Live music? on the Net?
Oh yeah! woo hoo! I found my first show!
Thanks to Bill Bumgarner and his post on how to do it, I have become aware of
something I suspected for quite some time: there is live music available on the
internet! Of course, you should only download Trade Friendly music! etree.org has most of
what you need, so if you are a self starter, you can jump to
there.
Not surprisingly, there is a lot of Grateful Dead content. I didn't hesitate much before I went looking for my first live dead show. It was New Years Eve in 1981. I suppose some might say I saw the dead late, and looking back I would agree. I do wish I had seen them in the seventies as well, but there's no going back. I did manage to see them about fifty times in between that first show and Jerry's death.
Below are some notes to expand on Bill's instructions (hmm, would screen shots help?) It should be noted that there is some effort involved to do this, but done right, it results in some very satisfying results.
Enjoy!
Not surprisingly, there is a lot of Grateful Dead content. I didn't hesitate much before I went looking for my first live dead show. It was New Years Eve in 1981. I suppose some might say I saw the dead late, and looking back I would agree. I do wish I had seen them in the seventies as well, but there's no going back. I did manage to see them about fifty times in between that first show and Jerry's death.
Below are some notes to expand on Bill's instructions (hmm, would screen shots help?) It should be noted that there is some effort involved to do this, but done right, it results in some very satisfying results.
Find the show/music you want. One source is the Internet Archive: Live Music Archive.
When you download the files, remember to get the text file of the set list; it will come in handy later. Make sure that you download the "SHN" file(s) if you want the best quality. Warning! These files are big. Expect a full concert to be over a Gigabyte. Even on a fast link this can take some serious time.
Once you get the files, you'll need to convert them to WAV in order to work with them in iTunes. On Bill's suggestion, I downloaded xACT and it worked just fine. I trusted it right form the start and allowed it to delete the original files after decoding them.
Next, get them into iTunes. "Import..." doesn't work on the WAV files, I had to use "Add to Library...". Once you have them in iTuens, isolate them (in most cases, the names of a given show will have some prefix that you can search for (e.g., "gd81-12-31").
Nexxt you need to update the metadata tags. Select them all and "Get Info" on them all at the same time. This allows you to set the name of the band, the date, the genre, the concert info (Album), etc. Don't worry about the individual tracks yet (you did get the track list, right?).
Now make sure you have Bill's "Enumerate Tracks" script. It does more than simply add the N of M track numbering, it also names the tracks. It expects the song list to be in the clipboard. This is where the set list comes in handy, just clean it up a bit so that you only have the songs names in the clipboard, then select the tracks and run the script. (Careful, I had a bunch of inventory info in my clipboard when I ran it the first time and it named my songs after serial numbers. :-O )
You can wait until all the naming is done before you convert the files from WAV to Apple Lossless. Select all the tracks and then use the pop-up (it will convert to your default Import setting) then conversion will occur and will leave the old WAV tracks selected for easy disposal.
When you download the files, remember to get the text file of the set list; it will come in handy later. Make sure that you download the "SHN" file(s) if you want the best quality. Warning! These files are big. Expect a full concert to be over a Gigabyte. Even on a fast link this can take some serious time.
Once you get the files, you'll need to convert them to WAV in order to work with them in iTunes. On Bill's suggestion, I downloaded xACT and it worked just fine. I trusted it right form the start and allowed it to delete the original files after decoding them.
Next, get them into iTunes. "Import..." doesn't work on the WAV files, I had to use "Add to Library...". Once you have them in iTuens, isolate them (in most cases, the names of a given show will have some prefix that you can search for (e.g., "gd81-12-31").
Nexxt you need to update the metadata tags. Select them all and "Get Info" on them all at the same time. This allows you to set the name of the band, the date, the genre, the concert info (Album), etc. Don't worry about the individual tracks yet (you did get the track list, right?).
Now make sure you have Bill's "Enumerate Tracks" script. It does more than simply add the N of M track numbering, it also names the tracks. It expects the song list to be in the clipboard. This is where the set list comes in handy, just clean it up a bit so that you only have the songs names in the clipboard, then select the tracks and run the script. (Careful, I had a bunch of inventory info in my clipboard when I ran it the first time and it named my songs after serial numbers. :-O )
You can wait until all the naming is done before you convert the files from WAV to Apple Lossless. Select all the tracks and then use the pop-up (it will convert to your default Import setting) then conversion will occur and will leave the old WAV tracks selected for easy disposal.
Enjoy!
Posted: Tue - July 26, 2005 at 08:18 AM
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Published On: Oct 06, 2006 03:49 PM
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