You are looking at posts that were written in the month of August in the year 2008.
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… almost there … just about made it … Kaboom! almost a reality … singing vocals … one tiny guitar line … day off tomorrow …record the last little parts and then work on another song …
{{{8-bit emulation of the chorus of Kaboom!}}}
Rock on ….
Apart from finalizing some of the last chunks of “Kaboom!” from my forthcoming album “Bits”, I spent a small part of the day battling some old enemies from the original Megaman game.
Listen to the theme from the Cutman stage:
Megaman was released in the mid 1980s in the U.S. for the NES. I had the game as a kid and found it particularly challenging.
Liz and I have a Wii and I downloaded the game for it a week ago. I have been battling old foes ever since. Bombman … Iceman … Fireman … Elecman … Cutman … Gutsman - they’ve been waiting for a rematch for years and I’m gonna give them all I got!
I have yet to beat the final boss, Dr. Wily.
… and yes - I worked my butt off on “Kaboom!’ … more on that later.
Here is a little time lapse film I shot from the back of my bike as Liz and I rode through the streets of Portland tonight.
It is mostly a visual abstraction.
We rode over to the Clinton Street Theater to see “The Breakfast Club”.
On the way there … I set the camera to shoot at a two second shutter speed at ISO 800. On the way back home after the movie, I set it at a one second shutter speed and kept the same ISO.
We weren’t riding too fast and the camera fired about every 5-7 seconds.
{Click on the the thumbnail above too enlarge the picture}
Tonight, Liz and I went out to the final film in the Northwest Film Center’s rooftop screenings. They showed “Superargo and the Faceless Giants” from 1968. They had live music before the movie by a band called Will Carpenter ’s Towering Trees.
The film was an amazingly bad superhero movie from Italy. The hero (Superargo) is a retired professional wrestler that can fly and has psychic abilities. His spandex suit is bulletproof and he designs transforming cars on the back of napkins. He has a partner refered to as “the indian”, that can read peoples minds and levitate as well.
I was particularly impressed with how serious the film takes itself. Superargo is a total bad ass and doesn’t put up with guff from anyone. My favorite part is when the bad guy catches him and brings him to his hideout. He yells “PUT YOUR HEAD ON THAT BLOCK!” to Superargo so that he can behead him. But Superargo aint going out that way … no chance.
He just uses his mental powers on the henchman with the axe. One look from Superargo and he stops dead in his track. So the bad guy leader makes another guy try to behead Superargo. Ol’ Superargo looks him right in the eye and stops him cold too.
Sweeeeeet!
I’ve been kabooming “Kaboom!” in my spare time for a couple weeks now and I’m almost ready to move on. Everyday, I come home and get just a little more done. Next up on the list is the song “Breakaway”.
I play acoustic guitar on this one. It is one of the more mellow songs on the record. I tracked quite a bit of it back in June when I spent two weeks in Palouse.
As I recall, I need to record about half the vocals. It should go much faster than “Kaboom!” due to the fact that most of the vocals lines are not doubled and there are minimal harmonies. This “Kaboom!” hurdle has been pretty tough … doubling all the harmonies … uhhhhh … what am I thinking?
Record …. erase … erase … record …
No, I haven’t forgotten about the wine glass VSTi I said I would make after conducting a poll. I have been pretty busy recording “Bits”, working, and enjoying my summer.
That being said, I’m going to have to spend some time over the weekend collecting samples to use in the first version of this instrument. I’m not sure how it will go. I have some regular wine glasses, and some big glass bowls. I played around with making tones about a week ago and I was alble to consistantly make some noise. That was promising.
I’m not sure how many octaves I’ll be able to produce at first … given my limited resources.
I can use many of the internal structures I have created for my other VST instruments when I slap this one together, so that will save me some time.
I’ve been thinking about my first musical instruments lately.
In 1986, my mom bought my a Yamaha PSR-21. This baby had 16 totally awesome built in sounds like “Cosmic” and “Funksynth”. It had four waveforms for each sound and four variations of a amplifier envelope as well.
That makes 256 sounds!
256 sounds that all sound strikingly similar to a bad digital waveform. I do remember liking the trumpet sound.
It also had a (slightly) programmable drum sequencer. I remember tapping out the disco rhythm for my first song “Nuclear Toxic Sludge” in 1989 on this baby. I really have to put that song up here … along with the original versions of “Eating Light Bulbs” and “Moth on Bass”.
I had a copy of the “Pseudo Echo” cover of “Funky Town” I taped off the radio and I would JAM with that tune all day long. If you have no idea what I am talking about, click on the Youtube video above.
Maybe someday I’ll find the old PSR-21 … sample it … and turn it into a VSTi.
Hmmm……
