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April 2006 Archives

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April 29, 2006 - General Ledger

If the big ledger sheets I have are too complex for your needs, I now have simple general ledgers available!

2 Column ones are for simple Credit / Debit... 3 columns are for... hrmm... I'm not sure - but they were requested. 8.5 x 11 only. One color scheme only.

April 28, 2006 - Dvorak Polka

No comment.

Graph Paper with Bolded Major Axes

Well - not by default, but it is an option now. There's a checkbox that makes all your Cartesian dreams come true... if you dream of an origin roughly in the center of the page.

April 27, 2006 - Ghosts, Ghosts, Writers, Christ, Norway, Norway

Atmospheric Video
http://www.ghostmystery.com/

Animation Project
http://www.archive.org/details/LamplightJackTrailer

The Naked Novelist Podcast (coming May 1)
http://www.thenakednovelist.com.au/

Web Cards
http://www.crosscards.com/

Norway TV... thing...
http://www.aftenposten.no/player/

And this one is super-cool... not sure if I'm supposed to publish the URL... it is quite a large piece. :-)
Sorry, Kristoffer.
http://www.crawl-forever.com/kriss/troll-menn2.avi
Oh. This one is in Norwegian - but it works well even if you don't understand the words.

April 22, 2006 - Cranky Geeks

Holy Mother of Cranks! I just subscribed to the Cranky Geeks podcast after hearing about it on TWiT. The opening title is ME! Hilarious! This is cool - I was having a bad day up to now. Thanks John C. Dvorak (dvorak.org/blog)!

Wow. That's an old piece with bad samples. I almost should redo it... but I have a feeling they want the cheese. Email me if you want a new one, John!

"...we're going to try to be as cranky about it as possible. If that polka music doesn't do it for you - nothing will."
- John C. Dvorak (dvorak.org/blog)

April 20, 2006 - Mega-Musics

Ten new pieces of music. Ten. In a single update. Tis crazy!

Orchestral

• Noble Race
  
• Spider's Web
  
• Dawn Hit
  

Piano

• Overture
  
• Village Dawn
  
• Awaiting Return
  
• March of the Mind
  

Horror

• Midnight Meeting
  
• Dance of Deception
  
• Land of Phantoms
  

These are all pieces I pulled out of the score I recently completed for "Nosferatu".

Noble Race The montage of scenes where Hutter and Orlock race back to Ellen. The piece in the soundtrack proper is changed slightly from this excerpt - here I restored a final crecendo near the end which doesn't work in the film. It incorporates all the main themes from the film - but only rarely in counterpoint. There seems to be some problem with the tymp in this mix... I'll leave it as an exercise to the editor to figure out how to de-emphasize that in your own film.

Spider's Web Tritone (Locrian) theme in harpsichord for the Knock character. This theme is found throught the score - but this is one of the only parts that I could pull out as a stand-alone piece.

Dawn Hit Just a lush string chord. In the score, it is heard as "the cock crows" in the film. I put it online because it would be easy for people to use in a large number of applications.

Overture A piano piece that sets the stage to Noferatu. A hideous life-sucking vampire horror movie? Nope. A love story about self-sacrifice. So - a love story with a tragic edge. You should hear that within the first 20 seconds. On a technical level, I do an altered chord to give your brain a bit of a jolt (A Major in the key of C Major). It works because it acts as a dominant to the D Minor... blah, blah, blah... theory, theory, theory...

Village Dawn After Hutter goes to sleep at the local Inn, he gets up to a happy happy day. Well... not totally happy - but happy enough. This is a very simple happy tune... but something is wrong. It is in 5/8 time. Hrm... too subtle? Probably - but I'm not going to crank on the tympani. If it sets you off just a bit and you don't know why - that's PERFECT! If it passes unnoticed... that's fine, too.

Awaiting Return Hanging out on a beach waiting for the return of a husband? Have I got the piece for you! This is based off of Holst's "Thaxted" which is used earlier in the film when Hutter's journey begins. And so, while waiting for the journey to end - here it is... but in romantic piano style (as tends to follow Ellen around).

March of the Mind I forget why this piece exists. Hey! Give me a break, I speed-wrote this whole pile of music in under a week!

Midnight Meeting Oh! Oh-ho-ho! This is my favorite! Se we have a couple of vampire themes, and a couple of living people themes in this soundtrack. So... what happens if you smash them all together in a fuge? THIS! mwahaha!!! haha... ha... heh?
This piece happens when Hutter and Orlock "first" meet in the courtyard of the castle. They size each other up - hense the playing of all themes in a clear, yet crazily intermixed short piece. You can hear the interactions of the motivators and the reactors both living and not.
It is pretty seriously cool. There aren't enough fuges written these days.

Dance of Deception Pipe organ peppy and dark tune. In the film, it occurs at the docks - where it looks like Orlock is just playing with the silly mortals. This is the original improvised sketch that I was unable to improve on... given the time constraints.

Land of Phantoms Not really music... just plain creepy-sounding percussion. This occurs when Hutter is given a ride in the Phantom Carriage. This might be a bit over-the-top. The music is actually more creepy to me than the film.

Yay! There's my initial thoughts on these pieces. And yes, I stand by my interpretation of Nosferatu as a love story.

April 17, 2006 - More Weddings, and a mysterious Podcast

Three new piano solos Continue Life, Spring Fields, Midsummer Sky.

Theme, stingers and bridges Enigma for a podcast.

The piano solos were commissioned from photographer.se to be used in slideshows. They were expected to be "happy, with a sense of expectancy". The result? "Spot On". Yay!
I did seven pieces in all. All with the same direction, and all exactly 1 minute 54 in length. I wrote them over the course of 3 days so they wouldn't sound too similar to each other. And I can say - 7 is a lot of pieces to make that have very similar feels, but should sound different.

So - I can't make any more of these anytime soon. :-) (I still have 2 sketches that I didn't produce, but they were the weakest of the bunch).

As for "Enigma". That one was interesting. I received a request to do the theme music for a puzle-based podcast. "Upbeat and mysterious". Well... those elements are tough to mix... so I decided to try. What you hear is the result (plus a few strings). The track is not one continuous piece - It was meant to be chopped into 6 parts of varying length to be used in different segments.

April 14, 2006 - Weddings; Damnation; Charles Bronson; Arizona

Website: New stuff to Sweden!
http://www.weddings.se/frida_eng.htm
Mark Earthy commissioned some new piano stuff. I'm not done with all the pieces... but they are already cropping up on the site. Good stuff!

Short Film: "The Frequency of Damnation"
Shot in a day, edited in a day. This is a... I'm not certain the genre - but I'll say death is involved. I didn't do all the soundtrack, but bits and pieces of my stuff is in it. The end result is here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6647289850857906035

Shorts: The One Minute Show
These are awesome. That is all I will say.
Charles Bronson Home Protection System
The Other White Meat

Online Slideshows: AZCentral.com
http://www.azcentral.com/flash/jason
http://www.azcentral.com/sports/azetc/ (click on the ironman slideshow)

April 06, 2006 - Porch Blues and Intractable Jazz

Two new - and very very different pieces.
Porch Blues - you know, marginal blues from the front porch... if your porch has a piano like mine does.
Intractable - A sort of light jazz/funk confection with lots of vibe and a flugelhorn.

Read more... it is a fun story.

I don't recall how Intractible started... but it ended up sounding "cool". So I had to come up with a cool name for it. A name that people would convery the coolness - just by the title. So... what's cool... what's cool... ?
Aha! Computational Complexity Theory! Everyone knows that stuff is pretty cool!
An Intractable problem is a kind that we should be able to solve... but can't.

Oh, originally, I had an alto sax on the lead line, but it turns out that a flugel is much more forgiving in this context. (it has a mushier attack characteristic)

---

Ahhh... Porch Blues. Here's the story: It is 1:10am localtime, and I get an email from Australia.

Hi Kevin,

I'm making a short student film, and Im in great need of a slow blues
track..sort of that "on the porch" feel. You dont have anything like that
do you (or know where i could find one)? It would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Josef

Well... no, I don't have one. I offered to do a piano solo, but he was thinking guitar and harmonica.
Knowing it wouldn't work for the guy - I needed a break and decided to try to make a blues piece.

Step 1) Record piano.
Step 1a) Throw out recording due to it being terribly out of meter.
Step 2) Attempt to find a Blues template. (why is this so hard?)
Step 2a) Settle for what the application labled as "Blues", put in some chords, export.
Step 3) Import into the real application.
Step 3a) Throw out all the chords, leaving a Blues "click-track".
Step 4) Record guitar part.
Step 4a) Fix my bad guitar part.
Step 5) Record piano part... a few times.
Step 5a) Fix piano part.

Ok! Now I have a not-at-all porch-sounding piece of blues. They just don't make a good harmonica synth.
So... Aha! Tenor sax! I put that in. Twice. Fixed it. It just sounded terrible.

I hunt around the house for a harmonica. Woohoo! I gots one! In the wrong key! G harmonica... ok, transpose the project to D.

What step is this? 14?

I finish it off with a couple of takes into the condenser mic (this is more step than you'd link because I have to reconfigure the entire computer's sound to switch from ASIO Midi to analog recording.)

Delete remaining vestage of the drums; Add reverb; Mix Levels; Send Email; DONE!

Elapsed time: 53 minutes.

You've been such a cool guy, and your music has saved my movie twice now (I was
ready to give up, seeing how much the production music libraries charge for
their low quality music).

Well... That was fun!

Signed,
Your local, worldwide lightning composer.

April 05, 2006 - 23:20; PBS; Edison Death Machine

Sightings!

Cinematic Featurette: Eleven-Twenty (23:20)
Still in production, this piece is from our fine friends across the pond in the U.K. It is a horror piece with a darned fine story. It features some of my stock music, and one scene that I scored specifically for them.
Check out the trailer at the Swansea Bay Film Festival site.

Online Interactive Project: PBS's POV / American Documentary
As of this posting it isn't online, but I thought it was interesting enough to list here. Post a comment if you see it go live. You're looking for "Borders: American Documentary".
pbs.org/pov

Feature Film: Edison Death Machine
A "vintage" feature film from the director of Zombie Planet. A trailer is available along with lots of other notes. Looks to be fun!
The web site (ZP International).

MIDI files are now available for several of the pieces, as well as "unprocessed" m4a file.

Get them here (bottom of the page)!

I should have learned by now just to offer everything up front. Not thinking these would be popular, I didn't bother linking the "raw" unprocessed versions of the pieces - leaving just a message on the page to email me if you want them.

Well... email me, you did!

I put up all the unprocessed ones I found, along with a few MIDI files that were requested. One person wanted to learn how to play the pieces, and another wanted to use them in a techno mix. If I come across any more MIDIs on the vast wasteland that is my hard drive - I'll put those up as well.

Lessons learned: Keep better track of projects - even ones you think have little use. :-)

April 03, 2006 - Ex-Mas, Sweden, Rwanda

Feature Film Trailer: Ex-Mas Eve
http://silveredgefilms.com/downloads.htm
It is a nice trailer, and looks to be a cool movie. I worked with the director to get custom music for this trailer, and will be scoring the movie - scheduled for release November 2006.

Website: wedding photographers in stockholm sweden
Mark Earthy - http://www.weddings.se/pictures.htm
Nothing says 'wedding' like touching piano solos. These slideshows are better than most. :-)

Online Video: Richard Bangs Adventures
http://www.adventures.yahoo.com/
I'm not sure when this one is going live, but my African pieces were used in the Rwanda segments.

Two new piano solos are now available; Parting of the Ways, and Parting of the Ways Part 2.

In the midst of several people requesting more piano solos, I decided to bring up a couple of long pieces today. I guess I haven't done many new ones in months.

Typically, I try to get to the musical punch in a timely manner. I'm impatient that way. However - most of the time, these piano pieces are used as backdrops for very very long projects. While you could just grab a bunch of them - changing the style every 2 or 3 minutes can become jarring.

These pieces have very long development times, and are assumed to be part of a larger whole...

Parting of the Ways
This is a 12 note melody drawn out, and drawn out, and drawn out. Really, the only thing running through my head in this piece was "take.... your.... time...". The title is for no other reason than a few friends are watching Doctor Who right now. I've already seen it, though. :-)

Parting of the Ways - Part 2
This piece is so titled because... see above. Like the last one - this is one of those "hit record" -> Publish pieces, but on this one I had a few notes I was looking at. It was this: "a D C g" - A minor, D major / C major, G minor. Stunning... I know.
Here's the story on the chords; if you're a lover of music theory (and who isn't?) you learn pretty early on that in the key of A minor, the related "iv" chord is also minor. Not here. I made it major. It lends a sort of dreamy quality to the piece. When it goes into the related major (C Major) the V chord should be major (V chords are almost always major), but I made it minor.
Doesn't this just suck out all the magic?
Well - that gives it a sort of "powerful" feel that complements the dreamy thing we started with. To further emphasize that - the C/g minor sectons are also loud. I mean pounding loud.

So there you are; 16 minutes of simple piano in 18 minutes (I spent two minutes correcting 2 errant F#s.)