I recalibrated the song “Atlantis” tonight. I’ve been doing this as I go through and record the final tracks in order to prepare for mixing. I’m trying to hit about - 18db on my Master Bus before I do any sort of pseudo “mastering”.
When I was in middle school, I was put into a special group called “Future Problem Solvers”. It was some kind of experimental educational track where we would group up and try and find solutions to global problems like acid rain and nuclear war. Our answer to every question was always the same:
“Put a dome over it.”
Acid rain melting your skin? Live in a domed city. Nuclear missiles coming your way? Live in a dome. Global warming? Dome time. Global viral pandemic? You guessed it.
No one took our recommendations back in 1987 … and look where the world is now?
You can see that in the old Imagic game “Atlantis”, people lived in underwater domed cities. I guess it never helped them though …
Posted on September 29, 2008 by arman. Categories: oddities.
I was finally able to see a specialist today about my on going problem with my ears. I had my first hearing test since the fifth grade and it went okay.
They reported some hearing loss around 8kHz in my left ear which was surprising. I expected to have some loss in my right ear, considering I had a pretty bad ear infection when I was 19. They said my right ear was pretty much normal and within acceptable bounds with minor hearing loss due to years of playing live music. Nothing to worry about.
I’ve never had a problem with high frequency information on the left side, so this came as a bit of a shock. I think the headphones they put on my head were not even lined up with my ear holes. Coming from a guy who has spent half his life wearing headphones, I think I might know where they hit my ears the best. Those tests tones are awfully quiet and if the phones are not lines up correctly, then I’m pretty sure that could alter the test results.
Anyway … I’m going to do my own hearing test at home to see if my balance is off ~ 8kHz. I just want to test the relative balance between my ears. I’ll post the results later.
The good news is, although my ears have felt strange for about a month now, my hearing is pretty much normal.
I finished tracking the song “Breakaway” today. I originally thought that I was going to not use layered vocals takes, but I was wrong.
I have twenty vocal tracks.
They are not all going at the same time, of course. There are points in the song where I have as many as 6 or 8 vocal tracks rolling at once. I kept some of the takes that I recorded while in was in Palouse last summer.
That brings my “completely tracked” song count up to four. I haven’t revisited many of the songs since my two week recording session in June. None of the others are really done and they are in various states of disrepair.
I should probably tackle “Adventure” next. I was never able to get the right guitar sound while I was in Palouse. Maybe my Grendel Dead Room will help out in that category.
I am starting to learn how the scripting language in After Effects works. Tonight, I went out and shot about 6 seconds of time lapse footage with my CHDK hacked Canon A640.
I dropped these frames into AE CS3 and then created a little drum loop.
Using AE’s expression controls I was able to convert the audio into a series of keyframes that I applied to the scale (size) of the images. This creates the visual pulse to the beat.
It was a very basic experiment … but it proves to me that I can do some very interesting thing by creating audio for the sole purpose of altering video.
Posted on September 25, 2008 by arman. Categories: writing.
I’m thinking about starting up a new feature length screenplay to satisfy a need for instant creative gratification. I am still chugging away on my solo record “Bits” and working on the animated music video “No Escape!”, but writing fulfills a completely different need.
… and I haven’t written anything since last year.
I have the premise worked out, but I have no idea how to frame the story yet. In the past, I have started by writing detailed outlines before setting out to flesh out the real script. I’ll probably start that way again.
It will be my third feature length screenplay. Each time I have scaled the scope of the film down, hoping that I will get the opportunity to direct one of my stories. I wrote my first screenplay in 2005. It was an epic Historical Science Fiction film. Last year I wrote a dark comedy set in the 1980’s.
The film I have in mind now could potentially be shot with some crafty city permits and no budget. It would fall into the Contemporary Science Fiction/Comedy genre.
I was writing on a PC based program called Sophocles that apparently went out of business so I may need to get a new screenwriting program.
Liz made this background plate for the “No Escape!” music video for my up coming album “Bits”. I’d say we’re almost halfway done with all the background plates.
So far, this animated movie has been constructed on a scene to scene basis, created directly from a story in my head. I should probably start to sequence some of the new background plates into my working composition in After Effects to see how the imagery is keeping pace with the music. I have all of the main scenes and the story arc worked out … but I lack a detailed storyboard.
This has made the whole project less structured, but maybe a little more fun. The large pixel size and limited colors leave some room for the imagination to fill in the blanks.
