Sunday, August 7, 2011

What has two thumbs, a coonskin hat and a brand new iPod?

This guy!!
That's right, ME!!  I won it.  I am a winner.  Because I won something.  Suck on it haters!

I know what I may have risked type two diabetes when I drank all that Coke a Cola in order to send in all those entries but I don't care because it was totally worth it!

Unfortunately my obsessive compulsive nature took over the moment I installed iTunes so I may not be able to properly blog (or do anything else) again until every song is filed under the correct album and displays the correct album artwork.  I thought I could be happy with just having my Lady Gaga and Sheryl Crow albums sorted but it turns out that no, I really can not.  I probably should worry more about that personal realization but I can't right now because I AM A WINNER!

3 comments:

GumbyTheCat said...

Congrats!

I know EXACTLY what you mean about obsessively organizing iTunes lists. When I first got my 32Gb iPod Touch a couple of years ago I thought I would be content to just throw a bunch of songs on there. That lasted about a day. Now, I have 540 albums on it, about 6,000 songs total. Every song in every album has the appropriate artwork attached to it. All the other kids in the neighborhood hate me because I'm so cool.

BTW, there are absolutely, 100% perfectly legal ways to get free music online - everything you could possibly want. Joining a P2P file sharing site is NOT a good idea, as that is an illegal way to obtain music. If you want to know more, let me know.

And have I told you lately how manly you look in a coonskin hat?

Eugene said...

Pffft, P2P is sooo 2000 and late! But go on, I would like to know more. Not that my current collection isn't TOTALLY LEGAL and stuff

GumbyTheCat said...

The way I do it is this.

1. I use the Freecorder Sound Recorder freeware program. It's free, from a well-known company, and it installs as a handy toolbar on your browser.

2. I get my music from Grooveshark free music streaming site. It has a good search engine, and that site very, very, very rarely is lacking a song I am looking for. Play around on the site and you'll learn very quickly the best way to search for tunes.

3. When you select a tune to play, if you have the Sound Recorder activated, it will automatically start recording the audio from your sound card the instant the song starts playing. Nothing is lost.

4. Sometimes a song that you download might need the edges trimmed a bit, or it might need a bit of normalization, amplification or de-amplification. For that, I use the free WavePad Audo Editor. (There's a paid version with more features but you won't need it.) This is a very nice app.

5. I just get the cover art off Google Images.

This is all perfectly legal, because you're not downloading the music from any remote server. You're simply playing it through your sound card, and you are allowed to record anything when it hits the sound card or speakers.

Music quality is often very close to CD quality. But I set my Freecorder recording resolution to 128 Kbps, which while not audiophile quality is great for iPods... and I can fit more albums onto my iPod. Special favorites of mine, like Dark Side of the Moon, I rip from CD at 320Kbps.

When you look up a song on Grooveshark, you'll almost always see a bunch of results for that song. Before recording, listen to snippets of a few of the provided results and just record the one that sounds best to you.

Have fun!