Coffee Cup Half Moons

This week’s song is the ever-popular “Endless Rain” from my “Heaven” album.

This week I chose to do “Careless Whisper” — a great song originally by George Michael that Seether was able to completely take to the next level.  I sing this with Town Crier, so it was a natural choice.

Direct Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvfnKyvzXNE

This week’s podcast is another two-parter. The first song is “Lightning Crashes,” a great song by Live who I first heard live when I was in college in 1997 or 1998. I sing the song with Town Crier.  This recording was made before I really “moved in” to the song, so there are some variations that I no longer do.

The second song is “The Thirst” from my album The Threshold of Omniscience.  I originally chose the song as a podcast right after I wrote it.  I liked it so much, I just had to share.  It too, has evolved somewhat.

As usual, these songs were recorded by just me and my acoustic guitar in my studio on my Sony ICD-SX700 Voice Recorder.

Direct link (Lightning Crashes): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMTMsaaOyPA
Direct link (The Thirst): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdRT4jflN0E

This week’s song is “Irrational” from my Two Sides Of The Same Soul album.  This is a pretty dramatically introspective song (go figure) with a general free form, and it’s one of my wife’s favorites. 

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHiUv2Ws6-w

This week’s songs are “Mr. Jones” (originally by the Counting Crows), and “Bedroom of the Sun” by Me (on my album Triad).

The reason there are two songs this week is I decided to start doing one cover and one original each week.  I chose to do “Mr. Jones” because I sing it with Town Crier (it’s the last song in our first set), and “Bedroom Of The Sun” is just one of my favorites (it was also requested).

As usual, this is just me on my acoustic guitar, recorded at home in my studio on my Sony ICD-SX700 voice recorder.

Direct link (Mr. Jones):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwgkDVCK2wI
Direct link (Bedroom Of The Sun): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH5I0RsNBmM

This week’s song is a great one by Steve Earle — inspired at least partially by The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. It’s a great song sung by Irish immigrant Buster Kilrain during the Civil War.

Recorded as just me and my acoustic in my studio on my Sony ICD-SX700 voice recorder.

Direct Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHRPBcBXLp0

Even though my experience with this company was quite painful, long, and drug out, I’m going to attempt to keep this review short.

Bottom line: Although the design and ordering process is very easy, streamlined, and simple, placing an order with this company, based on my personal experience, runs a very high risk of cumbersome delays, phone tag, and a major investment in your personal time.

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This week’s podcast is “Remedy” — the song that brought the-awesomeness-that-is-Seether into my life. The song rocks, and I sing it with Town Crier.

Recorded as just me and my acoustic in my studio on my Sony ICD-SX700 voice recorder.

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unXG4YGyGgY

This week’s song is “Country Roads,” originally performed by John Denver (of course). I did a demonstration about music recording to some students at my old school in Sept. 09, and I thought it would be a good choice for a podcast.

As usual, this recording is a simple live version done on a Sony ICD-SX700 Voice Recorder.

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6eu7HdlAz0

This is a script I made to take advantage of the ffmpeg package in linux to quickly convert an mp3 to avi using a static image. I personally use this technique for uploading my songs to YouTube. I originally found the conversion command here.

All you need is a linux distro with ffmpeg installed, a jpeg or png image, and an mp3. Note: It is highly likely other image formats, audio formats, and output video formats will work, but I have only used jpeg/png+mp3+avi and so cannot attest to results otherwise.

Usage: bash mp32avi.sh <image_file> <mp3_file> <output_file.avi>

Code (mp32avi.sh):

#!/bin/bash
FFMPEG=`which ffmpeg`
if [ "$FFMPEG" = "" ] ; then
	echo "Please install ffmpeg.";
	exit 0;
fi
if [ $# != 3 ] ; then
	echo "Usage: $0 <image_file> <mp3_file> <output_file.avi>";
	exit 0;
fi
if [ ! -f $1 ] ; then
	echo "Source image '$1' not found.";
	exit 0;
fi
if [ ! -f $2 ] ; then
	echo "Source mp3 '$2' not found.";
	exit 0;
fi
if [ -f $3 ] ; then
	echo "Output file '$3' exists.  Overwrite? (y/n)";
	read CONFIRM
	if [ "$CONFIRM" == "y" ] ; then
		echo "Overwriting '$3'"
	else
		if [ "$CONFIRM" == "Y" ] ; then
			echo "Overwriting '$3'"
		else
			echo "Operation canceled.";
			exit 0;
		fi
	fi
fi
TIME=`$FFMPEG -i $2 |& grep 'Duration' | awk '{ print $2; }' | sed -e 's/,//g'`
$FFMPEG -loop_input -i $1 -i $2 -acodec copy -y -t $TIME $3