Welcome to another issue of Technolite

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In todays newsletter:

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1. Beginners Guide Super Sale

2. How do you put your tracks online?

3. Some Extra Tracker Codes

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1. Beginners Guide Super Sale.

What is going on you may say? Well I am off on holiday soon, so for a holiday bonus to you all I have reduced the price of the whole Beginners Bible package (the movie tutorials, bonus ebooks, bonus samples and the guide) by a massive 60%. So now for a paltry $9.95 you can start your own music making straight away. Check it out here: Beginners Bible

Also be aware of the other cool feature of the Beginners Bible that is slightly hidden. The affiliate system that is attached to the ebook package. By placing a link on your website, in your email newsletters or even articles you can earn money just by recommending the Beginners bible package. For each sale you will get 40% of the price of the package. It is free to sign up, and won't cost you a penny. For more info and even some practical advice on how to increase sales click here: Beginners Bible Affiliate Programme.

Please note, with the ebook package being at sale price, conversion rates (amount of people who visit the site who then buy.) are high so strike while it is hot!

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2. So how do you put tracks online?

I have had a few emails regarding this subject. Now there are a few option regarding how to put MP3s online. However what you have to think about is:

1. Bandwidth
2. Links away from your site

Now I don't like the "pay to house MP3s" option. I have searched high and low and found out a few options. Some are listed on the site, however with most MP3 hosting sites you have to obey someone elses rules. What if they charge extra, what if they fold the next day? So what I did was to use 2 options.

For my full MP3s which I think are good enough I used SoundClick (http://www.soundclick.com). They have free hosting for your MP3s and give you the HTML to paste into your website- easy. By promoting them on the site and other places - I also increase my placings in their charts. So it is good for me. Some people choose MySpace, which is fine.

But one word of caution. If you click on my SoundClick links (mainly found on the Beginners Bible page) they open in a new window. This is vital. Your site must have stickiness to keep people on your site, find your music, hear it, like it and crave more info (hopefully a CD, or more MP3s). If someone clicks on an MP3 and they are then zoomed off onto someone elses site then you are lost and your name could be forgotten. SoundClick opens in a "new window", my original windows where they found the tunes are still open, meaning they can come back and browse some more.

Using this simple technique has caused my tunes to go into 7 personnal charts, each one being looked at by more people again increasing my chart position.

However, I have recently done some music for a YouTube short film (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58vXqcWYppI) the music is found in part B in the middle and at the end (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqvAKXB_OqQ). They are only 30 second tracks, but still they represent a CV achievement. So, do you put them on SoundClick or MySpace?

(How to make the last tune is found in the last video tutorial of the Beginners Ebook).

Well in time I figured that no, they don't go on MP3 sites as they are wasting people's time and they end quite quickly and it is not what people would want to hear over and over again.

A huge guide whether you music is any good is to listen to it over and over again. If it bores you go back and readjust. You can also pick up glitches and none workable parts (I listened to each track for about an hour and adjusted them over 8 times- very small bits, but they needed tweaking.)

So what I did was make some flash panels and put them on the Beginners Bible site, descibing what they are and giving people the option to check them out.

So how did I make the flash players?

Before we start, I spent ages searching for hosting packages about 1 year ago. Eventually I found - Superb Hosting - who have a bonkers package (750GB bandwidth/ month!) for about $90. With these type of packages (there are loads around) you can host everything yourself, for technically free without additional purchases.

Now you can buy various flash players, but the free ones are by far the best, and I have to say are much easier to execute. I have searched for 2 days solid to find a good flash player- I have installed and deleted MBs worth of small files, eventually finding this cool free one: jeroenwijering flash players.

If you go onto the Beginners Bible page, they are all his flash players...all free and all simple to do. And how did I do it? Well I got Jeroen to do it on his wizard page here: Wizard Flash Players. On this page is a simple set up screen of how to set up the players (which can be found here). All you need to do is download either a movie player, or an MP3 player, upload the various players components to your site, upload an MP3, then tell the wizard where everything is stored. It will automatically give you the code. You copy and then paste it in to the source section of your HTML where you want the player...and thats it.

Simple, easy and totally free...genius.

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3. Extra Tracker Codes

If you have some samples and play them through a tracker you can add additional effects to them, not by using VSTs (which take up alot of memory and can slow down the play back of your track (in any music making software- Reason and FL Studio as well), but by using codes on the input lines.

As I said it will only effect samples that you load in, but some of the effects are pretty cool. Some of the cooler ones are Note Roll: E90

The normal lines within the tracker (taking Madtracker as an example) looks like this:

=== 00 == == 00 0000

If we put a random note in from sample number one we shall get:

D-4 01 == == 00 0000

Now if we loaded up a snare sample and put it into a few tracker like so:

D-4 01 == == 00 0000
D-4 01 == == 00 0000
D-4 01 == == 00 0000

We would then hear the snare hit 3 times.

If we add E90 it would go like this:

D-4 01 == == 00 E93
D-4 01 == == 00 E93
D-4 01 == == 00 E93

The command goes into the last three zeros. If you play it again you get a roll. The number on the end of E9 states how quick the repeat of the sample will be, so 1 would be really quick, 9 would be a normal sound. If you put a snare sound all the way down the column and then E93 them all and increase the volume at the start from zero (through automation), you get a nice drum roll build up. Simple but effective. This is found in TimeToTell.

Other commands are 800. If this is put on the sample it will play in the left speaker. If you put 8FF down, the sample will play in the right speaker. By increasing or decreasing the numbers you can get your samples to play from the left to the right speaker.

C is a simple little command. It is a command for volume. C00 is no volume, C80 is max volume. For pads or drum beats you could have an alternative volume effect all the way down the column, this works great with higher tempo tracks e.g:

D-4 01 == == 00 C40
000 00 == == 00 C00
000 00 == == 00 C40

900 is a tricky command to get right but in hexdecimal, you can jump to any part of the sample that you wish. If you click on the "sample button" which is 2 buttons away from FX and under patt. It will tell you where you are on a sample. Click any part of the sample and next to "sel" there is a value. This is where you are on the sample. 00000000 = eight numbers. If your sample is more than 4 numbers long it is out of reach for the 9 command. So, 0000ffff is the maximum length you can have. And it is the first two FFs is what goes behind the 9 command. This is great for drum beats and vocals.

I will get some video up and going for next issue and explain some more commands. But give them a try and see how you can create some cool effects with ease.

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