Photo-shopping

Not too long ago I saw an ad - from a distance it looked like a picture that was very grainy. From a closer look, the grains were actually smaller pictures that were arranged together, like a mosaic. Depending on what you focused on, you either saw one large picture, or hundreds of small pictures.

I was curious to learn how to do this technique, so one sleepless night I experimented with Photoshop for a few hours using several pictures of my new baby niece. It's not exactly like the ad I saw, but in the process of experimentation I learned to use a few more features of Photoshop.

My Photoshop experiments are yet another way in which I can express my creativity.

Word of the month - blurf

I'd like to propose a new word to be added to the lexicon of popular usage - blurf. Blurf is a portmanteau, a fusion of the words blog and surf. I define blurfing to be the act of randomly or sequentially from one blog to another, typically spending only a short time at each one.

Here are some examples of how this word might be used in a sentence:

I usually blurf for about half an hour before going to bed.

I was up all night blurfing and found this really cool blog.

A social study reports that most people who blurf are looking to read about a life that is more interesting than the one they are living.

A search for blurf in wikipedia shows that no page with that title exists.

A google search on the word blurf leads to someone's blog at www.blurf.com. Further examination reveals that the authour's choice of the name blurf originated from an alcohol-related incident at a college party.

Therefore I can conclude that my proposed definition for this word is original and unique.

It will be interesting to do another google search in a year to see how popular the word has become (or not).

Where do ideas come from?

Last night I had a dream that there was a new spin-off TV series called CSI:Elsinore. Their first episode is an investigation into the suspicious sudden death of the king of Denmark. Yes, it's CSI as written by William Shakespeare. How do you say the evidence never lies in iambic pentameter? Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are CSI agents.

Oh Freud, what would you make of this one? Something is rotten in the state of my mind.

Friend in hospital

A good friend of mine had a brain aneurysm on Friday evening. She is in the hospital and has had surgery performed, but she is still unconscious. For a while she was not able to breathe for herself and was put on a respirator. At the last report, she was breathing for herself but remains on the respirator until she regains consciousness.

My thoughts and prayers go out to her and her family for a successful recovery, and for comfort during this trying and uncertain time.

Goal for 2006

For much of 2005, I had a statement at the top of my blog that said, Goals for 2005: Build and use a peer review network for my songwriting. I would say I've fulfilled the intent of that goal by bringing my music to Date with a Tape, Song Assessment Service, and GarageBand.com.

I have a new goal for 2006: To raise the bar for my music artistically and as a business.

Raising the bar artistically means I will reintroduce vocals to my music in a way that their quality is significantly improved compared to the way it was in the first song I submitted to GarageBand.com, Yesterday Seems So Far Away.

Raising the bar as a business means I will find creative ways to market my songs like The Great Escape. I am particularly interested in finding a film producer who will use it for a soundtrack. I feel encouraged to do so by some of the reviews I've received.

I plan for my next recording project to be Painted Smiles, a song I wrote and recorded several years ago. I revised this song last January, so I'd like to record a new version from the ground up.

The journey continues!

Great Escape reviews - Part 3

Here is another sample of reviews I have received on GarageBand.com for The Great Escape.

From Long Beach, California -

nice production i lke the guitar

i like the the way it builds in the middle it seems to be a little slow at the beginning i would say it should go into the
building prosses sooner .

that being said i do like it

i was bored at the first minute but from then on it was interesting i liked the mix also

From Berlin, New Jersey -

the guitar playing is quite inspiring! i wish i could play half as good as this! the song however, has a mathematical flaw. it begins in 3/4 timing and somehow jumps to 4/4.

From Canada -

Nice guitar work - definately has a mood going. There are some tasty melodic bits in this piece.

All you need is some equally creative lyrics and someone to sing them and you've got yourself a great song.

From Nashville, Tennessee -

seems like the half-time change could work in a better arrangement, but it's not working for me in this one... and the mix really gets cluttered right before the 3 minute mark...

I like the overall feel though... and it seems like a re-mix could be a big plus!

From Sweden -

Quite nice feeling in this song but there are some "blurs" in the choosen el.guitars and mixed rythms wich make it a bit messy,clean it up a bit-take it easier than you do in the end...

From Ireland -

Some really good guitar ideas and nice tones for the mostpart, some of the levels could be better. Nothing apart from the guitar stands out though, drums keys and bass could do with being fleshed out more. Nice piece overall.

From Salem, Oregon -

Awesome work!!! You crafted this song very well and really produced a nice piece of art. Your recorded sounded perfect. I give you an A in all catagories.

From Fort Wayne, Indiana -

I dig all of the guitar work, the acoustic playing is really nice. The subtle percussion adds a nice touch to it. Nice ambient noises as well!

Great Escape reviews - Part 2

I'm pretty happy with how The Great Escape is faring on the GarageBand.com charts. It is currently sitting at #26, and has been as high as #24 out of 82 on the Progressive Rock channel. It has a current score of 4.3 (on a scale of 0 to 5).

This song has earned itself the following Reviewers' Picks awards:

Track of the Day on 1 Feb 2006 in Progressive Rock
Best Guitars in Progressive Rock, week of 30 Jan 2006
Best Production in Progressive Rock, week of 30 Jan 2006
Best Mood in Progressive Rock, week of 30 Jan 2006

Here are some more reviews.

From Iowa City, Iowa -

Nice relaxing mood. Almost like new age. I hear nice stuff going on. I don't hear a theme to grab onto, but that is ok as long as it remains interesting. So far it is. Nice guitar work. I'd like to hear something more to tie it all together. Maybe. Nicely done, though. Pleasing to the ear. You should have heard the song (loose term) before this one.

From Birmingham, West Midlands, United Kingdom -

the guitars are produced very intimately, apart from the electic solo guitar which is anything but subtle and doesnt and seem to sit well in the mix - needs more reverb id say. great harmony all the way through. i really dig this track, reminds me of marillion. also, moving and vibrant percussion drives the track along.

From Boise, Idaho -

This is a very pretty instrumental tune with some very nice guitar playing.

It kind of reminds me slightly of The Flower Kings and for some reason a little bit of Bon Jovi.

It almost has a western cowboy feel to it.

There's alot of lead guitar playing as the song builds.. maybe a tad too much for my tastes... but it's not bad.

From Tooting, London, United Kingdom -

Nice mix and subtle percussion. Wasn't sure about the really processed distorted guitar patch that snaked in over the top. Everything else sounds so nice and organic that it seemed rather out of place...maybe get a nice tube amplifier...(if this is a tube amplifier I apologise). Ebbs and swells are pleasant. By 1.07, the drummer is my favorite musician. It's 1.33 now, and my only gripe really is the guitar tone - sounds like an ugly cheap little pedal, wheras everything else is really lush and natural sounding. Keep everything else, bass, bells, cymbals, acoustic geetar - just find a nicer distorted guitar tone. Good luck!

From Toronto, Ontario -

Nice chord changes. Got me interested from the first bar. Liked the strings. Reminds me of Metallica's Unforgiven. Has a bit of a western vibe to it. Very Enio Morricone. Great percussion. Nice crescendo towards the end. Needs a bit more of a lead. Electric guitar solo sounded off in places towards the end; too much going on at the end, but maybe that's whatyou were going for. Cool. I'll check out more of your stuff.

Great Escape reviews - Part 1

Here are some of the reviews that I've received on GarageBand.com for my song The Great Escape, and my thoughts.

From Chicago, Illinois -

This has an interesting and unique feel to it. The percussion sounds good down the middle with the acoustic tracks panned around it. A couple minor performance flaws but well conceived and performed well overall. Shows some good musicianship and originality. I would have liked to hear more and see where else it could have gone.

Nice comments, and I feel encouraged by them. As far as where the song could have gone - it went were it went, and if it had gone anywhere else it would have not have been The Great Escape but a different song.

From Philadelphia, Pennsylvania -

OK it seems very strange to be rating this song in this genre when there is no lead vocal, and so much depends on that. I like the fact that you treat your guitars as lead instruments though, and I like how they work off each other. The bongos are sort of bothering me- they seem out of place or they are mixed too high. When it kicks in around 1:50 or so that is very cool. I have to say this sounds like a soundtrack more than a stand-alone song- a tune I could compare this to is Alice in Chains "whale & wasp"- which treats the guitars like you guys do- but check that tune out, because alot happens in a couple minutes.

I am glad that this reviewer picked up on how we used guitars as lead instruments - that was completely intentional and it is nice when listeners pick up on what we were trying to do with the song. I really like how the guitars play off each other as well; I am glad that this reviewer picked up on that.

From Dallas, Texas -

the intro is a bit weird. It sound like some of the sounds are meshing. Maybe try some compression on the bass. there are some nice melodies here. very somber.

The intro may sound weird because there is actually no intro. I did not write this song to any particular form; when I originally wrote it I couldn't think of an intro, so I asked myself why not write a song without an intro? Of all the songs I've written, this one in particular said to me that if I was going to experiment by writing a song without an intro, this was the song to try it on. The vocal version of this song also has no intro - the vocals come in immediately.

The Rolling Stones did a song called Ruby Tuesdays which also has no intro.

From New Haven, Connecticut -

I enjoyed this very much, the overall fell of the song is mellow and very earthy with a nice slight change in tempo at about 1;20 that works realy well. I really enjoyed the use of percussion as to drum set on this, it helps keep the fell real and not over stated. The guitar work was nice and consistent throughout and compliments the organ very nicely in the final 30 seconds of the song. Good mix, good production value and a good song, I can't find anything bad to say about this one.

I totally, totally like this review!

The Great Escape - reviews are coming in

The reviews for The Great Escape have started coming in, and so far they have been pretty good. As of today, it's ranking is #31 of 80 in the Progressive Rock genre - I'd say that is a significantly better ranking than I had with Yesterday Seems So Far Away last September (Yesterday has a current all time ranking of #1,624).

I am pretty excited about the results I am seeing so far.

Submitted The Great Escape to GarageBand.com

I finally did it - I submitted The Great Escape to GarageBand.com. I have been planning to do this since around October (see GarageBand.com - next step), and I've been actively working on preparing a track for submission since December (see Holding back vs taking action).

Although I had considered retitling the instrumental version of this song, I ended up deciding to keep the name The Great Escape - I've decided not to second-guess myself, and my reviewers will say whatever they say.

When I submitted Yesterday Seems So Far Away last September, that song ranked in the bottom three of its peer group. I will consider it a success if The Great Escape attains a significantly higher ranking.

So I guess I'll sit back for a while and wait for the reviews to come in and plan how I'm going to approach my next recording project.

My birthday presents

I got my birthday presents last weekend. Why so late, three months after my birthday? Well, my sister had given me a gift certificate to use at Chapters, and J had given me a gift certificate to use at Blockbusters. Both gift certificates have been sitting on my dresser since then, until I decided that they had sat there long enough.

I used the Blockbusters card to get the Star Wars Episode III DVD. I used the Chapters card to get a book called The Artist's Way.

Thanks, J, for the Star Wars DVD. Thanks sis, for the book.

Should I change the name?

I once said that when it comes to titling an abstract photograph, you can call it anything you want, because it's abstract - who's going to argue with your title? I titled one of my photos something like Ice Cream Dripping on a Sidewalk on a Hot Summer Afternoon - just because I could.

I figure the same reasoning could apply to a song that is instrumental - right? I've been debating whether I should rename The Great Escape when I post the instrumental version. In the lyrical version of my song, Great Escape refers to an escape from a dreary life running in the rat race where it's a drag just getting out of bed, to a life of passion and adventure with every day bringing so many possibilities.

However, I wonder if the title is a bit of a cliche. This title is shared by the classic 1963 movie (which I haven't seen yet) about an escape from a German POW camp. The band Marillion also did a song with the same name on their 1994 CD Brave. Is this title already overused?

Alternate titles I've considered for the instrumental version are Evolution and Metamorph. The way the three sections of the song build towards the climactic ending make me think of the metamorphosis from larva to pupa to butterfly.

Probably I'm second guessing myself and should just stick with my original title though.

Great Escape - alternate mix

The idea to do an alternate mix came from all those times I spent in the studio during mixing sessions on past recording projects, listening as SS would solo various combinations of recorded audio tracks in order to set their relative levels. He would mute this track and solo that track, and each combination would give the song a different feel and different character. I pondered that we could use the same source recordings to create a totally different mix of the same song just by emphasizing a different combination.

I thought we could try this on The Great Escape. I didn't have anything specific in mind for an alternate mix; I simply thought let's try this. I discussed this with SS and he suggested that we try an alternate approach to the percussion. The mix we made in December used a standard tom kit (sampled); this time he wanted to try it with an ethnic style percussion.

So we built a new set of percussion tracks and then mixed it with all the guitar work we recorded in December - and the idea worked. I had thought that with an alternate mix, I'd end up with a two different flavours of the same song; instead we ended up with an improved version of the song.

We still need to do a final mixdown and master the track, and then I'll be ready to post it to GarageBand.com.

Learning to extract video

My LifeDrive came with a bonus CD that contains an application called Pocket DVD Studio. This application is for converting DVD movies to be played on a Palm device. The file it creates is an AVI file - which can be used in a ShowBiz project. ShowBiz is the application I use to edit my video projects.

What all of this means is that I will be able to create videos that incorporate scenes from movies. That could open the door for new levels of creativity in future video projects.

Look ma, no wires

I picked up a wireless router for home this week. My idea was to put a wireless network card into J's computer so that she could access the internet from her own computer instead of using mine at the same time that I want to use mine, and that we would therefore have one less topic to argue over. A side effect of having a wireless router in the house would be that I could access email and internet from my LifeDrive device using its built-in WiFi feature.

Although I did manage to get the wireless hooked up and configured so that I could access the internet from my own PC and from my LifeDrive, I have not yet been able to get it working from J's computer. Kind of ironic, since that was the original purpose of setting up a wireless network at home.

However, I can now send and receive email when I'm in the washroom - this has got to be the hallmark of technological sophistication.

Mixing The Great Escape

I had a session at the studio last week, working on the instrumental version of The Great Escape. We recovered the tracks from the digital audio tapes (ADATs) of my original recording, which was around February 2001. Back then we were still using ADAT but since then we have switched over to non-linear editing. That's a fancy way of saying we do it on a computer. After importing the tracks from tape we built up some percussion tracks and then added a a few guitar tracks that follow the melody.

I had another session today - we mixed the tracks we recorded last week along with the tracks from the original recording. It occurred to me that with all the tracks we've recorded, we could do an alternate mix that would emphasize different combinations of the guitar tracks. That will take another session though.

I like the way the mix sounds now - I think it's an interesting sonic landscape. I'll want to get it mastered before I'm ready to submit it to GarageBand.com. Mastering will involve harmonically balancing the frequencies, and will also cause the song to have the same apparent volume and mix when played on different types of audio systems. Mastering will take another session too, but I think it will be worth it.

So it looks like I'll need another session or two before I'm ready to post this song.

Reading at the Feast of Good Cheer

Every so often, some friends of mine throw a get-together that we call Feast of Good Cheer. It's an evening of good friends and good food. Originally we started off having these events once a month but the frequency has fallen off a bit as our lives have demanded some adjustments from us.

We had a Feast this past weekend. I took advantage of this event to present a reading of selected scenes from Mission: Dawn to my friends. I read some of my favourite character scenes - scenes about the relationship between Arjay and Linda, and scenes about interactions and reactions to the new ship's doctor.

I was a bit nervous because this was my first time reading this material in front of an audience. It was well received though. I received some nice comments about it - particularly that they liked the dialogue, and that it was easy to listen to. I felt encouraged by the comments I received.

Bonanza

I remember when I was a boy, my dad used to watch a television series called Bonanza. I don't remember any of the episodes - I just remember the distinctive theme song and the famous burning map - but I wasn't otherwise too interested in the show.

Last year it occurred to get my dad a Bonanza DVD set for Christmas. I thought it might spark some nostalgia with him. He didn't take to watching the DVD's though - it's too newfangled for him and he doesn't take to new technology very well.

This year when I was doing some Christmas shopping with J, I saw a couple more volumes of Bonanza DVD's, so this time I picked up a set for myself. I've watched a few episodes with J and I must say I'm becoming hooked on the series. I enjoy the writing and the characters.

The special effects look dated - not that there are a lot of special effects in this show. The gunshots look totally fake and hokey by today's standards. A death scene consists of the sound effect of a gunshot followed by a scene of the victim clutching his chest and falling to the ground. Despite the fact that it looks really hokey I find it a refreshing variation from all the explicit blood and gore that we see in modern day shows.

I wasn't too interested in the show when I was a boy but I'm hooked on it now.

Holding back vs taking action

My Palm-less days are over. I finally picked up a new Palm device, the LifeDrive. The technology I was used to in my old Palm m500 handheld has been updated so I'll have to get used to a new way of doing things.

* * *

Over the years I've had various people who know me say to me that I tend to hold back. I think even one of the reviews I got for Yesterday Seems So Far Away on GarageBand.com said a similar thing. It must be true - I've got some creative projects I'd like to undertake and complete but I'm just not doing anything with them.

Last weekend I decided to write a list of the creative projects where I'm holding back from implementing them. I ended up with a list of eleven items, and that includes doing the instrumental version of The Great Escape.

Having an idea is one thing but acting on it is another. So I've taken some action - I have found the ADATs - digital audio tapes - on which I recorded the original version of The Great Escape, and I've booked a studio session for the 20th to work on the new version.

Appreciation exercise

J and I did an exercise last night about what we appreciate about each other. It was a really great exercise; it felt like it reconnected us with our positive feelings for each other in a time when we have been dealing with quite a bit of emotional crap.

Some of the things I appreciate about J:

• She is somebody I can have fun with
• I appreciate that she initiated this appreciation exercise
• I appreciate her generosity of spirit
• We dance well together
• She is putting some effort into trying to find me a discount on a LifeDrive device through her corporate account
• I appreciate when we take time out to watch a movie or TV together
• She inspires me to take better care of things, (I can be rough with them and they wear out or break down faster)
• Her tidiness and organization
• I appreciate that we have adopted a cat together and have given him a good home
• She is doing an excellent job managing one of my rental properties
• I appreciate having her and her mom as an audience for when I make my home movies
• I appreciate that she likes listening to Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Some of the things J appreciates about me:

• My willingness to have her mother live with us
• Being a good uncle; I enjoy her nieces and nephews
• She appreciates me taking her out for dinners
• She appreciates me sharing housework
• She appreciates me driving her around
• She appreciates my support in her projects - like home renovations
• She appreciates me taking her on vacations/holidays
• She appreciates my help in mowing the lawn
• She appreciates my help in shovelling the snow
• She appreciates that I am into technology, like computers, digital photos, movie maker
• She appreciates that I pick up her mother when she is not able to
• She appreciates that her mother can also count on me
• She appreciates that I am faithful
• She appreciates that I am honest
• She appreciates that I take care of her and love her