This is a great tip from the Ninja. He explains how to work with virtual instruments that have the option of multi-channel outputs and he does it using Ultrabeat, which is something I have been getting a lot of requests for lately. I am planning a whole series of Ultrabeat quicktips, but for now, hopefully this whets your appitite.
I've talked about giving myself little challenges and pushing myself, and now the time has come to stop talking and start doing. It's about time, I take on something bigger than your average photostroll. Therefore, I have decided to start planning a photobook.
The Beet: Seesmic Video Comments This week on Beet.TV, Cathy Brooks gives Andy Plesser the scoop on Seesmic, a video comment platform that's recently been adopted by Wordpress and MyBlogLog, and will soon be available for TypePad and MovableType.
Ok, full disclosure. Total self-plug here. Spent a lot of time working on something really fun - a gift to fans of Indiana Jones, actually - and I want to share it with you all here. If you want to crank our Indy tribute song while you read the blog, pop this Flash player window up, or download the free MP3 here. I give you 'The Ballad of Indiana'.
After the thrill of having our way geeked-out Star Wars-themed tribute song"Farm Boy" (not only a Star Wars homage, but also a loving nod to our proggy, synth-laden youth) featured on the October 13, 2006 episode of "The Force-Cast" with Jason and Pete, my childhood friend and bandmate, Glen Nelson (he's an elementary school music teacher and co-founder/vocalist/keyboardist of CT-based family-friendly rock band Spaghetti Cake and northeastern regional jam-band fave Flipper Dave) and I felt a calling to return to the genre and write a follow-up tribute song in honor of the new Indy film, "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", hitting theaters on May 22nd, 2008. Australia-based Ed Dolista's fantastic podcast "The
Indy-Cast," focusing on all things 'Jones,' seemed like the perfect place to world premiere our up-tempo rock-pop number written in honor of the good Doctor, and Ed was more than happy to oblidge. The new High Adventure single called "The Ballad of Indiana" was featured in Episode 24 of the Indy-Cast, which came out Sunday April 27th. Dolista did a 15 minute audio interview with Glen and I for the show. If you're an Indy fan and you haven't heard of the show yet, you may want to hit the RSS feed. The Ballad of Indiana is also being featured tomorrow, state-side, on another hugely popular podcast. Adam Christianson'sThe MacCast will be playing the track as its finale for the May 7, 2008 episode. Following is the story of how the song was created.
Everything photography came to a standstill for me a few days ago. Okay, I still carried my point and shoot around with me, taking snapshots, but leaving them on the memory card. I also talked to a few models about setting up shoots, making sure to plan them far enough into the future, that I could recover from the problem, that has been keeping me from uploading anything new to either Flickr or iStockphoto. The problem?
A weekly roundup of hot topics and buzz-worthy conversation from the Logic Studio community:
First off, if you are not already all over the Logic Pro 8.0.1 update, get it now thru Version Tracker. The update addresses some compatibility issues as well as an update to Waveburner.
If we were to go on immediate impressions, Paul H-O is the kind of guy most of us would attempt to avoid. As host of the now-defunct public access show Gallery Beat (myriad clips of which are on display in the new film, co-directed by Paul, Guest of Cindy Sherman), he was a force of underground, lo-fi nature.
Magic Bullet Instant HD is a powerful tool to convert Standard Definition footage into High Definition, choosing from a wide variety of format presets and customizable options.
I experienced a total case in point for this last night. I have an Apple TV 160G, and it's been great. I actually love the thing. "iTunes for the living room" is exactly what it is. That said, there are three or four little things I'd change or enhance... not the LEAST of which is the ability to use a bluetooth or even USB keyboard, ad hoc, while you configure your network or log in... it takes me about 5 minutes to key in my network password with the remote, which makes me cranky and is some major wear and tear on that little plastic remote... it's tedious, like the method used in the coin-op dominated arcade game-laden 80s when you got a high score and had to enter in your three initials for the scoreboard with the joystick, moving a little selector all around the alphabet grid chasing down that damned 'm' or something... even that took a full 30 seconds, and my network password has 20+ characters in it. But that's not what this post is about... I just wanted to take a moment to toss my slip in the ol' suggestion box. USB or bluetooth keyboard extensibility = easy to implement, and a dyed-in-the-wool good idea.
So, what is your inner dialogue like? What is actually going on your head after you watch a TV show, or see a movie that you really enjoy? How do you think? I'm so curious about this, that I'm risking sounding like a rambling fool in this long (now two-parter!) post.
Me? I happen to be a really good multi-tasker, so what happens for me is that in addition to the interpretive growth and development dialogue I mentioned, I have these other meta layers of activity going around in my head at the same time. For example my "music and audio layer" is very strong, and just sits there pulsing along like it's own separate multi-processor, handling all the musical and vibrational perception that's either going on in the real world around me and recording it in real time and often like playing it back in retrograde-like loops, and I'm thinking about it and analyzing it. Also whatever current creative project I'm working on or whatever album I just listened to is also playing through in there, so whether I throw on like Sgt. Pepper's or Porcupine Tree, or maybe I was just working on some vocal parts on a new song of mine that I'm either writing, recording or mixing. Those things are just always playing. My own work plays back to me the same way other people's work does.
I had a thought today that I wanted to share with you. The thought occurred to me while driving in the car listening to the most recent Battlestar Galactica podcast, where Ronald D. Moore provides a "writer/creator's commentary" on each broadcast episode, released right after the show airs on Friday nights. He talks in depth (over a glass or two of single-malt scotch), about precisely what each beat in the episode means story-wise, provides a bunch of director's commentary-style technical tid-bits, and discusses in detail how the story development process got he and the other writers to the specific point - or version - that the episode freezes for all time. He talks freely about what he feels works, what he feels doesn't work so well, describes story possibilities that were left out or removed just before final locked edit. The podcast is really insightful as well as entertaining, and I recommend it highly to fans of the show. As a writer, he's talking about all the implication and meaning and symbolism and intention and creativity and craft behind all of the things that end up in the final episodes in terms of scenes and dialogue.
I was driving along enjoying Moore's detailed diatribe, when it dawned on me that it used to be the fans of a show who speculated about all this stuff. Up until the widespread practice of director's commentary on DVD's (which I love incidentally), it was incredibly rare to hear a director or writer talk about the episode of a show in such great detail just mere hours after it initially aired - unless you actually worked on the show, or knew the writer or director. Now, as with BSG, you can watch the episode, and then right there in your iTunes podcast source list, almost as though intended to be part of the viewing of the show is this complete exposure of the inner thematic workings, dramatic and emotional plot machinations, efficiently and lucidly laid out for you by the writers and creators of the show that you love. It was right after it had occurred to me that Ron Moore and others like him are doing our interpretation jobs for us, and felt that twinge a little... I asked myself, "what does that leave the fanboy and fangirl geeks to talk about??"
Milosevic on Trial, a potent mix of courtroom footage, talking heads interviews, and video asides, runs slightly over an hour (reportedly cut down from a two-hour television version), though the brief running time actually works in this engrossing documentary’s favor. The four-years-long war crimes trial of Serbian and Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic thus goes by in the relative blink of an eye, the bogged down legal process (reams of paperwork, myriad witnesses, an overall clinical presentation and examination of the most unspeakable kinds of evidence) suddenly collapsed into a fleet-footed and deeply moving space.
I've talked about 
Ok, full disclosure. Total self-plug here. Spent a lot of time working on something really fun - a gift to fans of Indiana Jones, actually - and I want to share it with you all here. If you want to crank our Indy tribute song while you read the blog, pop this Flash 
I experienced a total case in point for this last night. I have an Apple TV 160G, and it's been great. I actually love the thing. "iTunes for the living room" is exactly what it is. That said, there are three or four little things I'd change or enhance... not the LEAST of which is the ability to use a bluetooth or even USB keyboard, ad hoc, while you configure your network or log in... it takes me about 5 minutes to key in my network password with the remote, which makes me cranky and is some major wear and tear on that little plastic remote... it's tedious, like the method used in the coin-op dominated arcade game-laden 80s when you got a high score and had to enter in your three initials for the scoreboard with the joystick, moving a little selector all around the alphabet grid chasing down that damned 'm' or something... even that took a full 30 seconds, and my network password has 20+ characters in it. But that's not what this post is about... I just wanted to take a moment to toss my slip in the ol' suggestion box. USB or bluetooth keyboard extensibility = easy to implement, and a dyed-in-the-wool good idea. 
