I gave my brother the great gift of Guitar Hero 2 (or II as it's written) for his birthday. Great game, semi hard to play but it's also quite addictive. So in return for his belated birthday gift, he gave me a belated gift for my birthday. I received Singstar Rock edition, and it's actually pretty fun. I have a horrible voice and it's something that I want to work on, so I'm actually putting it to use. Surprisingly it's already helped me find out what kind of vocal range suits me most, so I might give a shot to singing something in the near future. I won't give it too much thought, tho, as I'm trying more dedicated to the hip hop project that Shane and I are working on.
My roommate's girlfriend, Joy, purchased the pop edition, so yeah, 60 different songs that I can pretend to sing along with. Most of the songs I know, but there's a few good indie songs on there too.
In other news I'm designing some T-Shirts up for The Demo Tape, and I've got the concept sketched out and it's all a matter of scanning it and doing a bit of touching up that I have to do to make it a black and white concept. I'm thinking the design is gonna turn out great on an actual shirt.
Yes, it's unfortunate, but Pandora, along with most internet radio, will cease to exist in about a month's time. In the meantime, I'll enjoy the use of the website. I've been exposed to so much music that I absolutely love, and even from artists that I'd never expect. "Big Mistake" by Natalie Imbruglia for instance (which is in my sidebar as I'm writing, but it may get pushed down with more bookmarks soon), it's a great song, but I never would have thought to listen to her. Pandora suggested it to me in my Portishead channel. There's a lot of semi-pop music coming up, but it's all stuff I like, so I'm not bothered by it. Of course there's lots of underground stuff too, I'm just surprised with the amount of pop that actually sounds good.
So I suggest listening to some of the songs in my sidebar, apparently you'll see some advertisements until you sign up, but it doesn't cost anything to sign up, so why not? Man I sound like an advertisement, but this is a great invention, much better than the yahoo music thing I used to use.
First things first, I've got a new website that will hopefully have it's own domain name soon. I like a lot of things about it, it's got a decent design, it's very easy to manage and change things around on the fly, but it's somewhat inflexible to me at the moment. There are a few things I want to change, so as soon as I learn a bit more php, I'll be getting on that.
It uses a bunch of software from wordpress.org, and I've learned bunch of stuff about my web hosting service that I never knew existed, so hooray for me. I'll probably be changing this site to something similar in the future, but for now it's staying plain and bland, and all hand coded.
I've recently composed the best song I've ever put together. It's the one that Petey was giving me advice on. I never ended up using it, but I tryed to utilize his suggestion twice, and neither time did it work. What it did help me do was write some of the melodies, and then realize the perfect sound to go with them. It might sound conceited but I can't stop listening to the track, just some of the harmonies and ideas mesh so well together, I'm very proud of the sonicscape, it's a very moody piece and it moves forward quite well.
I'll post it soon as a work in progress, as I still have a few minor tweaks to do, and I've got to write some lyrics for it as well. I have no idea what the subject will be, but I'm going to attempt singing in this song, hopefully that goes well, but also don't be suprised if you never get to hear the vocals.
Yay, a blog entry. Anyways, I'm loving the latest album by Nine Inch Nails, Year Zero. Pretty much every song is really good with the exception of one or two generic songs, which still sound decent, so it's not that bad. I'm writing a small write up that consists of fairly random comments, so it doesn't approach anywhere near what most people conceive of as a review, but it still fits one of the actual definitions. I'll be posting that soon.
I've started two new songs recently, one of which I'd made the initial beginnings in a fairly swift manner, but I wasn't exactly sure where to take it, so I got some advice from Peter this evening. We also started a new song together and we've got a single concept for it. Rather than the song never getting finished because we rarely see each other, we're deciding to see how different our perceptions are of the small segment of music we've created thus far. I think it's a cool experiment, at the very least.
I've also got a few ideas for a song that Shane and I have recorded vocals too, but I'm having second thoughts about releasing it because I don't think that the beat is quite suited for the lyrics. I might have to enlist the services of Nick, Peter or Brendon to play some sweet licks for the beat, and then Shane and I will have to re-record the lyrics, as there's a good chance that we'll want to rap a hell of a lot louder and at least thrice as aggressive. I'm sure I'll thank myself if I can get this idea out the way I vision it, why do something half assed, right?
So Nick was over today and he forgot to bring a selection of dance music. This means that his idea for covering a dance song into a rock/alternative styling is postponed. Fortunately we weren't totally distraught, so we were able to salvage the evening by starting a hip hop beat. Actually the evening was kicked off with an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Then we decided that it'd be hilarious to disturb my roommate by turning up the volume with our new set of speakers, and blasting a giant, high and mid pitched sawtooth waveform around the apartment, many notes at a time. Then we go to some old time beat making.
What a beat she is, so far we've got a really cool set of drums, beefed up with some tape hissing, an awesome haunting melody, a dark bass line and some really cool ideas. It's always cool working with the guy, I guess almost 10 years of making music on and off with a friend will do that to you. We get a pretty good groove going and it's so easy for either of us to feed off of it.
The "Other Musical Tale" was the fact that I did some music for my buddy's at blackpearlmagic.com for their second flourish reel. Sorry, it's the song I'm working on for Brendon that I let them borrow. Either way, it suits their video quite well. As an added bonus, find my hands in some of the videos! There's a prize... really!
Not too much in the "news" today (news is something I always have to quote, as it's probably not news to most) except that I'm composing a song for a good friend of mine, Brendon. He's done a film piece called Wardance, and, without being too descriptive, it's a flashy short featuring two Capoeria stylists. It's a cool watch, and I got to compose music for it, replacing the temporary track that he'd put in. I've yet to do the vocals, but the song is composed. I may go back and add a few effects, but nothing majour. I'll see if I can get him to post it on youtube, something that should've happened with another XJR5 episode long ago!
Brendon has also made it clear that he is mad at me because I haven't written about my film work in my bio. Don't worry bro, I'll get to it soon.