250, Untititled

[In the interest of transp[arency, I've left all spelling and typing error s intact for this post]

See, this is why I shouldn't bother with things like this. You make big promises and then you get busy with school and writers block and you could have posted like ten blogs but NOOOOOOOOOO it had to be a song. I'm a dummass.

Anyway here are some movies I made a while ago, which at least contain music. I fininshed another movie last week but the file might be a little to big to post until I can figure out how to shrink it.

What am Was Watching II

Trying to get more into a bloggin schedule of a couple times a week (as opposed to my current schedule of "never"). Here's some videos, in no real order:


This was written by one of the guys who made LOOOOOOOOOOOOST (deep cut). It is funny and you should watch it because it is funny. Also there's famous-ish people and a cool use of time travel.



The next thing I was going to post went down the memory hole, so here a video of Kurt Vonnegut being awesome instead:



The next thing is also the thing that is the last thing, because I thought I had more things but did not. Anyway I am recomendiding Clone High because it is a fun show that is funny and also fun and you can watch the whole thing in like three hours so theres that. Also I really like the theme song, so at least watch that part. The first episode is kind of weak, and the show never does that much with its premise, but it gets stronger as it goes along (surprising for both an animated show and an anything-goes parody, it's actually pretty serialized). All the episodes are streamable (note to self: is streamable a word?), although you might have to hunt for some of them.

The next post is number 250, and I'm trying to think of something cool for it, which is not-very-subtle code for I'm probably going to start posting music again.

Photoblag One

I'm not the only one who sees it, right? (taken way back at Christmas)

Apparently Wal★Mart has the same opinion of Guitar Hero 4 & 5 as I do. (Taken a few weeks ago)
I'm still not sure I drove my own car home. (Taken the day before the previous photo I think)

Hopefully the next one of these will be longer. I have something planned, so it'll either be awesome or the worst thing ever, according to the laws of the Internet.

Also while I probably don't have your attention, here's my twitter, which is just about to wrap up a truly anticlimactic month-long series. I'm very...proud is the wrong word. Relieved? Distracted? Waffles? I'm very waffles of my achievement

More downloads

Here.

About a third of these songs are identical to the blog versions. Most of the others had some small mixing/ editing/ volume issues reworked. One song ("♣ Noise") has a rewritten track (the piano solo). Another ("Effect & Cause") is a completely new recording.

I wanted to do every song; but I decided it was better to make as many as I can available now instead of waiting six months or tearing my hair out trying to rush and fix 30-something songs in a few weeks.

The songs that were left off were either weaker overall ("Beatbox 1," "LOST"), took longer to rerecord than I had time for ("Enter Sandman," "Sleep Now," "Grace"), or were reworked but I wasn't satisfied with the outcome ("Heavy Wood," "Sound of A Guitar Exploding"). Some of them ("Minor Thing," "Duel," "Teardop"), I had no idea where to start. And a couple ("Hayao," "Spellbound," "2-Note Shuffle") were basically cut for time or pacing reasons. It's a shame though, as I think some these, especially "Enter Sandman," "Minor Thing," and "Teardrop," could turn into really good songs. I'll probably talk some more about this later, if I can get back to them.

Oh, and please give me money. Or else

Soundtracking Your Life is available for download--sort of

...OK, so it's not the final versions, just the demos* (i.e. the versions you've been listening to nonstop on this site and Youtube, with some modifications**), and it's not every song, just the eight that are finished so far, but it's free (but if you can please give me some money, they only give me like so many free downloads; also if it's less than thirty cents I don't actually get anything because of servicing costs).

As for the other songs, at least some of them will be up soon. Everything's in order, but it takes a long time to upload files. If you're impatient, keep checking here. It's easy to remember, it's the same as this site, but with "bandcamp" instead of "blogspot."

*Devotees may recall me mentioning this exact plan earlier.
**For more information on what modifications, I've written something up on the individual song posts:
1. "Dread"
2. "Rose"
3. "Two Warriors Meet on an Ancient Battleground"
4. "Leitmotif for X"
5. "Insanity in 9:8 Time"
6. "Rise"
7. "Fencing Wire"
8. "Angels Dressed in Black"

"Beatbox 2"

:)

UPDATED 1/3: Some Notes on the Future of Song of the Week: For a long time I had sort assumed that SotW would end here, and I probably wouldn't do a year 3 (I'm not saying I would quit music entirely, just stop with the weekly schedule). I'm going away to school and probably can't take most of my instruments, and I don't know if I'll have time to record. Plus for a long time when I wasn't doing music, the stress of missing the deadline was getting to me, and I figured it would be better to quit than to have to keep to it. Having said that, doing so many songs in such a short time was a lot of fun, especially some of these smaller, less stressful songs from the second half of the week. And I still have a lot of unused ideas, so who knows? Maybe I can find some time to do something.

Over the last few weeks I've been remastering, editing, and rerecording (what a weird word) most of the SotWs in preparation to do some kind of downloadable album release. I've done most of them at this point though a lot of the most important ones (which of course are the ones that are the hardest and take the longest). Still aren't done yet. And I have three days, and I have to spend a lot of that getting ready to go. I guess we'll see.

DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: This one's the same.

Surfing the Infinite Part III

Party like it's post 199!

This is the blog theme I'm going with for next month. Thought you'd want a preview. Make sure your speakers are on.

[Made with Geocities-izer]

Forgot to Mention...

Song of the Week now available on Youtube. Exclamation Point.

Song of the Week Week 2 Update

So I think Monday highlighted the "denial" stage, Tuesday the "bargaining" stage, and yesterday the "anger" stage (wait, does anger come before or after bargaining? Whatever, let's just go with it); today I've finnaly accepted that SotWWII just can't happen right now. There's some kind of hard-to-describe mental business I have to do for these, and after stopping for so long I'm finding it hard to get back in the literal and figurative groove. I think while I spent all that time in that class my expectations got all wierd, and I was all, yeah I get back I'll be makings the best songs ever woot, and then this week actually comes around and nothing sounds good enough or I haven't gotten enough sleep or I've slept too late and don't have a lot of time, or my sister's borrowed my computer so I can't do anything anyway, or my parents are making too much noise or preventing me from making too much noise--stuff I can usually work around, but it's just been so long it's like I have to re-learn how. And I still have to write a paper and 5 one-to-two-page answers for a test, and read the second half of a book, and sign up for Fall classes and wow I should really have started all that already.

Hopefully I'll be able to do Song of the Week Week 2 Take 2 in earnest as soon as possible. In the meantime I'm downshifting back to the regular one-song-one-week schedule to fit in more Guitar Hero time*. Expect something tomorrow or Saturday (but not both).

*Short, haven't-yet-finished-the-game review: just get Rock Band 2. It has better songs and they're all in English, except for that one part of "Psycho Killer".

Then Again, Maybe a Year is Just Less Time Then I Thought It Was.

A year ago today I graduated from high school. I don't know if it really means anything, or what it would mean if anything, but I don't know, it feels important for some reason.It feels like I should have got more done in the last year. Secretly I always figured I'd be rich and famous by now.

Oh well. I'm taking a moment, is all. And using my Blog-given powers, compelling you to do the same.

If nothing else, I saw a lot of great movies this year, and I managed to keep blogging for eight months, which is probably three times the average blogger. And I do feel like I've learned a lot*.

*Most important thing I've learned: don't try and blog everything you watched on TV. It makes watching TV less fun, and you always feel guilty not doing it.

Don't trust Ancient Greeks!

Or your parents. Also no SotW today, I have some kind of cold-type thing.

Two-Part Hundredth Postacular, Part Two (of Four)

See, I had all these Grand Plans, and now I just want all this anniversary crap to be over so I can get back to talking about Pokémon.

Actually, you know what, all the serious reflection I was going to do here? I'm making that the 150th post. Problem solved.

I still have some other retrospective stuff I was gonna do though. Here's the post that was going to be part three of four, promoted to part two of three. Nobody remembers part three anyway. Think about the third verse of "Amazing Grace", or "White Christmas", or any other song with at least three verses. You can't, because no one ever remembers the third part. Anyway, here's the thing.

The Many Looks of The Infinite:

The Basic:

When I came up with the basic design of this blag, there were two concepts I wanted to focus on, both of which play off the reason I picked the name: I see the Internet as a big, unending, mostly empty place. So I what wanted to do was create the illusion that you were kind of trapped or lost in an endless space. So there are a lot of ways to do that, but I decided to focus on two elements of that, 3-D and sort of "larger-than-life" (in quotes because they're not really that big). Since most fonts are viewed straight-on--note to self, design font that's viewed in profile-- the best way to show 3-D is with blur. I tried a lot of fonts and the one I decided on, oddly enough, is called Erthqake (not to be confused with the similarly-named Earthquake). Normally, it looks like this. I know. Sometimes it's the last thing you'd suspect.

To reinforce the "fog" idea, I always use grayscale colors with this one. Regular colors "pop" too much and kind of destroy the illusion of blurriness. For the same reason, this (and-

To make the letters look bigger without actually making them bigger, I made them taller, and farther apart. My goal was to make them kind of monolithic, as if they're looking down on you, but without overdoing it and looking silly.

The Speaking of Silly:

Like a lot of the alternate logos, this one has only been used once, for a few weeks around Halloween, mainly because it doesn't make sense otherwise. This was the first alternate, so I was a bit conservative about it, sticking to grayscale (albeit reversed), blur, no edges and the same font. And honestly, it's probably my favorite out of all of them. I just like the skulls (if you do too, you can get a them here).

The Guess Which Presidential Election I Used This for:

First of all, I really do love 'mrka, in a not-ironic way. Seriously, have you been to other countries? Most of them suck, especially the food. Plus everything there is really old for some reason, it's like, build some new stuff other countries! Anyway, I'm not completely satisfied with this design, which is probably the shortest-lived one (running only from Halloween to Election Day). It's bacause it has edges. I prefer logos that blend into their background, and there was just no way for that to work here. I do like the red-white-and-blue color scheme that accompanied it though.

And Then the Third Futurama Movie Came Out:

The first of many logo parodies, undoubtedly. The hard thing here was getting the colors. The blue used for the real logo just looked wrong here, and I couldn't find quite the right shades of red and yellow to make it identical. In the end I just went with what looked good over strict accuracy. This one ran for about a week, I think, though it did lead to me coming up with the phrase "RSSMatron" (look to your right if you don't get it), which I guess is remains its legacy. Also the "flash" background directly led to the next one.

The Next One:

In case you hadn't noticed, this is also the current logo, though it originally went for about a week (November 2008: Month of the Four Logos. Actually five, I think I switched out the Halloween one a little late). But it's versatile enough to be reuseable. It also fits well with my aforementioned design elements, since the light helps place the words in space, and also has a somewhat alienating effect. Hopefully).

The Shiny:

Here I wanted to use the same design ideas, but approach them in different ways. Just as with the last one, the letters are illumnitated with a light, but this time it comes from a (heavily doctored) photo. I like the bombasticness of this one-- it's infinite in its own way-- but ultimately it didn't fit.

This was my Thanksgiving one, in case you didn't guess. Like I said, Novemeber had a lot of logos, especially if you include whatever I switched to after Thanksgiving (probably the Basic one, I can't remember. Huh, I guess that actually makes six).

"Oh, You Mean Xmas":

Pretty easy one to describe. Mostly I did this one because I liked this background picture. What I like here is that there's a moodiness and atmosphere to this that most of the other logos don't have-- it's very cold in the literal sense, but figuratively still warm and inviting. At least, that's what I see in it.

Tribute to Portal One:

See, originally I'd planned to review Portal after I finished it, instead of over a month later, and I designed this based on the game's credit sequence.

Again, this approaches the "infinite" idea from a different direction. Instead of being infinite in direction or size, this one is (not literally) infinite in how many pieces it has. Sort of I did it betteron my second go-round:

My Second Go-Round:

This one combines the "many, many things" idea with the "3d" and "blur" ideas. It'd be my very most favoritest, but it's a little too complicated.

Valentimes is Special Times:Here again we see the "many, many things" idea. This logo is actually a repurposing of something I had designed earlier, something I normally wouldn't do, but I thought it worked well.

I don't really celebrate Valentime's Day, religiously or socially, so I thought it would be funny to, in contrast to that, go all out with the blog design. The background was a maroon-red-purplish (I'd call it Dark Pink, but that's actually an oxymoron, and also a good name for a rock album*), the text actually had pink links, and this huge, intentionally garish logo dominated most of the screen. Luckily I got away with it because I don't think I had readers then. Actually, I have no idea if I have readers now. If you're a reader, please leave a comment so I can get a ballpark figure. Hell, leave two.

Here's what I did for St. Patrick's Day. My favorite thing about this: no green. I mean, green is a perfectly good color, but must we always go for the cliche? Instead I went with booze, clearly making a sign for "The Infinite Bar & Grill". At least I was kind of subtle.

Of course, my original idea was to do some kind of Celtic knot design, since those already symbolize infinity. But I couldn't figure out how.

OK, that's all of them so far. We can now resume our regularly scheduled blogtivities.

*Two other good names: Self-Titled Debut and ...A Good Name for a Rock Album, if only as meta-jokes.

UPDATE 4-3:
I built this animated one using gickr (not sure how that's pronounced). Consider it a bonus. Actually, my original plan was to do an animation, but I decided it would be too distracting. Plus I can't use this one, it's too small and jerky. And I'm not sure if it even works, literally. Seemed fine earlier.

Surfing the Infinite, Part II

"SURFING THE INFINITE, PART 2"

CUT TO BACKSTAGE. A HANDFUL OF AIDES AND ONLOOKERS STAND, WORRIED, JUST BECOMING AWARE OF THEIR SITUATION. LOOKING ONSTAGE FROM THE WINGS, WE CAN SEE OUR SPEAKER IN THE DISTANCE. HIS WORDS ARE REPEATED, ECHOING BACK TO US:

MAN (OFFSCREEN):
Where is everyone?

WE CAN SEE SAME THE QUESTION PASS ACROSS THE FACES OF THE PEOPLE BACKSTAGE.

FINALLY, ONE SPEAKS.

AIDE ONE:
Where is everyone?

A LONG PAUSE

AIDE TWO:
Why do I feel like I've heard that before?

I've Made A Huge Mistake

I thought I was closing in on post100, but I was looking at a count that included Unpublished posts. This is actually Number 81. Just ignore the numbers on the last three.

No Song of the Week Today...

...my guitar string broke. Also, because my class schedule is different, I'm moving it to Fridays, anyway. Just thought you ought to know.

Accidental Song of the Week (Plus Video)

[Song of the Week is a "weekly" feature which is supposed to update every Thursday, but almost never does. In it, Drew records a song, or attempts to record a song, or gives up and writes another movie review.]

I don't have an excuse for not posting, other than what I call "[long string of creative expletives] finals." And I haven't watched any movies in a while, so there's that. Let's all just pretend I was abducted by aliens.

So I find myself having to do a presentation, and I think-- hey, if'n I makes me a movie, I reckon I wouldn't have to stand up while presentatin'." At the time it didn't occur to me that the movie would be more work than a normal presentation. So then I thought, "well shoot, I's can make up a right purty song to go with'n my movie."

As they say in the business, EPIC FAIL.

I was going for something James Bond with the song, with a heavy bassline, surf guitar, and the kind of drumming that goes tsk-tsk-tika-tsk-tsk, but the bass sound was weak and messy and both my guitars are broken (I've taken to calling one "ol' five-stringy," because I'm too busy/lazy to buy new strings). I managed to get the drums working, and figured I'd try some of the other MIDI doodads Garageband offers.

Come to think of it, my recording process of trying to start the movie on one PC, the recording software on another, and playing an instrument at the same time so they'd all sync up? Really stupid for people with only two hands.

I tried to get a tight drumbeat on this song, but the other instruments are just keyboard-mashing. I tried an experiment with doubling the bassline, but I'm not entirely sure it worked. I really do like the ending, mainly because it's a lot louder than everything else.

Oh, and just ignore the movie. I'm just too lazy and pressed for time to make a whole other music video.


Drew's DIY Presentation: "Battle Theme"


[Update: Sorry about the weirdness. I was trying to upload the wrong file for the first 18 or so hours.]

DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: This one's the same.

So here's what happened

My original plan was to not post anything last long weekend. Then I thought, "you knows what? I wills put up some bloogings" (my inner monologue can't spell "blog"). That was... Friday?

Saturday morning I decided to bust out the old DVDs, so as to avoid being productive. The first thing I watch is this. I notice a quote about a certain character having a "funny aneurysm," and instinctually note the significance*. But I brush it off and watch the rest of the discs. I also watched this, and this, and this, and got started on this, which, to be fair, I just got Wednesday (and apparently paid too much for).

*If you don't know what I'm talking about, I won't tell you.

While I was looking for something, anything, to do, I stumbled across this. Which quickly led me to this (see above). I consider this a tremendous cosmic coincidence, like Jefferson and Adams dying on the same day, albiet more important.

From there, I was hooked. It's like Wikipedia was in the early days, where you think, "what's that? what's that?" and before you know it you have 224 tabs open. Though I did learn a lot, or so I keep telling myself.

So that's what I did this weekend. I was on vacation in a different part of the Internet. And I watched a lot of TV. We'll be back on schedule... um... now.

My Eight-Word Review

Of the unable-to-compress-into-six-words film version of Sweeney Todd:

So that's what all the fuss was about.

In other news, the Rock Band 2 liveblog is dead. Long live the Rock Band 3 liveblog! No, for serious, I was running low on both both time and new things to say. I might pop in with a stray observation or such, but that'd be it.

P.S. No Song of the Week Today

For various reasons I can't do a Song of the Week right now. I'm gonna try and do two next week.