A few months ago, I was at home drinking a beer and playing guitar when a blues riff appeared on my mind. I immediately hooked my acoustic-electric guitar to my notebook and recorded the riff idea using a free software that is super versatile and useful called Audacity (besides being the “Swiss Army knife” of digital audio, it is also multiplatform).
I saved the file in the folder where I used to store my musical ideas, but this time I had a different one: Do I really need to make this song all alone? Will it be more useful stored in my “musical ideas folder” or free on the Internet?
After thinking a bit about it, I decided to do things differently… I decided to create a free (as in freedom) music!
The idea is pretty basic: I recorded the instruments I could (Guitar and Drums) and decided to release the tracks here on my blog so that people can do what they want with them. Before that, I decided to send the tracks for some friends, and what was my surprise to get an email from one of them (Deivi, good in several battles in life) saying: “Hold it, because I will write down and record a bass track to put into it.” … I was planing to ask him to do that, but wasn’t necessary.
Deivi also named this experience, “the Fork Blues.”
Fork is the name given to the divisions (or subdivisions) that may existi is a certain free software project. Those diferent flavors are usually made so that we can implement some features that meets a specific group, and not necessarily the whole community. I hope so this is our blues: an eternal Fork (as 80’s as it should sound 
).
My part was done, and the Deivi’s one too (although he told me he made a second version of the bass line, creating the first fork this blues). Now it’s your turn to do the stuff here, and anyone with a PC and a microphone can join the fun.
First step is to download Audacity on your computer. The second is to look for a tutorial on the Internet about it (I found dozens and I simply cannot define “the one” to indicate here). Instead of pointing a tutorial in particular, prefer to leave here the macro steps that you’ll need to follow:
1. Open the track you want in Audacity.
2. Make sure your microphone / musical instrument is connected to Audacity and be able to record from it (several tutorials may help you here).
3. Add a new track to the Audacity project, and connect your microphone / instrument to it.
4. Click “Play”, pick your instrument, record it and enjoy the ride.
5. Use the “export” feature in Audacity to generate the final song file (in .OGG, the open format audio).
If you have enough time and patience, there are several tutorials that teach how to mix the tracks, add effects and mastering your music using Audacity.
For those who have more knowledge in music and free software I recommend is to use the same sw infrastructure I’ve used: Jack and Ardour. I used those to record the guitars and drums, and the detail here is that I used an acustic-electric guitar for the recording and even my guitar effects pedal was free software… Rakarrack.
The only requirements that I make regarding the usage of the audio tracks I’m publishing here are:
1. The material produced from them, should be made available on the Internet, respecting the same requirements stated here.
2. An URL link to the modified material shall be made available on the Internetand its URL shall be published as a comment on this post in my blog.
3. Do what you want with the music! Much more Forks, even better results !
I hope that items 1 and 3 guarantee the freedom (and longevity) of music and the second is focused in much more forks as possible…
The tracks are:
Guitars, drums and bass (must complete version that I’ll provide here)
What are you waiting for to put a letter in the fork blues and give us your voice on the microphone? May you only able to play a door bell? I bet a door bell would sound greate at the Fork Blues!
Good fun for everyone, and I hope that this project shall proof that together we can deliver much more!
Just waiting to receive the links to yours contributions… Long live the Fork Blues!
