Archive for ‘February, 2009‘

In most circles, there’s someone who forwards along dozens of emails every week. In mine, it’s my Mom. While admittedly, I don’t read all of them, there are a few that are real gems. Here’s one for those economy jitters:

This story is about a man who once upon a time was selling hotdogs by the roadside.
He was illiterate, so he never read newspapers.
He was hard of hearing, so he never listened to the radio.
His eyes were weak, so he never watched television.
But enthusiastically, he sold lots of hotdogs.

He was smart enough to offer some attractive schemes to increase his sales.
His sales and profit went up.
He ordered more a more raw material and buns and use to sale more.
He recruited few more supporting staff to serve more customers.
He started offering home deliveries.
Eventually he got himself a bigger and better stove.

As his business was growing, the son, who had recently graduated from College, joined his father.
Then something strange happened.

The son asked, “Dad, aren’t you aware of the great recession that is coming our way?”
The father replied, “No, but tell me about it.”
The son said, “The international situation is terrible.
The domestic situation is even worse. We should be prepared for the coming bad times.”

The man thought that since his son had been to college, read the papers, listened to the radio and watched TV.
He ought to know and his advice should not be taken lightly.
So the next day onwards, the father cut down the his raw material order and buns, took down the colourful signboard, removed all the special schemes he was offering to the customers and was no longer as enthusiastic.

He reduced his staff strength by giving layoffs.
Very soon, fewer and fewer people bothered to stop at his hotdog stand.
And his sales started coming down rapidly, [and with it, the profit].

The father said to his son, “Son, you were right”.
“We are in the middle of a recession and crisis. I am glad you warned me ahead of time.”

Mass hysteria is a scary thing.  It’s funny how the whole notion of “buy low, sell high” goes out the window when we’re in the bear.   I’d argue we have more opportunity now than while we were better.

On a marketing note, people are looking for cheaper entertainment.  That means more time in front of the television and the computer.  Jump on it, internet marketers.  Everyone’s watching.

Hello folks! Sorry for the hiatus. Been stuck in music land lately and doing lots of reading. Today’s TILT comes from Francis Preve’s excellent guide to creating electronic dance music, The Remixer’s Bible: Build Better Beats.

Today, many delay effects (both software and hardware) sync into a host’s BPM count. However, that isn’t always the case; there are still many hardware and software titles require you to set delay by milliseconds, which (to the unitiated) is often approximation at best. For a flawless delay, Preve offers the following forumula:

60,000 / BPM = amount of milliseconds required for a quarter-note delay

Similarly, this can work in reverse and can also be applied to smaller intervals (e.g. eigth-note delays are 30,000 / BPM rather than 60,000).

For more production tricks and a look at putting a dance track together, I highly recommend The Remixer’s Bible. Brilliant piece that I appreciate more and more each time I revisit it.