PSTUBb

Okay so there are two sides to this coin. On one side, commercial music has alowed artists to distribute their music across nations and has alowed musicians to get paid rightiously for their hard work. It is the fuel behind music and without it there would probably be alot less good music out there to listen to. If you think about it, it pays for all the major artists, it gets the music heard, it inspires more musicians who create more music and we get a never ending, increasing cycle.On the other side of this very same coin, we find that the same money that fuels the music has also corrupted it. It seems to me like all the big bosses of those record labels and radio stations and media outlets see are dollar signs when they hear music. I mean, I'm about my money but not more than I am about writing and recording quality music. We have reached a point (and have been here for a while) where music isn't made for the sake of making music, it is made for making money. Some seem to have forgotten what music really is. Some seem to believe that music serves one purpose and that purpose it to fatten wallets.When you create songs and base lyrics and melody and style on what will get sold the most, as opposed to how you'd like it to sound, are you still being creative? When you base yourself on demographics instead of what feels right, are you still being true to what you set out to do? I don't think so.Moving on to Hip Hop. All this booty shakin, gun cockin, bubble gum crap is, in my honest opinion, corny and lame. I mean, when it's used to tell a story or convey an emotion or feeling, fine. But when you string words together and repeat them over and over just cause it 'would be dope in a club', are we still even talking about music?Hip Hop started out as a way to give youth in urban areas a way to speak out and get themselves heard. The music industry lets emcees speak their opinions louder than ever before but, with the price of their message being twisted and contorted into what people want to hear. I guess there are different ways of seeing it, different opinions on what Hip Hop should be, what it was and what it will be, all I know is the good music is underground and relatively unheard compared to the shiny packaged noise that comes out of the big labels. This isn't to say there are no fresh mainstream artists, just to say that they grow sparse.

Definatly. I think concentration is a strong point. If you have several un-active sections in your forum that are similar in topic, consider grouping them all into one, although remember that alot of changes are never good, so if you're going to make several changes, do them over time. The thing about sections is that having too many sections and not enough active users will make some sections appear unactive and when users think a forum is unactive the usual reaction is to ease up on participation and visit less often. The problem however is that if you don't have enough of the right sections, your users may not be inspired on what to write about, you know? Like, if your forum has a section for rants (*coughtrap17cough*) if users have something on the mind that they want to rant about they may be inspired to write it out. So once again there is a fine balance between too many and not enough sections in a forum but generally the more you grow the more sections you will need.I think that the number one thing to do with any forum decisions, think up all possible outcomes for each option and logically decide using your own common sense which option would be most beneficial for your goals. This pretty much goes for anything but yeah, it's always about that fine balance you have to find.

I think everyone here has good points but as far as people suggesting that she change her habits and the way that she looks, my question is: Why should she have to change the way she dresses and acts for some immature boys? It is true that it is easier to change yourself than to change everyone else, but I think since this is a rant, perhaps she isn't seeking advice but merely venting a little anger at these kids. One thing someone was saying about control, I'm a guy and I'm 17 and you won't catch me walking around feeling chicks up in the hall at school... Matter of fact usually if I see a guy do that unprovoked I get a little angry and if I know the guy I might ask him you know, "what the **** was that?"So I guess the basic message is "if you dress like a ****, stop" but honestly if that's the way you feel comfortable dressing then do it. Be yourself. But if it's a confidence issue, find a way to boost it other than showing yourself off.Really if worse comes to worse and someone is really pissing you off and you've told him before to stop, collect evidence and/or witnesses and report it to the proper authorities. Take one down and you'll send a message to the rest of them.Anyways it's like anything else you get, take it with a grain of salt and maintain your own values you know? Good luck!Sean

Okay I visit alot of forums and this is part stuff that I notice and part just general marketing/business theory that can be applied to any product. I noticed that alot of forums change the way they arange their sections CONSTANTLY. Like I'll see the same category redivided into different sections like 5-6 times in 4 months.Here's your problem. Customers subliminally seek consitency in the products that they use. You can think of your Forum as a product, but you can also think of each category and each section individually as seperate products when you analyze a forum, since your users have a choice of only using certain parts of your forum. So anyways, if you're constantly changing the way information is arranged in your forum, for example if your graphics section one day has the following sections: "Show Off, Requests, Battles" and the next day has "Show off signatures, Show off Avatars, Show off random stuff, Battles, Sig Requests, Avatar Requests" you are forcing your users to change the way they use your product. This can become annoying, especially with forums since some people have your different sections bookmarked and will get a 404 error the next time they try to access a certain section. This might cause confusion, perhaps a little anger and often leads to a reduced active user base.There is a fine balance, however, between annoyance and innovation. If you truly believe that your way of doing it is better, you need to think before changing. You need to really go through everything inside your head and wonder 'will my users be encited to use this feature more, or will they be distracted by the changes'. Because usually, the only reason you should really be changing anything at all in an established forum is to encite more users to come more often, right?So the next time you decide to make a change in the way you organize your information, especially when it changes the way people access and insert that information, make sure it will be in a way that will cause users to use your forum more often and will cause more users to join up.Good luck in all your projects!SeanPS Feel free to discuss and make points, I don't know everything and I'd love to hear your opinions on the subject This is a community right? Lets help each other.

I wonder how it is that these people get to us but they just do. It might be this one person who shows up to a group who you don't know but just from the few things he's said so far already know you hate him. Sometimes it's someone you know who is just ticking you off at a particular moment especially when you're in a good mood and they just somehow manage to piss you off enough to kill it.Here's my story: I was chilling at a friend's party, just having a good time, meeting people and we were sitting around a fire and this guy who I guess was a friend of my friend's shows up and I mean, from the first glance I got of him I didn't like his face and he just started whining and moaning about stuff, people, in particular one girl who was at the party who I guess he had a problem with and was just ripping on for like 3 hours. I was playing guitar and he mentioned that the particular song I was playing sounded like I was playing drums and that it was gay. Okay so now you're really looking for beef. Honestly, who comes to a party and disses someone they don't even know? I didn't even respond I just stared at the guy with a "what the *** is your problem" kind of look and he ended up leaving half an hour later. Thank god too cause if I wasn't so emotionally attached to my guitar he would have been wearing it around his head.And uh.. yeah that's my rant. Post your stories up!

Thanks for the feedback! I'm not too sure what you mean about the drums being off, I think it might be the slow attack on the strings making it sound like that. As far as the bass it might be your speakers cause it's thumpin over here In any case thanks for listening!

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/songInfo.c;songID=5406849 100% composed by yours truly I'm still working on perfecting my mix but it's still pretty good quality imo, tell me what you think of it!

Interesting theory, although to help you would have to first define "Great" and then define "Manipulator" heh. Cause we can talk about a great person who is just a really nice person, or it could be a really powerful person, rich, famous, honoured etc. And then, manipulator can be taken positively or negatively depending on the situation. Now I don't quite understand the history of India to a full extent so forgive any mistakes I make here but if this person or persons who led the people to freedom never existed, would anyone have fought? Would thos people who you believe should be placed higher ever have died fighting for freedom? If we take Manipulator as meaning "Leader of people" then perhaps it is a positive thing. Leaders are a natural thing. They have existed in our society since recorded history whether formally or not. They exist in ant and bee colonies and even in wolf packs and other animal groups in the wild and in captivity. They are essential imo to society as a whole. I mean, without the persons who led your people to freedom, would you have your freedom today? Without someone to say "Hey, let's fight this" ? I guess we will never know.There are also the simulated greats. This would be like all the famous rockstars and rappers of the music industry. Behind them are massive corporations controlling their image and sound, marketing, advertising, promoting, just basically moulding these people into record sellers. At this point credit is due to the people behind the person (dare I say artist?) and much less to the person him/herself.I guess that's my opinion on the matter. I can't really vote in your poll and respect my idea but excellent thread anyways!

Hehe, that's pretty nice for a myspace layout Most of the major record label artists and bands now have rather decent myspace pages, and since it seems every artist has a myspace as part of their marketing, I was basically forced to do the same with my own band. The myspace can be found here: https://myspace.com/browser Add me! WARINING: Auto playing music gotta get heard! Also tell me what you think of my layout!

If I understand correctly, you're looking to create a kareoke type thing where the website will play the song and display the lyrics to sing along with? If so, read on. Okay so you've got several issues to deal with to make this a reality. First of all, you can just put any music on a website and call it legal. Allow your viewers to listen to mainstream stuff for free and you will have lawsuits coming in left, right and center. This means you will either have to acquire rights to play the music (will get quite expensive in my estimation) or find/make some royalty free music to play on your website, music that you can play without worries about copywrite claims like music under a Creative Comons license (read more: https://creativecommons.org/ ) or some of your own work. Now to display lyrics and play music you have several options. For the music, you could use Flash to stream the song to the net, or you could embed an object like QuickTime or Windows Media Player or offer your viewers a choice between the two. for more information on that, search up Embedded Quicktime html or something like that in Google. For the lyrics, are you thinking of lyrics that show which part to sing at a specific moment like auto scrolling to the beat of the song? Or just displaying the lyrics on the page? If you're not scrolling anything, you can easily display the lyrics with some HTML code. If you are scrolling, you can do it via Javascript of Flash (other methods exist, these imo are the best) if you are using Flash to stream your song, you might aswell display the lyrics in the same file. You'll have to figure out how to sync the lyrics to the music by yourself. Same thing with Javascript + Quicktime/Windows Media Play. On top of all this, if you want a dynamic, easily maintainable website where adding, removing, sorting and editing of all your songs is made easy and efficient, you'll have to code some sort of Content Management System in a programming language such as PHP or ASP, OR find a Content Management System (CMS) that already exists to suit your needs. Search up "Content Management Systems" on google and read up on a couple. I hope this helps in your quest! Sean

Obviously nobody has noticed but this is a thread from 2004. Thus, your PSP and iPod video arguments are invalid Atleast I think they came out after...

Well looks come down to opinion cause I find that the archos is damn sexy . I guess it is kinda bulky compared to a nano, it all depends on what you use it for really. I mean, no one mp3 player can suit everyone's needs right?As far as the Zune's Wifi song transfer capability, they've still got their feet deep in DRM land and any song sent via WiFi can be played up to 3 times before it becomes unplayable. When this whole DRM *BLEEP* blows over things will change and music and information in general will be alot more free.

Every once and a while we get stuck. Sometimes we don't even know where to start. As designers we are free to be as creative as we can be but creativity sometimes runs low. The real problem is to question creativity itself. What is it? In my personal opinion you need to feed your creativity with new ideas to help it grow. Not only is it feeding your creativity, it's also fun to do! Here's my sources of inspiration: Nature: I know, people say this all the time but its true! Take a walk in the park or in the woods depending on where you live, take it in, look at stuff, textures, shapes, contrast, colours, it's all there! Architecture: This is easier if you live in the city. Go look at buildings. Old ones, new ones, the lines, the patterns, the layouts etc. Now on to links: CSS Garden - http://www.csszengarden.com/ Choose a design on the right. Basically this website is done in CSS and designers are challenged to redesign it completely using only CSS, each of these designs are available to be viewed, go through a couple and see what you like! https://color.adobe.com/ - This is an awesome wesbite/community for sharing colour swatches. There are tons of different sets, and their tagged so you can search for a theme and perhaps find colours that match it. This is really awesome if you dont know what colours to use http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ - This is also great for colour. Choose a few colours and the rest will be calculated to match. This is a tool for designing rooms but it's awesome for website colour schemes too. (click "START COLORSMART") http://www.deviantart.com/ - Awesome art community. Consider browsing through some of the sections that might be more relevant to what you're designing at the moment. https://www.smashingmagazine.com/ Awesome. See for yourself. This website is the epitemy of useful. Those are the ones I use most often, what are yours?

Yeah the iPod is way overrated in my opinion. You might consider other players which may or may not better suit your needs as a consumer. There are some gangsta media players out there, this one in my opinion is way better than the iPod video Introducing the 199$(circuit city) 3.5-inch screen, supercompact body, 30GB; video, music (including subscriptions), and photo player: The Archos 404 Yeah, that's right, 3.5-Inch screen. if you wanna go to 4.3 inches widescreen, shell out another 100$ for the bigger brother the Archos 604. It has Wi-Fi They both come with optional dock that allows voice/video recording directly from camera/mic/television which is pretty sweet, I think the dock is another 100$ though but they keep it seperate to keep the base price low. plenty of other features are available that I won't go into right here to keep this short and sweet but yeah, it's a hot buy if you were looking for a portable video player. Read more about these guys and others via Google. There are plenty of reviews available. The screen is soooo big *drools*

Well, I'll always have webdesign to fall back on since my partner and I have already made a few $ via some contracts at the university of Ottawa, so we've already got a sort of reputation building and I often spend several hours a day reading web design articles or just design articles in general, worse comes to worse I'll take a proper college degree in Web Media or something of the sort. As far as knowing people, I do have connections however it's more of a "friend of a friend of mine" type thing. As far as the music theory goes, I do already have lots of theory from guitar lessons that I've applied to producing and to keyboard. Scales, Keys, Chord Building, Key Changing in a song, Rythm, Arpeggios, structure, aswell as a little bit of drums I picked up from the web like rolls and fills and basic patterns, flow w/e lol I don't know the proper names for it, most of what I know about drum patterns comes from experimenting and holding tempo comes from playing guitar/keys with metronome. So basically I know quite a bit and I'm contantly learning already so when I hit Berklee it hopefully won't be that steep of a hill to climb. I've always loved art in most forms, with the music, the webdesign (large part of which is art), street art/graffiti, acting/drama, it's always been part of my life so if I can turn it into a living then that's what I'll do. My purpous is to be heard. Sean PS Metronomes are awesome if you have one, use it, if you don't, buy one.