It’s 10:00am, I am enjoying a morning coffee (Lavazza mmmmm) a piece of toast with cheese on top, and the thought that today I will be spending today recording yet more sound effects, rather than spending my day breathing solder fumes, fixing other peoples broken guitars while my own broken ones sulk miserable and neglected in their stands.
I am doing sound for a NZ indie game called Derelict. It’s a first person shooter, where you control five different characters. Which at first can be a little confusing but once you get the hang of it it’s very cool.
My very short retelling of the storyline would go like this - “You’re on a space ship, there are monsters. Kill them all.” There is in fact a lot more too it than that, but I won’t go spoiling it for you. You can download a beta copy of the game, and read the development blog for it at http://earok.blogspot.com/. The current version doesn’t have any of my sounds in it yet, but I’ll keep you posted as to when I’m done.
Anyway, the coffee is gone so I better get started.
P.S. Portfolio updated. I have added some music from another game I have worked on recently. I can’t say any details about that game at this stage though. Secret Squirrel.
I found this video on a blog I read called open culture. I had heard a lot about these patterns, they are sometimes used in acoustic instrument making, but this is the first time I’ve actually seen it. These patterns called Chladni Patterns after Ernst Chladni who apparently invented this technique in the 1700’s.
Music is not a linear experience, it is four-dimensional. The sound is produce through the vibration of strings in roughly one dimension (the string has thickness). Surfaces and cavities (such as the body of a violin) vibrate in two and three dimensions. All the vibrations propagate in three dimensions through space. The air in a room filled with music is vibrating, and the shape and material of the walls also have resonant frequencies just as the instruments do. Cymatic visualization is used as a tool in acoustics to develop high quality instruments and sound systems. A movie theater outfitted with a THX or Dolby sound system has been optimized for a pleasurable aural experience by analyzing the building materials, placement of speakers, and other considerations.”
I find it very fascinating to be able to ’see sound’. Even zooming in and seeing the wave-form representation in recording software is of endless entertainment to me. It amazes me the way something can be both so simple and so complex at the same time.
What do you think about visual representations of sound?
New Zealand Music Month began in 2001. Each May, New Zealand music is showcased on radio and television and in live performances.
New Zealand Music Month aims to boost the visibility and success of New Zealand music. It was developed to support the New Zealand music industry by creating a commercially successful platform for local performers. In 2000 airtime for New Zealand music on commercial radio stations made up around 10% of programming. By 2005 this figure had increased to nearly 23%. The amount of New Zealand music sold increased from 5.45% of the total market in 2000 to over 10% by 2004.
Us NZers are lucky to have a whole month in celebration of NZ music! It’s not just about going out and buying a CD by a NZ musician though… Get out and go to gigs, learn an instrument, start a band or get your mates over for a jam. Tell your friends about your favorite NZ bands. Support, celebrate and enjoy NZ music.
My 5 favorite New Zealand bands/artists this May are…
1. Matt Thomas - I heard Matt’s song “Come back round” late one night on a drive home and just couldn’t get it out of my head for the rest of the trip. Love it
2. Battle Circus These guys are cool. I always seem to have their song “Send in the Clones” floating about in my MP3 player. I love the way they muck about with odd time signatures.
3. Plum Green I heard about Plum Green through a friend of mine, the production/recording on some of the songs is a little rough but the songs themselves are beautiful. My fav is “Below the Water”.
4. Infinite Flying Kick I love to see IFK play live! They’re fantastic My fav IFK song is “Sad Robot”.
5. Crash Test for Favorite Things I don’t believe I’ve been to one of their gigs yet, but I somehow ended up on their mailing list and after spending half a year deleting their spam I finally gave in and checked out there website - and there’s some really great music on it
There are heaps of great NZ bands, but I’ve just listed 5 for today so as not to overwhelm readers with a spectacular Spaghetti of links. I will list another 5 next week.
I have been dying to get a Piano for a while now, however with the stairs, and the tuning, and the space it just hasn’t proved practical. But I’ve been also needing a new MIDI controller Keyboard. Mine is only two octaves, and a few notes don’t work so good after the coffee incident… So I found a good medium point. A fairly decent digital Piano. I didn’t go overboard and get one with all the bells and whistles since I’m going to be using it with my computer anyway. It has a great Piano sound and feel, a USB port, and who needs anything else?
It has a GH3 Keyboard which has different weightings on the hammers, so the action is heavier in the lower end of the keyboard and lighter in the high end making it very realistic to play.
Within minutes of setting it up I found myself writing this piece. Apologies for my rusty playing - I haven’t lived with a piano since moving out of my parents house about ten years ago, so I have a lot of practicing to catch up on
I have noticed this search coming up a fair bit in my stats, so thought I better write a post on it. I’m gonna grab a vocal line from something I’m writing at the moment, and run through using the Adobe Audition Pitch correction plug-in. I am using version 1.5, but version three is out now hopefully the operation will be reasonably similar.
You can not use the Adobe Audition Pitch Correction in real-time in the multi-track window. You have to select the track you wish to pitch correct, and double click it to go into the edit window. Here is the vocal line in the song without pitch correction.
It is best to pitch correct the vocal track line by line. Select the first line, then go to pitch correction. The Automatic function can be very good if you know the key you’re in, I find it a little unreliable if I use the chromatic scale setting. I am singing in A Major for this piece, but there are some parts of the song where I need to sing a C natural which is not in the key of A major, so I can’t just pitch correct the entire song to A major. However, I can pitch the first line to A major. The next line, I can adjust the pitch manually by selecting the manual tab, finding the note that needs tweaking and then adjust the envelope as shown in the picture. So I can go through the entire song quite quickly line by line either adjusting to the key signature, or manually adjusting any notes that either don’t fit the key signature or are too far off.
Here’s the corrected vocal line, it’s just done roughly because it’s only a rough vocal take for a demo of a song. And no amount of pitch correction could make a rough vocal take sound great.
Extreme pitch correction can be used as an interesting effect… In adobe audition just turn everything up to max and pretend you’re Daft Punk, or Cher, or a robot.
I have just got back from a nice little trip to Melbourne Australia, and while I was there I was lucky enough to stumble across an exhibition called “Game On”. As I’ve been doing music for computer games here and there I thought I better pop in for a look. The Exhibition is on the history of computer games, and they have over 100 playable exhibits. Some are on old computers, some are original arcade games, some groovy old retro hand held games, and plenty of new shiny stuff too. The neat thing is, the history of computer games is not yet long enough to be dull and boring (like, the history of literature… dare I say it? I love books… but… yeah…).
You can find more details about Game On at http://www.acmi.net.au/game_on.aspx I really recommend checking it out if you have the chance. I’m not a ‘gamer’ at all but I still got a lot out of it and found it really interesting and fun. And yes, they have a computer music section and I spent waaay to long hogging the headphones and listening to all the game music
The Beta version of a game I’ve done music for has just come out. The game is called “Attack of the Meeplings” And is a cute neo-retro bullet dodge arcade style browser based game. Well, that’s how I’d describe it I guess It’s made by TinyFrog Software, and the game can be found at http://www.tinyfrogsoftware.com/aotm/
The music I did is done with General Midi, which was a challenge in itself. I think I already blogged a little while back about rediscovering the joys of MIDI, and while MIDI is a little outdated,and quite restricting, is does have some advantages. Because Attack of the Meeplings is a browser based game, it’s preferable for it to have a small file size for fast download. MIDI file sizes are ridiculously tiny, so ideal for this sort of thing. The other advantage we had with MIDI in the case of this game, is the fact that you can change the BPM. The game starts off with the music playing at 140BPM, and as the game speeds up with each level, the music plays faster and faster. Unfortunately I’m really bad at computer games, and haven’t managed to get past the first level. Yet…..
Well, The RPM challenge is over, and while I didn’t complete it in time I feel it was definitely worth while attempting it because I have written a lot of new material that I otherwise would not have.
Next year, I think I would do a few things differently to make sure I finished in time.
Not starting a week late. I started a week late this time, because I heard of the RPM for the first time a week into February.
Not spend so long on songwriting. I spent so long writing, demoing, then rejecting songs, that I planned to do most of my proper recording and mixing in the last few days. This backfired terribly when I got the stupid flu and spent the last few days lying on the couch feeling like death microwaved on high for 30 seconds.
Take it more seriously. Probably the biggest reason I didn’t finish, is simply the fact that I didn’t make it my number 1 priority. If I had taken it more seriously, I would have been forcibly removing visitors from my home - family or not, recording on those last few days no matter how sick I felt, and recording in the evenings without worrying about annoying the neighbors.
I had actually been planning on having a proper album finished by June, so this was good motivation to get some more material together, and I now have a few new songs that I’m quite keen on (and quite a few I’m not!).
[Actually, if I had really low standards I could just send in ten demo’s I’ve done, but nah. Not gonna happen ;) ]
Somehow in between all my procrastinating I have managed to come up with my ten RPM Challenge songs Duh duh duh duuum…..
1. Don’t want to wake up (without you)
2. Long Road
3. Wasting time*
4. Lullabye*
5. Ragdoll
6. This world (instrumental)*
7. End of the world*
8. Second Best
9. Autumn Leaves*
10. Song for Dan (Instrumental)*
* Far too many of these songs are rehashed old songs originally written at least 3 years ago! I’ve had writers block all month
Now that I have spent two days tidying and rearranging my workspace in order to maximise my work efficiency, I think I will actually start recording my final versions of these songs.
Off Topic: During my tidying and reorganising process, I came across an old Savage Garden cd. Now, while I am ashamed to admit I was a huge Savage Garden fan as a teenager, I am almost more ashamed to admit that I can still hear exactly what I liked about them. Bar the cheesy lyrics, and the sheer awfulness of Truely Madly Deeply, the songs on their self titled album are really kinda cool! Don’t lynch me! :) I just love all the synths and harmonies. It’s neat music.
Musicians can get writers block. I get it all the time, especially leading up to a deadline (like now). Common symptoms include:
Repeatedly playing Stairway to Heaven or Nothing Else Matters on the guitar for no apparent reason.
Listening over and over to previous work just so you can pick out every single little mistake.
Listening to your favourite songs over and over, picking out all the clever bits that are so much better than your own work
Drinking Coffee and eating Toast.
Doing housework, running errands, catching up on paperwork, blogging…
The worst thing is when you can think of a hundred things to write a song about - but none of it just seems any good. My current ideas involve sick frogs, the IRD, and mismatched socks.
The other worst thing is when you give up on what you’re writing a song about and just try to come up with some good music and/or riffs. When you have writers block, everything always sounds too much like something else. Sometimes, it all just sounds crap. Sometime it doesn’t sound like anything because you can’t even come up with anything.
Cures for writers/composers block:
Actually having feelings or opinions to write about. (Rumour has it you can get these by giving a damn - harder than it looks sometimes)
Being almost at the deadline… and dropping your standards to write about things you originally thought were crap when you had a lot of time to think about it.
Finding God (Christian bands NEVER run out of things to write about )
Harnessing random fluctuations in the Time Space Continuum. (eg, open any random book at a random page and randomly point at something on the page and write about whatever that’s about. Also works quite well with like dream cards, the random button on wikipedia, or even your media player set to random. [I secretly suspect all those Christian bands just write songs by doing this with the bible!])
Doing housework, running errands, catching up on paperwork, blogging… Sometimes stopping trying to compose and doing something else for a little while can give your brain a little time to stew things over and come up with some proper ideas.
It’s 10:00am, I am enjoying a morning coffee (Lavazza mmmmm) a piece of toast with cheese on top, and the thought that today I will be spending today recording yet more sound effects, rather than spending my day breathing solder fumes, fixing other peoples broken guitars while my own broken ones sulk miserable and neglected in their stands.
I have been dying to get a Piano for a while now, however with the stairs, and the tuning, and the space it just hasn’t proved practical. But I’ve been also needing a new MIDI controller Keyboard. Mine is only two octaves, and a few notes don’t work so good after the coffee incident… So I found a good medium point. A fairly decent digital Piano. I didn’t go overboard and get one with all the bells and whistles since I’m going to be using it with my computer anyway. It has a great Piano sound and feel, a USB port, and who needs anything else?
)
