SchwanSongs - Scores of Notes

My music goes live!

2011-12-26T06:46:00.000-08:00

Back in 2002 I began to write my own light airy flute and guitar arrangement of the Ukrainian New Year's carol "Щедрик", or Carol of the Bells as we know it these days, as a gift for my wife. I called it "Belle Aire", since the flute gave it a gentle "Aire" style, and my multi-lingual wordplay got me playing with bell/belle ("Morticia, that's French!" -- The Adams Family).

I got part-way into writing it and morphing it into a 4/4 trance tune (of all things), then set it aside out of frustration with my lack of skill, and wrote a "Baroque/Bach" version of the carol instead ( "Belle Fugue" http://www.macjams.com/song/18042 ). So, as I slowly learned more about music, the "Belle Aire" sketch gathered dust for years...

until...

in November 2011 I met a local mandolin player (Kevin), and we talked about how I wrote a little music here and there. He told me the "San Diego Mandolin Orchestra" group he was playing in had a Christmas concert coming up and they might be looking for new music to play, and did I have anything written for Mandolins and flute? My mind raced. This seemed like a great opportunity to re-orchestrate something, learn about a new instrument (the mandolin), and possibly have a piece of my music performed live!

But I only had a few weeks to come up with something. I remembered this very short (half-completed) "holiday" piece from almost a decade ago, and started researching the mandolin. Oh wait... I was then reminded that it is an orchestra, a whole FAMILY of instruments! Mandolin, Mandola, Octave-Mandolin, Mandolin-cello... I learned as much as I could about each instrument and its range and what clef each played in, then started reworking the music for these instruments. The flute's deceptive initial counter-melody (that makes the listener start wondering if this might not be Carol of the Bells at all) was already there and remained mostly intact, but I added some embellishments, like the short swing-section, bouncing the melody between guitars and 1st and 2nd mandolins in the middle, and putting in some of the characteristic mandolin tremolos near the end.

Well, to make a long story short, Jim Trepasso, conductor of the orchestra very kindly accepted my score, and had his musicians start practicing it for the performance. On December 21st, 2011, my wife and I drove down to attend the concert, at the Coronado Public Library. We offered to video-tape this and a few of the (more traditional) holiday pieces they played that evening, to give more exposure to the mandolin orchestra, and to the "Friends of the Coronado Library" who put on these concerts. The orchestra did an amazing job quickly learning and performing my piece for the concert, and the evening was a jam-packed success. Jim was embarrassingly generous with his introduction of me during the concert.

So, without further ado, here is a video recording of the San Diego Mandolin Orchestra performing "Belle Aire". And the Macjams audio recording here is the Garageband computerized rendition of the musical score itself (not the live performance) for comparison. And the video size on this blog is tiny... you may want to watch it in a larger format directly from the YouTube site... just click the link below the movie.

If the above video does not show up, just click this link to watch it on YouTube here.

But wait, there's more! Just for you, I have a free "computerized" recording of the original score (not this live recording) which you can listen to or download by clicking here.

Please visit the San Diego Mandolin Orchestra web site, buy some of their music, and take some time to go to your local library and support their concerts! Happy holidays, and as the original lyrics of "Carol of the Bells" suggest, may the swallow bring you good fortune and a bountiful new year!

My warmest thanks to Jim Trepasso for offering to have my music performed, to the Mandolin Orchestra musicians for practicing and performing so nicely, to Vanessa the flute player/Coronado librarian who helped set up the concert and played the flute part with such warmth, and to my wife who was half of our video-camera/roadie team, and always inspires me beyond words.

Combining arts and talents

2011-11-21T09:52:00.000-08:00

Through the wonders of seemingly random internet connections, a wonderful painter found my music, and I found her artwork. After a little introduction and mutual admiration, we decided to blend our talents into an audio-visual feast. OK, perhaps that's a bit of a mouthful, maybe it is best to just cut straight to the movie. Natalya's hand-drawn artwork, and my music:

She works in colors and black-and-white, all painted by hand, and she is rumored to be showing in a gallery soon. The music is an updated version of my older piece "Quixotic Dreams", which you can read more about, by clicking here and reading the description.

Make sure to check out more of Natalya's works on her YouTube channel here.

Published! Music Videos "Spring Forth" on DVD!

2011-04-24T14:21:00.000-07:00

I am very happy to announce the availability of "Four Worlds", a DVD of four of my computer-animated music videos (over 22 minutes of videos)... and for those of you who have seen prior smaller YouTube versions of some of these, the music has now been updated and re-recorded, and the animations have been embellished and re-rendered in high-quality full-screen DVD format... and there is even a new never-before seen video, "Game the System" making its premiere only on this DVD.

I have personally written all the music, created/textured/animated all the accompanying computer-generated video scenes, and designed the printed jacket for the DVD case. I have also recorded a separate video teaser/trailer, to offer a taste of what is on the video, in case you are interested in purchasing a copy. Note that the video below is reduced-size to fit on this blog page. If you wish to see the trailer full-size, you may wish to CLICK HERE INSTEAD to view it directly on the product page:

Here is the official "text" announcement:

Come journey through four different surreal worlds... some playful, some mysterious, all of them thought-provoking. Each video has its own original music soundtrack composed to go hand-in-hand with the video.

#1 - Game the System - Frolic through a video-game fantasy world of kaleidoscopic excitement. Will you avoid the strange whirling parasols? Can you count all 10 sneaky sheep?

#2 - The Cherry Orchid - Float through a garden of crystal flowers, growing in a serene liquid pool at sunset.

#3 - Nebula Spin - Stroll through the nebula-hood with three chatty molecules as they search for the nearest star.

#4 - Glacially Inevitable - Experience glacial beauty and inevitable entropy... where time and music seem frozen, and icy sharp.

This NTSC region-free DVD contains over 22 minutes of animation. The 4 videos can be played individually, or sequentially in a loop.
You can find more information about this DVD (including on-line ordering) here: - Four Worlds Product Page -

I hope you enjoy this journey with me!

ttfn,
Eduard

A new video is "Glacially Inevitable"

2010-01-28T05:48:00.000-08:00

Spoiler Alert! The following little article describes many details that may spoil or give away surprises in the following new music video, so if you have not yet seen it, I suggest you watch it first, then read the rest of this article :-) Also, YouTube by default displays these movies in a lower-quality mode, where the music is grainy and the video is small. In order to see this video with better quality audio and video, you can go to the actual movie page by clicking here, and then immediately choose the bigger/better quality version before it starts playing (choose the larger number "480p" in the little pop-up menu at the bottom of the movie player, as well as the two little right-angle arrows to enlarge the display.) For the rest of us impatient-types, the lower-quality version can be instantly watched right here instead.

Back in April 2007 I wrote a slow ambient piece of music by computer-generating a nice chord progression, then slowing it way way down. My thought was to make the music so achingly slow that the listener would begin anticipating the next chord change, but eventually be forced to relax and let the music move at its own glacial pace, and possibly start to enjoy all the sounds "between the notes."

I also wanted to choose synthesizer voices that gave a cold crystalline ring to the music, especially since slow frosty bells are one of the trademark sounds of my "ic42" compositions.

And given my penchant for puns, since the piece was written in C sharp, and it was icy cold and slow, I chose the title "Icy Sharp - Glacially Inevitable." The original 2007-era piece can be heard here.

Now almost three years later, spurred on by a "2010 Reunion Challenge" at Macjams, my main music composition website/hangout, I decided to enhance and extend this piece, reworking the voices, and making a video to accompany it. Unfortunately, being in Southern California meant that I could not video-tape nearby glaciers or ice caves. So I decided to take a more abstract approach... I would build my own computer-generated ice palace instead, using my favorite computer graphics software, POV-Ray.

Since I'm an old-school software engineer by trade, I tend to visualize these 3D worlds in text coordinates. I just never got into those new-fangled fancy 3D modeler visualization tools. That means that when I want a glass oval kind of shape like this:

I create it by typing in some text commands that look like this:


#declare CrystalShape = sphere
{
  <0,0,0>, 1            // 1-unit diameter at origin
  interior {ior 1.3}    // refractive
  scale <1, 1, 0.7>     // squish slightly on z axis
  rotate -y*360*CLOCK/2 // twist slowly on y axis
}

... and to make a bunch of them rise and twist into a tower, I delicately stack them in nested "while loops" of text commands:


#if (GOING_UP != 0)
  #declare LIFT_CLOCK = SegmentRampSin(0.45,0.9, CLOCK); // up: 0 to 1
#else
  #declare LIFT_CLOCK = 1-SegmentRampSin(0.1,0.4, CLOCK); // down: 1 to 0
#end

#local pTotalItems    = 25; // # of crystals around the perimeter
#local pStartRadius   = 10;
#local pTotalHeight   = 15;
#local pTwistPerLevel = 0+LIFT_CLOCK*8; // degrees

#local currHeight = 0;
#while (currHeight < pTotalHeight) // 1-outer loop
 #local heightTwist = pTwistPerLevel*currHeight;
 union // of a loop of crystals
 {
 #local currItem = 0;
 #while (currItem < pTotalItems) // 2-inner loop
  #local currAngle = currItem/pTotalItems*360 + heightTwist;
  object
  {
    CrystalShape
    texture {CrystalTex}
    scale 1/(currHeight/3+1)
    translate 
    rotate -currAngle*y
  }
  #local currItem = currItem +1;
 #end // while 2-inner
 } // union
 #local pStartRadius = pStartRadius*4/5;

 #local currHeight = currHeight +1;
#end // while 1-outer

Do you see it yet? At this point, a few of you are nodding in nerdy excitement, and the rest are just nodding off. Hang in there! Just a little more math, then back to interesting stuff, including my discovery of how to do those movie credits at the end.

So, in order to animate this, I had to create 1,200 unique images to build a single scene, and there were 6 scenes in the whole movie. And because of the complexity of each image (with many refracting crystals, soft shadows, and anti-aliasing on), it was taking about 10 minutes for my computer to create just one image. So just a moment (invokes the calculator)... 1,200 images multiplied by 6 scenes, multiplied by 10 minutes each... meant that it would take about 1,200 hours, or 50 days to generate all the images for this movie! I didn't have that much time, so of course, I cheated. I have a 4-core computer, so I made 4 copies of my rendering program, and ran the 4 programs at the same time, each copy creating a different range of scenes. Now it would only take about 13 days to render all the images. One of the drawbacks of this approach was that made it extremely difficult for me to even check e-mail on my computer since it was running full-blast for 2 weeks. On the positive side, the dragon's den (my computer room) was nice and toasty-warm during that time.

As I began to see the movie take shape, I started thinking about the original name of the music. This ice palace I had created was indeed icy, but it was all rounded and had no sharp edges. So to reduce confusion, I renamed the music video simply "Glacially Inevitable", hoping nobody would notice the text-tonic shift away from the originally dominant music title "Icy Sharp."

The first draft of the movie only had 5 scenes in it, not 6. Luckily I have a captive test audience who is amazingly creative and offers me invaluable critiques and advice. My wife watched an early draft of the movie and said it... "is unresolved, it feels like it is missing something. Can you add another scene, and maybe have the crystal tower melt back down into liquid at the end?"

Ooh, great idea! Oh, but wait a minute... I had built the tower so it could lift up, but not so that it could melt back down... that would take some surgical re-programming, and another 1200 images to create for this new 6th scene. But she was right, it was exactly what the movie needed, and I still had some time left to finish this up before the due-date of February 1, 2010. So I re-worked the graphics and added the water pooling out (and the ripples slowly subsiding, if you watch closely) and started up the rendering of the last scene. While waiting for it to finish, I started assembling the movie scenes in Final Cut and began working on the credits at the end of the movie. Did you know that Final Cut will accept a PDF file and display it like an image? I didn't, until I tried dragging one into the Final Cut project. This discovery meant that I could now make fancier looking credits in a regular old word processor, with multiple fonts, and even embedded images, and have that become the scrolling credits! One more little trick in my movie-making toolbox now... and I promise to use this power for good (I have seen some rather garish and nauseating credits lately.)

Here is the finished product, all sparkly and presented (in all its facets of meaning) for your enjoyment and your thoughts. As always, I look forward to any feelings/interpretations/critiques of my music and video. Drop me a comment or an e-mail, I would love to hear from you.

ttfn,
Eduard, aka "ic42"

Universal Music

2010-01-23T15:31:00.000-08:00

There are so many things to learn. As I learn to write music, I am also learning how to present it on the web to share with others. Recently, the very talented composer Keith Edwards contacted me, and warned me that although he had sent a couple friends to listen to some of my music on my web pages, they could not play any of it. It turned out that they were using Windows computers without QuickTime installed, something I didn't test!

So it was time for me to invoke some Google-fu and discover a better way to host my music. Originally I had lazily just let iWeb convert the MP3s into QuickTime movies for me. Later, I had toyed with installing a free Flash player, much as I detest Flash. Now, I am of the geeky "roll-your-own-HTML-in-a-text-editor" school, and a little voice kept telling me "This is the WEB! Let the end-user/browser decide how to play the content!" But how do I do that in a universal way? Search, read, try, search, read, try...

My re-searches eventually brought me to a moderately old but well-researched and still-relevant article by David Battino, that gave a chunk of Javascript code for embedding MP3s in your web page in a more foolproof way. Being a software engineer, I couldn't just use it as-is, but tinkered with it a little to suit my purposes (and clean it up a little) before installing it on my web site. Now my music pages are hopefully a little more universally playable, hopefully even on Linux. The formatting is simple... no fancy Flash players and widgets, just the music. Please feel free to wander over to my newly remodeled music page (here) and try playing something from the list of pieces at the bottom of the page, and let me know if it works on your computer. Also, mention if you are on Mac/Windows/Linux/iPhone, and if it is all working OK. Thank you for listening :)

2=1: The end of the Experiment

2009-10-08T13:36:00.000-07:00

Background (Music)
I was raised on all sorts of classical music... it often flowed through our home. It was mood music.

I was also raised on electronics, and built my own noise-making circuitry... Walter/Wendy Carlos' "Switched-on Bach" synthesizer music often flowed through my room. It was MOOG music.

So, I guess it is no surprise that my personal musical tastes have always bounced between the rich sonorities of symphonic woodwinds/strings/brass... and the unearthly-but-intriguing tones of synthesized instruments. I've always been interested in the baroque/classical musical forms, as well as experimental algorithmic/computer-generated compositions... two very different ways of creating music.

When I began seriously focusing on composing and publicly posting my music (as "serious" as a hobby can be), I initially confined myself to real-world instrument sounds and conventional compositions. But soon the experimental side of me wanted to explore and share. I had begun finding really interesting web sites, information, and software programs that let me play with computer-generated music and wild-sounding synthesizers, in ways I wished were possible decades before. I had stumbled into a candy shop, and there were many other people interested in these things too. So I thought I would try sharing some of my own experimental creations as well.

But these were strange and untamed pieces. They didn't play well with others. I was worried that, like oil and vinegar, my more polished conventional pieces and my wild experimental pieces would clash, and people interested in one style would not be interested in the other. Or worse, after hearing just one of my pieces, they would assume all my music was that style, and ignore the rest. What to do?

I decided to create a separate online music account, and put all my experimental stuff in there. I also chose initially not to connect the two accounts to each other... this new account would stand on its own for awhile, so I could see what people thought of the experimental music by itself.

What is in a name?
My Schwansongs "label" already had the account name "Drakonis" on my main music website, Macjams.com, as well as other places like MySpace.com and Alonetone.com. It was time to come up with a different name for this new experimental account. Hmmm...

Well, on circuit boards, the main building blocks that make up the electronics are called "integrated circuits", or I.C.s for short. On the circuit board, the spots for these IC's are usually numbered, so that they can be easily identified and assembled... and they are given names like IC1, IC2, IC3, etc. Given my love of electronics and wordplay, I decided to call the new account "IC42", referring to both a position on a circuit card, and a nod to "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", and a hint that I am overseeing two accounts.

Hakucho's Swan-song
I never intended this to remain a secret account, so it is now time to unmask the identity of the "IC42 Experiment". I have added links to cross-connect all my accounts, so people can find my two styles more easily, if they are interested. Don't worry, I will always be writing music in both styles, the experimental ic42 world will live on and produce new music and art and videos. I just will not keep the ic42 identity a secret any more. I also wish to thank the small circle of friends who discovered the IC42 identity early on, and kept it secret with me. I appreciate your help and patience during the experiment.

With that said, I will be retiring "Hakucho", the mysteriously laconic guy behind ic42. "Hakucho" was my old nickname when I was in Japanese language class decades ago. The bird we call "Swan" in English is called "Hakucho" in Japanese. In German, it is called "Schwan"... so the nickname always fit me nicely.

Coda
To wrap things up, I should mention where you can find my conventional and unconventional pieces of music. The complete set of "SchwanSongs" music, artwork and videos can be found at these web spots:

Traditional (Drakonis):
Macjams (complete set), iCompositions, MySpace, AloneTone, YouTube

Experimental (IC42):
Macjams (complete set), MySpace, AloneTone,
PhotoBucket

So now you know that IC42 is me too, and that I am not going to change anything or go anywhere. I do hope that you will continue to listen to (and hopefully enjoy) all my music (and from here you may now have discovered some new music to listen to.) And if any readers are interested in more information on some of my music creation tools and techniques, drop me a note and I will offer some tips and tidbits here.

ttfn,
Eduard aka Drakonis aka hakucho aka ic42

Postscript
Here are a couple of ic42 examples... click here to read the story and listen to the music for a new take on Halloween.

Below is an algorithmically-generated piece of music, dancing with some hypnotic fractal patterns (seeing it directly from the Photobucket account is a little better than this embedded version.)

Up for Promotion

2009-07-21T17:34:00.000-07:00

One of the fun things about traveling and shooting videos is that I continue to learn about all sorts of things I never knew before. It is a big world out there, full of all sorts of fun people with intriguing hobbies and jobs. On our recent trip to Eugene Oregon while visiting the big "Black Sheep Gathering" fiber festival, I not only interviewed organizers of the event (see prior post), but also shot a couple of interview/promotion style videos for some vendors at the show. My wife and I thought these would be a nice personal touch to add to the vendors' web sites or blogs, giving other potential customers a much more engaging introduction to the proprietor and their products. This is a new idea we are trying out here at SchwanSongs, and if you might be interested in a similar "video introduction", you may contact us (e-mail: video-at-schwansongs-dot-com) for surprisingly reasonable rates for such a warm addition to your on-line presence.

Here are a couple of examples of our work:

(1) Miryha Runnerstrom has a roving/yarn store called "Blarney Yarn", where you can order all sorts of gorgeous hand-dyed fibers for spinning/knitting here: http://www.blarneyyarn.com

(2) Lori Lawson runs her roving/yarn store called "Capistrano Fiber Arts" out of her home studio in San Juan Capistrano, California. We interviewed her up at the Eugene "Black Sheep Gathering" show, where she gave us a tour of some of her products. Her on-line store is at: http://capistranofiberarts.etsy.com

Spinning a Yarn, Part 1

2009-07-16T12:44:00.000-07:00

June. Summer Vacation. The annual wool and fiber show. Let's take a road trip! My wife, being an avid wool spinner/dyer/knitter/teacher, wanted to take the rest of us on her second annual adventure up to Eugene, Oregon, to a big 3-day sheep/wool/processing/selling convention, called "The Black Sheep Gathering"... probably one of the biggest of its kind on the West Coast. We would also do a number of other things on the way up and back, like visit my sister who moved up to Oregon recently, visit some of my music buddies, tour a wildlife rescue center, see a honey-processing plant... and since I'm involved, we would be taking LOTS of video along the way. Well, the trip was a huge success, we all had a grand time and met wonderful people along the way, and now I have mountains of raw video footage to assemble into segments of our trip. The main goal was to do some preliminary shoots of the Black Sheep event itself, vendors, competitions, judging, get interviews... and put together some videos that would give a flavor for what goes on there, since not many people know about this.

Well, after a month of video editing, the first movie is now available. This is a 9 minute interview, as a high-level overview of many of the events that go on here. I spent a lot of time arranging the background video during the interview to show what Peggy (the speaker) was talking about. She talks about the judging events, the sheep and goats, the competitions, and some history. I am offering these videos to the BSG volunteers, in case they may want to use them on their web site to help get more interest in their event.

The next videos I will work on will focus on more specific events and vendors. I also have really intriguing videos of the bee/honey farm, and of the wildlife rescue center... those are coming up next!

As if, from a dream...

2009-06-26T09:42:00.000-07:00

Here is another quick glimpse at ideas from my huge "Fractal Serenity" music video project, still in progress. This particular music-video is a "character study" of one of the strange plants that grows in this dream... the "Glass Orchid".

The tasty cherry color was used on the petals, after chatting with the marvelous musician Hoon, who mentioned his love of that particular candy-like color. The "Fractal Serenity" music, was initially completely computer-generated, then I massaged and re-wrote areas by hand to soften some of the rough edges, and this harsh-and-soft dreamy music will be lengthened and reworked into the soundscape for the full-length music video of the same name.

The computer graphics were hand-coded in the C-like computer text language of the freeware POV-Ray ray-tracer software... I still don't use modelers, but instead type this all up by hand.

And as always, there's a bit of (Russian) wordplay in the title. I hope you enjoy the surreal dreamy ride!

What makes you salivate?

2009-06-14T14:24:00.000-07:00

Chocolate, perhaps? How about some beautifully cooked bacon?

Hold that thought...

This movie is an out-take from a recent sheep-shearing movie my wife and I took back in April... (posted in the prior blog entry below.)

It turns out that there is not much to do while the sheep shearer does his thing, so everyone else just stands around and talks between sheep-grabs.

So... please listen to the silly conversational banter we were having (over the wind noise) in the beginning of this movie. Now fast-forward to a couple of months later, when this local news video pops up, and my wife and I are floored, they actually made this concoction we joked about and took it to the fair! And people are eating it! How funny.

Annual haircut... for sheep

2009-05-19T21:22:00.000-07:00

My wife and I headed out east to Descanso to a small farm in April (annual sheep shearing time), and as my wife bought some of the fleeces for herself and friends to wash and spin into yarn, I took some video of this interesting process that not many people out here know about. Wool yarn just shows up on the rack at Walmart, right? Well, not quite... there's a lot of work involved in wrestling down a 400 pound sheep, holding her steady and giving her a haircut. And then there's the washing and combing and dying and spinning of the wool, but those are future videos. For now, let's shear some sheep.

Elephant Seals

2009-04-28T12:53:00.000-07:00

Sorry about that, life happened for a while there, and I have neglected my blog! One of the places my wife and I stopped at, while driving to Big Sur and back along Highway 1 on the California coast, was "Elephant Seal Beach", near San Simeon. In the Winter, the females give birth to their pups, and you get some great close-up opportunities (with a nice zoom lens, anyway) of these amazing creatures. The following video shows some of the adult males bellowing, and some of the females re-positioning themselves to protect the babies, and even a pup just born, umbilical cord still attached.

Movie Shot with a Canon GL2 video camera. Music "Quixotic Dreams" by schwansongs.com

Hope you enjoy!

New Spacey Music Video for fun

2008-09-22T13:20:00.000-07:00

The talented Macjammer Reinholt56 wrote an intriguing ambient piece of music here called "Cosmic Symphony", and when I heard it, various abstract colorful images started floating in my head... so I asked him if it would be OK for me to capture these images as a music video, and he graciously agreed. After a couple of days of designing and laying out the coordinates, I started my computer on the task of creating over 4,000 images (at 640x480) for the movie. 4 days of continuous image-rendering later (with all 4 CPUs cranked at 99%), the movie is ready for viewing here. I hope you like it. I have also made the high-quality 640x480 QuickTime movie available for direct-download too, it is crystal clear and there are details in it that you cannot see in the Google/YouTube videos below. Here is the high-quality version of the movie: 'control-click' or 'right-click' here to download this as a (QuickTime movie) file, and play locally on your computer. Note that it is 284 MB, which will take quite some time to download. But if you are interested in a crisp movie, this is the one to get.

If you wish to leave a comment on the video itself, click here. Or comment here in the blog... I would be very interested in your thoughts on the music video, positive and negative!

ttfn,
Drakonis

(Google's video seems a bit clearer)

(YouTube's video is a little blurry)

Renaissance Faire Videos

2008-04-15T20:26:00.000-07:00

My wife and I enjoy escaping, sometimes far into the past, and donning 500 year old garb and visiting the local Renaissance Faire near us. My wife is an avid wool spinner/knitter/crocheter, and while she was giving demonstrations, I decided to bring my video camera and ask if some of the wonderful musicians would like to have their performance video-taped. Despite the fact that it was about 90 degrees and extremely windy, I was able to set up and record a couple.

The first was the Cottager Minstrels, Mary and Trevor Hamer, who performed a couple of wonderful songs here:

They also are working on their own album of music, and can be found here on MySpace.

The second was "Vox Nobili", a Madrigal ensemble that is a joy to listen to. I had heard them on previous occasions at the faire, and was looking forward to working with them to capture a bit of their magic sound:

Vox Nobili are:
Sopranos: Tara Pool, Liz Lindenfeld, Angelica Marcu, Barbara Young
Altos: Susan Abernethy, Sally Dexter-Smith
Tenor: Jerry Marcu
Basses: Vincent Martin, Richard Smith
They can be hired to perform in garb for various special occasions, see their web site here.

Finally, as a bit of a dare from some of my friends (who can actually PLAY instruments), I recorded myself strumming away on my Mountain Dulcimer "Dulce", showing that I really do only know a couple of chords.

Nice leather vest, huh! Stop watching me try to play... oh, look at my socks! Those are hand spun and hand dyed wool socks that my wife made for me! There, the music is over, thank goodness!

Condors in flight - The Video

2008-01-16T12:41:00.000-08:00

Given the vacation described in the previous entry, we shot probably 1/2 hour of raw footage of California Condors, sitting on the guard rail next to us, collecting into a "gang" to look quizzically at the visitors who stopped to look quizzically at them, and some great shots of them flying overhead. This was one of the most delightful and amazing encounters of big birds we've ever had. So, it caused me to write a little pan-flute tune to use as "movie background music", called "Andes Off!"... and I've been working tirelessly for several weeks to trim the footage down to a 10-minute flight with these great creatures.

After fighting with the special YouTube uploader on Windows, I finally gave up and used a lower-quality movie format to get the size down so I could upload it from a Mac (which worked fine.) So, the quality on YouTube isn't as clean as I would like, but I think you'll get a good feel for the breathtaking experience we had up by Big Sur. I hope you enjoy the video. Be sure to leave a comment over at the YouTube video page, or here on the blog and tell me what you think... about condors, re-introduction efforts, the music, the video, etc. I am putting together the raw footage to send off to the biologists up at Ventana Wildlife Society, and possibly to the San Diego Zoo too (if they respond to my e-mail). :-)

(Updated to NEW version of the video 11/2009)

And now for something...

2007-12-31T17:58:00.000-08:00

...Well, perhaps not entirely different than music...

In fact, I think that the anniversary/vacation my wife and I just took could well be the catalyst for a wealth of new music. Not only did we have a wonderful trip together, we kept experiencing one amazingly spectacular thing after another! First stop was a 2-night camping trip near Solvang, CA, at a place called Lake Cachuma campground.

While there, I ran across this eerily-familiar oak tree overlooking the lake. Are you suffering from Deja vu too? I could swear I've seen it as the logo for a movie company :-) Perhaps their artist slept under this same tree? We saw California quail, hawks and turkey vultures, which I dutifully videotaped. Although quite chilly at night, the projected rain forecast patiently and politely waited until we packed up and left the campground before letting loose.

We then headed up the coast toward Big Sur via the breathtaking highway-1, stopping along the way to see the jagged picturesque coastline, and a beach full of elephant seals (which I got more video footage of, including some bellowing males and some far-too-cute pups.)

At Big Sur, we stayed at Glen Oaks, which I heartily recommend, by the way. Took a day hike around the Pfeiffer Big Sur state park, which has its own little stands of Redwoods. Oh, and a bit more video was taken, and a picture or two.

But on the way back home, about 10 miles south of Big Sur, the greatest adventure was circling overhead, or in most cases, just perched on the guard rail, waiting for us to stop by and say hi. There were at least 20 California Condors, all tagged and re-released up here (probably many from our CRES center at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.) Some were sitting in the trees, some on the guard rail just 20 feet from us, and some spreading their wings (with 10-foot-span) and circling overhead. A few of these grand birds were flying just 15 feet above the roadway, giving some drivers a bit of SGBS (sudden giant bird shock) as they flew toward each other. These huge gentle birds seemed a bit too comfortable hanging out with the people, and I am hoping that they don't get injured or sick from too much human contact. Debbie V., a very helpful worker at the Ventana Wildlife Society, showed up to do some bird counting, helpfully answered questions from onlookers, and eventually had to shoo the birds off to a safer distance with a little water spray from a big squirt gun. These birds caused me to use up the rest of my video film and batteries, and we headed home to become members of Ventana, and start editing some really stunning video. The cuddling/grooming behavior I watched/recorded, along with the extremely graceful gliding, suggests a slow romantic waltz to accompany the video sequences... I feel more music bubbling up! Time to add this to my growing pile of New Years projects. Which reminds me... here's wishing you and your family/friends a Happy New Year, I think it will be a good year indeed.

I've been Podcast(ed)?

2007-12-06T21:02:00.000-08:00

Far off in the UK, an ecclectic Doctor Who-fan, going by the nom de plume of "Epileptic Gibbon", works tirelessly to pull together interesting indie music that flies under the radar of pop radio stations (and is therefore worth listening to)... and pulls together 1-hour "podcast" shows. This month's "Christmas" podcast features one of my pieces of music (Belle Fugue), which he let me verbally introduce on his show! His prior shows are quite engaging as well, and give you all sorts of pointers to lesser known artists writing really stunning music. I'd heartily recommend checking out his fresh picks of music... at The Epileptic Gibbon Podcast Music Show! I think you might enjoy it.

On to the next video... Fractal Serenity

2007-10-13T16:18:00.000-07:00

My next video project is "Fractal Serenity"... although I started working on it long before the "Dance of the Technoids" video. It is a much more involved and detailed video, with a bit more of a storyline, although the meanings are twisty and mysteriously shrouded in layers of mist. It started as a dream of a vivid but strange set of landscapes, and a feeling of curiosity and fear.

I have finished the story line, and the pencil sketches for each of the scenes. Lately I have been rendering the sketches as 3D landscapes in POV-Ray (3D computer software), to capture the mystery and intrigue I felt when I visited this place before. I have about 1/2 of these video scenes finished. In the mean time, I have selected a few of the scenes from the video (some are close to complete, some are still early shots with stuff missing), and put together a short trailer, so you can get a glimpse of what's coming. Of course the final product will be crystal-clear DVD quality video and music.

The music you hear was originally computer-generated, then I heavily reworked it into what you hear in the trailer.

The final DVD will likely have a behind-the-scenes extra, where I talk about how I made the music and 3D scenes, show some of the early sketches, and play the original computer-generated seed music, to show how much it has evolved.

Here is the trailer, for your viewing pleasure!

-Link Here-

The Technoids have landed!

2007-07-31T10:12:00.000-07:00

It is official, today! Now available is the high-quality DVD of the music video 'Dance of the Technoids', with an extra 12+ minute "behind-the-scenes" interview with yours truly about how I wrote the music and created the 3D graphics, as well as a solo guitar performance by Ian. It is now available for purchase at
'The Lost Records' on-line music store.

It is a great joyful relief to have completed this huge project... now it is time to focus on my family, especially my wife who has worked at least as hard as I to make this happen. I owe her everything, with my eternal love.
ttfn,
Drakonis

I see the runway...

2007-06-16T14:43:00.000-07:00

I can feel it... this Technoid DVD project is almost complete! The video shoot for the 12 minute "Behind the Scenes" feature is complete, editing is done, and a final draft of the video is ready for OK'ing... I am very pleased with the results! I show the music-writing software and the 3D computer ray-tracing software I used for this. There's also a very sweet recording of Ian playing a solo piece on his guitar on the DVD... we drove up to his place and set up mics and the video camera, and he gave a very solid performance in the soft light of the living room there.

As always, there are little smirky in-jokes sprinkled through this video... including the meaning of the Japanese sign on the door to the studio.

It took some research and shareware fees to find a good way to capture the Mac screen to show how I write music and create the 3D computer animations... I can heartily recommend iShowU, a very nice Macintosh shareware utility for video-capturing moving screen things.

DVD case artwork coming along...

2007-04-20T22:04:00.000-07:00

I'm working on many aspects of this Music Video DVD, not just the video itself. The "Making Of" story is written up, and I've collected most of the examples and notes I used during creation of the video and music. Now I need to video-tape the "interview" with me, and drive 100 miles up to shoot some video of Ian playing guitar, and add that to the extra footage. I've also been designing the DVD case in PhotoShop. This has required me to go back and render a couple of new angles on the Technoid dance floor to create the background artwork for the DVD case and the printed DVD itself. The front of the case will look something like this (without the "DRAFT" watermark, of course):

and the DVD itself will have this cool top-down view:

Real life enjoys interrupting my creativity, and I tend to be a perfectionist, and I wish to insure that this be a high quality product, so it all takes time. But progress is being made.

Swooshing into blog-space

2007-04-01T17:26:00.000-07:00

The time has come, the dragon said, to blog...

So, rummaging around for some mouthwatering eye and ear candy, I have chosen to start my first-ever blog with my first-ever music video. Enjoy! It's description is below.

-Link Here-
Bouncy Electropop music with aliens dancing around large lava lamps (suggesting that music is literally "universal".) Reaching into my 1980's musical subconscious, I wrote a catchy "Depeche Mode"-like techno-flamenco tune, and then created a mosh pit of Technoids dancing to the music in a hyper-realistic dance hall called "The Candy Bar". Music written note by note in Harmony Assistant and finished/EQed in GarageBand. Live acoustic Spanish guitar performed by Ian Beardsley. Video rendered with POV-Ray Mac, and assembled in iMovie. For the technically curious, there are over 1,200 lines of POV-Ray code (all written by hand in the text language, no modelers were harmed...) to create this. The 2.5 minute movie (in final anti-aliased form) took about 14 continuous hours to render all the frames on an old dual 1 Ghz G4 Mac. Free MP3s of this music and others of mine are available at SchwanSongs, or Macjams. This is my first foray into music videos, I'd love to hear your thoughts (pro and con) about the music and video. A high-quality DVD (with a 10+ minute behind-the-scenes "making-of" video, and a trailer for another music video of mine) will be available soon for purchase. I have a much larger, rather different, 3D music video project in progress now.