Schoenberg, Chopin, Associative

 The Chopin trick for chord progressions. It's kinda cool.

Schoenberg meets Thalberg.

Pipe Chase

I'm behind on everything. But we're in the final ploof of work on Red Flag of the Future. I'm going to make the big bucks, you know, with puppet opera. Because puppet opera is where the money is. The big money. Puppet. Opera. Can you feel the money pouring in? We all can. 

Honestly, "Guest Storage" cracks me up. 

Our cast and crew screening next week is bonked because of some key people coming down with the Covid. Ugh. I've had it twice, but I seem to be free of it this time. 

Birthday present T-shirt. I'm staying on target.

So I'm hiding in my disease-free-bubble. I noticed that the sinus operation a few years ago (which nearly killed me when I got MRSA) has, ultimately, really worked. I get sick much less. I mean, I got Covid once since then. But so far nothing else.

A bit more than a month ago. This was unpleasant. 

I mean nothing else except the wildfires in Canada are making the air quality absurdly bad. Like 1970's bad. I'm personally keeping the entire air purifier industry afloat.

Associative Property.

Rendering in DaVinci to 23.976

So, the word on the street is that both DaVinci and Premiere do terrible h264 renders and you should first render out in high quality before using Handbrake or some such to make the video you'll put on YouTube or whatever. 

DaVinci timeline. Red arrow points to pre-rendered .mov file. 

That's... fine. I mean. It's fine. I still use DaVinci for many short uploads -- tests, some corporate stuff, etc. -- but I'll export final feature-length things in high-res before Handbraking them to HD.

I usually like to pre-render my acts (or 10-ish-long minute sections) and then put the pre-render at the highest track of the timeline. It makes rendering easier and it acts as a safety where the movie can be rebuilt in the future even if the software that edited it doesn't exist anymore. 

But here's a weird thing I've discovered in DaVinci. I shot this puppet opera at 23.976, mostly on a Blackmagic Pocket 4K, but some on a Panasonic GH4. For some reason, my timelines I made in DaVinci Resolve are set to exactly 24 frames per second. But seemingly, it does something odd with the 23.976 material inside the timeline. 

If I pre-render the timeline, the pre-rendered Quicktime (or whatever) slowly moves out of sync. But that seems to be because the automatic frame rate of the render is at the timeline's settings (24 fps). If I manually change that output to 23.976 it can then be re-imported and placed on the timeline and syncs just fine. 

Zum Tanz

There's a plugin for GIMP to export individual layers in an image as new images. Batch Image Conversion.

My sister Jeanne made these delightful animated letters for the opera. Could we be finished with this opera? I would be happy to be done. So close! 

NiftyCase standards

 the NiftyCASE when using 5-Pin MIDI:

• Channel 1 will go to CV/Gate 1

• Channel 2 goes to CV/Gate 2

• Channel 3 is for duophonic input, that is, two simultaneous incoming MIDI Notes: First note goes to CV/Gate 1, Second to CV/Gate 2

• Channel 10 acts as 5 drum triggers, turning the CV1/Gate1/CV2/Gate2/Mod outputs into individual gates based on the incoming note (C1 to E1).

Travails of an acoustic guitar nut

8 years ago I did a whole thing about 3D printed guitar nuts. The short answer is that I absolutely do not care about what a nut is made of. I don't care about bone nuts, brass nuts, nuts made from prehistoric fossilized antlers, whatever. 

What I do care about is intonation compensation at the nut. 

So I made a 3D printed nut for the Martin D-28 and I experimented with making them out of PLA and ABS plastics and sound-quality-wise it didn't make any difference. 

Well, it's 8 years later and something happened. 

Melted guitar nut.

Now, what actually happened here? A couple years ago the bridge split in half. It really bummed me out. I took it to 30th Street Guitars and they did an amazing job fixing it. But I was still kinda depressed about the whole thing having happened and I left the guitar in its case for at least a year. When I opened the case to play the guitar again, I found the bridge in the above shape. 

Also, some of the finish of the guitar had reacted with the fuzzy stuff inside the case. I presume it got very hot inside the case at some point to do all that. It kinda bums me out. Again. 

It seems that case reaction is a thing.

It may be a reaction to using a silicone polish like Pledge. That could be a problem I didn't know I was introducing as I normally wipe down guitar and then put them up on a wall. But if I were to wipe it down and put in a case? Ugh.