Mr. Jobs Demands a Fortune

I had to go out and buy an AC adapter for my newly acquired iPod yesterday. I had been using it with my iBook. For some reason it took an extremely long time for the disc icon to mount on the desktop. Then iTunes was really slow in opening. After what seemed like forever it would begin to update the iPod. I knew instinctively that something was amiss, so I poked around a little. I hadn't spent much time studying the new product. What I found was this particular iPod was formatted with or for Windows. There was my problem. As a dedicated Mac owner and operator, there was no point in having Windows anywhere in my home, except to see outside. I searched around the net and found the updater on Apple's site. This was a relief and more of a relief when I found out it was a free download. 42 megs later and about five minutes of download time over Roadrunner and WiFi, it took all of 15 seconds to change the format to Mac OS. My problem was solved, and the factory settings were restored. This was kind of a drag though, because many of the functions by default now were turned off. Like any new computer software, I had to customize it to my tastes, which I am still doing. Of course my entire MP3 collection was wiped out in the process, but that was okay. I needed to take some time to stream line my collection of CD's anyway. First and foremost I had to import my own personal music. I have scores of CD's. I have 12 CD's of projects I created and produced in my home studio. What are they? Back when I lived in Columbus, Ohio there was a guy living there that was a pioneer of this process. His name was Kim Pensyl. His success in music came from producing his own projects. That meant writing, performing, recording, then mastering your own projects. Because CD was the accepted medium of the day, you then had to burn the discs yourself. I said to myself with nine years of college music study, I should be able to do this, and I did. I went into credit card debt to the tune of $15,000.00, but I knew as an active and hard-working musician I would be able to pay it all off soon, which I also did, almost. Although now I am not a fan of credit and got rid of all my credit cards, I have those companies to thank for allowing me the capital to invest in my dream. I didn't squander the money. I selectively and carefully invested the money in the necessary equipment to be able to produce my own CD's. I did this on a shoestring budget. To finance a professional recording studio would require hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment capital. I used $15,000.00, and not all of that was for music. There was some rent and beverage thrown in there too. In fact the credit card debt really began when I inherited bad upstairs neighbors in the apartment complex in which I was living. There was no acoustical ceiling like there isn't in most cheaply built rental properties. I had been producing "computer" music on a small scale in this space, and the old fart living upstairs didn't dig it. He could hear and didn't like the tap, tap, tap of my fingers on the quirtey keyboard, much less hearing MIDI music. I couldn't go to sleep at night because of their noise, so I found a watering hole with a nice, girly staff, the Comedy Channel showing, and a quality juke box that played LOUD! There were about 20 pool tables too. Because my cash was limited, I began drinking on my credit card. There was that. For some reason the monthly payment kept coming down. Each month when I received the statement, that figure was lower. "Great Scott, Batman! I can buy musical equipment and only have to make these ridiculously low payments." It was like a free, easy loan, so I took advantage of it. Slowly but surely I pieced together a Macintosh system with an external hard drive that allowed me to sample, sequence, and record digital audio on four tracks of MOTU's Digital Performer. I bought only what I needed to make quality sounding music that hopefully some one would want to listen to one day. This is what Kim Pensyl had been doing for a decade, and it landed him a record deal with GRP. I refined and developed the system and learned how to use it, and over the course of two years created 12 differing and varied CD projects of which I am extremel proud. I used Adaptec Toast to burn them to disc. When iTunes came out I had to ask myself, "Is this something I should learn how to use?" Well, I did, but the computer came before the egg, I mean the Pod. After I finally got the Pod, I realized why iTtunes was created in the first place. Most people didn't really listen to the music off their computer. They downloaded it to their iPod to carry around with them. "Yikes, Batman!" Another revelation. A portable, programmable, digital music player that performs more easily and more reliably than the Sony Walkman. (those damn CD's always seem to skip when you are moving around) What I had to figure out was how, without the CCDB database, to input my own finished CD's into iTunes but with track and album information. I had been through this experiment before with Toast. I took the time to add track names to ALL my CD's, not just my own personal projects. That meant scores of recorded CD's from four years of cruise ship work. I typed all those track names in, and when I decided to clean my hard drive, Toast just up and forgot all of them. "Drats!" I have had to do most of it again, but that is good seeing as the MP3 is the file of choice these days. I figured out how to input the track information and get it written into the file name of the MPEG4 for good. That way you can't lose track of them, with so many MP3 files floating around in your library. Anyway, that whole process was to pave the way for a final product on the iPod. For the first time I had my own original music on the iPod, just like any other artist. My name appears just like Bob Dylan's, the titles look professional, and the music is good. Hurray! Now I am set for the marketing process but at least in the format that widely is taking the consumer market by storm. By the way, that power adapter for the iPod, that little transformer you usually can buy in radio Shack for $10.00, that little wall wart you need to charge the battery on the fly in public, cost me...... are you ready? $42.00 at Best Buy. Mr. Jobs will eat well today. "Can you spare some change, buddy?"