Here is AllAboutGeorge’s 30 seconds:

And here is mine:

Drown Radio will also be recording a chess rap video with MC Slutsky (check out her WuChess verse here) this week. If you like to play chess and rap, get your videos in soon.

I just added another track off of Me Geek Pretty One Day to TheSixtyOne. The track, Dropped, is one of Me Geek Pretty’s many instrumental songs and was one of the first songs I created using MidiNES. MidiNES is a cartridge interface and program that enables access to the Nintendo’s awesome sounds via midi controller (like a keyboard or a sequencer).

Me Geek Pretty One Day is out now! You can read about it here or buy it here!

Good question. I guess this is what I get for assuming I’d be able to get the album online within a week of finishing it. I’m still working on getting the SongNumber for Me Geek Pretty One Day and getting the shop working in WordPress. I appreciate all the folks that are checking the site for the album to appear or emailing for updates, but I have no specific date for when everything will be running, sorry.

As a consolation I’ve uploaded a brand new song from MGPOD called ButterPart. Check it out below. If you’ve heard me talk about the album being fairly eclectic, this is sort of what I’m talking about. MGOD flows from nerdcore raps, to R&B, to experimental instrumentals, to indie tracks like ButterPart. Enjoy:

Do I get a bonus points for not using the “failing to roll his saving through” joke?

I remember combing through the various monster manuals and guides and practicing drawing the characters I came across. I also recall lying to my mom about going to play the game. When I was 6, she saw a movie called Mazes and Monsters that villianized D&D, so she had banned me from ever playing it. I found it interesting that my uncle actually worked at the D&D plant for most of this time too… My mom and uncle have long had a turbulent relationship that may have had something to do with banning me from D&D.

The “Goliath” reference at the end of the song is reference to the etymology of Gary’s last name, which is Swedish for “giant”. Here are the rest of the lyrics:

I was 15 when I first heard of D & D
Wasn’t keen on fantasy but it seemed to be
the only way to meet any other geeks
In a small town down in middle Tennessee
We played, campaigns for days
Fueled by sweet tea
But I was never as obsessed
As my friends seemed to be
I was a low level priest
on my character sheet
But the DM knew
I was actually a thief

blah blah
blah blah blah

I’ve never played another game since that first campaign
But I’ve stayed in touch with all the friends that I’ve made
I learned it was okay to have imagination
and I owe it all to Dungeons and Dragons
Roll 1d20 for all the friends that I’ve made
in that trailer park the first game that we played
and although I ain’t played a game since
I still get about 90 percent of the references

Gary Gygax was a gaming goliath
created dungeons and dragons with Dave Arneson

It’s official, I’m releasing a brand new Drown Radio album in March of 2008!

The album is called Me Geek Pretty One Day, and is due for release on March 9th. It’s too early to give exact info, but it should be 10 or more songs (clocking in at around 35 minutes) and will be available electronically for $8.

For more info, check out the official MGPOD page.

In preparation for the album, I visited my friend and 1337 nerdcore producer, tanner4105 last weekend and we collaborated on several tracks. We recorded 5 songs, including a remix of Happy Valium Meal and a new track called Skype Lyfe (featuring mc router on her last nerdcore track evar).

As a special preview we’ve posted one of our goofier songs, Boyen Boyen, for you cats to check out. This is the un-mixed version of the song and was created in a couple of hours.

With all of my obligations out of the way, I’ve finally had time to crank out a new song and I’m really proud of it. The song imagines a world where lolCats are our new rulers. If you are not familiar with the lolCats phenomena, you can get familiar here.

The song idea has been bumping around for a few months, but the bulk of the work and writing occurred in the last couple of days. It’s a pretty loud/hyper song which I think stems from need of more upbeat live material. I can’t wait to get a chance to do this song live.

Feedback is always appreciated.

download lolCats.mp3 by Drown Radio here

I have always had this obsession of recording a high quality outgoing voice mail message for my cell phone. Those who called me anytime in the last three years have probably heard some sort of cell phone jingle consisting of me, my guitar, and a well placed cell phone, but I’ve never been able to capture that full Drown Radio sound via voicemail.

When I bought my iPhone last month I thought “I’m sure there’s a simple one click mp3 upload to my voicemail and I’m done”. A quick search showed no such feature, nor any 3rd party apps to produce the desired effect. Then I started looking at the hardware itself, although the casing is slightly different, the headphone/mic is just a 1/8th inch jack with 4 connectors (left, right, microphone, and ground). So my first plan was to buy a 1/8th inch cable with four sections on the tip so I could capture external audio into the microphone channel. I found a cable intended foriPod Videos to be plugged into a tv set. The cable is an 1/8th inch to RCA, so all I had to do was find the mic line and plug my four track device (or if you have an RCA to 1/8th” adapter, you can use your mp3 player) into the RCA side.

That worked okay, but obviously there is a big difference between a mic level and an amplified audio source. Even with my 4 track playing at the lowest level possible, the VM recording was highly over driven. Technically, it was a success, but I kept searching for an all digital alternative.

Luckily, I found this article on iPhone Alley with analternative method of file uploading. The author says that you have to convert your audio file to an AMR (they provide a link for converting), then record a dummy message on your iPhone but don’t save it. Instead, find the “greeting.amr” stored on your phone using SFTP and replace it with your own “greeting.amr” file. Then tap “save” and the file will upload to AT&T’s servers.

My buddy Baz did all that stuff for me… I don’t program.

I was able to upload the file, but the quality was just not what I was looking for this time either. There is a warble to the audio, like a damaged old audio cassette… so both of these methods work, but not perfectly. I guess I would suggest the RCA to 1/8th inch method out of pure simplicity.

I’ve uploaded my original voicemail greeting, please check it out here! It’s the first song I’ve recorded since my computer crashed 5 months ago and I love it. It was fun to blow the dust of the old four track machine and crank out a jam. Some of you may recognize it as an alternative to the Northwest Nerdcore Podcast theme song I wrote in February.

Another audio project for your iPhone is uploading your own ring tones from mp3s. Luckily, this is super easy (as long as you didn’t upgrade to 1.1.1) via a 3rd party app called “Send Song”. It’s easy to upload, all you need isNullriver’s “Installer” app on
your phone. Send Song, which is included in the Installer.app, let’s you go through your iPhone’s iTune playlist and grab any song for use as a ring tone. You can even assign certain ring tones to certain phone numbers.

I’m sure you probably want to hear the Hyphy Ring tone I wrote, check it out here.

Are you an audio/iPhone geek with suggestions for my voicemail problem? Leave a comment.

Click Pic To Play

Last week, MC Slutsky (”Irina” to her close cadre of friends) asked me to help her and the Vloggies Show create a new song to enter into the VlogDeathMatch.com music video challenge. This video our result. Irina spends her time as a professional video blogger, not a rapper, but it’s fun to work on music projects together. After working on Boobs In A Box with Irina, I didn’t want our next track to be another parody video.

Slutsky’s Deathmatch video is way better than Boobs In A Box, despite the fact that we did it in the same amount of time. I love the high contrast colors, and unique scenes, but I think the music is pretty fucking tight too (if I do say so myself).

Speaking of, you can grab the mp3 here, but it’s missing Ask A Ninja’s voice though.

After you check it out, you can go see the other videos and vote here. I totally suggest seeing The Burg’s and Nathan Miller’s videos.

You can also check out our original promo here.

Don’t forget to vote.

I’ve talked with the folks at GETV, and they’ve said it would be fine for me to post the instrumental on this site, so I’m now making this instrumental available for others to use for non-commercial purposes only. All I ask is that if you use this instrumental to make a Dick In A Box spoof and post it online, be sure to credit Drown Radio and provide a link. I would also like to see or hear any work that uses this instrumental. Don’t make money, give me credit, share it with me, that’s all.

Here is the mp3 of the instrumental, have fun with it.