Sunday, December 31, 2023

Yes.

 Zdzisław Beksiński


The story of YouLean. He works in C++ and iPlug. Sigh. I have a lot to learn before I can deal with iPlug. 

Jeffrey Sachs: another Lysenko we aimed at Russia.

Folkmanis puppets.

O'cello. I'm using this as a model for my cello.

Olga Desmond.



Decent Samples is pretty groovy with an interesting liberry. Actually, that link is to the Venus Theory Organic Orchestra instrument. I don't know what David Hilowitz' relationship is with transphobe Christian Henson is though. 


Friday, December 29, 2023

Capitalism Does Not Exist S01E04

This time with a puppet to explain how Capitalism doesn't exist.

Nobody knows what day today is

Waiting for my PhD defense to be scheduled. 


We have scene 4, now for 1-3, 5-6.


Working on the opera Red Flag of the Future.

We have a couple shorts coming up. One which will be improvised and is the brainchild of Rebecca Kush. The other is similarly-themed and writ by Richard Byrne. 

This sign was on the HVAC unit in the cafeteria, but I thought it was a funny sign for a TV studio.


Tried to see a dress rehearsal of Carmen at the Met. But the "open" part of the rehearsal was cancelled. 

iPlug controls. iPlug confuses me. I realize the tutorials are a bit out-of-date but they're also not really for people who are just learning to code. 


Tuning the tailpieces on basses. Two octaves and a perfect fourth. I don't know what it is "supposed" to be on a cello, but perfect fourths seem pretty reasonable. 

Flipzyde's singer is a very cool dude I work with. Their music is extraordinarily "musical" metal. I really dig the breadth of sound and the dynamics they do. 


Kaiber is one of those danged AI companies. 

Paul Drescher is a composer. 

Musiversal is a remote-musicians recording service. 

Wednesday, December 27, 2023

Such things



There's a version of Clonehunter that's up on YouTube and has over 380k views. I don't know if it's a legit licensed copy or not. They've edited or blurred out all the nudity. 



Dances in Exile is a web comic. 



This is nice

 I am on the list of DC Theatre Arts 2023 staff picks of creative professionals


Strong Wind at Scena Theatre
Roger Doyle and Andrew Bellware, music
Andrew Bellware, sound design

Saturday, December 23, 2023

No Truce With the Furies

 A new Tyrannosaurus Mouse album. 

New Tyrannosaurus Mouse alblum. "No Truce for the Furies."

Wednesday, December 20, 2023

Winter Solstice

 Various things for today. 



Lessee. Today is the Winter Solstice. I'm waiting to find out when my PhD thesis gets defended (by me). I'm told it will be next month. Sigh.

This is why we can't have nice things.


AdamMonroeMusic makes VSTi's. 



Cello measurements. I am making an electric cello. I want to put magnetic pickups on it rather than piezo. It's probably just my prejudice against piezos. I'm also going to make it a hard-tail, or at least with a very short bridge-to-tail length. Actually, I think I want to make it "headless" with electric-bass tuners at the bottom.


A weird thing about cellos is that normally the bridge is asymmetrical. Indeed, the radius of the flipping fingerboard is frequently so asymmetrical that the wood beneath the low note (C) is flat rather than radiused. 



Full-Bucket Music makes VSTi plugins. They're based on the iPlug2 framework. Or, at least the iPlug framework. 

Tuesday, November 21, 2023

The Rest Home for Building the Will to Victory

 It's the 21st. This is the nonsense I've been doing since the 13th. 



 

 This is much more experimental nonsense. Mostly playing with textures and a little with dynamics. I'm still trying to "master while mixing" using emulations of Pultec EQ's and then being very lazy with slapping Ozone on there, tweaking the levels, maybe inserting SSL and/or Fairchild emulations on the mix buss. Many of the individual tracks have LA-2A emulations on them just for whatever that does. On many of these tracks I commit the sin of putting reverb on the master bus. I know, right? But you know, some days that just works.


Monday, November 13, 2023

Sapphire Rebellion

 


New album. Sapphire Rebellion. Mostly experimental, trying to see how much low-end I can get on a recording without it chattering and pumping. Not always successful. 

I tried mixing and mastering on the same timeline. The mix master buss gets very busy that way, it's not a method I really recommend overall. 
Some things, like Audit Announced in Advance, surprised me as I though the saxophone sound was pretty good. And I think it was just a sax which came with my DAW, Samplitude. 

Chris Henson's Transphobia

This is really disappointing. Chris Henson's company The Crow Hill Company doesn't have a contact on their  page, so I wrote a comment on their "What is the Crow Hill Company" YouTube video.


They haven't bothered to respond.

So I wrote to Spitfire Audio (using their help desk.) 


I can't fathom not copypasting some boilerplate about how they respect all people regardless of race, creed, ethnic origin, LGBTQ+, etc. 

So yeah, I'm not buying any more of their stuff. It's really disappointing and disgusting. 

Friday, November 10, 2023

Spitfire Audio has a Transphobia Problem

I've written to both Spitfire Audio and to The Crow Hill Company about their positions on trans rights. Neither have bothered to respond. 
I've always found Spitfire to make the most musical of the libraries out there. But I don't really need to be supporting TERFs. I encourage artists to not support Spitfire anymore. 

Tuesday, November 07, 2023

Monday, November 06, 2023

Electric cello stuff

 Because I should be doing something else, I am working on designing a fully-electric cello. 


My idea is to make a headless instrument and to use magnetic pickups. The arc or radius of the bridge possibly makes putting a regular (say) bass pickup on it not do a great job of picking up the middle two strings. But maybe not? 
Thing is, the strings have to all be metal. And good strings are almost comically expensive -- like $300 for a set. Of course, a bow can be tens of thousands of dollars because of... reasons. 



Saturday, November 04, 2023

Three And One

The Telefunken ELA M 260 Tri-Mono Recording Set is relatively inexpensive for what it is. Apparently it's designed to be a Decca Tree set. 


It's under $5000 for three channels of microphones. Decca trees are cool and those Neumann M49's and M50's are stupidly expensive nowadays. Right now I have a fantasy about putting three of those Warm Audio U-47's in the air as a Decca tree. 
Huh. The M50 is also small-diaphragm. I was not aware of that. Anyway, my last Decca tree was with a pair of new Neumann omnis on the sides and an AEA ribbon in the center. That worked out pretty well, especially with some large diaphragm tube mics as spot microphones. 

Broken Peach's Pink Elephants on Parade is essentially a perfect work. 



Saturday, September 30, 2023

Monday, September 25, 2023

Research materials

The Selfish Gene. Personally, I object to the idea that genes have agency.


All the open stuff in my browser today:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/172gwtNQNcypkh25OT98qOMhIdYUKDu8z/view

https://scalar.usc.edu/works/creative-practice-research/cognitive-approach?path=practitioner-model

https://www.throughperspective.com/methods

https://archive.org/details/actionscience00argyrich/page/108/mode/thumb

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_research

https://www.actionresearchtutorials.org/activity-master-booklet

https://www.throughperspective.com/methods

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-90542-2

https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/published-dissertation-references

https://scalar.usc.edu/works/creative-practice-research/introduction?path=index

I submitted my thesis today. So I'm closing these tabs.