John Peters, in his book, Speaking into Air, claims that “in the age of electronic media, [communication] has become the art of reaching across the intervening spirits to touch another’s body (p.225),” and I could not agree with him more.  

As the talented Erin McKeown sings: “there is hope in poetry, comfort in fiction.” There is, indeed, pleasure in the physicality involved in creating something heartfelt, even as simple as a webcam video of you attempting to sing, and then sharing that with others. That pleasure is only surpassed at the moment it generates a physical response in another, the moment were the bodies in the medium are moved to action. The soaring popularity of Kutiman’s videos clearly attest to that. Kutiman was moved to create an amazing project in six movements joining lots of people in their private act of music creation and connecting their efforts.  

We all want to feel a sense of connectedness and belonging. Even when we are singing loud in the shower, we are hoping someone is listening. What Kutiman created here is an extraordinary moment of someone from the apartment next door joining in your shower-singing in a duet across the walls the separates you. 

While there is comfort in ambient presence, the real potential for social media is when the electronic connectedness finds a way to generate a visceral response. 

The crowd was not wise on its own, it needed a human filter to cut through the noise, see a potential, and realize it.  I encourage you to check out the full project with links to the source videos at Thru-You.com.

Click here to view the embedded video.

crossposted at armyoffools.net

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• June 4, 2009 -- YouTweetFace (1)
• May 2, 2009 -- Twitter & Skype classroom coverage of Paul Gillin (4)
• March 21, 2009 -- “The current (news) meltdown is just a warm up act.” (0)
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The resource I want to share with you today is The Freesound Project. Freesound makes available an ever-growing database of sound effect licensed under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0 license. This means you can use and abuse the samples for non-commercial purposes including remixing, file sharing and webcasting.

You may search the site using freeform text, tags, descriptions, usernames, or geotags.  There is also a “sounds-like” type of browsing available on the site. An account is required, but sign-up is free.

Related Posts

• February 24, 2009 -- The Search for the Elusive CC Music (Part 2/3) (1)
• February 24, 2009 -- The Search for the Elusive CC Music (Part 1/3) (2)
• May 10, 2010 -- How to Create a Vlog (2)
• August 31, 2009 -- Visual Storytelling For Web: Tips And Techniques (1)
• March 13, 2009 -- The Potential of the Crowd – The Case of Kutiman (1)

This was going to be the exception to creative commons music and a post about licensing from small recording houses. But in the past two days while talking to musician and studio manager Robby Baier at SoulTube, Robby just went ahead and posted a Non-Commercial, Attribution, Limited Use notice to the site. I verified this with the studio, and indeed, licenses to students are free (yay)-festival licenses included. When the money comes (keep believing), they would want to talk to you some more about commercial distribution and offer to even help you pick the right song for a scene. Either way, always give credit where its due.

SoulTube is home to a small, but a unqiue and beautifully-produced collection of artists. They have licensed music to commercials, TV, and films before so they are not new to the game. Check out their site, go to the “Songs For Film” section and choose the advanced search feature. You can explore from their list of artists, pick a mood, or search for specific words in the lyrics database (kudos!).

If this does not sound too good already, most of the tracks are also available in instrumental versions and you can hear the music and download it from the site directly.  Again, the only drawback is that it is a small collection, but the experience of dealing with people passionate about their music is vastly superior to any of the stock music houses or large labels.

Related Posts

• February 24, 2009 -- The Search for the Elusive CC Music (Part 1/3) (2)
• March 3, 2009 -- The Search for the Elusive CC Music (Part 3/3) (1)
• August 31, 2009 -- Visual Storytelling For Web: Tips And Techniques (1)
• May 10, 2010 -- How to Create a Vlog (2)
• March 13, 2009 -- The Potential of the Crowd – The Case of Kutiman (1)

Visually, things seem to be falling into place (historically known as the crapper), and now it is time to find that perfect minor chord to send your audience weeping after they view your piece.

The musicscapes are vast and this post (in three parts) will only attempt to provide some guidance for those creating audio-visual projects to navigating the creative commons music territories (or swamps).

We begin with the very nifty OWL Music Search. OWL helps you find music you like by letting you open an mp3 file from your own library, select a section you like, and it will match it against over 98,980 songs from a variety of commercial and independent catalogs, including ccMixter, Magnatune, and Jamendo. Their catalog is growing as they continue to index music. The search is based on the characteristics of the sound wave of the clip you specify. The search allows you to hone your search on music available for commercial use. OWL is also featured at the Creative Commons Project site as an applet on their search page.  The results are hit and miss depending on the uniqueness of the clip you choose, but it is a superior way to search for music than tags.

Jamendo is another great cc-music community, it offers a freeform text search box, as well as the ability to search by tags (also known as the needle in the hay stack method), artists (really), and albums (right). If you are a regular user of the site, then through building your playlists and community interactions you can build a reservoir of songs for future use. However, in a pinch (or business as usual) your best bet is to use the Albums search page and turn the advance search on allowing you to add tags and limit the search to music licensed for commercial use (no one can take that dream from you).  If there is a need to commercially license a piece of music separately, the site will help you do that and give the artists 50% (which they call fair).

ccMixter is yet another great resource (I cannot help you there). A word of caution though: most music under ccMixter is available under a creative commons sampling license, meaning ok only for noncommercial use (and abuse).

Our final featured resource for this post is the Internet Archives NetLabel directory. A NetLabel is the Platonic version of a real life Label. They publish a collection of hand-picked artists virtually (and hopefully) under a variety of creative commons licenses. The site had some nice features like Most Downloaded and Staff Picks. You can also search by tags and subject. Again your best bet is to find which of these labels publishes music closest to your liking and keep a list of those handy.

Related Posts

• February 24, 2009 -- The Search for the Elusive CC Music (Part 2/3) (1)
• March 3, 2009 -- The Search for the Elusive CC Music (Part 3/3) (1)
• May 10, 2010 -- How to Create a Vlog (2)
• August 31, 2009 -- Visual Storytelling For Web: Tips And Techniques (1)
• March 13, 2009 -- The Potential of the Crowd – The Case of Kutiman (1)

Image by Brad Fitzpatrick

As a digital media nerd, I have no problem managing a billion different accounts on the Internet.  From social networking sites to bank accounts, I’ve accumulated about 30-40 different logins from the past 5 years.  I’m definitely not a pack rat by any means, but I’m starting to feel like I have too much junk in my (digital) trunk. 

Just like my spring cleaning thought process, I tried to justify the need for my online “memberships”.  I tried to comprehend my new pack rat status by slicing and dicing the facts.  Why is it that I am able to throw away material items that I don’t need, but I don’t mind hoarding digital goods? 

There’s the obvious tangible factor:  We cannot physically hold digital items such as photos, videos, documents, spreadsheets, and logins.  It is easy for these items to accumulate quickly and massively because they don’t take up any physical space.  Yet, they still take up digital space, and eventually we find ourselves upgrading our USBs, memory cards, and hard drives faster than are dogs age.  The rate at which we build up digital baggage is becoming faster by day, and soon enough terabytes will no longer be cool for school. 

This leads me to entertain the idea that maybe we are all pack rats deep down inside, and that the digital revolution has forced us to become self aware about the importance of prioritizing and organizing the things we own.  Or maybe I’m just alone and wallowing in self pity that my digital noise is growing into a bigger beast than I thought I could handle. 

The truth is I’m not a slob, but I’m not obsessively compulsive about a little chaos either.  I do appreciate order with my digital items, though.  I like to keep my digital photos organized in an external hard drive, sorted by folders, by year, by month, and by occasion.  I keep a neat playlist for all my mp3 files, so that I can easily access music depending on my mood or the company I am with.

If I am neither a slob nor freakishly neat, why is all this digital noise getting to the best of me?  Either way, I’m starting my spring cleaning a bit early this year, and I’m going to focus on all my intangible digital things first.

Do my skinny jeans still fit? (Do I really need a login to all those brain sucking entertainment sites that I relied on during my procrastinating college days?)

Is it necessary that I own my own a Hallmark membership card? (How many different online accounts do I need to manage my air and hotel mileage points?)

Why is it that I own five different colors of the same shirt? (Why do I need three different sites to access music?)

As I am thinking about different ways to organize, I start reverting back to my old habit of rationalizing the need to doing things.  I convince myself that as long as the digital junk in my trunk are full of good things, then it really can’t be all that bad.

But when is enough… enough?  Isn’t there a saying that says too much of a good thing is a bad thing?

Our mothers always told us to keep everything in moderation.  So I took a stab at my laundry list of digital membership accounts and started prioritizing.

1. Organize by work, personal, and academic (if applicable) websites using favorite folders in your Internet browser.  Each folder shouldn’t contain more than 10 different websites, unless they absolutely do not have other folders to belong to.
2. Combine memberships that accumulate points.  Most online travel websites have a list of partners they share miles and points with.  Choose one or two memberships you would like to stay loyal with based on frequency of use and diversity of partnerships.  If you can’t trim, then use Points.com to transfer your earnings. 
3. Browse all the entertainment sites you want, but keep loyalty to a minimum.  Don’t limit yourself from the freedom of Internet browsing, but keeping frequently visited sites to a minimum (about 3-10) will take digital baggage off your shoulders.

It’s a start.  I don’t know if my Martha Stewart approach will help reduce the digital noise in my life, but organizing never hurt nobody.  If you find a better solution, by all means, share the wealth.  I think that one day, there will be a break through digital phenomenon that could help us face this more easily, similar to how RSS feeds made syndication almost effortless to use.  Until then, I suppose I’ll rely on the old school trial and error approach.

I know I’m not alone.  Bring on the noise, but personally I need to start keeping my digital noise from growing exponentially before I start seeking permanent digital asylum.

Related Posts

• March 13, 2009 -- The Potential of the Crowd – The Case of Kutiman (1)
• February 4, 2010 -- Online Media Democracy Is Still Under Construction, or Why Engadget Had to Flip the Switch on Comments (14)
• June 4, 2009 -- YouTweetFace (1)
• May 2, 2009 -- Twitter & Skype classroom coverage of Paul Gillin (4)
• March 21, 2009 -- “The current (news) meltdown is just a warm up act.” (0)