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Messages - CoLD SToRAGE

#1
Hi Guys! :OD

I hope you're all keeping well?

It seems an age since the Christmas Competition...

If you've not already heard, Easter is going to be a rather special time at CoLD SToRAGE H.Q.

From now until the 12th April ALL my albums and singles are just ONE POUND.

Yep, just one singular UK pound!

You can of course throw over a few extra pennies which I will happily add to the CoLD SToRAGE Easter Fund, but that's completely up to you. :OD

Pop over to my BandCamp page to either treat yourself, or someone else you know who might like some nice music instead of a chocolate egg(!)

http://coldstorage.bandcamp.com

All the best!
Tim.
Aka
CoLD SToRAGE

P.S.
I know I've posted this in the "MUSIC Series Discussion" but that's because a lot of my albums contain tracks written using MTVMG2... so there is a (tenuous!) link, LOL!
#2
Glad people are enjoying their CDs.  ;D

All the packages went on the same day... so if you live in the UK you should have had yours AGES ago.

For Europe, again I would have thought with air mail it should have landed some time ago.

If you live in the U.S. or Canada not sure how long?  ???

I have proof of posting for all packages, so if you've not had it by the end of January DO let me know.

All the best!
Tim.
#3
Hi Guys,

Just popped in to let you know that my 5th Studio Album is now up for download...

It was one of my favourite projects ever to work on, probably because I was working with a long time
old friend ( we worked together on some Amiga / ST games ) and largely because it was writing music
with a big fat 80's vibe.  ;D

You can hear it here:
http://coldstorage.bandcamp.com/album/gravity-crash-anthems

The game is really good fun too, if you like retro style games. Take a look here:


All the best!
Tim.
#4
Hi Guys,
I'm back from visiting the in-laws for Christmas... which was nice'n'festive. :)

I will be going to the post office to ship out all these packages tomorrow.

I was hoping for all the addresses before I went to just do one trip, but as I'm
only waiting on The Lyricist, J-Machine and Spacekid to let me know their postal
address, I can always pop theirs in the post at a later date.

Hope you're having a great holidays and all the best for the New Year - don't
get too drunk!  :D
#5
Contests! / Postal Addresses...
December 23, 2009, 11:32:54 AM
I've got all of the stuff parcelled up...

...just waiting on postal addresses from The Lyricist, Blonde Justice, J-MACHine and Spacekid.  ;D

Anyone know them? Giv'em a nudge, LOL!
#6
Contests! / Payback
December 22, 2009, 07:07:25 PM
Hey, it's been fun listening and judging... even if it was a bit stressful toward the end(!)  ;)

I get so busy moving on to the "next best thing", especially with all the work I do and the projects I get involved in.
Sometimes it's nice to take a look back down the road and see if any of the saplings that were planted have taken
root and grown into strong oaks!

I guess this competition was my way of giving something back to the people who contributed to my life being exciting
to experience... and it really has been fun so far... so long may it continue.  ;D

Take it easy, and here's to the new decade... may it bring much cheer for us all!
#7
Contests! / Discs done! :O)
December 22, 2009, 01:12:15 PM
Hi Guys,

The commemorative discs are done...  ;D



I'll be sending them out to all of the 15 entrants along with first & second prize as soon as I have all the snail
mail addresses for everyone.

If you know of anyone who entered who might not frequent the boards too often, if you can give them a
nudge to get in touch that will speed things along!

These Data DVDs contain all of my released albums and the latest Virtual Vinyl Single. Enough CoLD SToRAGE
to freeze your brain! All the music is 320kbps MP3, so good enough for most listeners.  ;)

Thanks again guys and have a good one!

All the best,
Tim.
#8
More names to add to the list... great news!  ;D

Others I'm aware of;
Dizzee Rascal ( Dylan Kwabena Mills )
Wylie ( Richard Cowie )
DJ Mentat ( Adam Bell )
DJ Grooverider ( Raymond Bingham )
#9
Contests! / TIMGUL Christmas Competition 2009 RESULTS!
December 21, 2009, 10:19:00 AM
Guys... I thought running a competition like this would be pretty easy.

Set a goal, declare the rules, display the prizes, call a halt, pick a winner, job done.

Not on your life!

I spent a couple of hours yesterday listening to the entries as I'd only given them a quick listen through as each one arrived before yesterday.

Choosing a winner became more and more difficult... so I set up a spreadsheet with marks for Melody (or where appropriate song construction), Production (including ingenuity in use of the software), Seasonality (gotta have some points for that as it's a Christmas competition!) and originality (both in terms of overall song construction and style).

I've had another listen through this morning to confirm my thoughts from yesterday, and with fresh ears I've done some minor tweaking. If I tell you that out of a maximum of 40 points the top 5 are separated by only 4 points you'll get an idea of how damn close it was(!)

FIRST PRIZE:
It gives me great pleasure to award the top prize to DJ Omnimaga for his track Magic Hardcore;D ;D ;D
This track represents all I'd want in a winner... it showcases what can be done with the MUSIC products, has a wonderfully catchy melody, some great breaks, tight production and level headed use of effects, clever use of the software and an original and developing song structure that keeps you interested. A great anthem!

SECOND PRIZE:
Given what I've said earlier about how tight the competition was, I wish I had enough prizes to award some joint seconds! But at the last minute 2nd place was pipped by Master Dutch and Smoothy.
I'll be honest about it, when I first heard this track I wasn't at all swayed either way. Then each time I listened to it I felt this smile spread across my face. Even up until last night I saw it creeping up the spreadsheet as I kept changing my mind about it, until finally this morning I tweaked the points here and there and clicked on "sort on TOTAL" and there it was in 2nd place!


HONORABLE MENTIONS IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER:
- DJ Droppin' "Christmas Canon Medley"... I LOVE the start to this. It sums up the expectation and excitement of Christmas from when I was a child. Sent chills down my spine!

- Sacred Virgo "Angel Whisper (xmas 2009 edit)... the level of emotion in this track is extremely high. Those intro chords looping over and over soaked in reverb... just lovely, and then the strings come in. Something Vangelis could have written. Top notch. :)

- Fear2Stop "Slayride"... what can I say? SANTA ON ACID! HAhahahaha... great stuff. ;)

- Nakamura "The Last Goodbye"... tight production, nice closing chords.

- DJ Ryznup "Season of Solace"... nice use of bright top end percussion, and tidy production with use of varying BPM too.

- Casper Audioghost "Electro Carol"... liked the choice of sound here, they all sit really well together - especially liked the bassline.

- Blonde Justice "John's Gone"... Very dramatic and evocative! Liked to vocal stabs.

- J-MACHine "Million"... One of the few to use vocals, but done very tastefully! Nice bassline slides, mellow with a capital "M".

- The Lyricist "Replace the Seal"... put me very much in mind of some Depeche Mode 'B' sides. Lots of S-T-E-R-E-O panning... smoov!

- Not a Number "Parabol(a)"... Probably some of the most complex drum programming in the competition... and liked the piano melody!

-Spacekid "Broken Robots Merry Fuxxing Christmas"... great intro! :D Crazy theme too... nice stereo feel. Love 2'56'' onwards. ;)

- JCW "Grinch"... old skool vibe here. Good choice of hats, and the stabs at 2'33" kick ass!

- The Love Bandit "Christmas Chemistry"... 2'00" love the break here... nice chords, driving and final splash down at 8:19 is one of the best endings. :)

OK, so there you have it!

The judging was gruelling and clearly it would be nice if everyone could win... but suffice to say, I couldn't be a judge on XFactor - it's stressful enough when you don't really know the contestants and you don't have to stand face to face and give a judgement.

As it's Christmas, if ALL the people involved could PM me with a snail mail address I'd like to send you a limited edition ( I'll only be making 15! ) CD, containing some of my music from the past few years as a thank you for taking part. So basically, no-one goes home empty handed... even if you don't like the music you'll have a momento, LOL!

Thanks again guys, and I hope you and yours have a Merry Christmas ( or Holidays ) and a Healthy and Prosperous New Year.  ;D

All the best,
Tim Wright
aka. CoLD SToRAGE.




#10
That's it guys!   :)

"No more entries please!" - as I said I'd say, LOL!

OK... the entries are as follows;

DJ Droppin - Christmas Canon Medley
Fear 2 Stop - Slayride
Casper Audioghost - Electro Carol
The Lyricist - Replace the Seal
The Love Bandit - Christmas Chemistry
JCW - Grinch
Sacred Virgo - Angel Whisper (xmas 2009 edit)
Blonde Justice - John's Gone
DJ Omnimaga - Magic Hardcore
Master Dutch - Smoothy
Not a Number - Parabol(a) (demo 1)
J-MACHine - Million
Nakamura - The Last Goodbye (Xmas Club Mix)
Spacekid - Broken Robots Merry Fuxxing Christmas
DJ Ryznup - Season of Solace

I've checked, and that should be everyone. If I've missed anyone shout now!  ;)

I'll announce the results on Monday via this thread and the BandCamp page.

At this point I'd like to put out a massive "Thank You" to all of you who have entered the competition!
It's really great to see that there's still life in the MUSIC/MTV products, and that people are still willing
to put their creative energy into writing fresh and inspiring music. So, no matter what the results of
this competition, you are all winners...

Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!  ;D
#11
It's been brought to my attention that SpaceKid's entry that was initially questioned does acutally sit within the rules, i.e. the composition was done in a MUISC/MTV product, so I'll add that to the BandCamp page... which will now have a total of 14 competition entries!

I'll check this page tomorrow morning at around 8am (GMT) and any new tunes will be added. I'll then put a note on this thread saying "no more entries please" and then we'll announce our winners on Monday. :)

All the best!
#12
As it's getting close, I thought I'd pop in for a quick word!  ;D

Any entries need to be on here by 12 midnight GMT tomorrow ( gotta call a halt sometime! )

I will then retreat to the nearest swedish massage parlour to be pounded while I listen to all
the entries. I'll select the winners over the weekend and post the results here and on the
BandCamp page.

Once that's done, if the winners want to contact me via e-mail with their snail mail address
I'll make sure the prizes get out to them ASAP!

I'm uploading the latest entries to the BandCamp page over the next hour or so...

All the best!  :D
#13
Quote from: Fear 2 Stop on December 11, 2009, 10:40:05 PM
I'd like that too! I realized something though...I can't use Music 3000 or the sampler kit, as I'm in the US and isn't it region specific?

Sadly yes, the software is SCEE (so Europe only) but the sampler will work anywhere as it's a non-regional device.
#14
Hi Guys,

I'm downloading the latest entries to post to BandCamp...

Someone asked if the prizes were for 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc? The plan is that all of the items in the photo
are for 1st Prize!

But...

I've got another spare MUSIC 3000 sampler (somewhere!), so I'll give that as a second prize, along
with anything else I can scoop up at the time - just so it's not just one person who wins a prize.

It's a shame that I don't have access to any MTVMG2 samplers. However, I will let you into a little
secret (which is of no real consequence now anyhow!). At the time we created the MTVMG2 samplers
there was another sampler that worked 100% with MTVMG2, and we sometimes used one as a spare
if we didn't have a 'genuine' one laying around. I am now going to (a) rack my brains to see if I can
recall the name of that sampler and (b) dig around in the cupboards to see if I have an old one laying
around... and if so, I can throw that into the mix too (please excuse the pun).

All the best!  ;D
Tim.

+++STOP THE PRESS+++
Apparently, Jester beat me to the punch in 2007, as they posted the USB Sampler 'secret' on their Forum.
Ah well, shows how close my finger is to the pulse(!) Hahaha!
#16
Hi,

I was just rummaging through some old sound files, and I came across a song I created for my Junior Schools 100 year anniversary back in 2001 which I thought I'd share with you guys.

The School Governors asked me to compose something that the kids could sing along to, and I was honoured to do it of course. What I've only just remembered is that I used MTVMG2 to write the track!

As it's a Welsh speaking school, there is also a Welsh version, and of course an intrumental version too. You'll notice good use of the that classic organ sound again in this track... in fact I think it sounds a bit Christmassy, hence posting it here and not elsewhere in the forum. ;)

http://www.icecubes.org.uk/mp3/Henllan-100-Years-English.mp3
http://www.icecubes.org.uk/mp3/Henllan-100-Years-Welsh.mp3
http://www.icecubes.org.uk/mp3/Henllan-100-Years.mp3

We pressed a CD for each of the kids involved... it was a real buzz to go back to my primary school and meet the original teachers, who, remarkably were still very much live and not it too bad shape considering(!)

Anyhow, thought I'd share the fact that I have actually used the MUSIC products for something pretty important, and not just demos or riff building. For the tech-minded, there wasn't enough RAM to hold the vocals, so the music and vocals were mixed together using Cubase (if memory serves me correctly). The track was pretty much 'as-is' out of the PS2, maybe a hint of E.Q. and then final compression once the vocals were in. So MTVMG2 really did itself proud on that day. :D

Now, I REALLY DO need to take piccies of the prizes for this competition and post them here!!! Sorry for the tardiness. ;)

Cheers'n'beers,
Tim.

P.S. In reply to The Lyricist, not so bad... looking forward to Christmas! ;O)
#17
Quote from: Sacred Virgo on December 08, 2009, 07:19:58 PM
So sweetie, so cute.. are you too a fan of Nobuo Uematsu?

I love the Final Fantasy scores... :)

I do have a soft spot for twee game music, or music that's originated from the Nintendo style.

Having said that, I'm not exclusively inspired by that one genre, I also love the more raw and
punchy Commodore 64 style too when it comes to old skool influences.
#18
If you take the final song out of MUSIC and then clean it up in say SoundForge or Audition then that's
fine. Sometimes you need to maximise/compress things a little. So this isn't a problem for the competition.
So long as all the sequencing is done in a MUSIC product, that's fine.

I've even known people to write 3 songs in MUSIC 2000 (due to sample memory restrictions in a PS1)
and then string them all together in a Sound Editor to make one long song. Again, this is fine... and
very ingenious!

At this stage, there would be nothing to gain from saying you HAVE to use internal samples only, or
that you have to sample and edit the sounds within the package. If you did, that's great, and feel
free to brag about it(!) If you sampled something into Audacity, tweaked it, and then imported it into
MTVMG2 then that's fine.

The main rule here is that an MUSIC/MTV product was used to sequence the song you submit.

Hope that clears it all up? If not, feel free to ask!

8 days to go! I will post a photo of the prizes here very soon - just going to dig one out later today. ;)
#19
I think we need to clear something up... ;)

Some of the MUSIC/MTV products have a sampler, so it would be a bit weird to disallow external
samples, so long as they're sequenced within a MUSIC product that should be fine.

There are limits of course... If you create an ENTIRE song in PRO Tools, sample the whole thing into
MUSIC and then record it out of the PlayStation or your PC, then clearly that's taking the p*ss! :P

It would be good if people stated if they've used external samples just for everyone else's benefit.
It's good to know what we're managing to put together with/without outside samples.

Recording vocals into MUSIC to go along with your song sounds like a great idea.  ;D

Here is my contribution to the competition... (not in the comp, just a theme for it!)

http://www.icecubes.org.uk/mp3/Bellitzen.mp3

It's just a bit of fun written in MTVMG2 over the past few days when I've had time to grab the
controller and sit down undisturbed. It could do with some more TLC, but by then the competition
would be over, LOL!

Oh, and for the record this doesn't use any external sounds... but I'm sure any long in the tooth
users can tell that quite easily(!)

I've really enjoyed writing this song. There are some shortcomings with MTVMG2... things that we
just didn't get time to add in, but I am chuffed with what did actually make it into the product.

After a few hours I started to use it without thinking which button does which function too,
which was great. I also remembered some shortcuts like pressing SELECT on the track headers mutes
the track, and pressing the shoulder buttons in a menu attaches it to that shoulder button as a
shortcut.

Anyhow, enough waffling.  :P

Hope (some of) you enjoy the track... it's a bit twee and M.O.R. but I wanted to create something
very typically Christmas.  8)

ATB,
Tim.
#20
Contests! / BandCamp updated...
December 06, 2009, 07:54:16 PM
Hi Guys,

I've added the latest tracks: http://timgulxmas2009.bandcamp.com

Keep up the good work!  ;D

My track is coming along... sorry for the delay, but I'll upload it to
bandcamp once it's done. It's probably going to be nearer the more
typical and "twee" Christmas end of things, but it's been fun using
a controller to write music again(!)

Regarding Spacekid's entry... no worries. Good of you to be 100%
honest.  ;)