develop the app. I’ll be checking out version 3 soon…

Picked up a PreSonus FireBox over the weekend. So far it’s doing everything I’ve wanted it to, apart from a few initial glitches getting it set up.

Apart from the fact my old USB I/O box died a few months back, the two main reasons I went with the FireBox is that

• it’s bus powered (meaning you don’t need to plug in a power pack as it gets it’s power from the Firewire port of the computer)
• it allows configuration to send any of the three output pairs to the headphone output

The first one is pretty common nowadays, but my old USB I/O required a power pack, which was a right PITA when having to transport it. When I first attached the FireBox to my iMac it didn’t seem to work - it’d start up then lose power. Plugging in the power pack (which is supplied in case your computer/firewire hub doesn’t supply enough power) got the unit to work.

After using the Firebox off the power pack for about half an hour I could remove the power and it would work off the Firewire bus. However, this morning the same thing is happening again. This might be a faulty unit, I don’t know. But it’s frustrating to say the least.

The second thing (routing outputs to the headphone out) is something that I’ve not seen on any other unit in this price range. The reason I wanted this feature is so that I could send an independent mix to the drummer in a live setting, without having to mess around with headphone amplifiers or any other fiddling.

When I attached the unit, I went to the PreSonus page for the FireBox and downloaded the Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) configuration utility. This utility allows the setting of some options on the unit, but didn’t allow for configuration of the outputs (something that is advertised on the website). So I downloaded the mixer application that was included in the 10.3 set of applications. It worked just fine under 10.4, and after a few minutes messing around in Live, I was able to get exactly what I wanted. Why PreSonus don’t include the mixer utility with the Tiger package I don’t know - it’s very confusing.

Hopefully I can sort out these bus power issues, but overall I’m pretty pleased with the unit - good sound, flexible - and I expect that I’ll be happy with it’s recording capabilities, apparently the pre-amps are really good.

Dean: iTunes now open for making a profit. Yes, yes, yes. Couldn’t agree more. I would hazard a guess that it is the labels here charging more that accounts for the differential.

Not that I believe what I read in the Daily Telegraph, but it seems that the iTunes store is finally coming to Australia. I’ll believe it when I see it, but I do hope the rumour is true.

UPDATE: Opening on 25 October - you can currently sign up to the store, but can’t buy just yet. Rumour is Sony/BMG are still not joining the party - which is stupid on their part. They’ll come around soon enough…

Can’t wait to get my hands on a copy of this More top news from Lou and Andy too. Cool!