I forgot to mention it last week, but Pixel Pinkie has finally hit the Australian airwaves. Saturday mornings at 11:30am on Channel 9 (or WIN if you’re outside of a “major capital city”). This is the series I spent a couple of years working on, recording voices, gathering sound effects, mixing, generally getting frustrated with the fact that all the other department’s deadline “slips” had to be caught up somewhere, and I was near the end of the chain so I guess we might as well do it there because after all it’s only audio.
Ahem.
In seriousness, it was a challenging but very rewarding couple of years work, and I’m proud to have been involved in such a major production for Tasmania. And I should point out that the people driving the thing did in-fact recognise the importance of audio, lest I inadvertently defame them here in the name of cheap comedy martyrdom ranting.
So, Channel 9 (or WIN), 11:30am Saturdays. You’ve missed the first episode, but I think you’ll probably be able to catch on. Tune in, watch, listen, and marvel at the sound design and audio engineering.
The animation and design and the rest of it is OK too I guess 
Well, yes… and no. That is to say… sort of.
If I’m already working on something for you, then you’re all sorted – I’m hard at work still. But I’m not taking new work for the time being. There’s a development in the wings which might preclude it, and I don’t want to end up with more than I can handle (or conflicting interests).
So… I’m converting this site back into a bit more of a personal blog/folio arrangement as opposed to the rather dry and impersonal approach I’m forced to take when I’m trying to look professional. 
At any rate, I’ll have more details in a little while, for those who are interested.
Gooood morning!
It’s been a while between posts (again). Been mucho busy with new house and puppy shenanigans, plus work is starting to get to the very pointy bit. Oh, and I’m starting a uni course again today.
So what’s news? Well, I’ve had a bit of time to hack together some T3E stuff, and hoping to spend some more hours (or at least a few minutes) on that particular task in the next little while. I’ve also been gettin’ my developer on, working up a VST plugin. It’s based around some workflows that I was repeating over and over for the cartoon job, and I thought “well hang on a darn tootin’ minute, if I had a plugin that could do all this, then I’d save a bucket load of time”. So I did a scout around the various development/authoring options, picked a flavour and I’ve been building it up. Of course doing so has used up far more time than just manually working through it in the first place, but I’m trying to take a long-term view. At the moment it’s very embryonic and kind of ugly, but it works. Audio goes in, audio comes out sounding (sort of) the way I want. I may even put a spiffy interface on it at some point and see if anyone wants to pay me for it
OK, must get some work done before I scarper to Uni.
Ahh, Christmas over for another year. Not too bad a one overall, family time, some nice gifts on both the giving and the receiving side (at least I hope so on the latter). My lovely wife bought me various bits and pieces for the studio in the new place and I’m itching to get it set up. Speaking of which, there was a tiny bit of a scare with regard to the house arrangements, but that seems to be OK now. Hurrah for banks being open between Christmas and NYE, and sighs of relief all round
Frankly, the move can’t come soon enough. The new neighbors moved into the house up the road recently. They’re the third bunch in the place since we moved in, and also the third to have a dog who sits on the balcony and barks. Hey, that sounds strangely like the neighbors on a 90 degree angle as well. It seems obvious to me that if you place a territorial animal in a position where it can see lots of people moving around what it perceives as its territory, it might just have some words to say.
No incredibly bad visual joke picture up there today. I’ve spent the day buying tap fittings, packing boxes, and throwing things out, and I don’t really have the energy 
Ahh, Christmas over for another year. Not too bad a one overall, family time, some nice gifts on both the giving and the receiving side (at least I hope so on the latter). My lovely wife bought me various bits and pieces for the studio in the new place and I’m itching to get it set up. Speaking of which, there was a tiny bit of a scare with regard to the house arrangements, but that seems to be OK now. Hurrah for banks being open between Christmas and NYE, and sighs of relief all round
Frankly, the move can’t come soon enough. The new neighbors moved into the house up the road recently. They’re the third bunch in the place since we moved in, and also the third to have a dog who sits on the balcony and barks. Hey, that sounds strangely like the neighbors on a 90 degree angle as well. It seems obvious to me that if you place a territorial animal in a position where it can see lots of people moving around what it perceives as its territory, it might just have some words to say.
No incredibly bad visual joke picture up there today. I’ve spent the day buying tap fittings, packing boxes, and throwing things out, and I don’t really have the energy
I just got an MP3 from the esteemed Mr Curtis such that I might lay down my vocals for the Christmas bonus song. Hurrah! Sounding good, and it’s nice to hear some real drums on some new T3E material. It’s still very much a demo-standard thing, and I’d like to get the whole thing a bit tighter on the album version, but it’s a great little taster of what the album might sound like. I’ve liked the song ever since Curtis sent me the demo a few months back, and it’s passed through the T3E group collaboration gauntlet with only minor cuts and bruises.
In matters professional, I’ve realised that the cartoon job has passed the 50% mark for this contract period, so I’m starting to casually browse the employment pages again, as well as starting to brainstorm on other ideas. Not that there’s any pressing concern for a little while, but I don’t want to be caught like earlier this year. Especially with a mortgage on the way…!
Speaking of mortgages, with less than a month before the big day, pre-settlement packing has begun, and the inside of our house resembles a furniture and applicance warehouse crossed with a municipal recycling depot – a combination that has somehow failed to take off within interior decorating circles. Clare has been extremely diligent with wrapping, boxing, taping and taggine a good portion of our wordly goods, and I have been helping in my own inestimable way by building a home theatre PC. It’s a tough job, etc. etc…
I’ll be tearing down the home studio for the last time over the next week or so, leaving myself with a skeleton system comprising Macbook, UMX49 and Mbox. The rest shall join the ever-increasing pile of “things to be loaded into a truck” that is currently filling up the spare room. I’m also starting to get into some serious planning regards the new digs, and how best to turn a garage into a work-space worthy of my talents (some might say it would be more worthy of my talents if I knocked a hole in the wall and poured pond-water on the floor, but I wouldn’t talk to those people if I were you – they’ll burn your crops, and make merry sport with your more attractive daughters as soon as look at you). Ideas are still coalescing, but I’m currently envisaging a sort of semi-wraparound desk-type arrangement, with a separate section for less audio-centric tasks. One of the problems with my current arrangement is that it’s great for working on the PC, but there’s no actual useable desk space for when you might want to perform such arcane tasks as writing with a pencil, or placing things on a clear horizontal surface. Well, there’s the floor obviously, but that’s a gambit that only works for a limited time. I’ll also probably have a couch or a couple of chairs in there for the benefit of collaborators/clients (and myself from time to time). No doubt I’ll throw some pictures up here for anyone who might be bored enough to want to look at them.
I never thought the iPhone would be something I could use for nostalgic purposes, but I recently found a little application which turns it into a 4-track recorder. You’ve got record, stop, play, forward and back, with level and pan for each track. That’s it.
I sat down with the acoustic for guitar and the phone for a few minutes the other night to test it out and managed to come up with a nice little ditty. There’s something very liberating about limiting your technical options. I usually write music on the main studio PC, and while it’s very flexible, it’s all too tempting to start worrying about how the thing sounds. Switching the musical hat for an engineering cap, if you will. It’s hard not to start thinking along those lines given my day job, so removing that option completely for songwriting is a nice way to get into a more appropriate mental space.
In other news, my limited edition bonus-DVD version of Frost*’s new album arrived, so I’ve been listening to the supplied instrumental mixes of the album. Very interesting to listen to all the details that are hiding beneath the vocals, and it seems to be a lot less agressively mastered as well.
It’s surprisingly difficult to get the final version of a performance in the can when you have the disconnection of the internet between yourself and the producer, combined with a picky client who you are both trying to please.
So I’ve just recorded and bounced ANOTHER revision of this jingle, and I’m sending it off for approval, having recorded some octave doubles of the melody, and revising the harmonies on the final tag. And now the little girl next door is on the trampoline having a temper tantrum, and she sounds exactly like Eric Cartman.
Her parents must be so proud
It’s come down to the fact that I’ve got a bucket-load of work to do over the next few days, and I need to seriously put my head down and get it done.
How on earth did I get so busy all of a sudden? Two voice recording sessions this week for the cartoon job (plus some potential re-takes to do at some stage), the revision stage of this esession job, a hefty bag of T3E homework from the get together on the weekend (as well as another behind the scenes video to hack together) and now I’ve gone and agreed to throw some keyboards and backing vocals on an old friend’s project (and he’s working in Pro Tools, so I’ll have to remember how to use that particular flavour of arbitrary limitation software.
We’re hoping to finalise our house-buying ventures this week as well, and some semblance of a personal life would be nice to squeeze in there too, if I can swing it.
To be fair, the T3E stuff has been kicking around for a good while, and it’s my own fault I’ve let it slip until now. Plus I didn’t have to agree to this keyboard/bg vocals job, but I want to… dammit . It’s a good dose of ever-so-slightly-cheesy-but-very-well-executed symphonic metal, and a nice change of pace from the wacky, cliched, and serious tunes that my other three current projects provide respectively (I’ll leave it to the reader to divine which project corresponds to which adjective ).
But for now, the room next door is full of noisy animators playing with their Wii and talking about colour-blindness, so I think that’s my cue to go and have lunch.
I arrived at work this morning to find my first ever esession request, along with a personal followup email from an esession manager to verify that I’d received it, as the deadline was fairly tight. I like that touch – it’s reassuring to know there are actual people on the other end. I replied to say thanks and to let them know that I was checking out the request immediately, and got a very quick response. Most impressive.
I must admit I’m a bit new to all of this online vocal malarkey, so I’ve taken a stab at a quote based on what I’ve been paid for vocal sessions locally. If we can reach an accord, I get 50% up front, then I’ve got the weekend to do the tracking, send it over to hit the radio-waves in the USA, and get paid the remainder.
Pretty cool
Hmm, well I tracked my Macbook problem to a bad RAM module. So I’m back up and running, albeit with only 1GB to play with.
It’s weird to imagine Apple computers using humdrum components like RAM… From their promotional material you’d get the impression that they ran on magic and rainbows and love.
Oh, and smug. Let’s not forget smug.