http://tangentialcold.com/ Tangential Cold: A Note or Two en-us TangentialCold tcRSS beta © blog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://tangentialcold.com/images/tancold.png http://tangentialcold.com/ http://tangentialcold.com/ I turned 40 years old this year, so naturally I've decided to take up piano lessons again. I took piano lessons for around 15 years. I've had my share of lessons. When I turned 18 I figured I was done with piano lessons. I was playing music with friends and bands and I was doing a lot more 'keyboard' work. Free-style. Over the years, I noticed that my hands could play music that I really couldn't read. Muscle memory. Trying to play what was actually written was getting more and more difficult. Which brings me to this point, taking piano lessons after a hiatus of 22 years. Wish me luck. I should be upping more music soon. Don't be surprised if it's more piano-centric than before. Mon, 31 May 2010 17:20:48 -0700 Composer Journal Entry http://tangentialcold.com/ Good view from above my house as they continue to remove the trees. I met a real interesting guy in this process. Phil Berwick is the owner of 'Living Tree' and I seriously enjoyed his company. Sat, 15 May 2010 18:38:00 -0700 Composer Journal Entry http://tangentialcold.com/ Many of you probably already know, but for those that don't: I'll be getting back to music but right now, I have this to deal with. Tue, 04 May 2010 18:38:08 -0700 Composer Journal Entry http://tangentialcold.com/ Dave Shot First is the website of a guy doing an online podcast drama called "The Unbelievable Origin of Superspiff and the Toothpick Kid". He contacted me about some of my Creative Commons music and so the song you hear at the end of each podcast is actually me. His podcast drama is in the super-hero noir genre. The episodes aren't long, so take a listen and see if you like them. They are in order though, so if you don't want to be completely lost, start with #1. You can start with episode 5 though as that's a stand-alone, but you'll want to listen to #1 before continuing with the series. Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:14:00 -0700 Composer Journal Entry http://tangentialcold.com/?SID=17 [September 29 2008] First track with my new iMac. This was done using Cubase v4. I tried to keep it feeling natural, so I turned off quantization and did the piano part in three seperate complete takes and just chose the best one of the three. The drums were triggered using my Roland VDrums and the bass-line was just me on the keyboards. Creative Commons Licensed Music http://tangentialcold.com/?SID=16 [July 14, 2006] First track with my new MacBook Pro. It's also the first track in a long time that I do not play any actual instruments (sad to say). Part of that is because I wanted to get my feet under me musically. I had not seen the new version of Garage Band and I wanted to take it for a spin. This is the result. The drums are canned loops. The bass is done as a virtual instrument and I did the midi by hand (ie: note by note). You can see a screenshot of garageband in action in the journal. Creative Commons Licensed Music http://tangentialcold.com/?SID=15 [April 9, 2006] For my wedding aniversary I got a Bodrann (a type of Irish frame drum). My studio had been dormant for many months and I just hadn't the time to work on some musical ideas I had. When I got the drum though I really had some ideas with what I wanted to do and made the time to do them in. I did this piece, end-to-end, in about 3 hours. It was fast because I limited myself to 1 drum and 1 piano. I cheated just a little bit because I used a couple of bass guitar samples. Other than that, all the drumming is me on 1 drum. It doesn't quite have the start I want, but I'm not displeased with the way it came out over-all. Creative Commons Licensed Music http://tangentialcold.com/?SID=14 [April 2004] My first crack at using my upgrade to Cubase SX. All my other Cubase endevours were done on the PC with v5.1 VST. I used some simple kit loops from GarageBand and then layered everything else up in Cubase. I really wanted this track to feature some vocals, but when I completed the bassline, I couldn't for the life of me, come up with anything to actually say. So the track meanders a bit more than I care for, but I am pretty happy with the mix. I think I did a far better job with compression and EQ in this track than most of my other tracks. Creative Commons Licensed Music