Here is information on
some of the instruments and tools used to play, enjoy and record the material found on this site.
Instruments
Piano - well, electronic keyboards. A Yamaha pf85 and pf95 electronic pianos.
Weighted full size keys. Both very good budget pianos. The pf85 has proved
very reliable, never yet needing attention or repair after over 17 years. The pf95 still going strong.
Guitars - a 5-String Washburn Bass (black), a Fender Squire Jazz
Bass (white), an Encore electric lead (black), an acoustic twelve string and a little spanish acoustic
Trumpet and Violin - less used items. A was once well used trumpet, and
an almost never used violin in need of some care and attention
Computers - from a 1.2GHz Athlon to a Core Duo 2, Soundblaster Live 5.1
sound card and other stock soundcards. Not exactly the best equipment for quality recording, but fine for bedroom studio fun. Sorry,
no real image available, but most PCs look much the same.
Flash mp3 Player - HTML5 now does handles all the media playing I use to need flash for. So flash no more! Woohoo!
Sekaiju - Free, Open Source Midi recording and editing software. From Japan, with an english version. I have been impressed by its capabilities and features considering the lack of cost. Highly recomended! (website link)
Cubase - Multitrack audio software. Created by Steinberg, the version I had was
Cubase SX1.0. It's a professional tool and costs a lot. I enjoyed working with it, although my PC could only just keep up with it
once you had a few tracks and effect plugins going. Nuendo is their current offereing. It looked good but I only ever trialled it. (website link)
Wavelab - Audio editing and mastering software. Created by Steinberg, the version I had was
3 I think. It's also a professional tool and costs a lot. Probably my favorite audio wave editor, but as it cost so much
I have been using free (and no where near as powerful) tools more recently.
(website link)
Audacity - Free open source software for recording and editing sounds. Multi-track. Highly recomended. Not as powerful as Wavelab
or as user friendly, but with of price tag of $0 compared to $500 it has at least one advantage. It can't really be compares to Wavelab,
but for my purposes it is actually fine. Most of the features in Wavelab I doubt I even scratched the surface of while using.
(website link)
Finale - Professional music notation software. Used a demo years ago and can't actually remember
which was which between this and Sibelius. They both seemed very powerful at the time and I'm sure they have improved vastly in the last
5-10 years. (website link)
Sibelius - Professional music notation software. Used a demo years ago and can't actually remember
which was which between this and Finale. (website link)
lame - free MP3 encoder. Only works on a command line but there are graphical interfaces
out there what can be used with it. There are encoders you can pay for, but in this instance I think lame is as good as any
of them. (website link)
FooBar - This is an advanced freeware audio player for the Windows platform. It is a partial replacement
for media player and similar programs. It only does audio, no video, but it is very lightweight, clear and easy to use, and just
gets on with playing audio. VideoLAN make a good video player and I also like ZoomPlayer (a video player with a free version available). I manage to avoid
media player completely (woohoo!) (Foobar website link) - (VideoLAN website link) - (Zoom Player website link)
Exact Audio Copy - CD Ripping software. Don't use CDs much any more, but still use
this tool if needed. It's free for non-commercial use and what I always liked about it is that it copied accurately. I
always use to hate playing back an MP3 (often well after copying it off a CD) to find a skip or bit of distortion in the middle
of it. Exact Audio Copy would always report any issues after any copy and if it said it was copied with no problems, it
was always correct. (website link) <TOP OF PAGE>
Copyright
Any material (MP3, text, etc) made available on this site is free to copy, alter, share. It is my preference
that if passing anything on no charge is made for the distribution media, postage or time. Please give credit
where credit is due, and if used commercially please pass proportionate share of any profit made if and
when in a position to do so. Any exceptions will be noted by the linked items.
Here is a link to a Creative Commons licence which seem to be about right:
Licence Link <TOP OF PAGE>
Contact Email
If you wish to make contact for any reason (general questions, praise, criticism, etc.) please email
webdude@warpweb.uk<TOP OF PAGE>