May 2007
Wednesday, May 30
Another music pitch by CMBT, for the broker in LA.
The request was for a 70's-era funk piece, for some film about basketball. Imagine two balding/grey middle-age white guys listening to iTunes music samples of Seventies funk icons, in a musical attempt at non-whiteness.
This effort was a "total shot in the dark", so we didn't spend money on serious players. Opening guitar lick and drums are Logic loops, bass guitar, keys and percussion are human, vibraslap a Logic sample (I don't have a vibraslap), and some other greasy sound came from the Handsonic via MoogerFooger filter software. We had to be careful with the Virus stuff, so as not to sound too tech/modern.
A taste of white man "funk"...
Thursday, May 24
Carey and I finished the song we're pitching for the indie film. Ours is being thrown in with a bunch of others. Who knows how the music director will react, or if it's even in the same universe as what they say they're looking for.
The film's main character (I think) is a fellow of about fourteen, who's onto some piece of forbidden wisdom or something, involving mentors, elders, shamen, or some such scenario. The song is supposedly what he might be listening to on his iPod.
Carey did lyrics, I did music, we adjusted the arrangement, and got somebody to do the vocal and guitars. All other sounds are machine sources.
It was fun to build, and gratifying to mix. And, such a pleasure to do it all in my own place - no time constraints, no distance factor. (And no client, heh)
Here it is - turn it up.
Thursday, May 17
No more visitor comments for a while. I need to implement some measures to combat comment spam. I'll get to it later.
Faithful visitors might recall me bitching about it a couple of months ago, when I realized I was getting hit with comment spam at a rate of around a dozen per minute. When you see that there are four hundred and sixty-seven comments on a mostly useless journal entry, you know something's wrong.
The "people" who sanction and apply these actions are absolute scum, filthy, stinking, immoral, unethical shitheads. You've seen the stuff: dozens of comment entries that say "Cool site!" "Nice..." "Cool.." "Great work, thanks!" and their name is a link to some godforsaken piece of spam shit that nobody in their right mind wants anything to do with. The idea is to increase their search engine rankings by creating dozens of links to their site.
Of course, this amounts to nothing more than stealing bandwidth from thousands of nobodies like me, and creating unnecessary work and hassle. It's as if vendors were constantly filling your front yard with their signs while you're asleep, and every day, you have to go out and physically remove the signs and throw them in the trash.
Here's an overview of the issue with some tips on avoiding the scourge, although, in the ensuing discussion, some of these points are refuted. An interesting read.
Tuesday, May 15
Jerry Falwell, 1933 - 2007
"...a man of distinguished accomplishment who devoted his life to serving his faith and country." - John McCain
"...an American who built and led a movement based on strong principles and strong faith." - Mitt Romney
"He was a man who set a direction. He is someone who is not afraid to speak his mind." - Rudy Guilani
"...a severely delusional, power-hungry, politically motivated, arrogant, nefarious, narrow-minded asshole; the world is a better place without him." - Bryan Talbot
Friday, May 11
I've spent the better part of an hour trying to process a bass guitar track from the Motif, with great frustration. On certain notes, there was a huge swell around 100 hz that I couldn't get under control.
I tried a Sony Oxford Dynamcs Full plugin, with its own sidechain eq.
I tried an additional aux input, with an eq inserted and cranked up around 100 hz, then took the sidechain from that to trigger the Oxford compressor. This helped some, but didn't get rid of the offending, overpowering frequency range. Although let me say that the Oxford compressor responded well to the sidechain input.
I tried a Bomb Factory "BF76" plugin, with the aux + eq as sidechain input. It had a more noticeable effect, but was more "spotty" and slightly erratic than the Oxford.
I then (out of stupid desperation and lacking a talented human bass player) tried inserting an Oxford EQ, with a huge shelf rolloff around 100 hz.
None of these methods proved entirely satisfactory, but the Oxford compressor with sidechain input from the aux + eq, plus the eq rolloff, gave the best results.
So, moving on, I began experimenting with amplifier simulation plugins. I called up a SansAmp plugin, factory default setting, adjusted some controls...and bingo, there it was, the offending frequency range pretty much under control. I tweaked a couple of parameters, and am as satisfied as I'll probably be with the available methods, while lacking an actual bassist for this project.
Tuesday, May 8
A friend and I are cooking up a song to pitch for use in some indy film. Who knows what kind of chance we stand, but if nothing else, I'm getting a good workout with the Logic/ProTools combination, establishing workflow patterns. It can be a lot to keep up with and still be creative.
It's dealing with two different powerful programs at once, attending each one's continual requirements, along with the caveats of using two hardware synths for multiple sounds and song parts. So far, I haven't extensively used Logic's softsynths, but not because they're lacking - they aren't. I'm simply getting what I want at this time from the hardware. But it requires a fair amount of juggling with the analog routing to and from the console and ProTools. Pretty old school, but I can deal with it.
Besides, hardware synths kick ass, regardless of what any bleeding-edge virtual twit tries to tell you.
Saturday, May 5
Friday afternoon held several nice surprises, all work-related.
One was a phone call from a client from Toronto, Doug Paulson. He is in town this weekend at his Nashville residence, and needed to record a narration for a company in Pennsylvania, who called in to direct via telephone patch. We did the recording, then I cleaned up the files and uploaded them to my server.
Doug also owns Vault Studio in Toronto, and knows the technical stuff.
It was great to see him again, and great to work with a professional of his caliber on a decidedly casual Saturday morning.
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