If you’re going to record your guitar, you might as well get the best sound out of it. While good strings won’t make a bad guitar sound amazing, bad strings can totally ruin the sound of a good guitar. There are techniques for making your strings retain their brightness longer, and the way you hit those strings can make a major difference to the sound you get.
Below are 50 hacks that will help you get more from your guitar strings. Some of the tips are contradictory, because there’s no accounting for taste. Different people, and different songs, may benefit from different approaches. (more…)
Songbird turned 1.0 this week, and aims to do to iTunes what Firefox did to Internet Explorer. That is, it aims to take the basic design of something closed and proprietary, and turn it into something open and extensible and fun. Songbird aims to give the power back to the people.
Appearing in February 2006, Songbird is five years younger than Apple’s iTunes, and does not yet match it feature for feature. iPod support, album artwork, podcast support and stability are considered beta features and need improving. CD ripping, watching folders for changes and video support are all still coming.
However, Songbird’s unique features make it a great media player in the Web 2.0 world. It is a flexible tool that belongs in the toolkit of any musician who explores new music online. In particular, the way it works with music-related websites and blogs greatly interests me. Songbird has completely changed the way I think about discovering and playing music online. (more…)
