Hey all you video people, who do videos for people and for yourself. There is a new book out. And it is good. I met with the authors, and they are fine people. And they know what they're doing, and they want to help YOU do what you do in a fun and easy-to-understand way!

Video Marketing for Dummies on Amazon.com.

$16.32
408 pages
It is EXACTLY FOUR CENTS PER PAGE!

That is an amazing deal.

Ug!

This release took way too long. I did it and reverted the project, and redid it and reverted, and ended up with days of work that resulted in no changes. It was done well at the start - and I should have been happy with it.
To top it off - this is a really draining piece of music to work on. So, I've not been super happy this week. But I think the result is worth it: A complex harmonic piece that sinks into bones.

I was going to talk about the exact structure, and what things do and where... but in the end - that doesn't matter. So here you go!

And again with commentary...

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Satiate in three versions.

With composer commentary:

Just the music:

Groove Grove

The idea for this piece is background music for ethereal storytelling.
It's a little chill, and it is able to carry interest through large vocal pauses like this....

Ok here's the layers it is constructed in. The Bass drum/bass is a sine wave, played in a few different notes. Way over in the top we have the high hat which has got quite a bit of reverb on it to give it that crazy ethereal thing.

This: is white noise, effected with a cabinet rotor - like a Leslie rotor - and panned here and there.
There is a woodblock in there (Krin). It gives it a very earthy thing, which is the sort of human part of it which contrasts to the melody which is going on in a crazy super-electronic synth stack.

The synth stack is also enjoying some side-chain compression - we'll be hearing more of that later.

The final element is electric piano.

And there you can hear the side-chain compression going on in the stacked synth. It is hard to hear the side-chain compression when the woodblock is also playing because the woodblock is the thing that triggers the volume reduction on the main synth.

Minima - With Commentary

Minima - No Commentary

Download: Minima

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Here is the text from my commentary:

Welcome to the commentary for Minimua, which is a new piece of music that I wrote... which consists of, as you can hear and see a lot of quarter notes.
It is an entire orchestra playing mostly quarter notes. The orchestra is woodwind-heavy, it is actually low-winds-heavy so You've got a lot of Contrabass Clarinet, Bass Clarinet, Contra Bassoon, Bassoon... And they're just pulsing... Pulsing and pulsing and pulsing.

I've had a lot of people go "hey, I really like your epic stuff", "I really like your choir stuff", "I really like your experimental stuff".
These are not the same people, by the way. So I decided to do an epic orchestral thing with choirs that's also experimental. The experimental part of this - is that the violins that you're hearing there ... have a sidechain compressor going on which gives them that sort of pulsating effect. You could probably do it live - but I did it in post-processing. But it gives it a pulsing dreamy feel which I hadn't really heard before.

So, when I showd this to a friend of mine, he asked me if I had ripped off Steve Reich... and, actually, I hadn't. I ripped off James Howard... who probably ripped off Steve Reich.

Giant choir also side-chain compressed there.

Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians has this sort of pulsating thing, but he does it much better and clearer.

There is a little bit of interest in the Celesta you can hear... which is quite nice.
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So what do you use this for? I don't know. Some things that aren't quite real.
It's not a very real-sounding thing.

If you listen to it a few times, you can hear in the quarter notes - there's accents that do like a sort of call and response, but it's not terribly structured. It's interesting, though, you can listen to it 8 or 10 times and keep hearing new bits pop out.

Future Gladiator

Steel Rods - another interesting percussion piece!

Very cool short documentary.

"I draw mostly smiling faces because I believe that it is much better to give a
positive energy to my art than the negative stuff, like when I was using and
drinking all the time."

I'm getting a little busy these days - so I don't have time to do the cool YouTube previews or sheet musics.
Here's the bare-bones.

Rock
Summon the Rawk 3:28

Anti-Rock
Healing 8:40

TV Theme
Evening Melodrama 0:36

Brittle Rille. Sheet music is also available for this - but it isn't easily playable.

Very cool Android game with a soundtrack that works great!

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And if clever problem solving is not your thing, here's a promo for Schick.

I am not kidding about the super chill music.
Drone in D is a very very very chill piece clocking in at over 21 minutes in length.
The interesting thing is most of the time, it is not in a Western scale. It goes D to D with an F sharp and a B flat. Anyone know the name of that? I sure don't. Good effects, though.

UPDATE! The scale is called Hindustan.

And the Reggae Dub stuff...
Dub Feral and Dub Eastern
I didn't know which version I liked better, so I just released both of them. They work for different purposes. If you have dialog - use Dub Eastern. No dialog, you can use either.

Cheers, all!

Nebecula Major (cool animation)

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Carlito Floro Rosadino (killer VFX)

Dan-O (from Dan-o Songs) just posted a quick ebook PDF for getting more views on your videos.

It is called "How to Get More Views for Your Videos".

And if you haven't picked up music from Dan-O recently - why not? It is, after all, free!
Everything has the same terms as I have - so you don't even need to learn anything new!

A new piece for your soundtrack arsenal.

Intense and reserved, this unrelenting piece of drumming will be well at home in the soundtrack of your summer blockbuster. Super long for splicing.

Stormfront

RetroFuture, in three mixes. The mix you hear above is the super nice one. They get uglier. :-)