Still Alive by Lisa Miskovsky - Mirror's Edge Contest Entry

I don't normally enter remix contests but I was really taken with Lisa Miskovsky's "Still Alive" from Mirror's Edge, so I decided to give this one a shot.

The track is free to download. It's available under a Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution license.

I really want to get my music some wider attention - the top 25 mixes get in this contest get in front of a panel of EA audio people, and I would love to be in that group.

Because my aim is to get my music out there, rather than win the contest for the sake of it, I've decided that, if I win the prize, I'll donate it to Child's Play.

I would love it if you could vote for me. You have to go through a slightly annoying process to do so, but it won't take very long:

1. Sign up for a Jamglue account here.

2. Verify your account and log into it. Blame Jamglue.

3. Go to my mix and make it a Favourite. The Favourite button is just above the player. Then you'll have voted for me.

4. Tell all your friends to do the same.

I would really appreciate five minutes of your time to help me get into that group of 25, and promote my music to the games industry.

Leon Bolier and Sied van Riel's Youtube Contributions

These two miscreants are trance producers of the highest calibre, but apparently when they get together they seem unable to take anything even remotely seriously, resorting to heavy breathing and childish humour. Anyway, this serves as a great antidote to all the rather repetitive production tutorials out there. There's a touch of Borat at times ("You make track, and then you can release") but that just adds to...or subtracts from...whatever this is supposed to be.

5 Most Hilarious Obscure Music Genres

A great name for a post, so I've stolen it from Audiotuts.

My favourite genre has to be Lowercase, which I'd never heard of before. Apparently, it's "Silence occasionally interrupted by brief moments of barely audible noise." Genius.

Read the full article now.

Also YES!

New Ladytron video

East West Sounds Online Fail

So today I get a mail from East West support staff telling me that the delivery note I sent in with my rebate form is not acceptable as a proof of purchase, and that I have to send them an actual invoice. Let's be clear, this means posting something ELSE to the Netherlands...not Germany as previously stated, but you get the idea.

For those of you who don't know what I'm on about, I'm talking about this 2-for-1 promotion from East West, which as far as I can tell is pretty much globally popular. Some of their products are basically essential purchases if you're in the business of making music, so saving about £350 on a 2-for-1 is great value.

Digital Village only send out delivery notes, not invoices, and (I believe) there's no easy way of printing one off. What this bright spark from East West failed to notice is that a printed delivery note with an order number on it, is precisely as difficult to forge as an invoice. It shows all the same details - name, address and order...Also, the TnC's on DV247 state that you should include "your original Digital Village / DV247 purchase receipt" but, again, the only "original" thing you receive is the delivery note.

If you're offering your customers something for free, don't be a dick about it. I'm not certain this system of needing to post stuff has been set up to discourage a percentage of people from taking the offer, but that certainly would seem to be the effect. But stupidly blocking people when they do take it up? That's just ridiculous.

It seems that East West have customer loyalty way down the list - I replied telling them that I'd bought several large-scale products from them in the past and that they should deal with DV247 direct about my order because I don't want to do any more work to get my freebie. We will see if they can overcome their idiocy.

East West Symphonic Orchestra Gold Edition

So, I bought this because I'm a sucker for those 2-for-1 Play engine deals from Digital Village. Ok, you can get them elsewhere, but I am a massive Digital Village fan and all music tech should be purchased from them.

Getting Voices of Passion in the mail from Germany sometime soon, hopefully. What a sentence.

Anyway, let me tell you about this software. It arrived in a GIGANTIC box, big enough to fit an American Football helmet and around twelve novels. This was nothing compared to the copy protection...

To register this software, you have to get an iLok key (not included - £30) and stick it in your computer. Except, you've already messed up, because you should install the drivers before you do this - there's a tiny warning somewhere in a readme about that, but that's it.

The drivers on the DVD didn't work, so I had to download some drivers. They worked. Then I installed the software which took around two hours - seriously. THEN I had to authorise the software. Except I couldn't, because there's no way to set up the auth program with a proxy server. I asked support about this - no answer.

I took my iLok key to work, registered for an iLok.com account, installed the auth program, got the licenses. Then I came home with the iLok and it authorised the software successfully.

Then I couldn't find the DLL for the VST plugin, as it had been installed into Program Files / Common Files (OF COURSE! WHAT BETTER DEFAULT DIRECTORY COULD WE COME UP WITH). After getting it to work in Live, I loaded up a big patch and it crashed.

Next time, I tried to use it, everything worked fine except there was a load of note-stealing happening in streaming-from-disc mode. Dumping samples into RAM fixed it - therefore, buffer problem.

I set the buffer to the maximum size. Now everything works cleanly and properly.

The sounds it makes are gorgeous - you should buy it.

I am so close to never buying another Play engine product because the installation and copy protection are so utterly utterly terrible. East West, what is your problem? Anyone with an internet connection can still get a pirated version of this - just stop being so stupid.

Oh, and I can't update the software because of my proxy. Good one.