Listening to music is a very important part of making music, so it’s essential that your listening equipment is set up properly. Arve Bersvendsen has written an excellent tutorial on setting up your stereo system, including a downloadable Audio test CD. You can play back the test tones on your sound system to make sure that the placement of your loudspeakers within the room isn’t messing with your sound. (more…)

Here’s a fantastic interface for remixing a track. The pop group Erasure has put a version of their recent single Don’t Say You Love Me on the web in a remixable form. The interface is quite lovely — it reminds me of the fabulous Electroplankton music game on the Nintendo DS. The track is represented as a tree, with groups of leaves representing musical qualities like Warmth, Emotion, Heartbeats, Tears and so on. Click a leaf in each group to determine how to play each quality — so you can have Emotion “a la folie” and Skin “beaucoup” and change it on the fly as the track plays. Click the bird to randomise the settings and use this as a starting point to make your own mix. (more…)

Nine Inch Nails have released their upcoming single Only in several remix-friendly formats. The previous single The Hand That Feeds came with a GarageBand project, but you can download Only in four formats: GarageBand, Ableton Live, Acid, and even Pro Tools. The Pro Tools session has extra tracks containing alternative takes. (more…)

If you have difficulty maintaining a musical idea for the length of an entire song, why not consider a career as a ringtone composer? The New York Times reports that artists are composing short pieces for mobile phone ringtones. (more…)