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The jack-o'-lanterns are carved, the candy is in a big bowl, and your costume is ready. You need only one more thing to set the mood for your trick-or-treaters or Halloween party: scary music and sound effects.
With digital music and sound effects, you can easily brew your own playlists to put a chill in the night air. Burning these playlist potions to a CD to play at your party or the front door to greet trick-or-treaters will definitely make the night come alive with the sounds of Halloween.
Collecting music and sound effects
First you need to collect the ingredients needed for these frightening potions. It is easy to find collections of Halloween music and sound effects online. Many online music sites and stores that sell CDs carry Halloween related music and sound effects. There are even some CD compilations made specifically for children which are perfect for a party of young princesses and goblins. You can also create your own list of songs that you know you want and download them individually from your favorite online music service.
Doing a quick search online we easily found CD collections that included:
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Halloween culture classics: All ages will recognize Addams Family theme, Monster Mash, and Ghostbusters.
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Spooky favorites made just for children: Who knew that there were Halloween songs like If You're Scary and You Know It, Five Little Pumpkins, and 5 Little Pumpkins?
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Classic Halloween sound effects: All of the standards including screaming people, ghoulish greetings, and UFO and other alien sounds.
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Scary sounds of horror: These types of CDs include groaning people, fearful animal noises, and extreme sound effects meant to really scare party goers and trick-or-treaters. You're likely to find some with a few eerie background sounds such as wind, heartbeats, and thunder claps included.
Do your own search, and find the CDs that are right for your ghoulish plans. Then get to work building your playlists and customizing your CD.
Having your music stored digitally on your computer allows you to create customized playlists to fit your personal interests. This is a great advantage for making a Halloween custom CD and we've put together some tips to help get you started on your creation.
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Rock your Halloween bash with music appropriate to the occasion by mixing classic Halloween tunes with eerie sound effects. You'll put smiles on people's faces and raise the hairs on the back of their necks at the same time.
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For a kids' party you can combine music and sounds that will capture the Halloween spirit without scaring the little ones too much.
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Many sound effect clips are short so try adding the same clip into your playlist multiple times in a row to create a sustained sound.
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Add some interesting transitional effects between sustained sounds to add even more creativity to your mixes. For example, add a thunder clap between a sustained wind effect, and you've got a stormy night.
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Play a custom mix of Halloween spooky sounds at the front door. You'll set the stage for your frightening appearance even before the trick-or-treaters ring your bell.
Get creative by mixing and matching sounds that create a chilling experience. As you can see, making custom CDs isn't just for mixing music anymore.
ets us say you have just download a new album or game but all the files are .xxx and you need them to be zip's, rar's, mp3's etc..... then do the following
-create a new folder -put all the files needing editing in the new folder -then goto "run" in the start menu -type in CMD and click ok
-the next thing needsa few bits of old dos commands -you need to navagate CMD to the folder whree the files are -you can do this by 1st getting the total adress of the folder -and then typing it in cmd with a "cd" in frount QUOTE cd c:\xxx\yyy\ccc\
once you in the folder where the files are you can move on nb u can cheek you in the right folder by typing dir to get a list of files
-now type in.... QUOTE rename *.* *.zip
Nb change the zip to what ever the extention needs to be (.rar, .mp3 ect)
all done you should hv now changed the .* to what ever you needed
in your Grand Theft Auto Vice City / Audio folder you will see a bunch of mp3's
you wanna find
malibu.mp3 strip.mp3 stripa.mp3 (short clip only needs to be half of a song)
open a few songs for each clip you want to make.. (fade the beginning or end of the songs if you want to) and open multitrack view.. you can have them fade into eachother. once you have the multitrack session finished go to "FILE" then "SAVE MIXDOWN AS"
you want to save as a 128k 32000 Hz MONO FIle (the same type as the originals) but normal internet 128k 44.1 stereo should work also.. just save as say malibu.mp3 and then replace the one in your audio folder for the one you created.
when i walk into the Malibu i hear david banner and lil' jon singing
These tips work with the final release of Windows XP. Unless otherwise noted, all tips should work with both Home and Professional Editions. Please note that some of these tips may require you to use a Registry Editor (regedit.exe), which could render your system unusable. Thus, none of these tips are supported in any way: Use them at your own risk. Also note that most of these tips will require you to be logged on with Administrative rights.
NEW! Microsoft recently sent along a set of Windows Tips and Office XP Tips that might also be of interest.
Here's a movie of this tip in action 335 Kbps Windows Media Video format, 404K
Delete files when the Recycle Bin is hidden I actually discovered this tip accidentally recently and thought it was appropriate for the Tips page, even though it's probably been a feature of Windows for years. (UPDATE: Sure enough, it's been around for a while. It's still a cool tip and proof that one learns something every day).
By default, the Windows XP Recycle Bin sits at the bottom right of the desktop, just above the tray notification area and system clock. If you've got a bunch of floating windows open, however, it's possible to obscure the Recycle Bin and make it impossible to drag files and folders there for deletion. However, Microsoft must have thought of this event, because you can automatically hide all of those open windows during a drag operation. The first time it happened, I thought it was a fluke. But it's not. Instead, it's a cool hidden feature of XP.
Here's how it works: Make sure a bunch of windows are open on the screen, with at least one of them hiding the Recycle Bin. Then, find a file or group of files you'd like to drag to the Recycle Bin. Pick up the files with the mouse and move them to the lower right of the screen. As you reach the bottom area of the screen, pass the mouse cursor over a blank area of the task bar, hover there for an instant, and--voila!--the open windows all minimize, leaving the Recycle Bin available to accept the dragged files. Good stuff. This tip also works when windows are maximized, assuming the file(s) you want to delete are visible in one of the available windows.
Add album art to any music folder Contributed by Richard Davidson and Brian Donovan This is easily my favorite tip! One of the coolest new features in Windows XP is its album thumbnail generator, which automatically places the appropriate album cover art on the folder to which you are copying music (generally in WMA format). But what about those people that have already copied their CDs to the hard drive using MP3 format? You can download album cover art from sites such as cdnow.com or amguide.com, and then use the new Windows XP folder customize feature to display the proper image for each folder. But this takes time--you have to manually edit the folder properties for every single folder--and you will lose customizations if you have to reinstall the OS. There's an excellent fix, however.
When you download the album cover art from the Web, just save the images as folder.jpg each time and place them in the appropriate folder. Then, Windows XP will automatically use that image as the thumbnail for that folder and, best of all, will use that image in Media Player for Windows XP (MPXP) if you choose to display album cover art instead of a visualization. And the folder customization is automatic, so it survives an OS reinstallation as well. Your music folders never looked so good!
Album cover art makes music folder thumbnails look better than ever!
UPDATE: In addition to the folder.jpg file mentioned above, you can also optionally create a smaller version of the image called albumartsmall.jpg, if desired. This is the image used to display album art in MPXP when its sized so that the display area is smaller than 200 x 200 pixels, and in the folder thumbnails for folders that contain album folders. If you don't create albumartsmall.jpg, however, Windows XP will automatically scale folder.jpg in these cases.
Automatically defrag drives with a new context menu item! Contributed by Doug Knox Create a new Registry import file named context_defrag.inf in Notepad (be sure to save with it with the Save as type set to All Files and not Text Documents) and place the following text inside:
; context_defrag.INF
; Adds Defrag to the right click context menu in Windows XP
Then, right-click and choose Install. This will add a context menu to XP that allows you to automatically defrag drives, using the command line version of the built-in defragmentation utility. To use it, navigate to a drive in My Computer, right-click, and choose Defrag. A command line window will appear, and that drive will be defragged. When it's complete, the window just disappears.
UPDATE: To remove this functionality, Open regedit.exe and navigate to the following location:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\
Then delete the Defrag folder and close Regedit.
Add/Remove optional features of Windows XP Contributed by Ong Choon Keong and Hans Breemer I first mentioned this technique in an old Technology Showcase for Windows 2000, but it still works in Windows XP, and can be quite useful: For some reason, Microsoft has removed the ability to specify which Windows components you want to install during interactive Setup, and when you go into Add/Remove Windows Components in the Control Panel, you still don't have the full list of applications and applets you can add and remove. Thankfully, this is easy to fix.
To dramatically expand the list of applications you can remove from Windows XP after installation, navigate to C:\WINDOWS\inf (substituting the correct drive letter for your version of Windows) and open the sysoc.inf file. Under Windows XP Professional Edition, this file will resemble the following by default:
The entries that include the text hide or HIDE will not show up in Add/Remove Windows Components by default. To fix this, do a global search and replace for ,hide and change each instance of this to , (a comma). Then, save the file, relaunch Add/Remove Windows Components, and tweak the installed applications to your heart's content.
Cool, eh? There are even more new options now under "Accessories and Utilities" too.
Remove the Shared Documents folders from My Computer Contributed by Bryan Somerville One of the most annoying things about the new Windows XP user interface is that Microsoft saw fit to provide links to all of the Shared Documents folders on your system, right at the top of the My Computer window. I can't imagine why this would be the default, even in a shared PC environment at home, but what's even more annoying is that you cannot change this behavior through the shell: Those icons are stuck there and you have to live with it.
Until now, that is.
Simply fire up the Registry Editor and navigate to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ My Computer \ NameSpace \ DelegateFolders
You'll see a sub-key named {59031a47-3f72-44a7-89c5-5595fe6b30ee}. If you delete this, all of the Shared Documents folders (which are normally under the group called "Other Files Stored on This Computer") will be gone.
You do not need to reboot your system to see the change.
Before: A cluttered mess with icons no one will ever use (especially that orpaned one).
After: Simplicity itself, and the way it should be by default.
Display the Sharing Tab in Folder Properties Contributed by Paul Knight In Windows 2000, getting to the Sharing options for a folder was simple: Just right-click, choose Properties, and you'd see a Sharing tab. In Windows XP, this feature is missing by default, but you can make the system display the Sharing tab if desired. Simply open up Folder Options (My Computer, then Tools, Folder Options) and navigate to the View tab. In the Advanced Settings section, scroll down to the bottom and uncheck Use simple file sharing (Recommended), a Mickey Mouse feature if there ever was one. Now share your folders on the LAN as you would in Windows 2000.
Use the ultimate configuration tool (Professional Edition only) Contributed by several readers One of the most full featured Windows XP configuration tools available is hidden right there in your system, but most people don't even know it exists. It's called the Local Group Policy Editor, or gpedit for short. To invoke this editor, select Start and then Run, then type the following:
gpedit.msc
After you hit ENTER, you'll be greeted by gpedit, which lets you modify virtually every feature in Windows XP without having to resort to regedit. Dig around and enjoy!
GPEDIT: It's your best friend for XP configuration.
Use the Windows Sound Scheme Contributed by Keith Furman Windows XP ships with a really nice new sound scheme, but it's not loaded by default for some reason. So once you've installed Windows XP, one of the first things you should do is get that new sound scheme loaded.
To do so, open up Control Panel and navigate to Sounds, Speech, and Audio Devices. Then, choose the task titled Change the sound scheme. In the dialog that appears, choose Windows Default for the sound scheme. Windows will ask you whether you want to save the previous scheme, which is usually a brain-dead questions, since no scheme was previously loaded. So choose No, and then click OK to exit the dialog.
Rip high-quality MP3s in Media Player for Windows XP (MPXP) Contributed by Mark Elder, updated by Paul Thurrott The relationship between Media Player for Windows XP (MPXP) and the MP3 audio format is widely misunderstood. Basically, MPXP is able to playback MP3 files out of the box, but encoding (or "ripping") CD audio into MP3 format will require an MP3 plug-in. During the Windows XP beta, Microsoft supplied a sample MP3 plug-in for testing purposes, but it was limited to 56 Kbps rips, which is pretty useless, leading some to report that Microsoft was purposefully hobbling MP3 to make its Windows Media Audio (WMA) format look better. This is not the case.
To enable MP3 encoding in Windows XP, you'll need to to purchase one of three MP3 Creation Add-on packs for Windows XP. For more information, please visit the Microsoft Web site.
Speed up the Start Menu Contributed by Paris Paraskevas and Jarrett Miller The default speed of the Start Menu is pretty slow, but you can fix that by editing a Registry Key. Fire up the Registry Editor and navigate to the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Control Panel \ Desktop \ MenuShowDelay
By default, the value is 400. Change this to a smaller value, such as 0, to speed it up.
If this doesn't work for some reason, then you might try the following: Navigate to Display Properties then Appearance then Effects and turn off the option titled Show menu shadow. You will get much better overall performance.
Enable ClearType on the Welcome Screen! Contributed by Erdim Tanyeri As laptop users and other LCD owners are quickly realizing, Microsoft's ClearType technology in Windows XP really makes a big difference for readability. But the this feature is enabled on a per-user basis in Windows XP, so you can't see the effect on the Welcome screen; it only appears after you logon.
But you can fix that. Fire up the Registry Editor and look for the following keys:
Make sure both of these values are set to 2 and you'll have ClearType enabled on the Welcome screen and on each new user by default.
Stop Windows Messenger from Auto-Starting Contributed by Kevin Mazzone If you're not a big fan of Windows Messenger, you can use the tip "Add/Remove optional features of Windows XP" above to remove it, or simply delete the following Registry Key:
Display Hibernate Option on the Shut Down dialog Contributed by Graham Vosloo For some reason, Hibernate isn't available from the default Shut Down dialog. But you can enable it simply enough, by holding down the SHIFT key while the dialog is visible. Now you see it, now you don't!
