I tried out something a little different yesterday; I had a camera and screen capture going while I wrote a song. I'm not super-comfortable doing live performance or having people watch me while I make stuff, but luckily, it all worked out.
Also, here's the video. Four hours of video. O__O Clearly, not the most exciting thing in the world, but possibly interesting to anyone wondering how it all goes down.
I'm currently working on a dark orchestral track inspired by some of the music in Mass Effect. :)
The sun has set for the last time and it will never rise again. Make the most of this bleak situation and enjoy what precious time remains. The end belongs to those who believe the sun will rise again. As the last pocket of heat dissipates and the last plant dies, the stars of distant planets mock us from afar.
This is a piano solo I wrote around the idea of the sun dying and the time spent until the earth dies. :)
Finished this a few hours ago and wanted to share.
I haven't felt all that inspired this year so far, but I got "California Dreaming" stuck in my head earlier today, which lead to me having, "The Sound of Silence" stuck in my head as well. Loop 20x Great. So, I started writing a slow pop folk piano ballad to get it out of my system. I got the melody down and *gasp* ran out of ideas...so I doubled the speed, changed the piano to a synth, removed the tempo swing, added some Turrican bass and suddenly all was clear. I KNEW WHAT HAD TOBE DONE.
What I ended up with is a sort of Chiptunes + Film Score + Rock kind of sound. Dunno really. I don't like to get too crazy over genrefication.
There's a big version of the Luchaplushie right here.
Please, Giant Bomb. Make Luchadeer plushies.
Let's Play Serious Sam HD
My commentated Serious Sam playthrough is approaching it's end. Part 17 of 21 will go up tomorrow. I die a lot, though through the magic of editing, such repetition is kept down to a minimum.
I've already played Chains, So You Go Play Chains
I haven't seen much love for this game, but it's certainly one to love. It's a simple puzzle game of connecting colors, but it's physics-y nature, moody music and overall silhouetted style is interesting. It can get a bit hectic too even on it's normal difficulty - set it to hard and you'll have yourself a challenge.
Rock Band Network
I've started experimenting with the software to get things onto the Rock Band Network. The amount of control they give you is kind of ridiculous and it sounds like a good thing until you actually start doing all the work and you realize it's kind of a pain. Basically, the whole system is MIDI. Everything is midi notes being triggered.
As expected, you have to place down the midi notes for each instrument at each difficulty level. A little tedious, but expected. Then you have to put down midi notes to trigger the animations of the on-screen characters so that they play in time with your music. They're not triggered by the prior midi notes. There's also a "venue" track for controlling the cameras and lighting and as far as I can tell, it all has to be in there or else it doesn't work right. For instance, there are no automatic/random camera changes, they're all manually placed, so if you don't place them it'll just stay at one shot the whole time. Maybe I've got that all wrong, but I guess I'll find out soon enough when I get to that part.
Mass Effect 2
I'm about 5 or 6 hours into Mass Effect 2. Just left Omega with a new squad member. Great stuff so far. Smirking impishly: I'm going to be talking like an Elcor for a while though. I think I spent an hour last night just reading the Codex entries and now there are new ones in there. Rhagharhagh.
Also, listening to Patriarch ramble on is great.
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I just finished eating a chili-cheese dog and I am now drinking a Coca-Cola Classic while I type this blog.
Gaming Addiction
Consumer Whore:
In my last blog I posted the games I had bought during the Steam Holiday Sale. Well, I ended up buying a few more...
Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box Command and Conquer: Kane's Wrath Command and Conquer: Tiberium Wars Fallout 3 - Game of the Year Jade Empire Killing Floor Silent Hill: Homecoming Street Fighter IV
I need to get me one of those Press accounts that has access to all of the games for free...
Streaming games over the internet:
Here are a few choice words: Blurry. Unresponsive.
I will say no more.
Games recently finished:
(note: I use a 4 star rating system - not fun, occasionally fun, mostly fun, super fun.)
Halo 3[ 1/07/2009 ] (Yup, I really hadn’t played it yet. Great weapons but annoying allies & enemies.)
VVVVVV[ 1/11/2009 ] (Ridiculously difficult platforming with some interesting gameplay mechanics. Fun!)
Speaking of VVVVVV...
VVVVVV!
Sometimes I play video games. Sometimes I talk. What's really crazy though is that sometimes I talk and play video games at the same time. It's insane.
See?
That's an 8 part playthrough of VVVVVV, although only 3 parts are up at the moment. I'll be uploading a new part each day. Take pleasure in my frustration.
New Music
I haven't had a lot of time to work on music, but while my computer wasn't working I spent some time with an iPhone app called Bleep!Box. Here's what came of that:
It's not just a happy tune, it's also my ringtone.
I was in NAMM
I'm going to be at the NAMM convention in Anaheim tomorrow. It's a trade show for music production stuff. Synths, guitars, midi controllers, mixing consoles, etc. I shall be taking pics and recording videos, so perhaps some of that will get posted in my next blog. I'll be messing around with uStream, though probably not live. I'll simply be using it to capture and upload videos at the show instead of having to wait until I'm home to upload them.
If any of you have interest in a certain piece of music equipment, such as a Haaken Continuum or Gibson Robot Guitar, post it's name and I'll see if I can find it at the show and fondle it.
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I'm spending time back home with my folks this holiday. Had Christmas dinner a few hours ago. We don't do any sort of gift exchange or holiday festivities. It's simply not our style. Really, we just use Christmas as an excuse to consume ridiculous amounts of food.
Murder Simulators
As far as video games go, I played some Espgaluda 2, Tekken 6, GRiD and Silent Hill: Homecoming on the 360. Finished SH:H - it was decent. GRiD is just as unplayable on 360 as it is on PC. Tekken 6 is...well, Tekken and Bob is a badass. So is Alisa. Espgaluda 2 is ridiculous.
Since I don't have access to my PC right now I can't jump into any involving games, so I've been playing various casual games with my mom. She's got her own Steam account now with a selection of PopCap titles. So far her favorites are Plants vs. Zombies, Bookworm Adventures 2 and Bejeweled 2.
SYNSO:SH is something that I probably shouldn't enjoy as much as I do, but it seems to just hit all the right buttons. It doesn't take very long for the screen to turn into absolute nonsense, making it completely unplayable, but for whatever reason it's still wholly enjoyable. The closed captioning makes me laugh too. *shrug*
Consumer Whore
I bought a few games during the Steam holiday sale.
Just a few.
^____^
Movie Time
I plan on seeing Avatar on Tuesday. Possibly at an IMAX theater. Possibly INNNN THREEE DEEE!!!. Though I'm not sure if my eyes could handle three hours of omg-three-deee-vision-shut-the-fuck-up. Who knows though. Gotta try it to find out.
Within a Deep Forest. Knytt. Knytt Stories. Three fantastic exploration platformer type games by Nifflas. Perhaps some of my favorite games. They're also freeware. To my surprised, Nifflas released a new game just a few days ago called Saira. I haven't played much of it yet, but what I've played so far has been quite good. One thing that differentiates Saira from his previous titles is that it's being sold for $17. I have no issue with that as Nifflas is die fick-zauberer.
Gallery
Those screenshots are crap, but they're the only one's on the site. The game is quite nice looking.
Roomba
I've bought a Roomba. It's amazing.
It's like a dog, but instead of shedding hair everywhere it vacuums it up.
^____^
Delicious Rip-Off
I have a strong attraction towards organizing and cataloging things.
Earlier this year I catalogued all my games utilizing the list feature on Giant Bomb. I also made an image-quilt style page on my website cataloguing all of my games as well. Yet, I was not satisfied. I wanted them in a richer format with additional information and full-length box art. There's a program for Apple PCs called Delicious Library which has absolutely everything I'm looking for. Unfortunately, I have a Windows PC.
Delicious Library in use about a minute and a half in:
Delicious. Conamy.
Recently I stumbled upon a program called Media Man 3. Feature-wise it's a lot like Delicious Library and visually it looks like a feature built-in to Windows Vista. Joy!
With the trial version installed, I spent my morning scanning in bar codes and replacing poor quality box art images with super sexy ones. The software pulls additional info from Amazon when possible and has a way to link library items to files on your hard drive, which sounds useful. I think I have about 75% of my stuff catalogued now - just 60 or so titles left. Yay.
Sadly it doesn't text-2-speech the names of the games when they're scanned in:
Click hard for teh biggar image!
Q: So, you've catalogued all of your games for the third time. Are you actually playing any of these games?
A: Yes, yes I am!
Games currently being played:
DiRT 2
GRiD
Tales of Monkey Island - Chapter 2
Trackmania United Forever
Saira
A lot of racing games. Weird.
Games recently finished:
(note: I use a 4 star rating system - not fun, occasionally fun, mostly fun, super fun.)
Tomb Raider: Underworld[ 11/1/2009 ] (Quite good. Better than Anniversary and perhaps Legend too. Still ridiculous.)
Prince of Persia (2008)[ 11/6/2009 ] (Simple gameplay with a fantastic art style. Enjoyable but stretched a bit thin.)
Batman: Arkham Asylum[ 11/14/2009 ] (Fantastic! Fun and engaging the whole way through except for Riddle cleanup.)
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3[ 11/14/2009 ] (Not as good as Red Alert 1 or 2, though still a great addition to the series.)
Hammerfight[ 11/16/2009 ] (A fun and original game. The story is interesting and the combat is satisfying.)
Aquaria[ 11/28/2009 ] (Aquaria is truly great. Huge too. One of the best games I’ve ever played!)
Tales of Monkey Island: Season 1
Episode 1: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal[ 12/03/2009 ] (Definitely off to a good start. Cheese and manatee jokes are always enjoyable.)
Zombie Shooter[ 12/04/2009 ] (Low-resolution sprites. That’s how you fit a thousand zombies into every level.)
Dreamkiller[ 12/13/2009 ] (2004 called and they want their twitch FPS back. Fast oldschool fun.)
Wet Panties
I just thought about S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat.
Hola, como estas. Me llamo es Jamez. Te amo. *hump hump hump* Ay, chihuahua!
It’s been a while – a few months since I last posted a song here – but now I’m back with some uplifting chillout for that ass.
The overall tone of this track is airy and light. The track has the traditional Indian combo of Sitar and Tabla as well as a simple bass guitar and some electronic elements. Also within the mix are Russian vocals sung by my friend Larissa.
A few of you wanted to hear my take on the Bombcast break theme. It took me a few days to figure out how I wanted to approach such a fine composition.
I changed the oom-pah tone the music had into a kind of daydream sound so that it would work for the upcoming indie film about 4 guys in Sausalito who get sent to bed without any supper and soon find themselves whisked away to a magical dreamland of fun and adventure.
This is the Bombcast theme done as though it were to be used in a movie or game. Perhaps the Giant Bomb military-themed FPS coming out 2010, based on real events.
I took some liberty with the timing and arrangement, but hey, that's what has to be done.
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