Hypercompendia

Well, my harmonica-playing has suffered through a few years of neglect.

Before I go around begging other nice folk to make up a musical selection for me on a guitar, I’ve learned to record (in Garage Band) a string of nothingness as played by me on a harmonica. Can’t hold a candle to the piece I wanted to use, in fact, is an embarrassment, but at least it’s original.

What it has done, at least, is force me to learn Garage Band (record in), learn how to manipulate the sound a bit (effects), and export as an mp3 (Share–Export to disc–save on Desktop or to file then pickup up with Audacity) so that with Audacity, I can manipulate it a bit further (toning down, changing speed), to at least have something to play with. Sort of disheartening, compared to guitar, but at least I happen to have a harmonica.

Honest to God, I almost bought a guitar today.

Just happened to see two available at an antiques store and plunked a string or two. Both sounded really good. I had to cut myself off from thinking that I could do something myself for background music.

Can’t justify the purchase, not that it was expensive, but rather that I know that even though I’ve bought a guitar in the past, I didn’t use it, never learned to really play it, and don’t even remember who I gave it to. It belongs in the hands of someone who can make it sing.

In searching for Public Domain Spanish guitar, I find that while songs in the U.S. produced before 1922 are fine, and other restrictions apply on international tunes, all this applies ONLY to the lyrics and score; NOT a recording thereof (as if I could find a 1921 recording of Spanish guitar anyway) and no recording made from a public domain piece (like somebody’s recording of Happy Birthday).

So that’s that.

Still wondering how Google has the right to scoop up images off my website, use a disclaimer that they “may be copyrighted” and find my canned peaches on somebody else’s weblog. Hmmph.
Bottom line: Have to find someone to sit and play something original (doesn’t need to be a plotted out tune) and record it.

Or give up the concept of using audio in my hypertexts. Yet, I’ve heard it in almost all new media pieces; how do they do it? Have to check that out.

Played in Garage Band a little, along with a couple online audio programs. I am not and never will be even a virtual musician.

Don’t know why I even thought of being able to make anything even reasonable useable to use for this project. Don’t think that even with a real guitar I could make enough snippets and strums and plinks to put together a decent sounding background.

That said, and while I’m not giving up on Garage Band just to be able to learn the program, I’ve gone ahead with what I’ve got and will keep this audio-enhanced copy for my listening pleasure alone while seeking out something that at least is professionally played in the public domain, or someone willing to sit with a guitar and strum and plink something original for me.

Did export all the .wav files through Audacity into mp3 files, and finished assigning segments to the pages of the entire piece though I haven’t edited them.

Tried out Virtual Keyboard online, which offers several instruments including strings and guitar.

Strings sounds like an orchestra.

Guitar sounds like a horn.

Went through the work I’ve done so far and will continue on just to learn the Audacity software.

Now that I have the .pkg opened, LAME is working just fine, I’ll be saving the snippets into mp3 files instead of .wav, and I’ll likely convert the .wav files to mp3s in order to compact the files a bit. One file alone went from 13mb to 1mb.

As well as seeking public domain guitar pieces, looking through “make your own music” sort of programs available online, as well as Garage Band on the Mac. Have never had any real musical ability–cheated and played by ear rather than following notes when I took both organ and guitar lessons. But it’s something to look into as an option.

Reading the text along with the music also gives me another sense of timing to the length of the pieces and with iTunes, a listing of the text pages,  am able to cut it a little closer using fades and silence in Audacity. While this work may all be for naught, it will have taught me better use of the sound programs and will make it much easier with another piece.

Played with Fluid and was able to download A Bottle of Beer off my website and it works completely without opening a browser. I believe it has some browser capabilities within its own program.

Was a little more than concerned when I realized that the path I have to the abob file goes through the parent directory so that when I selected the file, I in fact picked up the entire website, the Spinning website, and the Talespinning website, and everything else that was under the susangibb.net. Not good. Links to other places off the site, of course, will work, but will open the regular browser. I’m figuring that if I did not have a link to Hypercompendia on the final page of A Bottle of Beer, then even if Fluid grabbed everything, it would not be possible to “get thar from here.”

Which means, I should probably move my work from subdirectories to the root directory (/public_html/yadda yadda) but since there are loads of incoming links to, for example, the 100 Hypertext Fictions, I really can’t go through all the links to change them, nor would it make sense (I don’t think) to just put the opening page there and let it redirect itself to its current residence.

Anyway, I still need to play a bit with Fluid to see if it will assist in my goal of transferring to a CD. Though it likely will still need some tweaking, although it does turn the file into an application in the Mac Applications folder. The way it’s set up, there are no other files that I can peek into, just an icon that starts the saved file. The other thing is, is that it doesn’t work for PC though there is a similar program I haven’t as yet checked out.

Have moved onto other things while I’m waiting on the audio, but have done a few things between yesterday and today.

In playing in Audacity, I’ve learned to section out a clip of an audio and save it to a .wav file to correspond with a page of the narrative. Learned to add in silence of a second or two and to fade in and out. Did re-read each of the 30 pages and timed again to double-check at least my own reading pace and it’s a good thing I did since some were more than 10 seconds different than the first reading. Then, in iTunes I was able to see the exact second count to match up approximate with the reading of each page.

Made a couple new audio .wav files to either clip off a recalcitrant note at the beginning or end or to seriously lengthen or shorten. Also messed up a few and lost a few, but all is well so far. So far being about halfway through the piece of hypertext.

Also on the audio, I was making .wav files because for some reason, Audacity couldn’t find the LAME library to encode into mp3 files, which should be shorter and take up less space. Found I had installed, but hadn’t “opened” the pkg file so I’ll see if it works now.

And, I guess I’ll wait another day or two before contacting the artist on the use of audio to confirm approval or denial for use though I have already started looking for other options (love “Annie’s Song” on Willie Nelson’s Teatro album too, but I don’t think I can ask for any use of that) in the public domain areas for Spanish guitar, and there’s always the possibility of begging some musician I know to come up with an original for me.

Am in a state of excitement/agitation, thanks to my good friend Steve Ersinghaus who directed me to a small free program called Fluid that in about a minute seems to have turned not only my online version of A Bottle of Beer but all my work, the 100 hypertexts, the other hypertexts, and all three of my weblogs into an Application on my Mac!

This both delights me because it took me a couple days to figure out how to put a working hypertext onto a computer independent of the internet, and scares me, because anyone can do it to any site.

Investigating further….

Slowed down a bit on the excitement of pulling out snippets of song to match the hypertext pages of the narrative, since I’m waiting on whether or not I can use the audio file in the story, but I can’t let go of the whole project.

In reading through the text a dozen more times in syncing and noting down times, my inner editor is coming out and I’m going to be changing some wording I think.

Also, I am still working with the audio selection, just for the practice of it. If I need to change everything, then at least I’ll have mastered the Audacity program and will be able to move a bit faster. What I need to learn yet is volume control and as I mentioned before, fade. I don’t intend to mess with content as far as changing the original with bass, etc., though I did find particular sections that I would change around in sequence and repeat for dramatic effect in this particular piece, and likely in any that I will eventually use.

I’d love to tell you the artist and the piece I’ve been so crazy about, but until I hear, I think it’d be unfair to mention it.