kmcgraphics.com » Music

Google Pay Tribute To Les Paul

Kieran McCarthy — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 11:19:17 +0000

Today Google pay tribute to Les Paul the inventor of the solid body electric guitar. Below is a screen-shot of the Google homepage where you can actually strum the guitar strings and make a sound. It would have been a nice touch if the picture was of a Gibson Les Paul with strings. Up until his passing aged 94 Les Paul performed two shows every Monday night at NYC’s Iridium Jazz Club on Broadway and 51st St. Today would have marked his 96th birthday.

Google Pay Tribute To Les Paul

Les Paul was also known as the inventor of multitrack recording. His innovative talents extended into his playing style, including licks, trills, chording sequences, fretting techniques and timing, which set him apart from his contemporaries and inspired many guitarists of the present day.He recorded with his wife Mary Ford in the 1950s, and they sold millions of records. Slash from Guns N’ Roses would be a good example of the sound of the Gibson Les Paul guitar.

Apparantly if you use the Google Doodle in the U.S.A you can record and play-back your efforts. Google has used the power of HTML5 to create the guitar so you can play with your keyboard (using the letter keys) or just use your mouse. I have tried using it on my iPad but cannot get sound from it.

Twitter Mentions Of Google Pay Tribute To Les Paul:

@dannybloomfield‎ wow that is so cool RT Whoa, this Les Paul tribute is one of the coolest Google Doodle things ever. Very interactive!

@adamhand‎ playable google logo with recorder in memory of les paul. awesome… a great honour the way Google Pay Tribute To Les Paul.

Live @ The Marine Bar – Youghal

Kieran McCarthy — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 19:33:23 +0000

Filmed Saturday 12th February 2011 at The Marine Bar – Youghal. Playing live are The Steve Whelan Band & The Red House Blues Band featuring Bobby Lee. Experimenting with some camera settings on the Canon HV30.

O Emperor Live @ Debarras Clonakilty

Kieran McCarthy — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 21:18:34 +0000

This is my latest video project O Emperor filmed live at Debarras, Clonakilty, Co. Cork, Ireland – Friday 8th October 2010.

Pearl Jam – Backspacer – Full Album Listen For Free

Kieran McCarthy — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:37:24 +0000

You like it? Go buy it here:
BUY >> PEARL JAM – BACKSPACER

For its ninth album, Pearl Jam chose to go back to working with producer Brendan O’Brien. The album was the group’s first album to be produced by O’Brien since the band’s 1998 album, Yield. “At this point, I think we’re willing to let somebody cut the songs up a little bit,” says lead vocalist Eddie Vedder. “In the past, Brendan would say, ‘It’s a great song, but I think you should do it in a different key’, and we’d say no. But now that we’ve heard Bruce [Springsteen] has listened to his suggestions, I think we will too.” Bassist Jeff Ament said, “He brings a brutally honest approach to what he thinks is working and what isn’t, and it really moves things along… We don’t get weighted down with ideas that maybe aren’t even that good. He’s one of the few people outside of the band that we trust with our music, and we’re really, really looking forward to making this record.”

In 2007, after Pearl Jam’s 2006 tour had ended, the band members began recording demo material on their own while staying in occasional contact via e-mail. Guitarist Mike McCready revealed at the time that he had tested out some ideas with guitarist Stone Gossard and drummer Matt Cameron in separate sessions as well. Rolling Stone reported in May 2008 that Pearl Jam was in the early stages of working on its ninth studio album and had already had one session with O’Brien. McCready stated in 2008 that the album is “really in its infant stages right now” and that the band had “about five ideas that have been worked on.” After laying down some instrumental beds in 2008, additional demos were put to tape in December, and Ament, Cameron, Gossard, and McCready came up with another array of material during a trip to Ament’s home in Montana. Ament said, “It’s the first time since the first record that we’ve really rehearsed… instead of just going to the studio with a handful of ideas.”

Vedder proceeded to put rough vocals on about half of the material formulated in the December session, and also brought in his own material for the band members to work on.In February 2009, Pearl Jam went for a two-week session at Henson Recording Studios in Los Angeles, California with O’Brien. It was the first time the band spent a considerable amount of time recording outside of Seattle, Washington since the band’s 1996 album, No Code. McCready said, “When we got together with Ed and it really started getting more cohesive, we took that momentum down to Los Angeles with Brendan… It was a great idea to get us out of Seattle. You’ve gotta get outyour comfort zone, and we’ve talked about doing that for the past ten years and kind of haven’t, so we trusted Brendan’s judgment.” In April 2009, the band went for a two-week session to finish the album with O’Brien at his mixing facility at Southern Tracks in Atlanta, Georgia.

(text via wiki)

Faster Grooveshark Search Add-on for Firefox (auto-suggest feature)

Kieran McCarthy — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 23:59:55 +0000

I coded this firefox add-on to query the Grooveshark search site much quicker than their standard search tool add-on.

Grooveshark currently provide a useful search add-on, it installs Grooveshark search to your current list of search engines within Firefox. By searching for an artist or song you are directed to the Grooveshark website and results are displayed.

I re-coded their XML install file to include a live suggest feature pulling related words as you type from Yahoo to speed up your search query.

Examples:

1. The below image shows the default Grooveshark add-on, you have to type in the artist and song title and then click on the magnify button to complete a search:

2. And here is my improved version in action, as you type you will be prompted with relevant words speeding up your search, no need to click on magnify button. Just type, select, go.

Try It Out:

If you haven’t installed the Grooveshark search add-on for Firefox please try my version:
“Click here to install Firefox Grooveshark auto suggest search add-on”

Note* I would prefer you install it via my Firefox Official Plugin page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/14319 this allow me to track downloads, installs and reviews etc.

How to uninstall:

To uninstall the add-on just select “Manage Search Engines” from your drop down list then select and remove it.

Hope it improves your search speed on Grooveshark

Note: This add-on will install to “Microsoft Internet Explorer” browser but the auto suggest feature is disabled.

What is Grooveshark ?

Grooveshark is a Rich Internet Application, (RIA) written in ActionScript using the Adobe Flex framework which runs in Adobe Flash. Its design implements various sliding panels to categorize and display lists of information, similar in style to that of the Apple iPhone. A right-aligned black modal window also slides in to display more information for songs, playlists, and users.

Grooveshark also lets users upload music to their online music library through a Java Web Start application. The upload program scans folders specified for mp3′s, uploading and adding them to the user’s online library on the service. The ID3 information of the uploaded song is linked to the user and the file is uploaded to Grooveshark which allows on-demand music playback. Collectively, each user’s uploaded library is available to any user of Grooveshark. All content on the service is user-sourced.

The website also allows users to upload music files on their hard drive to the search database, resulting in constant growth of its library.

YoughalOnline.com Live Webcast – A Big Success

Kieran McCarthy — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 11:06:25 +0000

I am really pleased with the result of the second YoughalOnline.com Live Gig Broadcast which was streamed using Ustream.tv on Thursday 29th January 2009. The band “Little Big Man” performed a live set at Claycastle Recording Studio, Youghal and also an interview with front man Brian O Glanby.

1,570 viewers accessed the webcast over the hour with traffic coming mainly from Ireland, UK, USA, Netherlands, & Australia. We had a chat box enabled on the site and at one stage there was 144 active users chatting . Below is a screen shot of the Ustream Metrics for the broadcast.

Getting the Traffic

Part of the success of this webcast lay in pre-planning. A group of the people involved in this project posted the gig details on social networks such as Facebook, MySpace & Bebo also SMS Text, Forums, Email and traditional word of mouth. I also created a YoughalOnline.com Facebook group and also a Facebook App for people to install so they could watch the webcast from within Facebook.

Why not check out these links:
YoughalOnline.com Facebook Group
YoughalOnline.com – Live Web Cast – Facebook App

The Facebook traffic was very good with a lot of app installs and a good community to inform of the upcoming broadcast. It’s become a lot clearer that you have got to use the social networks in order to reach wider audience.

Watch The Playback

Un-edited playback as it was broadcast on the night. Time 57 min 32 secs watch it all or scrub through.

Pre-recorded playback of “Little Big Man” webcast

Originally recorded 29th January 2009

Conclusion

*Note to self: Aim for better results next time, always try harder and always learn from the past

MidLake – Head Home – (Final Version)

Kieran McCarthy — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 01:55:08 +0000

Just because I like it….

www.myspace.com/midlake
www.worlds-fair.net/midlake
www.midlake.net

Embedded Video

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: midlakehead home headhome www.midlake.net youghal youghalonline www.youghalonline.com texas denton sxsw official

Live Video Webcast 7th Dec, The Savoy, Cork – Seeing Red Records

Kieran McCarthy — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:37:14 +0000

Tonight I am in Cork City at The Savoy for the Seeing Red Records Christmas Launch Party.

I will be responsible for the live video web broadcast which will start at 10pm till 2am. I will be using my Canon XL2 and Windows Media Encoder running on my laptop to encode and broadcast this event live. There will also be live chat enabled so that viewers can chat with each other while watching the live broadcast.

If you get a chance please visit www.seeingredrecords.com tonight after 10pm to watch and support this event.

If your at the event please come up to me and say “Hi”, I’ll be the one with the video camera and geeky stuff.

Faster SkreemR Audio Search Add-on for Firefox (auto-suggest feature)

Kieran McCarthy — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 01:18:04 +0000

Update 3rd Dec 07: James over at SkreemR has officially added my Firefox plugin to their 3rd party plugins “Tools” page view the page here

I coded this firefox add-on to query the SkreemR mp3 search site much quicker than the standard search tool add-on.

SkreemR currently provide a useful search add-on, it installs SkreemR search to your current list of search engines within Firefox. By searching for an artist or song you are directed to the SkreemR website and results are displayed.

I re-coded their XML install file to include a live suggest feature pulling related words as you type from Yahoo to speed up your search query.

Examples:

1. The below image shows the default SkreemR add-on, you have to type in the artist and song title and then click on the magnify button to complete a search:

2. And here is my improved version in action, as you type you will be prompted with relevant words speeding up your search, no need to click on magnify button. Just type, select, go.

Try It Out:

If you haven’t installed the SkreemR search add-on for Firefox please try my version:

“Click here to install Firefox auto suggest search add-on”

How to uninstall:

To uninstall the add-on just select “Manage Search Engines” from your drop down list then select and remove it.

Hope it improves your search speed on SkreemR

Note: This add-on will install to “Microsoft Internet Explorer” browser but the auto suggest feature is disabled.

If your interested in the code?

To view the source of the xml install file click here

What is SkreemR ?

SkreemR is a search engine for locating audio files on the web.
Some quotes about it:

“Music search engine SkreemR turns up a nice selection of MP3 files from all over the web…” – lifehacker.com

“If you are looking for a great mp3 search engine you should head over to Skreemr immediately.” – gHacks.net

Shooting the video “Darling” for Steve Whelan

Kieran McCarthy — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 18:24:42 +0000

Steve Whelan who hails from Youghal in Co. Cork, Ireland released his album “The Last Walk” this year. He is a well know singer/songwriter in the area and as a test project I asked him if he would be interested in making a video. So here is a quick run down of what I done…

1st Shoot Info:

We settled on the song “Darling” so with no script or plan we headed to Youghal Beach to try out a few shots. Steve had his guitar I had my Cannon MV300 a very basic dv camera (pictured above) and with Shane Supple in car. We just played around and had a bit a fun canning about 20 minutes of footage. Most of the shots were filmed from an opened window at passenger seat in Shane’s car while circling around Steve on the beach, by the way we had the song blasting on the car stereo so Steve could lip sync – we got some strange looks from strollers but didn’t care.

2nd Shoot Info:

I gave Steve a shout one night and headed to Claycastle Recording Studio. I filmed him in a room with just a red bulb next to him. This red bulb caused a lot of video “noise” in the shot but it looked alright and the idea was to keep things simple so we did.

3rd Shoot Info:

The girl in the car at the start of the video and is my niece Terri McCarthy. I had my Canon handycam in the car one night and filmed about 1 minute of her driving the car.

4th Shoot Info:

Put Steve in front of a green screen and filmed him syncing to the song. We filmed it twice and took the best bits.

Other footage:

The carousel shot was old footage I had from a shoot for Perk Family Entertianment Centre. It just seemed to work so I left it in.

The footage of the beach I created in After Effects. I took the hi-res beach shot and virtually zoomed in on the photo then I set up the timeline so it recorded from zoomed in to zoomed out then I just reversed the timeline, this gives the effect of a plane flying over a beach… (nice trick!)

So armed with all the footage I edited the video using Adobe Premiere Pro and made the decision to go with black & white because

1. It suited the mood of the song.
2. The footage had mixed levels of exposure from the different shoots so going black & white pulled them together.

Ingredients:

The end result was a success, nothing ground breaking but I learned from the experience that you dont need lots of €€€ to shoot a music video.

1 Canon MV300
1 Guy with Guitar
1 Guy with car
1 Girl in car
1 Green Screen
1 room with red bulb
Software
Patience
Zero Budget

= 1 music video

Result:

The video has so far recieved over 3,436 views on YouTube and good feedback for Steve. Click here to watch it on YouTube

Thanks to Steve Whelan and I hope you enjoy the video…