Drews Sound

so if you haven’t experienced it, you’re probably thinking, WTF? Sometimes empty soda cans, come in boxes of soda. It’s unfortunate because you lose out on the soda! But the fortunate thing is, I’ve never gotten a recording of it. There’s no soda in the can. The bottom of the can is a little bit broke, and it was sticky.

It’s almost like a Piano Sustain petal, with Some shimmer. 6-8 second long tail. Really beautiful

A friend sent me this from a vaca he went on. I limited, and compressed pretty hard to pull up all the other doodles. Omg? This is like pretty much all roosters. Damn. I love Roosters, but, this? Is a bit freaky.

Their is just something, about a laptop’s keyboard. It’s flat,, It’s thin. The keys aren’t so stiff. The feeling! I love the sound of typing on a laptop, something, sophisticated about it, probably cause I’m from the 90’s, and, in the early 90’s, any laptop moment, was an, Oh, my, God! moment.

I, prefer to type on an external QWERTY keyboard at work. It sits nicely in front of my Braille display, it’s got a number pad, I won’t cause the internal keyboard of my laptop to go out, with 6 plus hours of typing, 5 days a week. I needed a wired option. The one I found feels oh so classy, like typing on a 2000 dollar machine. It’s got an applications key. The F keys, actually type instead of providing volume, brightness and other functions that we don’t need with a screen reader, and, it sounds so beautiful. You here the words business slash professionalism, in every word you type. If you have been searching for a wired option too, check the,

Cherry KC 6000 Slim https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D1XWPLM?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

If you are looking for a wireless keyboard, that’s, almost as cool, check the,

Arteck 2.4G Wireless Keyboard… https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D34L57F?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

It feels quite a bit cheeper, like a 300-500 dollar machine, more, plastic like, but, holds up very well, and battery life? lasts months and months with heavy use. I would have been very happy if the wired above was just this goodbut it’s honestly better.

so, does this wireless solution work with instruments? Also, how far is the distance coverage? Listen to this demo to find all of this out plus a special surprise at the end.

Did you know? Their is an Apple Music app for Windows, grabbable from the Microsoft App store? Pretty cool. The app is pretty accessible out of the box, but, You have to, tab to every control. These scripts give you much easier navigation. Of course, they are free to use.

Scripts for the Apple Music Preview app, readme,
written by Drew Weber.
february 2024
Note, the word, Preview, is in the Apple Music application name, these scripts are not a demo with limited functionality.

Installation.
Copy the other four files besides this readme to your JAWS User settings folder.
Navigate to the JAWS main window.
Press alt+u to launch the utilities menu.
Press x, to launch the Utilities folder.
Press E until you reach, Explore My settings. Press enter.
Now, using Insert+t, JAWS should announce, ENU. If so, you are in the correct folder.

Usage:

Issues with these scripts.
When Apple Music launches focus is lost and you must alt+tab back to the application.
The scripts resolve this issue upon first launch only, once per run of JAWS. If you end up in another open application, just alt+tab over to Apple music.
Moving to the volume section using Control+V will not work in less you first navigate to volume mannually. Press Control+shift+a to move to the actions
menu, then tab over to the volume button, press space and then escape. After you’ve done this, Control+v is expected to work from anywhere in the application.
Navigating to the library with Control+l, playlists with Control+P may not always work as expected. I feel it is because these areas of the application
may be hidden at times. If you press control+shift+s to navigate to search, then tab once you will be in the library tree which includes playlists etc.
If you are trying to get to library and focus doesn’t move there, you may press control+l twice quickly to navigate to search and receive a message to tab
once to the library.
keystrokes included within these scripts for the Apple Music application include,
Music transport controls
Press, Control Space to, Play/Pause
Press, control left arrow to skip back to the previous track.
Press, Control Right arrow to skip to the next track.
Press, control R to cycle through repeat modes.
Press, control S to toggle shuffle mode.
Press control V to move to the volume controls which includes a volume slider, and mute button. Please see above if this isn’t working as expected.
moving to different parts of the Apple Music application.
Control shift S moves you to the search edit.
Control L moves you to the library tree. Press twice quickly to move to search, and then tab to the library tree. Please see above if this isn’t working.
Once you have navigated to artists and pressed enter, use Control 1 to take you into the artist list. Once you have found an artist by arrowing down and
pressing enter, use, control 2, to move you to the albums list. Once you have found an album, tab to the more button, and press the applications key for
further options. If you press the applications key while in the albums list, you will hear a message guiding you to tab once, and then press the applications
key.
Press, Control P to move to the Playlists section.
Press, Control Shift L to move to the Listen Now section.
Press, Control Shift R to move to the radio section.
Press, Control B to move to the brows section.
Press, Alt Left arrow to navigate back in the application.
Press escape to close this message.

oooo! I actually haven’t captured this in the moment before. Sounds quite interesting. #OwMyGString.

and why, is this demo one of two?

You’ll have to listen to find out. Audio below.

Writing music is such an interesting thing for me. To have what I had heard in my head, to become real, something tanjible. I think what makes it so exciting is the waiting game. I don’t record it, if it doesn’t stick with me for at least a week. After a week, I just want to hear it. I track some of the instruments in Logic. It will be a good day when I have all of my real instruments back. I am very thankful for Logic, but, it’s a long grewling process. I think I can honestly say after recording Area Code, that I am not against working with a producer one day. I try not to leave any excuses for the industry. I think it’s so easy to overlook something,and I try not to. You’ve got to quantize, so I quantize. Your vocals have to be autotuned, so I autotune. We are used to music being absolutely perfection today. It is a bit crazy. But it’s not as easy as it might sound for a totally blind producer, who may not know all the inns and outs of software such as logic. You can go to Youtube, and watch a tutorial. If you can see it, you can understand what they mean, when they say, click this, and then click that. If you can’t see the video, it a lot of times doesn’t translate, and you are left figuring it all out, without a mouse, and using the keyboard, and frankly, theirs a lot I don’t know.

Quantization is allowing the software to put all the notes perfectly in time on the grid. The problem comes when the sofftware gets it wrong, and then, it’s wrong. when you don’t know how to move the note, you can’t edit. Logic, Midi, is a lot different then working with digital audio. So, what to do? My solution, is to record every part separate. Everything on it’s own track, so when Quantization gets it wrong, I can take all the tracks over to Windows, into the Reaper sofftware, and manually move the digital audio. This means playing the kick, snare, hats, crashes, ride, toms, all at different times, so that I can correct things. Sound crazy? It is. It was really trippy my first couple songs that I recorded like that, and then as odd as it is, my brain started to figure it out and compensate.

I recorded the Hip-hop 808 style drums, acoustic drums, and bass guitar in logic. One really cool secret is making a copy of the bass guitar track, and having that copy be sign wave, so it just pounds the fuck out of subs, along with sounding good without subs. I do love that peace of Logic and midi. After I get everything in time and have things setup in Reaper, I play the guitars. I used the pickup on my Taylor for acoustics. I ran my electric into my new Fendar Mustang Micro, ran out the headphones jack into my audio interface. The best sounding electric guitar tones, I’ve ever recorded. Vocals, I used my Blue Microphones Bluebird. I actually ran 2 autotune plugins, to get things a bit smoother.

To make a some what long story shorter, basically, it takes me about 10-14 hours to build out a flawless track. I honestly believe from what I’ve seen on youtube, and heard in conversation, that the sighted producer community can build out a track within 30 minutes. After all, it’s just a grid, and notes, more than it is playing through the entire song in real time x amount of times.

So as you can guess, by that point, when it is all said and done, it is such a high for me, to take off the producer hat, and just crank the helll out of a song I have written. Just to have it done. to have it real!

For me, every song I write and produce is a lotto ticket. What, if this song, is the song, that someone hears, and it puts me on the map. I say it with every song, and believe it more with every song, and yes with Area Code, I think it could be the one.

The interesting paradigm as someone who has been in radio, and also a songwriter, is I do know what Radio is looking for, or at least believe I am in a different way in tune with that, so after writing a song like Area Code, I do believe it could become a hit.

Area code is a new take on the concept of the small town you grew up in, and haven’t been back to in a while. You can’t believe how much it’s grown, and it tares at your Heartstrings when you drive down what used to be it’s back roads. I was sitting at lunch at work, when the chorus played in my head. I had to grab my phone and write down lyrics. It was a pretty powerful moment for me.

Listen to Area Code below!

We mentioned this in one of our last posts about the Micro, but, hadn’t actually tried it yet. It’s the deffinition of Bad ass!! Listen below to the Mustang wired into the aux port of a few speakers and how they sound as Amps.

Fender Mustang Micro through the:

Marshal Acton 3:

JBL Charge 4:

and, the Ion Blockrocker Plus!

yes, for 250 bucks, you can purchase the Mustang Micro, and Blockrocker, and have a totally dope Battery Powered setup you can take to the streets!

Jesus, to be in high school or college these days. one speaker can litterally do it all! That’s! Sick!