The Sound of Death

Posted on 1st May 2011 in Something Daily

I’m in the 4th semester of the music theory track at NYU, which means that the time of talking about tonal harmony is kind of over. This whole semester, the focus has been things that are post-tonal and/or experimental in nature. We started with Debussy, who was one of the first composers to start to develop a practice against the tonal system. We’ve mentioned Ives, Varese, Stravinksy, Reich, Glass, Cage, and lots of other composers similar to them. They all make music that, to some degree, can be considered “not normal” from the viewpoint of high classicism. The point of mentioning this is that it functions as an explanation for why the below soundcloud embed sounds like so much death.

Death by Raised by Robots

This is my third and final composition for Music Theory IV. My process was as follows: use SoundHack to change the headers on several video files (Star Wars, Fight Club, Aqua Teen) to cause them to be interpreted as audio. That is, the raw video and audio data bytes contained within the mp4 files were interpreted as audio data with absolutely no preprocessing. As you may have guessed, this resulted in close to six hours of almost nothing but white noise. The first second of each transcode, though, had a unique bit of digital evil, for whatever reason. I took the first second from each of my three transcodes and arranged them in a rhythmic pattern in Logic. I also included a low, repetitive drone from LSDJ.

I bounced this twenty-second clip to a stereo mix, and then opened it in Spear, a specialized granular synthesis engine. Spear analyzes the audio data and breaks it into its constituent sine wave partials, visualizes the partials on a graph, and resynthesizes the source material granularly. It also allows you to timestretch and move the partial data in a lot of different ways. So basically, I slowed the whole file down to a tenth of its original speed, then chopped the heck out of it, moving partials around all over the place.

That’s what you’re hearing. The love child of several technologies that may or may not have been intended for use on the same project. The noise created when an Aqua Teen mp4 file is read as audio. The sound…of death?

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Workaholic

Posted on 7th March 2011 in Something Daily

So I wrote another piece using LSDJ last night, and added some guitar when I was done with that. It’s “for the game”, but really, it’s just for fun. This is the music that plays during the title and backstory screens, check it out. It’s nice and epic.

Theme by Raised by Robots

I’ve been working really hard to learn as much as possible about whatever I can. It’s getting a little stressful though. I haven’t really taken a break since Saturday. I’m experiencing a strong compulsion to work as much as possible – the feeling is almost that I need to. It’s good to be productive, but I at least need to take a little break. Seriously, someone please talk some sense into me. I’m tired. And midterms are coming up this week and I need to start acting like they’re important (because I’m pretty sure they are). I’ll take advantage of this while I can and shred on a ton of work, then crash when I can’t take it anymore.

Check out the new wallpaper I found today – it’s pretty darn unsafe for work, but its awesomeness outweighs its strangeness in my opinion. It’s by Paul Robertson, who makes amazing pixel art (as you can see) and who did a single cover for Anamanaguchi’s “Airbrushed”.

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Let it be known: I will eat my shoe

Posted on 14th February 2011 in Something Daily

I just got a package in the mail, and when I was going to get it I was so convinced that it was going to be my Tropicana gear, but it ended up being Valentine’s Day cookies from my mom. I was really excited for the Tropicana stuff, but cookies are very awesome too. Thanks mom. I’m expecting the gear tomorrow then, or (hopefully not) the day after that. It just needs to get here already. Along with letters from my friends and the confirmation of my double major declaration. I’m waiting for a bunch of stuff in the mail. And as I do so, I’m getting pumped up by I Get Wet. I honestly used to hate that album, but it’s growing on me rather quickly. I feel the same way about it as I do about Blink-182, in a sense – I acknowledge the fact that it’s simple and kind of idiosyncratic, and then stop worrying about it and jam out.

I finally finished getting all the star coins in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, which took an ungodly long time, even with our whole suite playing in a shared account. I decided that I’d just go ahead and do it today, but level 9-7 is so unbelievably annoyingly difficult. I don’t want to talk about it. I have bad memories attached to that level. The second star coin is stupid if you don’t have the propeller hat – which I never did – and I ended up trying it about forty times. I did succeed though. This was about an hour ago.

I was playing Mario instead of doing something productive partially due to the fact that I chose today to once again reconfigure my MacBook Pro – I deleted the Ubuntu partition (decided I have enough Ubuntu on my old MacBook, and Portal 2 is coming out for Mac) and reinstalled Snow Leopard, crossing my fingers very hard that my automated backup scheme had been working correctly. Turns out it had been. It’s gone through a lot of revisions over the last few months, but it works awesomely now. I am, once again, proud of myself. Also because of that piece I wrote in LSDJ over the weekend; I still think that sounds rockin. I rerecorded the guitar since it was a little bit out of tune, it’s way more rockin now. Check it out.

And I finally preordered Portal 2 on Steam today. It comes out on a Monday, and let it now be known that I will not stop playing on that Monday until it’s finished. If I can’t, I will eat my own shoe.

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I am the Supreme Ninja!

Posted on 12th February 2011 in Something Daily

It had been a little while since I’d recorded or written any music, and today I had an excuse to do so again for my assignment in music theory. The assignment was to write something that uses an “exotic” scale, mode, quote, tone cluster, or something of that nature that was used a lot in 20th century composition. I sort of did the assignment, if you count writing a Mega Man-esque piece in LSDJ and including a few whole-tone scale runs and random note groupings as “doing the assignment”. I mean it fits the requirements, and nobody else is going to have one that sounds anything like mine (at least I feel like that’s a safe bet). I had intended to get a lot of homework done today, and of course I ended up getting totally caught up in the writing and recording of my Gameboy piece. That’s pretty typical of me – I always leave the work that’s not fun for last. Bad strategy. I still have to write a paper tonight (I know it’s Saturday, don’t worry about it). But check it out; this is the first thing I’ve written EVER to include a guitar track, let alone one played by myself. My guitar skills pretty much limit me to power chords, but that’s exactly what I wanted in this piece. I just finished recording and mixing it a few minutes ago, so here it is. I’m proud of it.

Level Two by Raised by Robots

On a totally unrelated note, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the movie “Shogun Assassin”, but if you haven’t, you should probably get on that. It’s a samurai movie that’s actually a compilation of the best parts from the first two movies in the “Lone Wolf and Cub” series; as a result, the plot makes a marginal amount of sense. But it’s got some sweet fight scenes and a lot of awesomeness packed into a small space. It’s all original Japanese dialogue, and dubbed quite badly in English, which adds to its charm. The special effects are totally sweet, mostly the awesomely not-real blood squirts, and there are a lot of good lines. All around good movie. Also, I don’t know if it’s close enough to claim that it’s the “basis” for Kill Bill, but Tarantino sure owes Shogun Assassin a lot – he even acknowledges this at one point in Kill Bill volume 2 when Bill asks his daughter what video she wants to watch before bed. Check it out.

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Here at the end of all things

Posted on 21st December 2010 in Something Daily

I knew since last night that today was going to be a bit rough. I had two finals today, which took a combined total of close to four hours. Having that ahead of me, you’d think that I would study for something. Yeah ok. I did discover some fantastic new music in the form of Siah and Yeshua DapoED (which I have no idea how to pronounce). The beats on their Visualz Anthology are some of the crunchiest I’ve ever heard. Comparatively speaking, the rapping on that album as a whole isn’t the greatest, but it really varies by song. Great album.

The point is, though, that between 8 and 1 last night, I could have been working, but I was instead hanging out with Eric and Jen for a good portion of that time, listening to music and talking about how we “should” be working on stuff. I reviewed a bit this morning, which ended up being quite helpful on my first test this morning, a 2.5 hour Performing Arts in Western Civilization final which comprised ten essays. The only time a test hurt my hand that badly was Audio for Video a few weeks ago, and before that, probably the SAT or something. What I’m really trying to say here is that that test sucked, and I’m happy that it’s over. It was a good class, just not a good test. I also took the Electronics final today, which I was similarly prepared for. Honestly, I’m just glad that my finals are over at last. I’m still in the decompression stage right now, just getting used to the idea that I don’t have to do anything for the next month.

I was checking out my mic last night, a Rode NT1-A, and noticed that the diaphragm was tilted on a slight angle toward the back of the grill. I did a little research and determined that it was pretty safe to carefully remove the casing and gently nudge the capsule back into place. I had never taken a mic apart before, especially not one that cost 300 dollars, so I was exceedingly careful. I was kind of surprised to find, though, that the capsule of that mic is secured to the body by a gummy, silicone-type substance, so when you jostle the mic around, it actually wiggles a little bit. It probably has something to do with the sound, too; maybe the rubber stuff acts as a diffuser. Either way, the capsule wouldn’t go back to the right position with a push, so I decided I’m just going to store it differently and let gravity slowly do my job for me. I tested the mic after putting it back together, and I succeeded in not breaking anything! Great job, Mister Emmett!

In case you haven’t gone on my Soundcloud from the “About” page, here’s the other finished Gameboy song I made a few weeks ago.

Level Three by Raised by Robots

These are fun, I haven’t worked with LSDJ for a little while now.

Apparently the mixing desk in the studio where we were going to present our final Recording Tech project is broken now, so it may turn out that we don’t present at all. That’s actually pretty unlikely, but it could happen. Apart from that (which will be fun, not work), I still have to tech tonight! What a bummer! I think we all know that I’d much rather be sleeping. But I’ll be home soon. And I just know winter break is going to go by very, very fast.

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Close to the Edge

Posted on 19th December 2010 in Something Daily

I had one of those days today. By that, I mean that I went to bed at 1:30, woke up without an alarm at 7:15, and had nothing too pressing to get done. As a result, I’ve spent the whole day in a state of lethargy and lack of interest in anything. I had an interesting night last night, for sure. Among other things, London, Bryant and I watched Shogun Assassin and ate Insomnia Cookies together. London really liked the movie, which I’m so happy about! I’ve always thought it’s awesome, and for some reason assumed that no one else would. I’ve noticed, actually, that that’s a theme of my life. I have a certain set of interests, which I think are awesome (obviously). I have this perception, though, that by the simple virtue of me thinking something is awesome, other people automatically don’t. I’ve come to learn recently that this isn’t really the case through meeting certain people and being upfront about my interests, but for some reason I have this perception nonetheless. I’m getting over it, it’s just a pretty slow process.

So yesterday I discovered that Stuyvesant town is actually a sweet place to skate, even for someone with skills as limited as my own. There are a lot of nice smooth streets with not many cars or people around. It’s a pretty secluded apartment complex, and I get the impression that it’s expensive. The people that live there seem nice enough. But I went there yesterday and today, and succeeded in not eating pavement on one of those two occasions. Like I said before, I’m getting better, slowly but surely.

I also listened to “Close to the Edge” by Yes for the first time in ages yesterday. I mean I just sat in front of my speakers and listened for all eighteen minutes. It was incredible. The bass tone on that song is unbeatable, the groove on the verses is just nuts, and the organ/synth solo segment still gives me chills. As Jon Anderson said, that song is such a journey. It got me pumped up for the evening, at least.

Today was all about catching up on last-minute homework that I procrastinated on and watching Arrested Development. I’m actually going to go finish world 8 of New Super Mario Bros. Wii right now. But first, by way of an apology for yesterday’s musical travesty, here’s a slightly better-tuned piece that I composed about a month ago with a Gameboy emulator for the video game I’m designing.

Level One by Raised by Robots

I love this piece. It’s probably the most complex composition I’ve ever written, but I don’t write that much, so I see this as a success. Check my soundcloud for another Gameboy song and some beats that I made a while ago. I’m quite, quite tired right now. Goodnight!

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Down in town

Posted on 6th November 2010 in Something Daily

So I spent all of yesterday either at work or traveling – from 8 AM to 6:30 PM. It was a really long day, so please excuse me for not posting yesterday. I was absurdly tired. I came home from New York to the Philadelphia suburbs for the weekend to see my family, and the trip yesterday took about five hours from start to finish. That’s a subway from NYU to Penn Station, then a bus to 30th Street Station in Philly, and then the SEPTA R5 home. I wanted to sleep on the bus but I couldn’t…the ride was bumpy and I couldn’t rest my head on the window. I know, poor me. But I did get some new Gameboy music composed in my bus-induced stupor, and listening to it now in a more lucid state, it actually sounds pretty good. Definitely worth working on. Actually, I think I’m going to make a Soundcloud account or something today so I can link to tracks I’m working on from here. That would be cool, because then you could hear them…and realize how awesome they are! EDIT: There it is, check out some of my music!

Also, I watched Zombieland with my family last night. I love Jessie Eisenberg’s screen persona, I really do. And I love watching zombies get owned. I also enjoyed Bill Murray’s amazing cameo, and some of the jokes in this movie were really funny. Despite all of this, and despite me really wanting it to be good, it just wasn’t that good. I mean, I enjoyed watching it quite a bit due to the plentiful destruction of zombies and Jessie Eisenberg (and Emma Stone, of course) – but it really isn’t a good movie. It’s got issues, mainly about the plot being totally contrived and predictable I think. Also, I know this was really to be expected, but WTF is the deal with shoehorning in a romantic subplot to every single movie these days? At the beginning of Zombieland, I was almost allowing myself to look forward to the story of Jessie Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson as two lone wolves, which would have been awesome – then I quickly realized that this was wishful thinking. Here’s someone who says it better than I can. That video sums up my thoughts about horror/zombie movies pretty well, as it turns out.

Oh and my sister wanted everyone to know that she learned how to do the dance to that song Apache yesterday. She showed me. It was funny.

I’m listening to Black Star now. That’s Mos Def and Talib Kweli together. You know they’re awesome, and so is their album.

This is another render I did in Blender a little while back.

Goblet, rendered 9/27/10

Yeah. So I’m home for the weekend, coming back to NY on Sunday night. Looking forward to another long bus ride, and hanging out with Quinn tonight!

And here’s proof of who the bed intruder actually is.

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Wear a helmet

Posted on 24th October 2010 in Something Daily

If you’re planning on going skateboarding anytime soon, be careful. Seriously. Watch out for little rocks and potholes and stuff like that. Also cars. I ate pavement twice today – I don’t know, I guess I was tired or something. But they were both the kind where everybody stops and they’re all “OMG are you ok?” and you sort of have to get up and just keep walking even though your knee hurts like crazy and not look at anyone. That kind of fall sucks. But I think it builds character, just as Calvin’s dad would say. I skated to the financial district yesterday and didn’t fall, I don’t know what it was about today, man. Maybe it’s all the coding screwing with my head.

So I told Libby I’d mention Anamanguchi in today’s post. Honestly, even if I hadn’t, I still would, because this is becoming a blog about awesome things, and they’re completely awesome. Here’s a band with your typical rock lineup of guitar, bass and drums, plus a “hacked NES” and a Gameboy running LSDJ. It’s sort of punk-ish, but it’s also chiptune, so they’ve got sort of a future-retro feel. It’s all pretty upbeat and rockin. Rocking is certainly a good thing. And NYU Music Tech is represented in the band, too. All the more reason to commence the listening of the music. Anamanaguchi are actually, in my supremely humble opinion, totally rad, and I highly recommend their music to all. I recommend making music with Gameboys to all, in fact. It’s so much fun!

New addition to the list of things that are awesome: Hey Ash Whatcha Playin’. I just discovered this tonight, it’s pretty hilarious, and I’m jealous of this family.

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Christmas Present, perhaps?

Posted on 21st October 2010 in Something Daily

Wow, I can’t believe that in yesterday’s post I said that the game I’m working on might be more awesome than Ikaruga. No way man, Ikaruga is incredible. The color switching gameplay dynamic adds something to it that I’ve never seen in any other shooter – or maybe it’s just a lot harder than any other shooter. I’m getting back into it recently, as I didn’t play that much over the summer, and that game is hard. Really hard, actually. I’ve never finished it. Although I did just discover how chaining in that game works, and it’s helping out a little bit, with the extra lives and all that. I’m going to try and finish it eventually, all it takes is a ton of practice and a fast reaction time. I remember playing it when I was really young and thinking “this is the game I’ve been waiting for”, and ever since, I had it in the back of my mind without knowing what it was called. I finally stumbled upon it and had to have it, you know? Go check out Ikaruga, though. I managed to find it in the original box, used, for $40 at a Gamestop, but apparently it’s really rare. Even if you have to pay a lot for it, it’s certainly worth the price.

If my calculations are accurate, I have one more piece of core engine material to code for “The Game” and then the engine will be (more or less) fully functional. At that point, which will hopefully be around, I don’t know, tomorrow sometime, I can start really focusing on design – more enemies, bosses, levels, et cetera. The levels will be scary to draw because they’re each over 100,000 pixels tall. I need to figure out some way to automate this stuff. But it’s coming along, slowly but surely.

I recently bought the ROM of Little Sound DJ, a Gameboy cartridge that lets you track audio with the Gameboy’s internal soundchip. Like chiptunes or whatever. And I’ve used that to compose and record track 1 of the game’s soundtrack. It sounds like it came straight from an old 8-bit system (which it practically did), the only difference being the physical hardware. LSDJ is awesome though, if you’re into chiptunes then definitely check it out (actually, if you’re into chiptunes, you probably already have LSDJ, so in that case, check it out if you’re not into chiptunes). By the way, I’m not really sure how I feel about the word “chiptunes”. I guess every genre needs a name, but it would be cool if it were called, I don’t know…something else?

As could be pretty easily inferred from this blog so far, work on this project is sort of consuming my mind. So hopefully it will be done sooner than later (say, before Christmas?) so that I can breathe once more. But until then, well, you know.

Also, Dr. Dog are a wonderful band. Check out “Fate” or “We All Belong”, they’ll make you happy.

Here’s some love for Moog’s new Slim Phatty. Never played it, but the Little Phatty is a great sounding synth.

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