terrible twos

…in which we contemplate our second birthday.

The wikiGong website will be two years old tomorrow, July 26, 2011. You can read about the trepidation leading up to the launch on our first blog entry—wikiGong countdown—or by following the countdown tag. The site is eight months younger than the domain name registration, but it’s the site that matters.

My hope for the third year is to focus on the business of collecting interesting materials and posting samples to the Sounds pages. (Yes, the ccHost wrapper still looks a little rough after our latest facelift, but everything’s functional and I’m hoping tweaking/hacking CSS doesn’t become a substitute for creativity. It’ll get better, just not on a deadline.) It’s also time to start using the materials we’ve already got:

• Remixing
  We’ve got few hundred samples now, plenty of grist for resampling and seeking our musique concrète roots. The ccHost engine, coupled with the small MP3 file sizes, makes searching through the list quick and relatively painless. Try the wikiGong Sounds remixes link to get an idea.
• Cross-posting
  Nothing viral is going to happen in the niche we occupy now unless word gets out. That’s where some strategic cross-posts to ccMixter.org will help. The original site is still the most active ccHost community and seems like the most likely fruitful vector for spreading this content around.
• Performing
  With the implementation of the Audio Player Flash plug-in [Update 2020-04-23: Invalid wpAudioPlayer domain link removed], the site itself is starting to get playable, too. It’s organized thematically—ccHost remixes are typically sorted in reverse post order—which some will find limiting. But I still aim to put together some collections that will work more like instruments: I have in mind a a DIY sampling synth page template.

Observing anniversaries, I’m often drawn to contemplate endings as well as beginnings. This time of year, we pay our brief respects to Harry Castle, who helped talk this whole thing into motion and then moved on; I like to re-read A gong is retired. And this year will be the tenth remembering Pete Ayer, my father, who went out doing what he loved at seventy three and—as far as I know—never had much use for the Internet beyond its early Interlibrary Loan application.

That said, I’m looking forward to taking this to a new level. Hope you’re with me. Contact us for access, or submit a comment for moderation…