SoundTempest.net Redesigned, Now With More Content

Music industry newsblog and artist help resource SoundTempest has been completely overhauled and redesigned by OCR forum member and pro web guy Cyan_Ide (aka Chad Behnke of Steam Powered Design). The new site features an improved RSS feed as well as Digg, StumbleUpon and Twitter integration with every post and guide, better organized post tags/categories, and a non-default WordPress graphical theme.
Music industry newsblog and artist help resource SoundTempest has been completely overhauled and redesigned by OCR forum member and pro web guy Cyan_Ide (aka Chad Behnke of Steam Powered Design). The new site features an improved RSS feed as well as Digg, StumbleUpon and Twitter integration with every post and guide, better organized post tags/categories, and a non-default WordPress graphical theme.

Besides functional improvement, SoundTempest’s Guides section has also been revamped. These guides, written by zircon (Andrew Aversa) cover a variety of music industry topics such as music licensing, distributing and selling a CD, online collaboration and purchasing a DAW computer. With the new iteration of SoundTempest, all guides have been converted to lean, downloadable PDF files that are readily printable and feature easier to read text and formatting.

zircon Launches Artist Workshop Series on SoundTempest

Today, zircon released his new “Artist Workshop” series starting with a discussion on Home Studios. For those of you who are looking into a home studio, or professional studio solution, this is definitely a read for you. Here is an excerpt from the workshop:

Are you interested in creating music and distributing it to the general public? If so, it is easier than you think to put together a high-quality album ready for sale on the market, regardless of your musical training or access to a professional recording studio. This guide will take you through the process of creating a setup in your own
home capable of producing a great musical product.

SoundTempest Returns…as a Blog

From OCReMix:

This domain has been basically unused for years, but recently I decided I would actually use it for something useful. Welcome to the new SoundTempest, a blog reporting on and analyzing the latest developments in the music industry.
A lot of important industry news, especially anything relating to entities like the RIAA, SoundExchange, iTunes, Universal, etc. is often improperly reported and thus misunderstood. My goal with this blog is to not only cover news properly, but also break down why it’s important (or perhaps, why it isn’t), what impact it might have on both the consumer and the artist, and my own personal thoughts on the issue.

zircon kicks off the new site with a post about last.fm and their new royalty system.

Check out the blog at http://www.soundtempest.net/ and also be sure to drop in on the IRC channel #soundtempest on irc.esper.net.

CompoST 66! Love-Love Romance!

Check it out!

Coda wins this one! CONGRATZES. This theme was “Romantic Date” and boy was it… a horribly geeky date. Chip-rock, H-game midis, the whole works. In the end though it was coda’s smooth Kirby-esque guitar chord progression that won teh day. I seem to be sucking at compos again, getting my usual second-to-last place.

CompoSTs [short for
Compo and SoundTempest put together :)] are thematic videogame music
OHCs, held in #soundtempest on EsperNet. They are scheduled whenever
anyone feels like compoing.

Formats allowed are mp3/ogg, and music modules [it,s3m,xm,mod].

I
host the CompoSTs personally and also participate. I pick the theme and
regulate the start and end time. I also decide whether the channel
votes on a winner or not [sometimes when I am tired, there is no voting
:)]

Come hang out in #soundtempest, and please let me know if/when you would like to have one.

-soc

CompoST 65! They are dropping like flies!

Well, we had some trouble with this one. Andyjayne and UncleBen had to drop out which left us with two people, but Xerol and DjSammyG showed up late to fill in the two absences. And Xerol’s song placed better than mine ;o. Today’s theme was “Sunny Green Hills” so we had a lot of happy entries today.

Here are the songs and results

CompoSTs [short for
Compo and SoundTempest put together :)] are thematic videogame music
OHCs, held in #soundtempest on EsperNet. They are scheduled whenever
anyone feels like compoing.

Formats allowed are mp3/ogg, and music modules [it,s3m,xm,mod].

I
host the CompoSTs personally and also participate. I pick the theme and
regulate the start and end time. I also decide whether the channel
votes on a winner or not [sometimes when I am tired, there is no voting
:)]

Come hang out in #soundtempest, and please let me know if/when you would like to have one.

-soc

CompoST64! New tools, new faces! Abandoned spaceships!

The theme today was “Abandoned Spaceship!” We also had two new faces, Illustrationism [the owner of Sakari-Infinity] and Koelsch1 [scene saxophonist extraordinaire!]. Thanks to my recent camping out in #mod_shrine, I came across a tool called “CMS” designed specifically for managing compos, by Reduz! It’s great, I’ll give it to you if you ask for it.

Here are the Results

CompoSTs [short for
Compo and SoundTempest put together :)] are thematic videogame music
OHCs, held in #soundtempest on EsperNet. They are scheduled whenever
anyone feels like compoing.

Formats allowed are music modules [it,s3m,xm,mod], NSF, mp3, and ogg.

I
host the CompoSTs personally and also participate. I pick the theme and
regulate the start and end time. I also decide whether the channel
votes on a winner or not [sometimes when I am tired, there is no voting
:)]

Come hang out in #soundtempest, and please let me know if/when you would like to have one.

-soc

Edit by Xerol:

Songs are here, and as an additional note, another CompoST is scheduled for this Wednesday.

CompoST 62

CompoST 62 happened today! The theme was “dogfight,” so in this one we had to create a song for a high-energy, high-tension duel! CompoSTers were: Myself, Skrypnyk, MagiNinja, vindkast, and djcubez. Lots of compo virgins today, you can almost smell the cherry blood. Anyway, here are the songs:
http://compost.lggaming.com/compost62/

Skrypnyk’s was the most liked out of everyone’s. Good job Skrypnyk!

CompoST 60!

CompoST 60 happened today! Not as good of a turnout today as I’d hoped, but I still had fun. The theme was “Alien hive,” so like certain parts of the original Metroid or Prime, or perhaps even the Zerg music from StarCraft, who doesn’t love that :)? Anyway, the entrants were myself, Xerol, D-Lux, and Suzumebachi. There was no voting this time.

Entries are here

As always, #soundtempest on irc.esper.net. PLEASE join the channel, and let me or Ty know if you want to participate in a CompoST. We can discuss and set a proper time for everyone.

I tried going for the zerg approach, of course, because that’s the music that’s been running through my head these past few days. During the compo I had some complications so I didn’t get all the ideas down that I wanted to do.

D-Lux’s is obviously humor, though he was on the right track towards a good melody.

Xerol’s was pretty neat, though it would have worked well as a short loop, since that’s basically what it is, repeated a few times. But it’s an interesting take on the theme. And a very erotic title.

Suzu’s reminded me more of the Protoss than anything 😀 only more “street-smart” or whatever. Wrong kind of alien, but the quality was okay.

CompoST 59

Lots of them, lately! http://compost.lggaming.com/compost59/

The theme was “Clock Tower” and the entrants were myself, Ty, BlueMoose [Ty’s sister], and Xerol. Personally I thought Ty’s was the neatest one, and also the most unique. I tried to rip off Castlevania with the symphonic rock, failed terribly. Xerol’s sounded like Castlevania also, but like some of the more mellow tracks. BlueMoose’s didn’t have much to it, though she did incorporate bells, like I SHOULD HAVE, BUT DIDN’T :(((
Join #soundtempest on irc.esper.net for the OHCs.

Also, I thought, to make the news posts more interesting, I’d say something about each song.