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New version of the Brad Sucks Digital Download Store, most of these changes are thanks to Scott Andrew who’s using the DDS on his new store. Changes:

+ variable pricing
+ default price (list in order)
+ can now add physical items
= fixed: spaces now allowed in filenames
= fixed: specifies product ids must be number in items.ini
= fixed: noted PAYPAL_EMAIL must be your sandbox business email

Very handy additions. You can grab it here.

Some people are reporting installation troubles with previous versions here in the forums. Still trying to figure out what’s going on there.

Miro – formerly Democracy now 1.0 and renamed. Very nice open source internet tv / video player.

MediaMonkey Review – found this great write-up on MediaMonkey (my MP3 player of choice) geared towards power-users and people wanting to trick out their MediaMonkey.

This is software I’m using but would be happy to ditch for something better:

Google Desktop – I run Google Desktop because I like the quick program launcher and docking my Google Talk & Calendar in the sidebar. But the sidebar overall feels bloated and slow, the email gadget sucks (slow to update, shows sent items, lacks Gmail integration), the quick launch often doesn’t find things I want to launch and the desktop search keeps finding files I’ve deleted that don’t exist anymore. The more I write about it here the more lame I think it is.

ToDoList – I’ve used this for a while and it works okay, but the options and UI are super complicated. I also can’t get it to keep hiding my completed items and I’d like a view that shows me all my due tasks on one page. Having it online and integrated with my other software would be nice as well but I haven’t found a better one to replace it.

KeyNote – KeyNote’s development discontinued back in 2003 but I’m still been using it. It’s done well for me as a notebook and scratch pad, but these days I want to ditch the note-tree paradigm for something that lets me tag my notes and ideally store them online.

Firefox – I love the awesome customization of Firefox, but it’s slow, even without my gazillion extensions installed. It can’t be denied that IE7 and Opera are both much faster. But I’m tied to Firefox because I can’t live without Greasemonkey & Gmail Macros and NextPlease and Adblock and Firebug and Google Browser Sync and All-in-One Gestures and and and…

MediaMonkey – A while back I mentioned I was searching for a new music player, something that would let me shuffle through my library nicely. I tried nearly everything out there and 95% of it was awful. Media Monkey is awesome. Less bloated than iTunes, more feature-rich than Winamp, MediaMonkey has it all. I went from being bored with my massive music library to being entertained again.

Media Player Classic – Make no mistake, VLC should still be installed on every system. But Media Player Classic is a little bit more attractive and faster for jumping through certain video files.

RocketDock – This is a sexy lightweight little program launcher. I always used the built-in sidebars in XP but this is sexier.

Notepad++ – My favorite programming editor. I keep finding new features in it that make my life easier.

Pidgin – I replaced Trillian with this after being horrified by how bulky Trillian Astra looks. I still like the simplicity of Google Talk but this is cool for all the other protocols.

They sexified REAPER while I wasn’t paying attention:

There’s a real nice purplish theme here as well. Looking forward to playing with it…

Setting up all this live show stuff is officially kicking my ass. I am angry and hurt and tired. I’m about ready to put together a live show of me configuring software for an hour and a half and call it “Working-on-a-Performance Art”.

My mind is blown — BLOWN — by how annoying this all is with the tools currently available. I’m jealous of DJs. It’s like nobody designing software wants anyone to change chords mid-song anymore. “You mean you have two SEPARATE chord sequences in a song? That’s unsanity!”

I got some emails from musicians using Live who feel similarly and Peter Kirn from Create Digital Music listened to me cry on the phone. Matt from Flux Minor shared his live Ableton project with me. His approach was to render individual channels (drums, bass, etc) of the entire track instead of recreating it loop-based as I was.

It gives you less flexibility but he assured me they haven’t felt the need to alter arrangements on the fly while performing. So I ran off in that direction as it sounded a lot easier. I was four songs into the rendering and recreating process when I realized Ableton Live can only send program changes to external gear (like my GT-6) at the launch of a new clip. So if you’re not setting it up all crazy like I was before you’re SOL for program changes.

Guess I’ll go kick something.

I’m releasing the Brad Sucks Digital Download Store.

It’s a tidied up version of the DRM-free digital download store I use in my store. I made it for myself but realized this was something most artists could use so I give it to you internet.

Please post feedback/bug reports/troubles here or in my forums. 

I think I may be able to declare success in the singer/songwriter versus Ableton Live and the Behringer FCB1010 Midi pedal board. It took a lot of thinkin’. I can’t say this is the best way, but I’ve got it working and boy will it be boring for you to read about!

So here’s what I wanted:

1. My songs divided up into scenes (verse, chorus, etc) and for Live to automatically advance through them with no input from me.
2. A pedal that repeats the current scene (for those extended solos or when I screw stuff up).
3. A pedal that plays the previous scene.
4. A pedal that advances to the next scene.
5. For Live to control my Boss GT-6 guitar effects throughout the arrangement.
6. For Live to automatically apply effects to my voice throughout the arrangement.

Here’s the screenshot of my live Dirtbag set in Live for those who want to follow along at home:

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Create Digital Music has a good Windows Vista resource: What’s Compatible for Musicians?

I have an irrational desire to upgrade to Vista. There are no real compelling reasons to and lots of good reasons to wait, but here I am all wanting it. No M-Audio drivers yet either, booooo.