Drop me a link to your songs, up to 5 at a time, and I'll give you a review. Hell, if it's awesome, I might tweet it to my 1200+ followers!

Also open for commissions, YouTube stuff, and even SoundCloud.

To make a request, simply drop a comment! Thanks!

Guys and gals, I don't usually ask much other than a listen to a song or a share every now and then, but I caught wind on the bbs of a user who was fired from his job due to anxiety -- a dick move from his boss if you ask me. Check out @Sequenced's last news post if you would, and share if you want. You might know him from the Audio portal/forums. He's asked for paypal donations, but even if you don't have any money, I think it'd make his day if some people went through and checked out his stuff or left some kind words.

Thanks,
~A

Feeling pretty nerdy about searching myself on Grooveshark just to check, but I just released my latest remix of All About Us - t.A.T.u. on SoundCloud without any upload to Grooveshark; you can find it here. So, we can conclude that Grooveshark is now pulling from SoundCloud. Trippy, right?

Check the remix below -- some uptempo, hard-ish techno, with a little influence from house. I may post a modified instrumental here to NG due to the way it handles copyrighted samples.

I'm not sure how I feel about this, as some people disable downloads on their tracks for a reason, but for me, it makes no real difference. The majority of any revenue I make comes from NG, donations, or commission -- occasionally DJ work. Download this track either via SoundCloud or Grooveshark, share if you like, drop a comment, and have a great day!

A rather stripped down, somewhat unstable version of the original Grooveshark is available, grooveshark.im, and it seems to draw at least some of its content from SoundCloud, as well as Grooveshark's backed up archives. How do I figure? A search revealed my original Grooveshark catalog plus some songs I only remember adding to SoundCloud due to copyright issues on NG or straight forgetfulness. Unless someone specifically downloaded these songs from my SoundCloud and uploaded them to Grooveshark, I highly doubt "Track 2" or "Renegade Dances", both of which are classical music, would be on Grooveshark at all, since I never uploaded them. It's worth checking into, for sure, if not only for curiosity's sake. Playlists are fully functional from what I can tell, and the search is blazing fast.

Now, onto the story behind this. Grooveshark's latest iteration is the third or fourth since its untimely demise in May. Its reviver, identified as Shark, responded to the entities responsible for the recent, "brutal" top-level domain takedowns of subsequent iterations by saying, "You can not stop us. On the contrary! The harder you come at us the stronger we'll fight."

He and his team aim to release Grooveshark in open-source, a victory for all but the record labels who are already filthy rich from exploiting artists' talent, paying the average musician a measly $23.40 for every $1000 dollars of music sales (source), and you can bet the big four are bothered by the possibility of a free streaming service that cuts them out of the loop, doesn't send you thousands of ads begging for you to go premium, doesn't charge the artist for uploading their catalog, allows you to play anything you want at any time, and doesn't pester you to download copies of songs you can't access outside of the service only to wipe gigabytes of music from your bank if you then sync these songs to more than 3 devices (I'm looking at you, Spotify).

You know what I think? Everyone should be thanking them -- free adverising that denies labels an excuse to extract payment from artists by charging for hosting, packaging, etc. Artists may not make money directly from Grooveshark, but you know as well as I do, getting your music out there in the first place is the surest way to generate sales. This is why labels exist, to propagate the music, only they take hefty cuts of sales for themselves. Artists these days mostly make money from live performances, tickets, and merchandise sold at these events.

This is why the labels are coming down hard on any service that cuts them out of the loop and why I think Grooveshark deserves to live. It will force labels to be more competitive and fair to both the consumer and the artist. What about you? Drop a comment and share if you're excited to see where we're headed from here.

Doing a bit better now. Neck is healed, and I managed to completely clean out K's machine and send it back to her, virus free. I'm on my mother's crappy desktop as we speak, waiting on a new charger to come in, donated by my dad. Thanks to everyone who sent condolences/good will!

Speaking of computers, I've managed to get a half-decent DAW to work on here and am working (ever so slowly) on some new tunes, saving the files to USB for when I get my laptop up again. Not much to work with, though. Still, things are beginning to look up. Finally!

Also, if anyone has links to any good sample packs, I'd love you forever. My new DAW has a sampler plugin sort of similar to a DIY drum machine, and I'm always on the lookout for new sounds.

Thanks again, everyone!

Long story short, I've been out of commission the past few days due to a freak accident ending up with me tearing a muscle in my neck -- couldn't turn it to the left at all and ended up passing out from pain -- so I'm on a tab or two as I type; bear with me here. I've been on Panax ginseng for about 4 days now, which is really helping with the recovery, it seems -- 10 cc, liquid, from China, Prince of Peace brand, if you're into that sort of thing.

Anyway, I haven't made a post until now because my laptop charger bit the dust. I have a Lenovo T410, and the charger is very... distinct. Quick check of the voltage confirmed it was dead, although the laptop itself is fine. This is good, although I'm not sure where in the hell I'm going to find a T410 charger, or at least a similar one that won't blow up the charger port.

This brings me to the laptop I'm on now, my niece's, which I'm forced to use, rather than my phone, as the NG news editor doesn't work on my Jellybean OS. Shit, what a piece of work this thing is. We'll call her K for the purposes of this post, but Jesus Christ, the amount of viruses on this machine before I laid hands on it was astronomical, and somehow, I think more are crawling in through the temp folder. Most of it was adware, browser hijacking, and annoying malicious uninstalls worked around so that if you were frustrated, you'd just end up installing more of the same shit with every button click.

About the Repair

IE had been hijacked to Trovi and Bing searches, and this setting went through all the browsers. She also had installed some suspicious browsers like "speed browser". What an original name that, eh? Yeah, turned out to be a hijacker/adware spout. Eventually, I managed to delete and end-process enough of these to get IE to a functional level, without every page I searched for to turn into a hijack, and I downloaded Avira, cleaning out the temp folder as I went. All in all, I cleaned about 70 viruses by hand, and Avira found several more when it installed. If not for AdBlock, I'm not even sure if I could make it work. Even now, links are popping up from the text I've got down, so I clearly have a lot of work to do -- about 400 blocked ads since I started typing this post, now that I mention it.

I also uninstalled the worthless piece of shit that is McAfee. Gonna get back to cleaning out temp and settings now before I sleep tonight and take my ginseng. If anyone has heard of a way to permanently get rid of Coupoon, Search Protect, and its malicious friends, mail me please. Even Avira, end-processing, manual uninstalling, and deleting is turning up sparse results, and they keep finding ways in. I may just save K's most personal files on a USB and factory reset this piece of shit notebook. (IMO, it should be illegal to design a PC without a fan -- HP bastards)

Moral of the Story

Never install programs from sources that look unofficial, offer to clean your PC or boost performance, or have "optional programs" bundled in. Never express install. Never download coupon programs. Never install ANYTHING you haven't looked up first. Malware and adware writers are counting on unwitting idiots to ply their trade, and they know just how to get around your average antivirus -- or in McAfee's case, virus -- so you'll be sitting there at your PC, tearing your scalp off, trying to figure out how to get rid of the problem. A little research saves a lot of havoc.

Also, I usually don't approve of using AdBlock on NG due to how revenue is earned and paid out to other users, but in the case of adware, God in heaven am I happy I'm using it now. 488 ads from these damn programs and counting. They're even trying to link to ads in the text I'm typing, bastards!

Wish me luck getting rid of them!

Heya guys, so, since the new to-do list yesterday, I've been busy. Check the fruits of my labor, Urban Vibe, just released to the portal, and let time just melt away!

About the Piece

When I started on Urban Vibe, originally, all I had were those beatboxing vocals, with the tongue-click. From that, I built a bassline and grabbed my trombone for some simple riffs and some squealing, inspired by the seedy streets where I live. From that, I built nonsense vocals and harmonies, as well as the guitar tracks. Thus was born the soundtrack to your walk through life, melancholy in a "things simply are the way they are" kind of way.

All my music is free to use for games, movies, and trailers, as well as for sampling, so long as you credit me appropriately via NG's built in system or link to the track and NG userpage if hosted somewhere else. PM me for commissions/collabs.

On to the next one!

~A

So, it's late June, and NG just randomly dropped 50 extra cents in to my earnings, and isn't showing any data as to how I got it. I figure it may be projects or audio -- or a few flashes my music has been used in. Not sure if I'm alone here or what. Anyway, I plan to get back into music, writing, misc. projects, and video editing/producing soon.

Upcoming Stuff

Visual Novel?
@LawiusLorric and I plan on doing a Visual Novel some time, no idea what about or where it will be released yet, but as far as I know, I'll be in charge of music and possibly art, leaving most of the writing/character design to Law. His roommate is also an artist, so there's that. Who knows when this will be completed...

EDM Producing
Thanks to @Senrekiv, I now am learning how to use a percussion imager, and beyond that, I'm studying the work of some famous producers like the Norwegian duo, Röyksopp. If you haven't checked them out yet, there are several videos on YouTube. Pretty awesome shit.

Other Genres
I may temporarily take a break from EDM to work on some trombone/vocal oriented tracks, or do some covers of songs that I've become obsessed with lately, a lot of which are from the likes of Robyn, TaTu, etc. I may be stylizing some of these wrong. However, I'm also considering doing some mashups and remixes, which, if this happens, I'll likely post them to SoundCloud, unless I do my own vocals, etc. I really hate that copyright laws are the way they are. Otherwise I'd have a lot of mixes to post here.

Collabs and Commissions
There are a lot of people I need to apologize to here. I've lost some files for collabs recently, and I had to turn down a commission the other day (time constraint didn't agree with my RL). For now, commission wise, if you could, please give me a week's notice at least before work needs to be done, and for animations a length in seconds to aim for. I'm under a lot of stress. I apologize profusely both to clients and collab partners alike. Please be patient with me.

As for people who would like to use my existing music here on NG, I only ask you properly credit me, using the system NG has already set up, and link me in the description.

Writing and Blogging
As most of you know, I run the FuckYeahFarroncest! tumblr, as well as my personal tumblr. I plan to be on these more regularly, and write more fanfiction, as well as possibly start up another blog dedicated to gamer heroines, maybe another for my experiences in TribalWars. I'm hugely into that game. If you wanna play along side me, shoot me a message and I'll drop you a ref link and teach you the ropes.

YouTube
Lately I've been making game music videos, and although I'm definitely thinking to make more, I may also branch out into reporting/commentary. Some subjects I've been itching to talk about are the TaTu split, Charleston, and basically crazy shit in general. I might even go into music videos and start talking about NG.

Conclusion

Before the summer ends and I have to hit college again -- EMCC, number one ranking junior college football team in the US, woo! -- and have band, I plan to start on these. It's gonna be a blast!

Mail me for any questions regrading collabs and commissions. I check in at least once a day. I'm also still doing review requests!

~A
 

I edit videos as a hobby. Here's one I did for my Farroncest Tumblr fans. For those who don't know what Farroncest is, it's the platonic or romantic coupling of Lightning and Serah Farron from the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy. That being said, HD and fullscreen look fab! Made in Sony Vegas 13 as an experiment.  

Man, I'm one sick puppy.

This happened while I was on the way to fix my car. The little bugger just ran on water!

And as an added bonus, DIY vocoder.