Music & Beats

Many of you wont know, but i live a double life drenched in Music. To keep it short, i love music and the effects it can have on people and their mentality. I used to produce a bit of Drum N Bass but i stopped quite some time ago as it wasn’t making me happy, it was leaving me in a bad mindset. Fast forward a few more years and i’ve been practicing rapping for a few years, so i started to get down n dirty and start seriously writing both beats and raps (on the mic as Percuss), what follows is the end result of a month or 2 of getting back into the studio. I’ve only managed to get vocals down for one below and that beat is jacked from Swollen Members – Heavy Thinkers, but the lyrics were so meaningful i just couldn’t resist getting it down. ENJOY.

<a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/ruxton.bandcamp.com/track/track-x');" href="http://ruxton.bandcamp.com/track/track-x">Track X by Ruxton</a>

<a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/ruxton.bandcamp.com/track/filters-aint-shit-percuss-shareef');" href="http://ruxton.bandcamp.com/track/filters-aint-shit-percuss-shareef">Filters Aint Shit (Percuss &amp; Shareef) by Ruxton</a>

<a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/ruxton.bandcamp.com/track/ghost-drummer');" href="http://ruxton.bandcamp.com/track/ghost-drummer">Ghost Drummer by Ruxton</a>

Recycled: iTunes, iPod, iPhone.. iChoose?

Original post date: 2008-07-05

Recycled for Recycle A Blog Post Day

Something just occurred to me this evening and it has to do with software companies and the monopoly ‘lock in’ tactics that some use.  Microsoft was pulled up over forcing Internet Explorer on people in XP many moons ago now and I’m sure we’re all completely happy with how it eventually turned out, most of us use Firefox and Windows now recognises something called a ‘default browser’.

Fast forward a few years and we’ve seen Apple since day one, ram iTunes down the throat of every ipod owner in the world. This was understandable, after all it’s a portable music player and it only ran on OSX to start with, so it’s ok to force a music player that’s already installed on the operating system along with the device to provide sync support, in fact it totally makes sense.  That is until they released on windows and iTunes wasn’t that great, also for years we’ve all been using Winamp or Windows Media Player and have no desire to switch to iTunes.

Continue reading

Recycle A Blog Post Day (2009-08-12)

Mark Pollard threw a tweet to the world that had some interesting weight, Recycle A Blog Post Day (#rabpday).  Mark’s idea was that you would dig a post out from earlier in the year and “re-cycle it” which i assume means, create a new post, put the content in from the old and  post it again.  My suggestion was that the post should be over a year old, obviously this can’t for everyone and in that case, you should pick an older post.

I’m not sure what the intention was here, my thoughts were that it could be a monthly or yearly thing?  But i get the impression others maybe thinking weekly? Anyway it seems like a cool idea.

When’s it happening?

TOMORROW!! (12th August 2009)

Who’s recycling?

Mark tagged the following people in and I guess we’ll see if they partake:

Of course, you know you can take part too, post below with a comment if you’re going to join in and let’s see where this goes to.

More Android Icons For Free

The team at glyFX are still working frantically as always and today they slipped out the Android Common Developer Icon Set II. This free icon set is a rework of the original Android Developer Common Icon Set, using all the details supplied by the Android Icon Design Guidelines, which was not available when the first set was created.

Head over to glyFX and get your free copy of the Android Developer Common Icon Set II now.

You Don’t Need Find The Phone Apps..

Last night mid-way through my train ride home i had a sudden realisation, i had no idea where my phone was and I left the office with it, OUCH.  The though patterns started to retrace, etc. I got off the train a stop early and shot to my parents house to use their phone to try call it, unfortunately the battery on my phone was dead.

Sitting at my parents house I started to realise where it got to and convinced my mum to drive me 40 odd minutes back to work and wait for me while I looked everywhere for it.  You can be assured I didn’t find it and in a way I’m kind of retrospectively happy about it. Continue reading

Old Music I Made

Way back in 2005/2006/2007 my audio PC was rocking hard and i was trying my best to punch out some drum n bass and learn my way through Cubase.

What i’ve embedded below is the 2 “finished” (term used very loosely) drum and bass tunes that i did during that time.  Steeple was the first tune i ever completed in Cubase, a few came before it unfinished or finished in various Tracker applications pre-2000.  Unfortunately i think i lost the most recent version of both of these tracks, it’s on a CD somewhere, so enjoy Steeple and Transform, my terrible gift to you.

Ruxton – Steeple
Ruxton – Transform

It’d also be nice to hear some feedback, if you want drop a comment below and let me know what you think.  It’s been nearly 4 years since these were finished and while i have no intention of reworking them or revisiting them, it’s always nice to hear other peoples views.