Amon Tobin

Amon Tobin, A Brazilian born, UK raised, Montreal dwelling Mastermind. I've always liked some of his stuff, but it took me a while to really get into all of his stuff. But the last 2 or 3 years or so, I've just can't get enough. What this guy does with samples, and sonic manipulation is always amazing, always fresh. He's not doing it to be cool, or because everyone else is doing it. It's what he does, it's always cool, dark, and groovy, and intense.

I'd recommend any of his records really, hard to choose just one.

Open your minds and you just might like what it picks up.
peace


www.myspace.com/innerlightmusic
www.reverbnation.com/innerlightspectrum

Meditation

Well, I've heard about it pretty much all my life. Always wanted to do it, never found the right moment to do so. Ironic I know, but it's a lesson learned, that we have to take the time to do it, or to get anything done these days.

Just before Christmas 2007, I picked up a book by the Dalai Lama How to see yourself as you really are . It's a very comprehensive guide to Buddhist meditation practices.

Well I finally tried it, early one morning before leaving for work. As always in my non traditional ways, no special technique, no sitting with my legs crossed, no new age music with pan flutes etc I just sat on the couch, and closed my eyes... boy was I in for a surprise, I got my ass (mind) kicked, about a billion thoughts raced through my mind at that moment. I felt overwhelmed. So I decided to just focus on an object etc, and for no particular reason I decided to focus on a blue light. Well after about 10 min, I was able to clear my mind, and just focus on that one blue light. I was astounded, I had done it, I had stemmed the flow thoughts for at least a few minutes. I felt really good the rest of the day.

It proved to me that if I can truly focus on one thing, and accomplish that one thing I'd feel accomplished, and lighter. I'm not looking to transcend any barriers here, what so ever. I'm just looking for some focus, and that feeling of peace I had when I was a kid.

www.myspace.com/innerlightmusic
www.reverbnation.com/innerlightspectrum

Andie's Music Server

I've been wanting one Location to place all my Music, Mp3's etc. So that I can listen to them anywhere in the house or outside of the house. And with the birth of my Daughter Andie Laurana, I wanted to give her the experience of music anytime, all the time.

Hardware
I've found a simple and relatively cheap way to do it. If you have a spare pc with Windows Xp, as most of us probably do. Well then you can put it to use as a music server. Mine is a PentiumIII 500mhz. with 256megs Ram. It's a noisy old pc, so you may want to store the computer in a remote location as to not hear the constant noise. Mine is in my garage.

So all you need is a decently large hard drive. I'd say anything over 40 gigs, is cool. Although today a 500 gigabite hard disk is stupid cheep. Just get something reliable , like Seagate or Western Digital. I leave mine on always.

Software
I tunes is free (I love Free), and perfect for this sort of thing. Download it. It can extract your music in many file formats and bit rates etc etc, keeps your music nice and neat, and lets you make nice play lists and stream through a network(this is cool). There are other programs that do this as well. but I had I Tunes and ran with it. Did you download it yet?

Setup your Music server so that it's available on your network (you'll need a router for this). I won't go into details here, but tell your self this, If I can do it , it's easy.

So now comes the long and boring part of extracting all your Audio cd's to the database, or importing your mp3 files.

I created a play list of Classical, Soft Jazz, some pop stuff, and a bunch of children songs, and I play that play list through the sound card out, across my garage and into the baby room, plugged into and old Home stereo. Voila! instant music round the clock for the baby. Not to loud either.

But the cool trick is that any other computer in the house using I tunes can have access to the music server and stream whatever they want locally though the network, or wireless network. It all depends on your network speed of course. but if the kids listen to rock, hip hop, on the computers in their room, you can listen to a podcast, or even stream a radio broadcast, in yours. All with on centralized location for your files.

Hope this was helpful

www.myspace.com/innerlightmusic
www.reverbnation.com/innerlightspectrum