Incompetech: June 2006 Archives

June 2006 Archives

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June 29, 2006 - Googled

Recently, my site has been upgraded in the Google rankings. I'm now number 8 for "Royalty free music". I've been getting a super duper big pile of requests recently. I'm trying to keep up with everything, but it is taking some time, and I probably need to change the site to make the FAQs more prominent.

As a general rule, if you really need me to respond to something - KEEP BUGGING ME. It is perfectly acceptable. Also, donating money will get my attention. Seeing how many files are being downloaded, I should ask for money more.

So, please send money. I write music for a living; and I'd like to continue doing that.

- Kevin

June 26, 2006 - Piano Solo and the Creative Process

An interesting impromtu with context!

Moonstone

There's quite a story, read on for elucidation.

I get a lot of requests for sheet music. The short story is - I don't have any. I decided to post how I get these pieces, seeing as how I'm not hovering over a sheet of staff paper busily rubbing out bad notes. These pieces are not complicated. They're usually built on a single simple idea. In the case of Moonstone, I got it in my head somewhere to try playing something on only the black keys - but try to make it not sound like it was all played on the black keys.

Hopefully. if you played this piece for someone and asked "what is interesting about this piece?" they would not say: "It was played only on the black keys of a piano."

If you download the entire recording, the thing at the end is also only on black keys.

The Beginning
Today, I came to my piano and found dust on the keys. This is bad. I don't remember that ever happening since I bought my first piano. You don't cure this with a duster. You play: All the notes in all the keys. And so I did. I played things I knew, and a bunch of scales. I also made up a few scales and practiced those.

Creation
Then I hit "Record", and so started this session (at around 3am). It is about 16 minutes of me playing various things in my head. There are five or six main theme changes in it. Most of it is bad. But this is what it sounds like on a random day when I play random things.

Fifteen minutes and change later, I hit stop and looked at what happened. There happened to be one well-formed (though not perfect) piece in the middle. There are seeds of a couple more that I might revisit some day.

The piece I pulled out is not perfectly executed as per what was in my head - sometimes they are. But it was close enough that I didn't feel I needed to go back and re-record, or fix it up.

Sharing
That's it folks! No paper, no notes, no nothing, just playing late at night - and that's what you get. There aren't any mistakes or false starts, just things that are better than others. I find the better things, and put them online.

Coming up with titles is a problem. I no like be creative with words. I took a trip to Google and looked for "New Age Title" thinking it would come up with something useful I could steal. My site was number 4 on the list. Hrm... well - I can't steal from me.

Eventually, I found this gem. A fantasy novel title generator. It is a goldmine! I'm going to use it until it runs out of ideas. Coming up with titles can often take longer than writing-recording-editing-encoding-and-uploading.

These web site updates can also be arduous. I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know what you think!

June 24, 2006 - African Stuffs

Hi everyone. It has been a while. I'm working on a theater project, and I don't have much time to do new free stuffs. But I did do one today.

Whimsy Groove

For some reason, I got 4 unrelated emails in 4 consecutive days - all about my African compositions. That is very very odd. That brings the one-year total to 6. I took it as a sign, and wrote another piece.

This one is more fun than the others - relying on a major pentatonic melody rather than the minors found in all the other pieces. You probably wouldn't hear a piece like this if you were touring Africa. It is short, formulaic, and downright melodicly happy. There are a few typical polyrhythms thrown in.

Technically, I pulled the reverb down considerably on this piece. Also, the marimbas were rattling my head, so I pulled down the half-octave around 360hz by 10dB (a lot). Believe me - it is better that it isn't there.

P.S. I know... crazy-bell-guy (left speaker) isn't a very good player. I fired him.

June 14, 2006 - Falcon Banner, Pasokon, Chew, et al.

Audio Dramas: The Falcon Banner
http://www.darkerprojects.com/
These are very very cool, check them out. I did episodes 2 and 4, but you'll want to get 1 and 3 or it won't make sense.

Audio Adaptation: Pasokon
http://productions.lovelyv.net/pasokon/
I believe this in an audio adaptation of a comic; and it is pretty nice! Good voice acting; good story; very good production... It is just plain good! I recommend checking this out - especially if you're into Anime.

Theatrical Short: Dancing for Peanuts
http://gbifg.proboards41.com/
This is a silent-era period piece shot in HD; The first piece I've done in HD... actually the first time I've _seen_ HD. It looks lovely! I did a full custom score for it, but I don't think it is online yet.

Theatrical Featurette: Chew
http://www.exquisitebeast.com/films.htm
I've seen the rough cut of this. I recommend not reading the plot blurb before seeing the piece, as it is a crazy spoiler. Screening In July in New York.

Geometry Demo: How Round is your Circle
I'm in a multimedia addendum(?) to a soon to be published book from Chris Sangwin (School of Mathematics, University of Birmingham). I've not seen the book, but from what I can tell it is a non-technical geometry book.

Website: Uri Planet
http://www.uriplanet.com/
I hear I'm somewhere on this site... note sure where. But I likes the Russia.

More to come soon... I'm way behind on my email.

June 07, 2006 - More Silent Film Music

Five new pieces that will help round out your silent period films. Most were made with a small band consisting of Tuba, trombones, trumpets, clarinets, piano, and various percussion things.

Royal Banana is a kind of polka/march based on a tritone chord progression for over-the-top comedic value.

Friendly Day was a little improvised piano bit to fill in a way-too-long scene with not much going on.

These were written as a score to a 9-minute silent short, and reused in various incarnations with a couple of added action hits (not included in these files). The director wanted the piece mostly scene-scored with very few "action hits", but I had to - I mean, I had to. Otherwise it would feel like a collection of found music.

In the final film, the music is sometimes toned-down or amped up with instrumentation, and also with tempo variance of up to 20bpm (which changes the feel tremendously).

June 03, 2006 - Obsession, Vampires, Downtime

DVD Product: Extreme Downtime
I'm not certain on which of the DVD's my music is featured, but it is on something! Personally - I just like the concept of Extreme Downtime! Woohoo! Relaxation!! [website]

Feature Film: Dance with a Vampire
I just got a DVD of this one in the mail, and despite what the credits page says - my music is definitely used in it. Heck, it is used in the opening scene! It is quite a long film (almost 2 hours) but the makeup effects are very very good. [website]

Featurette: Obsession
I don't know a lot about this one... other than it was submitted to Progeny Film Festival in Blacksburg, VA
and has a runtime of 20 minutes. Soon to be seen in Norway and Ontario, Canada? Not sure - I'll keep you updated when I am futher updated. [no site available]

Interesting collection of things I did this week...

And Awaken (drama)
Sleep and Then (drama)
Alien Restaurant (experimental)
Rock Hybrid (rock)

Additional comments galore!

And Awaken and Sleep and Then were a couple of cues for the audio drama "Falcon Banner" from Darker Projects. One was for episode 2, the other for episode 4. Not much really to know about them... I'm just adding more stuff to the Drama page.

Alien Restaurant was also written for Falcon Banner, but it is source music (music that the characters can hear) and differs greatly from the remainder of the wholly orchestral score. What sort of music would be playing in a restaurant on another planet? Hard to say... I developed a 4-tone scale based on adjacent perfect fifths. Originally, I tried a 6-microtone-based scale, but it proved too unrefined to make it work.

The instrumentation is also other-worldly. The base of percussions are just pitch-shifted african drums, and sound pretty normal. Then, there is a bass which is a plucked string instrument dampered at the center to accentuate the first harmonic over the base note. The string "harp" is a cross between some sort of greek harp, and sitar. It was actually built with waveforms from a harpsichord. The high wind instrument sounds like it may be string based, but it is actually a combination of trumpet and English horn.

All of the instruments are possible - none have yet been built, and the scale is mathematically probable (but not the most probable). This was quite a fun piece to think about!

Ahh... the Rock Hybrid. Insteresting thing. This was supposed to be a combination 80's guitar rock and modern hip-hop/dance... and it is. This piece has no reverb on anything, and sounds especially cool (if cobbled) loud. I'll call this one stark and rich. Good mix. That bass drum will kick you in the teeth.