Information
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, an electronic keyboard. A Yamaha pf85 electronic piano. Weighted full size keys. Five voices. A very good budget piano. Has proved very reliable, never yet needing attention or repair after 17 years. |
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| 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 |
    
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| Trumpet and Violin - less used items. A was once well used trumpet, and an almost never used violin in need to some care and attention |
 
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| Computer - a 1.2GHz Athlon processor based PC system, using a Soundblaster Live 5.1 sound card. Not exactly the best equipment for quality recording, but fine for bedroom studio fun. Sorry, no real image available, but it looks much like most PCs |
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Software Tools
Flash mp3 Player - The only part of this site not created by me is the flash player which allows you to listen to the music files directy from the webpage (if your browser can handle adobe flash). I found the one I've used at "flash-mp3-player.net". They have a choice of players. Seems simple and is free to use. Thanks! (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. (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. 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. Between this and ZoomPlayer (a video player with a free version available) I manage to avoid media player completely (woohoo!) (Foobar 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)
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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
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