|
|
January 2007 Archives
« December 2006 | Main | February 2007 »
January 29, 2007 - Odd combos
Well... I finished off 30 audio pieces today ranging from 3-second sound design cuts to a 7-minute piece for a musical. I'll assume you don't want a sound effect of a talking fish and just post some music.
- Double Drift - a sort of world-hybrid piece.
- Hammock Fight - silent film score.
- Lift Motif - ballet-esque short piano waltz.
- Cartoon Battle - see notes below.
People have already asked what that drone instrument is in the bass. Well... I made it up. It is a combination of a tuba, a pitch-shifted bass trombone, and a trombone with a cup mute. The instrument in the melody is a soprano sax pitch-shifted up an octave.
January 27, 2007 - Hokey Ker-Smokers!
Well... there's been a pile of upgrades going on here. Here's the tour!
The NameDB just got a major data infusion - adding 24% more names! (that's a lot of names).
The Graph Paper landing page was out-of-hand, so I did a horizontal redesign to make it less visually tiring, also shorter. It may get further compressed... we'll see how it works.
Incompetech's 404 error message was also out-of-date, so that's better now.
Royalty-Free Music's little search box now collapses out of the way. There is a lot of data on those pages, and keeping them clean is problematic.
The music FAQ has been updated, as well as some other music page links.
Here's the BIG ONE! Just this week, I climbed to #2 on a Google search for Royalty-Free Music, so the emails have been pouring in. I now have a new section where people can build their own licenses for my music!
This application is seriously so cool, you should generate a license just for fun. It is full of 'web 2.0' goodness, while retaining the incompetech spartan feel. Woot!
January 25, 2007 - Enter the Octagon
Can you cover a plane with regular octagons? Heck no! But that doesn't stop people from asking... What are they looking for? This (Octagon) !
As a side bet... While doing this, I did find a way to cover a plane with octagons. Yes, a 2d plane. All the octagons are the same size. Try it at home!
January 24, 2007 - Moorish Gridwork
I don't know much about Moorish tessellations, but I got a request and it seems this type of thing would be useful. It took a few hours, but it should save many people much time. Have a look!
I've had an astonishing five requests for Cornell note-taking coupled with music notation in the last couple of months. I suspect the demand for this is pretty darned high, so here's version one:
Note-Taking Plus Music Notation
Enjoy!
January 23, 2007 - Hey! That's me!
Well, I turned up in a few more places recently... Mean Well (Elvie at Godo) a Filipino feature that I really don't know anything more about... The Cult of Austin Film Festival which I do know more about... and InDigital Episode 10 with Wil Wheaton. If one counts 'crew'... and it was a film - I'd have a Kevin Bacon number of 3... but it isn't, so I don't. yet.
I do have a John C. Dvorak (dvorak.org/blog/) Number of 1.
I've been off on vacation, and was just killing some time at my friend Pete's place... when I needed to write some music. I just really needed to. Problem One: I had no software with me. No worries - Mac OS X comes with Garageband. Second problem: there's no MIDI setup there. Garageband has a little app where you can key things in with the normal 109-key typing keyboard. Problem three: No studio monitors.
Ok, problem three is a bit bigger. No studio monitors... no headphones available... no external speakers of any kind! Just the little tinny built-in mono speaker in the G5 tower. This is not really an easy thing to deal with. The bass lines were inaudible. I played them in a couple of octaves up, and trusted they'd sound ok in the final mix. Also, the kick drum was completely missing. I mixed it visually based on the meters.
After I got home and listened, it turned out pretty good!
I've been getting a lot of requests for these synth-based light... 'compositions', so I also did one of these. This is interesting in that I played it in at 150bpm, and then slowed it down to 68. Those layers of pedals get a little tedious at normal-speed.
Sometimes it is all about the challenge.
January 11, 2007 - Rockin' Guitarin'
Not much new lately? Well, not that I've been idle - I just finished off the soundtrack for a film that will open in New York in April. But today, I bring thee, two pieces of rock music!
Down Home Rockin is a sort of guitar-driven 12-bar blues-rock piece with a nice little piano solo. Pretty straightforward.
The other piece, Neolith, is a little harder to put my finger on. It is certainly rock - and fast rock at that, clocking in at 145 beats per minute. The guitar mostly in the right channel has a hard gate effect on eighth notes, giving it an almost percussive drive. The one on the left is extended power chords with a hint of a major mode to them - as opposed to the traditional unqualified (open root fifth) or minor chords that you usually find in hard rock pieces. The effect is striking at times.
Both are interesting. Enjoy!
This document is part of Incompetech.com.
Most Everything ©1998-2012 Kevin MacLeod