Death of a Time Traveller
Dust Mote Fallen
Some more tunage, in this case a strange, rather eclectic acoustic guitar and piano piece with strained scales and some hearty piano thumpings. Sometimes the simplest things are the most pleasant. This is another part of "Potentia II: Extras", a sequel "album" to "Potentia". You can find a bunch of stuff on my SoundCloud page, should you want to go listen to it.
Thanks for your time!
Olympus legacy lens video experiments
Here's another quick YouTube dawdle. In this case, I'm experimenting with using my Olympus OM 50mm f1.8 lens for video on my Canon 600D. Apart from some exposure issues which are easy to deal with, it works splendidly and I'll be exploiting its smooth focus and awesome depth of field in the future! Music is an original, A Step Backwards, which you can find here in its entirety, should it take your fancy. A bunch of other original tunes are over on my SoundCloud.
Educational arcs
I have a new annoyance. It's another one of those pieces of English that no one seems to know how to use. It's deeply misunderstood. It's the term "learning curve". I'm continually, it seems, encountering people who believe that because something involves learning, that the entire project can be described as a "learning curve". "It's a learning curve." "This is difficult. It's a learning curve."
This is not correct.
It may have a learning curve. In fact, I guarantee it has one.
A learning curve is not the mere existance of learning. A learning curve is a way of describing the increasing (or decreasing) difficulty in the learning process for a given activity. A steep learning curve exists when a task is difficult to master, a more gentle curve when the job is easier.
You can read about learning curves in far more detail than I care to go into over at Wikipedia, the bastion of opinion-disguised-as-fact and the bane of high school paper graders world-wide.
If you have a new skill to learn, remember that it has a learning curve, and if you want to complain about it, it's probably a steep one.
Teleportation effects, as you do
I've been screwing around in Final Cut again. This time, I've whipped up a fairly craptacular Star Trek-style teleporter effect. Ingredients:
- Scrunched up tin-foil waved in front of the camera to create shiny particles
- Footage of myself wandering around the back yard like an idiot, hoping the neighbours don't look over the fence
- A mask of my shape, used to isolate the shiny particles to only appear where I'm standing
- A sound effect created in GarageBand by layering all sorts of instruments and pitchbending them in directions they don't want to be bent
- An insert shot of my iPhone with a Star Trek LCARS graphic on it, with some beepy sound effects
I had plans to make more of these. We'll see. For now, enjoy.
(Also, I'm aware that the iPhone's interface appears when I press the buttons. It was just an image stored in my gallery. Next time, I'll motion track a screen replacement.)
Original compositions: Potentia
I have a small collection of original music that I've been tending to for a few years, occasionally tweaking, and moving slowly closer to something that I'd be happy to admit to having composed. It's probably not quite there, yet. Still, that hasn't stopped me from making it public to the terrifying and opening critical world. Here's a selection of tracks, from the "not a concept album" that I've entitled Potentia. There are a few more tracks, which I'm happy to upload, I just haven't done so. If there's interest, I will. If there's not, well, that's less work I need to do.
The album(s) are mostly progressive rock, or inspired by progressive rock. I've experimented a lot with interesting chord structures and time signatures.
Potentia Complete album tracklist -
(Tracks in bold are available on SoundCloud.)
1. Perdix (3.51)
2. Nullus, Moriar (2.42)
3. Pro Puella (2.16)
4. Cubito (2.18)
5. Rotarum Apostatare (3.54)
6. Flavis Subridere (1.45)
7. The Wrath of Uber-Bob (1.55)
8. Vieta Dudus (3.40)
9. Placere Reprehendo Presul (2.54)
10. Harenoso ac Discoveniente (5.27)
11. Non Credo (3.32)
12. Vestigia Organa (6.28)
13. Recede a Ibi (2.16)
Potentia II Complete album tracklist -
(Tracks in bold are available on SoundCloud.)
1. Prolegomena (2.16)
2. Heroicis (6.30)
3. Eximius (5.27)
4. Miris Fecit (2.10)
5. Progressio (2.30)
6. Araneae (3.25)
7. Lectio (3.39)
8. Civitatum (Cityscape II) (5.22)
9. Oblitus (The Forgotten) (2.30)
10. Caseum (3.34)
11. Machina Fabrica IV (3.42)
12. Flectere (3.32)
13. Sublimus (2.07)
14. Sancti Metalli (2.16)
15. Prodigiosum (2.30)
16. Apocalipsi Transitus V (6.28)
17. Diu Volutpat Vestibulum (Long Weekend) (3.10)
But wait, there's more! The "bonus features" for this album are also available (and, in my utterly biased opinion, are significantly better) on Soundcloud:
Potentia II: Extras tracklist:
(Tracks in bold are available on SoundCloud.)
Umbrabilis (4.16)
Disappearing Act (4.16)
A Step Backwards (3.20)
Dust Mote Fallen (3.48)
Thank you, as always, for listening.
Disappearing Act
Once again, I've been creating some kind of fused progressive metal bollocks in the name of music. In this instance, I've learned a few things: 1. I listen to Porcupine Tree far, far too much.
2. Good off-time drums are freaking hard to write.
3. Repetitive does not mean good, but it helps.
4. Everything benefits from spontaneous woodwinds. (Or not.)
Here's the track. Please, enjoy. Or don't. YMMV.