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Friday January 9, 2009
Hello Again! It's another fine Friday in January and the new year is well under way. The topic for tonight is music and the focus will be on rhythm. I've always been fascinated by unusual and ethnic rhythm patterns. The combination of an odd rhythm with a strange instrument sound or sample can be both startling and beautiful. I've started an experimental piece that has that starts in a very conventional meter but gradually becomes more chaotic and less rhythmic. Adding a complex rhythm over a straight 4/4 or 3/4 meter can lend spice and interest to an otherwise bland arrangement. One of my favorite tricks is to start with a straight 4/4 kick/snare pattern and then add a hit every 3 beats on brushed cymbal or closed hi-hat. There are a lot of good DXi and VSTi drum machines out there, and most commercial software studios include some facility for grid entry of patterns. Devote some time to learning one and you'll soon be creating your own killer back beats. Give it a try!
The loops of the week are some sampled conga loops.
The picture of the week was created using Bryce.
Click on the image for a full-sized view 
The DVD/Movie of the week was Whale Rider, an excellent film from New Zealand.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Saturday November 15, 2008
Hola! It's Saturday night and I'm back with the belated hits and misses of the last week. The topic for tonight is music and the focus will be on composition. This week I've started in earnest on the score for a short film project that I'd been involved in. This is an entirely new challenge after only writing non-connected, self contained works. The first step was to start with the script. The most logical arrangement was to divide the story into 3 parts; beginning, middle, and end. The beginning part is orderly and regular. The middle suggested turmoil and growing chaos. The end would be broken down further into sub-parts, that all contain pieces of a greater resolution. The overall theme of the end is liberation through self-discovery. Based on those emotional cues, I started writing out chords and progressions. Major and bright 7th chords for the first, minor and unusual chords for the middle section, and complex chords for the finale. I'm still in the midst of creating this work, I'll post occasional progress reports as it moves and evolves. Stay tuned.
The picture of the week was created using Corel Draw.Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are some metallic percussion pads.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday October 3, 2008
Hello and Welcome! I'm back with the weekly dose of computerized merriment and artistic commentary. The topic this week is music and the focus is a on a great free sequencer. A sequencer program is the heart of a virtual music studio, in which you can record, arrange and edit compositions. Sequencers range from free trackers to costly and capable professional systems. I've advocated free and open-source software from the beginning of Mark's Digital Arts but I hadn't found a solid music sequencer with all the bells and whistles for zero bucks. Then this past week I stumbled onto MU.LAB from Mutools. MU.LAB comes in two versions; a slightly limited (6 tracks and 16-bit mixdown) free version and an “unlimited” version for a rather reasonable 50 Euros. MU.LAB free covers all the basic necessities (audio and MIDI, recording and mixing) and some advanced features (VST plug-ins). As will all music software you'll have to devote a little time to learning it but there is a complete HTML online manual and some short tutorials available at the Mutools site. The interface has a slick look and there is an included synthesizer instrument and some effects. I'm still experimenting and learning MU.LAB free so I'll have to save the detailed judgment for another day. Suffice for now to say that MU.LAB free is the only free music application I've found that approaches the sophistication of commercial offerings. Stay tuned for more about this intriguing and excellent free find.
The picture of the week was created using Bryce.
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are some synthesizer sequences.
The book of the moment is Teach Yourself PHP and MySQL. Any computer book with a black cat on the cover gets my attention.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday September 12, 2008Greetings and Happy Friday! We're on the verge of autumn and the evening is cooler. The topic for tonight is music and the focus will be on recreating the sounds of old instruments and computers. There's something about the limited sounds of yesteryear to get the old synapses firing. The synthesizer plug-ins listed here are all in VST format, so they'll work with the majority of modern Windows music program. For a real 1980s flashback you can download Ymvst, a nice Atari ST sound chip emulator, or 38911, which does a splendid job of recreating the sounds of the Commodore 64 SID chip. I never had the bucks for a hardware synth way back when, but thanks to the efforts of some gifted preservationists, I can play with a virtual versions of a Minimoog and an Arp2600. MiniMogueva and Arp2600va are highly detailed and produce some marvelous sounds. The next time you're putting together a track, try adding a bit of vintage vibe to your mix with these modern emulations.The picture of the week was created using Anim8or.
Click on the image for a full-sized view 
The loops of the week are some retro synthesizer blips.
The book of the week was Death be not Proud by John Gunther.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday August 29, 2008
Greetings and TGIF! I'm back on this fair if humid Friday evening with more interesting and creative stuff. The topic for tonight is music and the focus is making music with loops. I'm certain that most of you have heard the fairy-tale/fable Stone Soup. The basic idea is that a flavorful soup is created seemingly from stones boiled in a cauldron of water when in fact it is a collection of small contributions that makes the complete meal. With that lesson in community cooperation in mind I set out to assemble a short song from free musical components. The first place I looked for free loops was Acid Planet. Acid Planet offers a weekly selection of free loops called an 8-pack, which has 8 related Acid-ready loops and a project that uses them. You can get the current 8-pack from the Tools menu on the main Acid Planet page. The next stop in our search for free loops is Free Samples n Loops. There's a small but tasty selection of categorized loops to be had here. My soup pot is starting to look full so I need just a few more ingredients. You're in luck cause every week at this very location I offer a set of Acid-WAV format free loops in a handy zip file. I went through the now vast catalog of loops that have previously been posted and selected some fitting parts. I used Acid to sequence the loops and Sound Forge to finish the piece and that was it. You too can make a short song in about an evening from free components that you find on the web. Give it a try and see if you can better my effort at making soup from stones.
The picture of the week was created using Project Dogwaffle.Click on the image for a full-sized view
This week I'm sharing the short Stone Soup composition made from free loops. The file is an MP3 format download. The loops of the week will return next week.
The book/graphic-novel of the week was The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.
The movie/DVD of the week was The Terminal starring Tom Hanks.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday August 1, 2008
Greetings! It's another warm Friday night and I'm back with more stuff to share. The topic for tonight is music and the focus will be on squeezing the best string sounds you can out of your sequencer or studio software. My choice of instruments and samples has customarily been limited by budget constraints, though a lack of bucks shouldn't be too much of an impediment to the resourceful computer musician. I generally start by using a good GM string patch. These won't convince anyone that they're real strings, but they're good enough to add a bit of character to a piece. More lifelike results can be obtained from a sampler and a few choice orchestral string samples. You can find some good quality samples in soundfont format at homemusician.net. Samples can be very convincing when applied with a bit of subtlety and a touch of effects. The remaining option for producing string sounds in your music tracks is to use either a specialized or generalized synthesizer. Big Tick software makes Cheese Machine, A good free VST string synthesizer. These strings will definitely sound artificial, but they have a certain charm of their own and are sometimes just what your composition needs to fill in the empty spaces. Try all three methods either singly or in combination and see what some string sounds can add to your music.
The picture of the week was created using Project Dogwaffle.
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are some airy string parts.
The PC game of the week was Roller Coaster Tycoon 3.
Speakling of Roller Coaster Tycoon 3, some twisted types have used the game to orchestrate the most diabolical crashes imaginable and have posted the results on YouTube. (There's more here)
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday July 4, 2008
Greeting and Happy Independence Day! It's a hot summer evening and I'm back with more stuff of interest to computer geeks and artists of all types. The topic for tonight is music and I'm going to discuss recording and using your own simple samples. For this exercise I used a cheap headset microphone, a small plastic soda bottle and the excellent Audacity open-source sound editing program. If you're trying this on your own PC make sure the mic is plugged into your PCs sound card before you begin. I started up Audacity, got the mic positioned and pressed the “record” button from the row of icons near the top. To make the a sound to record I simply blew over the mouth of the bottle to make a nice hollow note. Press the stop button to end the recording and you've got a raw sound file. I was able to trim the sample, tune and adjust the pitch and save it as a WAV file within Audacity. I repeated the process a couple more time with varying amounts of water added to the bottle to produce a higher pitched note. Once I had 3 samples, I was able to import the WAV files into the Orion sampler. The sampler will automatically detect and map your samples to a range of notes. Finally, we're ready to play the samples as an instrument either with a MIDI controller or through step-editing. It's fairly easy, and very fun and you can get some unique and highly usable sounds from this technique. If you haven't done it yet, give it a try.
The picture of the week was created using Bryce.
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week were created from the previously mentioned bottle samples.
The book of the week was “3D Toons” by Steve and Raf Anzovin. It isn't a detailed guide to creating toons but it has some excellent and varied examples from different artists. This book was also my bargain of the week, cause I got it at the local 99 Cents Only Store for the princely sum of $0.99!
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday June 13, 2008
Hello and Happy Friday the 13th! Tonight's timely topic is music and I've an interesting technique to share. In past blog entries I've described the use of looping in music to create pieces from short instrument or synthesized samples. Beat slicing is a related electronic music technique, in which a loop or sample is divided into separate beats, usually some even increment such as 1/16. Each subdivision can now be played independently of the other so that you can now play the entire phrase at a different tempo with little of the distortion associated with time stretching. You can also reorder the segments (slices) to get a completely different musical loop. Beat slicing is most often used on drum patterns, but you can also use other instruments or vocal loops for different effects. The first and most famous beat slicing tool is ReCycle, but you can use a number of different music applications and plug-ins to get the job done. My advice to the uninitiated is, as always, to try it and see if you like it.
The picture of the week was created using Bryce
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are some beat-sliced drum loops.
The PC game of the week is Future Pinball. Future Pinball is a both a detailed emulation of a real pinball table and a flexible construction set. The coolest thing is that it's a free program. The 2nd coolest thing is that there are a lot of user-designed recreations of classic tables available for download.
The book of the moment is The Art of Computer Programming volume 1 by Donald Knuth.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday May 30, 2008
Friday Greetings! It's another nice late spring evening and I'm back with more of the good stuff. Tonight's topic is computing and I'll focus on portable applications. A portable application is a program that can be that can be installed and carried around on a portable storage device and used on any Windows computer. What this means is that you can take a small suite of your most used programs on a handy USB flash drive or portable hard drive and have them ready to work wherever you go. PortableApps.com has collected a number of free/open-source programs with a handy launcher application. The set includes portable versions of Mozilla Firefox, the OpenOffice.org productivity package, and ClamWin anti-virus. Being the artist/musician/geek that I am, I was also interested in graphics, games, programming and music applications. For 2D drawing you can use GIMP, or Project Dogwaffle. For 3D graphics, Anim8or and a few different portable versions of Blender are available. For music you can use the brilliant and free Audacity sound editing application. For games you have a fair selection of low calorie, limited resource options to choose from. Programmers can use the Decimal Basic programming language to create small applications. As an exercise I put together a bunch of portable stuff that took up only about ½ of a 2gb flash drive. It's perfect for computing and creating away from home. Give it a try!
The picture of the week was created using Project Dogwaffle.
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are some fat bass parts.
The PC game of the week is the classic puzzle game Bejeweled.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday May 23, 2008
Hola! The topic for tonight is music and the focus will be on a unique all-in-one solution for music making. In the past I've tried a few different Linux distributions, most recently settling on Suse. While I've had some success with most applications, the one area that really favored the Windows OS was sound and audio. Getting my Terratec EWX 24/96 audio card to work with Linux proved particularly problematic. This past week I found the Musix Linux live CD distro and decided to give it a whirl. Musix is a single CD containing both a Knoppix Linux OS and a slew of music and media programs; a sort of portable music/graphics studio on a CD that has the added advantage of being FREE(!). I downloaded the ISO image, burned the CD and proceeded to try Musix on a number of machines. On the first PC (Athlon XP) Musix was able not only able to run, but properly configured my “problem child” Terratec card. I immediately got some music running through Jack and Rosegarden. Next I went on to the more powerful Athlon X2 PC with the Emu 1212M. This time Jack couldn't configure the sound card, and after a few fruitless minutes I gave up and went on to the next machine. The 3rd computer I tested is a lower spec AMD Sempron machine, with a Terratac DMX Xfire 1024 sound card. This time Musix was defeated by the LCD monitor I had hooked up. The resolution/frequency was out of range so I wasn't able to test it properly. So the final score for this outing was 1 out of 3. Musix might work on the other 2 systems with a bit of research and effort, but that's been one of my major beefs with Linux from the start. It's still kind of a computer geek's OS rather than a easy consumer product like Windows. I'll continue testing Musix, but in the meantime I don't see it replacing my other commercial music packages like Orion, Acid, and Music Creator.
The picture of the week was created using Project Dogwaffle.
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are some static synth runs.
The PC game of the week is still Travian.
The book/graphic novel of the week is “Preacher: Gone to Texas” by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. I can't believe I missed this remarkable series (and Neil Gaiman's Sandman) during it's first comics run in the late 90's. Thank goodness for trade paperback collections.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday May 9, 2008
Friday Greetings! Today was a bit gray and cloudy but all told not a bad spring day. The topic for tonight is music technology and the focus will everyone's favorite portable media player, the iPod. What most folks don't know is that Apple's tiny tech marvel is really a small computer, complete with CPU and RAM. Given that information, some clever folks have successfully ported the Linux operating system onto the iPod, and dubbed their efforts iPodLinux. With Linux comes a whole range of serious and frivolous applications, including the seminal FPS game Doom. If turning your iPod into a pocket computer is too geeeky, then you can always get the cute little dancing doggy shaped speakers. Having said all this, I must confess I've never owned an iPod, though as with all cool, tech-toys I've coveted them on occasion. Perhaps at some point the fates (and my budget) will allow me to catch up with the rest of the civilized world. The picture of the week was created using Makehuman and Anim8or.
Click on the image for a full-sized view 
The loops of the week are some rock drums.
The PC game of the week is Travian, a browser-based building game.The book of the week is The Poetry of Robert Frost
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.Bye for now!
Friday May 2, 2008
Hi all! Friday brings lovely spring weather and slightly cooler temps. The topic for tonight is music software and the focus will be on upgrades. Software for music creation runs the gamut from free trackers to pricey studio packages. I've always tended toward the applications somewhere in the middle of the price/performance curve. The sneaky “gotcha” that underlies building a library of cheaper programs comes when a new version of your favorite music tool is rolled out. The good news is that the upgrade is usually available at a decent discount from the maker to users of the earlier versions. The bad news if that if you go through enough of these incremental updates, you end up paying a higher cumulative amount. I suppose this problem applies to buying the premium, flagship products as well, but when you're on a tight budget you feel the pinch a bit more. I actually ended up about 3 versions behind the current Acid Music Studio release until I could raise enough to upgrade. Some music software companies also offer the option of upgrading to a higher version (again at a reasonable discount) once you've purchased one of their entry-level products. I've been a long time user of the Orion Pro music production package and have been very happy with it. Orion formerly came in to flavors: Orion Pro, and Orion Platinum. With the relase of Orion 7.5 on May 1, the old Pro version has been dropped. Synapse software, the makers of Orion, are graciously offering Pro users an upgrade to the current version for a limited time. It would ordinarily be great to get the latest version of Orion for about a quarter of the retail list price, but even that fractional amount is a stretch for some of us on a tight software budget. Until free or open source stuff catches up to the performance level of commercial apps, I'll have to keep trying to play catch up when I can.
The picture of the week was created using Project Dogwaffle.
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are some big bass runs.
The PC game of the week is still Command and Conquer 3.
The book of the week is The Plot: The Secret Story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion by Will Eisner. A graphic novel that is the final work of a great comics innovator.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday April 18, 2008Hi All! Friday is here once more and the topic for tonight is music. Rehearsal is a subject that every musician must deal with. Hours of exercises, scales, and general noodling build confidence and skill. I must confess that being both a keyboard player and guitarist, I find myself waxing in one department while waning in the other. Practice time can also conflict with whatever other interests, jobs, or projects you have going on at the same time. In my case the pull of computer programming, graphics, web surfing and TV all detract from hours available. Some players recommend setting aside a regular practice time each night, and my former guitar instructor suggested even taking time to strum while watching TV. The moment of Zen occurs when muscle memory and reflexes kick in, and your fingers seem to play the notes themselves. I think tonight I'll give my downstairs neighbor a bit of Smoke on the Water or Sunshine of your Love on guitar. If you really want some inspiration to keep practicing, take a look a this t-shirt bearing the classic “Carnegie Hall” joke. When faced with practice time, don't get discouraged by the challenge and keep on trying!
The picture of the week was created from a photo using Project Dogwaffle.
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are some vaguely Asian flutes.
The PC game of the week is still Command and Conquer 3.
The Web spot of the week is the official Electric Light Orchestra site.
The book of the moment is Asterix and the Laurel Wreath by Goscinny and Uderzo; a classic European comic combining both sharp humor and beautiful artwork.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday April 11, 2008
Hi All! It's another fine Friday evening here in sun-drenched so cal. The topic for this week is the creative process and a method for finding your muse. I deal mostly with art as it relates to technology but sometimes you need to take a step back to break a creative block. If you're a visual artist, try spending an hour or 3 away from the PC screen and drawing with pencils or crayons or ballpoint pen on a sheet of 3-hole binder ruled paper. The point here is to return to the media of childhood and see if there is a fresh source of ideas in the mud-pies we all made while growing. If music is your thing, try beating simple rhythms on a hand drum or tambourine. Pick up your old harmonica or ukulele or recorder and see what melodies emerge. If you write, try composing a silly story in the style of Dr. Seuss. Creativity and imagination are the basis over which we build artistic technique. Try it and see if it doesn't jump-start your inspiration.
The picture of the week was created using Bryce.
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are a set of deeply effected sampled guitar bits.
The PC game of the week is still Command and Conquer 3. The battle for tiberium continues.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday March 28, 2008
Greetings! It's Friday once more and the theme for tonight is music. I've embraced randomness as a tool for music creation, and I'm starting to do some work with white noise. Most simple software synthesizers have a white noise generator as one of their basic oscillator types. White noise in a raw form seems distinctly non-musical, but by applying some filters and effects you can transform the noise into strange and lovely sounds. This technique works particularly well for creating percussion sounds for synthetic drum loops. Give it a go and see if you can creates some truly unique sounds of your own.
The picture of the week was created using Project Dogwaffle.
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are a set of synth drum sequences.
The PC game of the week is still Sid Meier's Pirates!
The book of the moment is still Desperate Husbands by Richard Glover.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday March 7, 2008
Hi again! March has marched in and this weekend marks the start of daylight saving time in the US. I generally balk at the loss of an hour's slumber but that's cause I'm a lazy old gray cat. The topic for tonight is music and I'm going to clue you in on a very simple yet interesting technique for creating bass loops. The simple part of this formula for bass lines is that there are just 2 notes used; the root note and a second note pitched 1 octave higher. Now open up your sequencer of choice (I use Orion Pro) and start up the step or pattern editor. You'll probably want to select a synth bass, but I've found it works well with a sampled bass too. We're going to alternate between the first low note (L) and the second note that's an octave highter (H) every 16th of measure, (or 32nd of a measure if the song tempo is slower than 90bpm), for one whole measure. That's it. You have a retro bass that will juice up your techno masterwork. If you really want put some cheese in your tacos try adding a bit of phase, flange, or wah to the effects chain . You can also vary the basic Low-High (LH) pattern to add some variety. Try HL, or better yet, HLLH-LHHL. It's fast, easy, and works surprisingly well, and now it's part of your musical arsenal. Go nuts!
The picture of the week was created using Carrara Studio.
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are some energetic synthesizer runs
The web site of the week is the official Star Wars site. Here you'll find a wealth of information about the movies, merchandise, and just about everything else related.
The PC game of the week is Titan Quest, which combines a cracking good FRPG with the rich world of Greek Mythology.
The book of the moment is Digital Sci-Fi Art by Michael Burns
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday February 22, 2008
Good Evening! Friday in So Cal bring colds weather and rain again. The topic for this fine winter night is music and more specifically resources for learning to play Blues on the Net. The first stop on our tour of this rich musical territory is the Slowhand Blues Guitar page. The main attraction here is a cool free Blues guitar tutorial with an emphasis on the distinctive style of Eric Clapton. Further down the road you'll find the Fender Player's Club and still more free Blues guitar tutorials. This site has a good variety of lessons for all skill levels and some tasty audio demo clips. An added bonus is that you can find lots of other tutorials ranging from Rock to Reggae in the “woodshed” section. Finally I have a site offering some free Blues piano instruction in relatively small and easy to digest bites. You'll get a bit of foundation work as well as a rundown of more advanced riffs and tricks. You can't get good unless you practice too but it can't hurt to have some help getting started. Give them a try!
The picture of the week was created using Bryce
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are a group of sublime synthesizer samples
The book of the week is Manga for Dummies, a beginner's guide to drawing Japanese style cartoons.
The web site of the week is Free Gamer, a blog devoted to free and open-source games. This page has a nice presentation and has been kept up to date.
The PC game of the week is still Dark Star One. I'm still in the early stages of the game, building my reputation by doing a bit of pirate hunting.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.Bye for now!
Friday February 8, 2008
Warm winter greetings! I'm back for yet another Friday evening of shared artistic thoughts and views. Tonight I'll talk about the use of recycling in music and graphics. The term appropriation applies to the practice of using borrowed elements in the visual arts. In music a new composition can be made entirely from short sound samples or loops. Some controversy has emerged over the legal use of material under copyright, especially in the current electronic age. The alternative is to use royalty-free images or sound-bytes to complete your next collage. You can find more than a few sites offering free or inexpensive content, so consider making your next masterwork from some recycled raw materials.
The picture of the week is a sci-fi image created using Project Dogwaffle (textures), Anim8or (models), and Bryce (terrain and rendering).
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are some simulated acoustic guitar strums. These samples haven't been Acid adjusted.
The DVD/film of the week was The Big One, from director Michael Moore; a documentary dealing with corporate downsizing in the late 1990's.
The web site of the week is artist Debi McSwain's Daily Painting blog. I have trouble coming up with some words, a picture and music loops every WEEK, but Debi manages a daily post of some truly lovely paintings. Check it out!
The PC game of the week was still Sword of the Stars. I've started a small-scale search for another 4x game to slay my few remaining hours of free-time, but in the mean time SOTS is the best.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it. Bye for now!
Friday January 25, 2008
Chilly winter greetings! It's a cold and rainy January eve here at the gray cat's place. The topic for tonight is music and I'm going to share some web sites that offer free music stuff. I've mentioned KVR Audio before as a good place to hunt for free and commercial plug-ins. You can search for instruments, effects or host programs in a huge variety of categories, ranging from free and lightweight to costly and capable. It's an easy way to expand your favorite music program without breaking the bank. If you're a musician in need of some manuscript paper or guitar tab sheets you need look no further than blanksheetmusic.net. Finally, if you crave the sound of a good march, then check out the music section of the John Phillip Sousa site. Here you'll find complete MIDI files of all 136 of Sousa's marches, as well as short MPEG, and RealAudio clips. Among my favorites is “The Liberty Bell”, which became famous (or infamous) as the theme from Monty Python.
Last week's meme-tag resulted in feedback from 40% of those I tagged, so I guess it was a little less than half successful. I'll bug my old pal Mark later about getting on the ball and passing the meme on.
The picture of the week was created using Bryce.
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are a set of sweet synthesizer parts.
The book of the week is “The Selected Poetry of John Donne”
The PC game of the week is Forged Alliance yet again.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday December 7, 2007
Salutations! I'm back on another rainy Friday night with more creative and compelling stuff. My creative energies and time this week past were spent mostly on music, so I thought I'd share a bit of music technology technique. I was working on a synthesizer track with Orion Pro and I used 2 very useful and complimentary processes: Quantizing and Humanizing. The Humanize button adds a little random variance to the volume, length or start time of the notes, lending the selection a more “human” sound. Quantizing performs the opposite function. It will pull the notes to the nearest beat or adjust the note length to the nearest whole or fractional value. In short, the Quantize function will make the musical selection very tight and precise. Quantizing is useful for correcting the small variance in a recorded performance, or for imparting a very mechanical sound. So there you have the yin/yang, organic/technical pairing of musical tools to use on your own sequenced works.
The picture of the week was created using Project Dogwaffle.
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are a set of synthesizer samples.
The PC game of the week is Worms 4: Mayhem. It's colorful, animated, and utterly violent. Worms dispatch each other with grenades, land-mines, dynamite, rocket launchers, shotguns, kung-fu punches, baseball bats, gas canisters, jet packs, exploding sheep, little old ladies, and the occasional mad cow bombardment. You can even design your own teams, weapons, and game variations.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
