Social Network Games (aka, games that nobody wants to play with you)

Ok, I mentioned this in my very first blog... I think... not sure, I meant to anyway. Social network games are here and they're being played a lot. The system that Farmville made famous, the time sink style of game play is here to stay.

It's really annoying.

Mafia Wars, and Mob Wars and any other kind of wars... play a little bit then wait for a couple of hours until you get enough energy to do some more jobs. Or, say you want to build a castle... it'll take 2 days for the castle to be built... 2 days, real time. Oh, and make sure your crops don't die.

Meh, you know, I've played these games, and got sucked into them. I guess my problem isn't that these games exist because there is a market for the microtransaction game; rather, I think my problem is that there are sooo many of them coming out in lieu of a different style game... more social networky I guess. On top of that, they are coming out with games that prey on your nostalgia and brand appeal.

Off the top of my head, Family Feud, Price is Right, Monopoly, Oregon Trail, Madden, FIFA. Of those four, Price is Right came closest to a different style of game, a more socially oriented game. The other three, you all play by yourself. Think about this for a second, aside from sending your friends gifts and visiting their game board, you never actually interact with each other.

Call of Duty, there's a social game... Civ V, there's a social game... shit, Ikari Warriors 2 for the NES is a social game; you're actually interacting with people. Right now I'm sitting across from my wife; she's playing some random game and I'm testing out this Monopoly game... even if she were playing the Monopoly game too, we'd still be playing the games by ourselves.

Facebook games have the potential to allow us to interact with each other better... Myspace is the ghetto of the internet now, but they had some cool games back in the day. I used to play one with my buddy where there were two towers with numbers as the blocks, and the point was to destroy the numbered blocks to the point where the towers would fall down... bam, you win. You would take turns, and after a particularly damaging shot, you'd talk shit to the person.

In comparison, I play the Madden Facebook game with him... I play a game against him one time a day... and when I say play, I mean I click one button, the software calculates the outcome and I either win or lose. Then I send him a message like, "oh damn, I beat you, LOL!". Then two minutes later I get a status update from him, "SNAP, I BEAT YOU NOW!?!?!"

One time a day we get to "play" this game together... if I got Madden 2011, we could play all day.

I do have hope for the future though... I'm hoping that Sid Meier's Civilization Network game that is in beta will change this trend up a little bit. I love the Civ games, and it's an awesome feeling playing with your buddies, starting wars with the computer and then having them steal your allies' worker (and then have him start a war with EVERYONE AROUND YOU so they attack you). Or work with someone the entire game and then nuke their main city... I love it, haha. Hopefully Civilization Network fosters the social network aspect to make it a legitimate social experience.

Otherwise expect to see "Brandon needs you to help build the Hanging Gardens!"

Add this to the list of things I wish I'd thought of first

I just found a few pretty cool sites that go along with that whole digital recording spectrum of conversation. Awesome really. I haven't been able to look at them too deeply, but the idea is great.

Digital bands.

On these sites you can digitally collaborate with friends or strangers in order to write music. How great is that?

This option lets me avoid having to live near people that I'm afraid of meeting with personally (will they rape me or inject me with a roofie and rape me?) or figuring out where to meet to play or what songs to jam out too beforehand, or if they'll come up behind me with chloroform, put me to sleep and rape me with their instrument(s). Really, it takes the whole nervous meeting new people thing out of the equation.

I do wonder how the sites deal with issues if digital bands get bigger than the sites themselves. Do they maintain distribution rights? I'm sure I can wade through the terms of use to see what control they have over the music produced on/for their sites

Like I said, I'll have to look at these sites a little closer but in the meantime, you can check them out for yourselves.

http://myonlineband.com/

http://www.kompoz.com/compose-collaborate/home.music

If you find out anything interesting, let me know. Or if you have any experience on these sites, give me a shout too, I'd love to know how they worked out for you.

UPDATE

Instead of adding a new post, I decided to add to this one.

Anyway, so I've been taking a look at MyBandOnline to see what the deal was. Pretty cool concept, actually. Collaborations are in the form of projects

. After signing up for the website, you can take a look at some of the projects they have on the website, and also see that a lot of them haven't been touched in awhile, which is a shame.

Since I'm now intrigued by the website, I decided to see what the capability was.

First thing I did was browse through several of the projects in order to find one that had several mixes and tracks to choose from (tracks are individual building blocks of larger mixes). Once I found one that had a few mixes to mess with, I decided to give them a go. I went ahead and created a new folder in my Downloads specifically for each track and mix and stored them there.

What's pretty cool is that you can listen to the tracks and mixes before you even download them. So before I even downloaded any of them, I weeded through the ones that I didn't like. For example, there was a track of just singing, and it sounded terrible. Simple enough, I just didn't download it.

So I downloaded three tracks - a basic mix with rhythm guitar, bass and drums, a lead guitar, and lead vocals. After saving them, I went ahead and opened up Reaper.

Once I did that, I added the basic guitar/bass/drum mix, the lead guitar and singing.

From here is where you can do all the cool mixing stuff. You can add effects to each track or raise the gains. The primary mix is actually already pretty good by itself. So instead of fudging around with that too much, I'd rather go about messing with the lead and singing tracks.

The lead guitar sounds alright, but it drowns out the vocals a little bit in certain parts so I lowered the volume on that.

The vocals already have some added effects on the track... which kind of leads me to a point about vocals: don't add effects to vocal tracks when you're initially recording them, add them after.

Anyway, so after mixing you can convert the entire Reaper file into an mp3 and upload it back to the MyBandOnline workspace. From there, other folks can view it and add any comments.

Another thing you can do is add your own instruments or singing to the song, and add those to the website. I just chose mixing because it was the least amount of effort required from me tonight (plus, Mrs. Me is sleeping, I didn't want to wake her).

Not that I ended up adding anything to the project, but you can take a look at what exists already here.

If you're a musician, and like me, don't have anybody near you that plays music and you're afraid of in-person rejection, this is a reasonable solution to collaboration. Plus, you can always facelessly tell someone that they're a dickface and their mom is a whore without physical retribution, ala XBOX live.

Narcissism (plus more words in parenthesis)

I know a blog entitled LOLERBLOG implies that things written here will be funny. Man, I wish I could be funny on command, but if I could do that I'd end up hanging out with Ryan Stiles on the hit tv show, "Whose Line is it Anyway?"

I spoke to my fellow bloggetter (located here) about things to add to my blog. I talked about how I really have no focus for what I want on here. It would help to know those types of things so I can write about a fairly consistent line of topics. I spoke about the whole jack of all trades things in the music post a few days ago, and I think that's where my problem comes in... cause I can't speak about any one thing consistently as an expert.

Though I imagine most bloggers aren't experts in much of anything. Really, it's just a bunch of people getting together, not getting paid (for the most part) writing about shit they mostly know nothing about. Just to hear the click, click, clicking of the keyboard, throwing the words on screen trying to get the attention of people that are much too busy reading or doing more important things.

Uh... what was my point again? Not sure. We're all a bit narcissistic, I think... some are just more likely to write a blog.

What if Jesus Christ Was Alive Today? (A Chronicling of the Life of John_RC)

you should write a blog about all the funny things I say

and then Travis can draw a picture for it

and Ryan can compose a song

You guys can become a team

dedicated to highlighting my great daily moments

or maybe you should write a blog about how you're a terrible friend for not writing about how amazing of a friend I am

And that a thousand blog entries would not be enough to fully encapsulate the depth of your admiration for me

And then each blog entry from then on out can be about whatever I did during my day

You can then rename the blog to "What if Jesus Christ Was Alive Today? (A Chronicling of the Life of John Coffelt)"

- John_RC 2011

I will do no such thing, John; I will not talk about how you say funny things or blog about it. I refuse to advance your communist neo-nazi ideologies.

That is all.

ROFLCOPTERS ON LOLLERSKATES!!! (or how I learned to not talk about the title of this post in the body of the post)

First things first...

This guy is awesome.

Second things right now.

So I talked last night about songwriting that sucks... I'll use that as my segue to talk about home made music.

Home made recordings are easy as hell to do. I'm really surprised by the amount of musicians who are, not necessarily afraid of recording, but intimidated by it. I can't pretend that I'm good at recording, I'd like to be an Audio Engineer (as one of many post-Air Force careers), but I know the basics. I know HOW to make a recording better; boosting the gains, adjusting EQ, multi-tracking, redubbing, etc. I just get lazy when I'm working on my own music, because it's only me in a downstairs bedroom, trying to put multiple instruments together to form a coherent
piece of music; even then I get lazy. Jack of all instruments, master of none.

But that's just it, I'm not very good at recording or writing songs necessarily, but I can throw something together, record it, and be proud of it. It's a skill that not many people have; not because they can't, but because they don't know how.

The first recordings I ever made were on Acid Pro 3.0, and the microphone I used was a crappy 5 dollar computer mic from the BX. On my Ibanez Acoustic-Electric, I put together covers and some original stuff, and it sounded like shit. My dorm room at the time was horribly insulated, and the reverb was terrible. Add that to my fish tank in the background with Habanero, my badass Oscar. Every once in awhile I'll catch one of those early recordings, and although there are some cool musical phrases, the quality is nigh unbearable.

There was a reason I used my acoustic alot in those early recordings though, as easy as it was to record using that cheap mic, it didn't pick up live electric guitar and distortion that well. I listened to a cover of Hotel California... ugh, I listened to the whole thing and it sounded awful (and my singing... I don't try singing in songs all that much anymore). But it was something, a look back at my life when I was sitting in a dorm room drinking "non-alcoholic" beverages all the time.

Plus, it was totally easy.

Here's the process in a nutshell:

1. Figure out what you're going to record first - guitar, bass, drums, vocals (drums and bass are usually the first things, as they're your rhythm) (I don't use a metronome, because I'm horrible at it)

2. Record 1 track of music - Example: Guitar

3. Record another track - Example: Vocals

BAM! You've got yourself a recording. That's literally how easy it is. Improving the quality is a completely separate topic (and one I'm not really in a position to elaborate on, haha).

If you want to record, the best suggestion I have is just dive in. Don't let all those knobs and menu options intimidate you. You'll learn it as you go. You don't have to be a master of recording to make something that you'll feel accomplished with afterwards.

Anyway, I bring this up because first things first guy up there and I always wanted to have a famous band together. More Ballz Than Most or Impatient Cow were our chosen names. Then I moved away, and it became a pipe dream... it still is, really. But the beauty of recording, especially, digitally, allows us to collaborate and make music together again. It's as simple as finding the same recording software and emailing the tracks/projects to each other for editing.

The prospect has always been an exciting one for me, so I just have to wait for him to buy some guitar cords, he already has a good mic (for his broadcasting), and hopefully we'll put something together!

For beginner and intermediate audio technicians there's a really great recording program out there called Reaper. It has a ton of functionality in it that rivals some of the higher end software (see: ProTools, Ableton Live, etc). The best part about it is it's free to download the evaluation version of the software that doesn't expire. Check them out here: Reaper

Finally, if you want to hear some of the crappy songs I've written/recorded, check them out here: Text-based Misconception

I'm especially proud of Senorita Girl, if for anything, the line that goes "her eyes spoke to me like white peoples do."

I'm out, yo!

Mp3 Rediscovery

So I found one of my old CD's the other day... one of those old compact discs that you used to put tons of "legally paid for" mp3 songs on that only worked with a few select players? Well I happened upon a song I hadn't heard in awhile.

A little song called "Popular" by a little band called Nada Surf.

Not sure if you remember the song, but aside from the chorus, it's mostly spoken word. As I listened to this particular song over and over, I thought, "I wonder if this dude wrote these words or found them in a book or something."

Well with a little more research, I found that the spoken word portions were ripped straight from an old 1964 etiquette book by Gloria Winters (a teenage actress) called "Penny's Guide to Teen-Age Charm and Popularity."

It's a clever song in that respect.

I'd love to find an obscure piece of literature and incorporate it into a song... rather, I'd love to incorporate it effectively. I'm sure I can write a song about Asimov's Laws of Robotics and somehow tell a story, but man, would it be a piece of shit.

That's one cool thing about some of the older bands though, and something I feel is lacking in the music scene nowadays... storytelling. Not the I love you, you love this girl, girl doesn't love you back type songwriting... but bands like Led Zepplin, Rush, Deep Purple and Blue Oyster Cult, telling actual stories with their music. They utilized literature (like Tolkien for example) in their writing, and enhanced it with some spectacular music. I'm sure that skill-set exists somewhere still, but I'm too busy avoiding Poker Face to search it out.

Fin

P.S. As an added bonus, on that old cd I found one of the best covers of Enjoy the Silence by Failure, an under-appreciated band from the mid-90's. Give that a listen if you're up to it.

A Brief Introduction

Hello everyone (if anyone)!

Not really sure what I want to accomplish with this Blog... not sure I'm going to spell everything and grammaticiancize my sentences right; by proper English standards anyhow. I will say though that I should probably be in bed right now.

I mean, let me just say that what I'm writing as I sit here, with an Extenze commercial in the background, is nothing really important. You might start reading this sentence, or the last one, or any in the future and say to yourself, "wow, I'm really wasting my fn' time"

Let me just say, you're right. You really, really are wasting your time.

That's the beauty of the internet though. You browse around, you look for stupid videos, laugh about that damned E-Trade baby (am I the only one who dislikes those commercials?), and wait for energy to recharge in whatever Facebook style game you're playing. All the while, there's other stuff out there that you could be doing... I'm not going to list all the things... things like books and stuff... but you could be doing them.

Uh... but you can read the random shit I write if you want to too. I'm okay with it if you are.

Not sure what the point is... Here's a list of things I thought about writing about since I started writing out the earlier stuff.

1. I wanted to elaborate on annoying Facebook games. Not the standard, "I hate getting popups, waah waaah" because you can ignore that shit, stop being lazy. Rather, I wanted to elaborate on the games themselves; the whole wait-or-pay-to-play style games (WoPtP from here on out)

2a. This new game that came out called Magicka. It was developed by a small Swedish software company. By small, I mean a total of around 9 people. Minus all the bugs/technical issues, it's a pretty awesome game.

2b. Evidently I'm a shitty wizard

3. Whatever else comes to mind while I'm working, the whim whimsies me, and I feel like writing something.

Ok, that's it for now... like I said, I really should go to bed. I need to wake up early tomorrow so I can do some more running; which I guess would be a #4.

Buh bye

(P.S. Probably not that brief, huh?)