Rainbow Kitten is the alias of the esteemed Doctor of Psychoacoustics M. T. Sunshine who has been manipulating sound waves to achieve states of prolonged bliss in listeners here on earth and out in cyberspace since long before you were born.
Anonymous asked: Hey man something is itching my brain. In the game "Enemy Mind", before a boss there is a sound bit saying "danger" in a synthetic sounding male voice. I was wondering if this sound bit if free to the public because I heard the exact same "danger" sound bit in a track called "Final Stage" by "The Widdler" and now an wondering with much doubt if it is in fact THE same sound bit.
I just saw this, and I have no idea how old it ism so sorry if this is way too late to be helpful.
All of the synth-voice in Enemy Mind was made by recording the raw output of a 1980′s Speak & Spell saying every word in its dictionary and then slicing those words into phonemes and recombining them into the words we wanted.
Crazy right? (Yes, it was. It took forever)
Anyway, I can’t give you the “Danger” sound as it doesn’t belong to me. But I can point you to the raw Speak & Spell audio, which has been released to the public domain. Have fun with it!
What is I up too?
I’m recording a version of Auld Lang Syne for my upcoming album and I’d like to mix in phone messages from a bunch of different people. So if you can get yourself in a new year’s eve frame of mind and you’d like to call and leave a message for the world or for someone you care about please call the Rainbow Kitten Holiday Hotline at (346) 808-0969.
It’s just a voice mailbox, you won’t have to talk to me live. You will remain completely anonymous. I won’t be collecting your number or pestering you in any way later, I promise.
Thanks. Happy Holidays. I hope to hear from you soon.
Celebrating being done with Gumbotron by making something completely different.
A friend of mine, who is about to release her first album, recently asked me how I go about doing my album releases. I figured I’d might as well share the answer with anyone who wants to know. It may or may not be interesting to you. I hope it is. If it isn’t, and you read it anyway… I don’t know. Thanks, and I’m sorry… I guess.
The first place I go once I’ve got my album done and I’m happy with it is Bandcamp. It’s friendly and free to use. It allows people to stream your entire album, which I like. And, they let you keep most (about 75%) of whatever you charge. You can price your stuff however you see fit; you can even make it free. They also let your fans pay any amount they like over your asking price, which to my surprise, people do! (Thanks people, you’re swell!) All you need to do is upload your tracks in uncompressed WAV format and an image to serve as your album art and you’re done. You hook up your PayPal email address to your account and you hope someone actually pays for your stuff. If and when they do, you get paid within a day. In the three years since I released my first album with them, I’ve made $162.00. That sounds sad and pathetic, and it is, but it’s literally 50 times more than I’ve made from being on all of the major download and streaming services in the same amount of time, so… there you go.
So what about those big online stores and streaming services? I get a kick out of being there too and so might you. Who knows, maybe it will be the key to someone discovering your work. Is it worth it? I don’t know. I can tell you that I have never recovered the low cost of staying in, but I do it anyway. Do you want to be like me? Here’s how…
Use Distrokid. Their service will push your music to Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music, Google Play, Amazon, and a host of others. All this will cost you $20 per year and you’ll get to keep 100% of your royalties. So, if you think you’ll make more than $20 a year you’ll stay in the black. Even if you don’t (I don’t) you’ll get the pleasure of knowing that some weirdos out there in interweb-land are listening to your weird music (I dig that). Just like Bandcamp, you just have to upload your tracks and a piece of art and you’re good. You don’t get to set the price, the individual stores do. Since they’re keeping almost all of the money, <sarcasm>I guess that makes sense</sarcasm>.
Final step, if you’re a physical media fan, is getting a CD made. For this I use Kunaki. Kunaki is some kind of internet robot that takes your tracks and album art and generates physical CDs. They charge you nothing for this. If you buy one of your own CDs, they charge you a dollar plus shipping. Sounds too good to be true right? That’s because shipping is something like $7 and takes a month… ouch! However, they’re the third place I’ve tried and they’ve produced the highest quality stuff and charged me the least, so I’m willing to forgive them for hiding all of the cost is a phony shipping charge. They have several options for selling your CDs directly to your fans, but I have never tried them. I prefer to sell the CDs through my Bandcamp for about $10 and then have Kunaki ship directly to the purchaser’s address, which costs me about $8. I like this because it allows the customer to download the album right away and I don’t have to manage multiple storefronts.
There are two caveats concerning the CDs. One, I’ve never sold a CD, so there may be some flaw in my plan. It all works on paper though. Two, you’ll have to follow some pretty specific steps for creating your album art. You’ll need a front cover, an inside cover, a back cover, and an image to print on the disc itself. All of the art dimensions are listed on the site. It’s a little intimidating, but you can do it. I did it and so can you. I believe in you.
So that’s that. You’re ready to sell some tunes. Go and do it! If you have any questions, observations, desires to tell me there’s a better way, or an urge to say hello, you can always find me on Twitter. I’m @viTekim.
Also, check out my latest weirdness, Gumbotron.
I just made my first tune with Nanoloop for Android and this is it.