If there’s one 80s song I can never get sick of, it’s John Parr’s St. Elmo’s Fire. This pic makes it even better!

KTV/karaoke is huge in the Philippines, but it seems to have caught on more in the western style of having a single machine at a bar or restaurant instead of private rooms. This machine seemed to be some sort of a converted arcade cabinet outfitted with microphone and TV.

I haven’t been to KTV (or karaoke) in Shanghai in a while, and damn… things have really changed.

KTV in Asia is a pretty different experience than what you see in the west. In the west, there is usually one KTV machine, and you generally sing in front of a crowd of friends and strangers in a bar or restaurant.

In Asia, this is almost unheard of. Generally, you rent private rooms by the hour. These rooms are usually pretty swanky looking with leather couches, mood lighting, big LCD TVs, and a touch screen KTV machine with a selection of basically any song or artist you can think of. Throw in a few microphones and a button to ring for room service, and you’re set.

Even cooler is that some places don’t mind if you bring your own booze too – this time I just ran down to the Family Mart and grabbed a few cans of Tsingdao.

In Japan, a lot of people just hang out in KTV rooms to sleep off a night of drinking (like we did last year) before catching the subway home in the morning, as it’s cheaper than a taxi.

I’ve never liked karaoke in the west, but the times I’ve gone in China and Japan, it’s impossible not to have a good time with a few drinks and some friends.

Well, we recently went to Haoledi (one of the two big KTV chains in Shanghai, the other being Party World/Cash Box) to have a few beers and sing some 80s songs.

But damn… how things have changed! Leave it to the 2010 World Expo and Haibao to ruin the party. Because of copyright laws that Shanghai has now decided to enforce, KTV clubs are now charged royalties for all of the music/videos they wish to play.

(To be fair, I think they were always charged royalties, but now these charges are actually being enforced.)

Unfortunately, rather than pay huge royalty fees, most KTV proprietors decided to just slash their selection of available music – especially western music. The results is that you’re lucky to find anything that you’ve even heard of, let alone can sing.

I guess it’s a win-win situation for the most part. The majority of KTV customers only care about the Chinese music selection, and the owners only care about not having to pay hefty fees. This would explain why there has been little uproar.

But my ability to live vicariously through John Parr or the Scorpions has now been replaced with humming along to Jay Chou songs, and singing the odd Chinese character on the screen I can read.

So, with a truckload of money, they licensed Kurt Cobain.

But the fact that nobody at Activision thought this might be a bad idea boggles the mind:

I was going through a bunch of old music I made over the years, and I have to say the most interesting stuff I created was not with a bunch of expensive MIDI and audio gear or polished pro audio apps and plug-ins, but with old versions of Fruity Loops.

That is, versions 1.0 through to 2.7. After that, it became “FL Studio” and it evolved into some full on DAW. Great for most users I guess, but not for me. Its new features offered nothing I needed and it started to interfere with my work flow. Eventually I gave up on FL and moved on to other ‘pro’ audio applications like Cubase, Logic, Live, etc.

These other tools were much more powerful and versatile, but I’ve never been able to get that (for lack of a better word) magic back that I had with the original Fruity. Old FL was so simple and fun to just pick up and play around with. Upon launching the app I’d immediately be putting down a track, whereas with modern apps it seems I have to spend most of my time configuring different environments for different songs. Also, Fruity’s limitations seemed to work for me; I always figured out a workaround for whatever it was that I wanted to accomplish, so the application never really got in the way of what I wanted to do.

Unfortunately, now it’s almost impossible to get a legacy FL install going. Support for older versions was dropped years ago, so good luck finding a copy. I was lucky enough to find one only to find out that it doesn’t support Windows XP. As much as I loved FL, I have to draw the line at installing Windows 98 for it, even if it is just in a VM.

The search for a decent and simple audio tracker (ideally for OS X) continues…

This is how it works
It feels a little worse
Than when we drove our hearse
Right through that screaming crowd

While laughin’ up a storm
Until we were just bone
Until it got so warm
That none of us could sleep

And all the styrofoam
Began to melt away
We tried to find some worms
To aid in the decay

But none of ‘em were home
Inside their catacomb
A million ancient bees
Began to sting our knees

While we were on our knees
Prayin’ that disease
Would leave the ones we love
And never come again

On the radio
We heard “November Rain”
That solo’s real long
But it’s a pretty song

We listened to it twice
‘Cause the DJ was aslee-eep

This is how it works
You’re young until you’re not
You love until you don’t
You try until you can’t
You laugh until you cry
You cry until you laugh
And everyone must breathe
Until their dyin’ breath

No, this is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
Then try to love the things you took

And then you take that love you made
And stick it into some
Someone else’s heart
Pumpin’ someone else’s blood

And walking arm in arm
You hope it don’t get harmed
But even if it does
You’ll just do it all again, and

On the radio
You’ll hear “November Rain”
That solo’s awful long
But it’s a good refrain

You listen to it twice
‘Cause the DJ is asleep

- Regina Spektor

Growing up, you don’t see the writing on the wall
Passing by, moving straight ahead, you knew it all
But maybe sometime if you feel the pain
You’ll find you’re all alone, everything has changed

Chorus:
I can see a new horizon underneath the blazing sky
I’ll be where the eagle’s flying higher and higher
Gonna be your man in motion, all I need is a pair of wheels
Take me where my future’s lyin’, St. Elmo’s Fire
wu……..

Burning up, don’t know just how far that I can go (just how far I go)
Soon be home, only just a few miles down the road
I can make it, I know I can
You broke the boy in me, but you won’t break the man

Burnin’, burnin’ in me, I can feel it burnin’
Oooh, burnin’ inside of me… (to fade)

Talk about lose-lose. MS should fire its marketing department. However, loading this web page crashed my browser (Opera 10) – proof that I need IE8!!

A co-worker showed me this a few months back and I just got around to playing with it now. Hobnox Audiotools is a virtual studio environment based around the classic Roland x0x series. It’s like the old app ReBirth but with the ability to add unlimited (?) x0x boxes and effects in a browser based Flash application.

I killed an hour or so playing around with it, and while it’s pretty limited compared to major sequencing apps like Ableton Live or Logic Studio, it is a lot of fun.

Setting up is simple. You start in the environment by choosing a blank template or some preset configurations. In the blank one, you’re given a master output. From here you can drag and drop the available equipment into the environment including the obligatory Roland TR-909 and TR-808 drum machines, TB-303 acid bassline synth, a grid based step sequencer, and an assortment of stomp boxes. You hook everything up by connecting virtual cables to the inputs and outputs of the devices and use the channel mixer, splitter and merger components to connect everything to the master output. For those who’ve used Propellerheads Reason, this virtual connecting business is familiar territory. Other nice touches include a ‘tape’ record that enables you to render your track to an audio file, the ability to resize your workstation, and undo/redo capabilities.

Once it’s all set up, hit play and start configuring the gear as you would with any other emulators of these classic boxes.

It’s definitely fun to play around with, but unfortunately the lack of some pretty basic features make it nothing more than a toy:

• Cannot save your environment. This is unforgivable. Unless I’m missing something, you have to set up your environment every time you access Audiotools, even if you register. Close your browser and kiss your three 909, five 303, 10 stomp box setup goodbye.

• No downloadable version. This is also pretty bad. I understand they probably want you to stay on the site, but what happens if your connection is lost, your browser crashes, etc. before you… oh that’s right, you can’t save anyway. Again, until the saving thing is addressed, this isn’t really anything to worry about since you’ll ultimately lose everything you’ve worked for anyway.

• No MIDI. This is not so much a deal breaker, but it would be cool if you could control some of these devices via external MIDI controllers. Then again, it may take away from the simplicity and ‘pick up and go’ feel of this app.

Hopefully Hobnox addresses the save session issue (I see a comment on their blog from January 2009 where they stated “”Saving” feature is coming soon.”, so I’m not holding my breath) because it’s preventing this awesome web app from being anything more than a novelty. Either way, it’s an interesting sign of things to come; being able to access your ’studio’ from anything with a Flash-enabled web browser is pretty cool, not to mention the collaboration possibilities this could open up.

I’m a huge fan of classic video game music. In addition to being incredibly catchy and pulling hard on the old nostalgia strings, classic game tracks are perfect for mobile phone ring tones since they also have this certain “tension” that alerts you but isn’t over the top or annoying. Video game death sounds also make great SMS alerts.

Right now I’m using Castlevania’s “Bloody Tears” for incoming call alerts. It’s so awesome I keep calling myself just to hear it.

There are countless other games with tracks that make excellent ring tones: here is one site where you can download mp3 loops of NES games to upload to your mobile.

Update

• River City Ransom’s Boss Theme makes a great personalized ringtone for your boss’s phone number.
• Street Fighter 2 and Contra have ringtone written all over them.
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