Student: Sean Mc Keown (09005138)
Chosen Blog: Synthtopia
Chosen Post: "New Novation Launchpad - The $199 Ableton Live Controller"

Synthtopia is a music technology blog published by, web analyst, James Lewin. This is a blog devoted to electronic music, which unlike other blogs which focus on one particular sub-genre, Synthopia covers a wide range of music, all of which falls under "Electronic Music". This Blog covers: articles, artists, free music, news and reviews (of both music and equipment). This blog is also available to follow through RSS news feeds.

The blog is posted to quite regularly with an average of 13 daily, or about 93 posts weekly. These posts generally feature some form of media such as images, audio and/or video which is vital for this type of blog, focusing on music. Posting to the blog varies over time as it is published by only one blogger.
As we can see, in the post graph (left), posting is marked in blue and reading is marked in orange. Posting peaks at approx. 4 AM (GMT) as Lewis is situated in America. This suggests he generally posts in the evenings, after work.

Synthtopia has quite a large target audience as it focuses on all aspects of electronic music, and is not specific to any particular sub-genre. This tends to be an audience of quite advanced musicians due to the language used and technical qualities of the posts. This is clearly seen as Google Reader, a subscription based news reader shows 1,897 subscribed, whereas the internationally renowned music magazine DJMag blog has a mere 105 subscribers.

The language used in these posts is generally quite sophisticated and technical, frequently using abbreviations such as "VST", meaning Virtual Studio Technology,
DAW, meaning Digital Audio Workststion, MIDI, meaning Musical Instrument Digital Interface and using terms associated with music production such as "Synthesis" and "Oscillation". While this is not the most complicated language we might see, it is certanly not aimed at the novice musican but a more advanced audience as stated earlier.

The page layout of posts is quite simple. At the top of the page, we see the website logo, blog title and date, followed by the main body of the post, any relevant links, related posts and comments. There is also a short section for subscribing, sending a post to a friend etc. The main body of the post consists of any relevant audio, video and images followed by a description and any hyperlinks relevant to the post. Next is the related posts section and a space containing post tags, for easier searching and archiving. This is followed by a share section, allowing users to tweet the blog entry, post to facebook etc. Along the sides of the page we see a topics, popular tags, search and recent activity section, All in all this is a simple blog layout but contains all the information, links etc. a viewer could want in a very user friendly manner.

The system used for posting comments and recieving feedback on this site is simply the easiest and most informative system on the web. Registered users can login using their IntenseDebate, Twitter or OpenID account, allowing them to personalise their account and keep track of comments, replies and blogs. Unregistered users can also comment as a guest, and by enetring their e-mail address also recieve feedback on comments and replies. When commenting readers can also embed videos and links.

Chosen Post: Novation Launchpad



Instantly my attention was grabbed by this post due to the title "New Novation LaunchPad – The $199 Ableton Live Controller". Ableton Live is a innovative industry standard software DAW, to record music, mix tracks, DJ and use VST instruments to create MIDI music tracks. Yet doing so much on a computer with just a mouse and keyboard is extremely tedious if not impossible. The Novation LaunchPad enables the user to physically trigger clips and adjust parameters in real-time, creating a physical link between software and end-user, and providing feedback through the lit up clip matrix. The LaunchPad can also be used to input notes and create clips. This post features several videos and a detailed description of the LaunchPad effortlessly providing an in-depth, concise, informative review of something so advanced.

Blog Comments:

Please note all comments are submitted under the username "smck99"

1. Synthtopia.com - New Novation LaunchPad – The $199 Ableton Live Controller
2. Synthtopia.com - Free Mellotron Software Synthesizer For PCs
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