Fresh off the virtual press!

I finished all the marketing material for Trials And Memories who wanted some posters and business cards and such for promotions.  Don't forget to check them out and hear the orchestration I did for them as well!

The Album is avialable online now @ Reverbnation and Bandcamp

Click on the caption below to go to full view page on my Deviantart Account:

Poster 1

Poster 2

T&M Profile

White Business Card

Black Business Card

They asked for 2 different posters for the local stores and for venue and promotional, as well as a band bio which is just the last picture with text below it.  The album design I did is below, check the full view page on my Deviant art account by clicking on the caption:

Outside tray-card

Inside tray-card

Booklet Cover

Booklet inside

Disc print

I'm finishing up my Fractal gallery updates, here's a few of the new ones I've been working on:

Phase-Phobic

Cepstrum

Anechoic

RT60 2.0

Dipole

Hysteresis

The First Wavefront

Nyquist Theorem

I will be creating a separate page here on my blog that has links to the full downloads on my Deviantart account.  I'm also considering offering a wallpaper download pack for the various sizes which will include 2560x1600.  As always, let me know your thoughts;  any feedback is appreciated!

Evasive Maneuvers!

Congrats again to Trials & Memories on their E.P. debut set for Black Friday.  They just posted up a 4 minute radio edit of Where Are You now on reverbnation, feel free to check out my orchestration work on these tracks!  My back has been slowly getting better, and projects are evolving all around me,  talks with Troy about doing some collaboration stuff for Neologic Studios, a couple of filming and video projects are in talks with Back Yard Studios and some other people as well.  When I finish my story boarding for a short film skit idea I'm working on I'll be posting those up here as well.

In the last couple days I started a quick project in Sonar just to get back into things and play around a bit.  Came up with this little idea i'm working on.



Troy had let me borrow his old Ibanez guitar to play around with and get in tune.  I opened up Sonar and just screwed around with some plugins, noteably this really cool feedback looper I was messing around with.  I laid down a couple takes and panned them wide in stereo and that started the track.

What the project looks like so far....

I wasn't sure what I wanted to do but I liked the idea of a pulse so I immediately looked for something bassy I could use.  There's a few synths I had in mind but I also wanted to play around with sound design so I kept that in mind as i built the track.  I played around with a bunch of synths for a few hours and then proceeded to tweak and dial in sounds until i landed on a couple that i liked, i simply played a single sustained note and some really cool ambient drones laid right over the guitar track I had, gave it life.

Since I hadn't done it in a long time, I started dropping some buses in to the project and using aux sends to create some alternate sounds with and start mangling up the ambiances I had started.  The guitar tracks were fairly simple and got old quick so after the idea of the feedback loop had run its course the with the regular bass pulsing on, I created an aux send for the pulse to go to a bus called Pulse where I put some plugins called Betabugs Chorrosive and then into Absynth 5 to get this really cool sounding distorted heartbeat effect out of the bass pulse.

 

The other bus I created for an aux send was for one of the synth elements called Synth Drone which fills in for the guitar with the muddy distorted mid-range droning and the high end metal tones that come in and out throughout the rest of the mix.

I moved on in the piece quickly to piano and strings.  I used the piano sound to try and play around with the chord Ideas I have in my head that I can hear the strings playing.  I still have some work to do on it as I hear some other changes with suspended 7ths that I can't quite get down yet.  I also fully intend on expanding on this idea and take it somewhere else.

I hope you enjoyed this quick mix.  The strings are still just a bit harsh thought i did want the more intimate close feel, I used several Divisi sections,  when layered with the piano make the symphonic components feel separate in the mix from the electronic sound-scape.

I didn't want the typical "LARGE" hall sound but that Sony sound-stage feel from a quieter more direct passage with strings.  I used a subtle reverb on the whole symphony bus and it helped blend and marry the strings to the track without creating a tail or smearing the details of the string movements.

It's actually been really fun writing this piece with all the Divisi sections and a real learning experience.  These are all just legato sections being played so it's actually fairly easy to get through.

My next phase for the piece is to move into a more symphonic movement that keeps the pulse coming and going to pay homage to the track, with some of the dystopian electronic elements sprinkled throughout for the original flavor as the movement turns more action oriented.  I can definitely imagine some type of spy scene of the Bourne supremacy likes or even Body of Lies, modern techno covert turns action.

Divisi (interesting article for reference) is a really cool way of dividing up a complex combination of notes to be played amongst the group of musicians.  Especially strings which often account for a majority of the instruments in a modern or classical symphony.  Usually these softer passages require the attention during a production recording to get in closer to the instruments with close or section mics, so you get more of the natural phenomena of the instrument (the sound of the bow scraping across the string producing a hissing or scratching sound) which is often diminished when larger groups play together, i.e.: the "chorus" effect.  Breaking down the whole group of violins (1st and 2nd) into smaller sections and having them play the passage this way allows to get the softer dynamics and more intimate feel (granted the close/section microphones are available in the sample libraries).
 

The whole thing inspires me in the way John Powell's work on Bourne Supremacy soundtrack meets something like Battlefield 3's score (which is very electronic ambient; very different from their previous works).  Even a little bit of Alexandre DeSplat with the fusion of electronic (much cleaner) and symphonic in Syriana.

There's also something else to the space created in the sounds, all the dystopia electronic drone work going on with the glitches and panning effects, coupled with the heart beat and pulse, then this distant washed out piano comes in with a sparse melodic chord change which is met with an intimate and close string section.  I'd like to know what everyone's thoughts are on the picture being painted here.  Please feel free to leave comments, flaming remarks, doodles, power-point presentations, links to unrelated events, even cast your vote for American Idol, whatever you like!  Just kidding, but please if you have feedback of any kind I absolutely love to hear it!

Short and Quick

So,  October was fairly busy.  Life's been hectic if nothing else.  Wrapped up work on the E.P. for Trials & Memories including finishing album art design;  which you can follow here.  They also just recently posted up a 4 minute radio edit of Crematoria.  The EP Drops on Black Friday!  Congrats to Jeremy and Mikey!  They also were very happy with the final album artwork.  I am too.

So what have I been doing?  Nothing. Well, not really.  Short Film Soiree got started with a group of friends doing short film projects and lately I've been spending my time doing some storyboarding for a couple.  Troy is also back in the area so we've been collaborating on some of the projects, and planning out a couple skits.  Aside from that I helped him set things back up at the Warehouse.

Microsoft started a public submission for the Windows Gallery themes expansions they've been doing and calling for all kinds of artwork.  I took some time to update a bunch of my Fractals and submitted them

Unfortunately, my back has been giving me a ton of problems the last couple weeks.  So much left to do, so little time!  Looks like I'll have me plenty of free time now to get back on track with my novel.  Speaking of...  I'm off!

OH, first... Battlefield 3 on PC has been in my possession since it's release day; unfortunately none of my current circle of friends are PC gamers (extremely sad face).  So, if you are so inclined to add me, hit me up on Origin and let's join up for a match or two! 

Shexy mods, clamor, and glamour..

Over a month ago, my computer screen decided to go dark.  Now when I say go dark, I mean it literally just went dark.  Most of the time when people have a computer screen that they can't see anymore they assume it just died.  A quick inspection and some research online led me to believe the capacitors, resistor, or some part of the power inverter that powers the CCFL backlights went out, because the rest of the screen still works.  I use the screen's USB hub to operate my kyeboard and mouse, and when I switch screens to my giant HDTV on the opposite wall (extremely hard to work with this particular orientation), the mouse and keyboard are fine.

The last throws of summer are in full swing, everyone wants to constantly hang out and enjoy what's left of it by gaming: xbox 360, or nerding: Magic The Gathering.  Poke fun, mock, and belittle all you like... It's a fun way to pass the time.  Mok offered to help me solve my screen issues and we took it apart to look at the power board.

First time we took it apart was sort of annoying since the plastic shell is a two piece snap-in that holds itself together.  A butter knife did the trick eventually, and we ran into the other problem of having to try and get around the stem for the stand where it connects to the back of the screen.  Once we got it off we disconnected 3 sets of connections that bound all the various components together.

While the particular fashion in which Samsung designed the screen can be annoying to work on because of the molded plastic back shell being cast through the metal bracket that holds the hinge and stem piece for the stand to sit in, we managed to get access to the the 2 boards in the chassis that house the electronics.

Disconnecting the power from the logic board allowed us to easily unscrew the power board and disconnect the two backlight connectors buried in the right side of the chassis.  Once we got the power board out Mok and I immediately noticed one major problem with it.

Not only was the PCB around the resistor burnt black, but the original capacitor had faded beyond recognition and we thus set about replacing it.  A quick stop at "The Shack" and later another visit to get a 60-watt Soldering Iron because of the heavy duty solder used on the board remedied the situation nicely.  We also replaced 8 capacitors i had purchased online from a DIY mod site that matched the main ones that the board relies on.  We stuck the board back in and despite our effort, were greeted with a dark but still functioning screen.  So I ordered a whole new power board on eBay...

A couple of days passed...  Busy with life things, like friendly gatherings, keeping up with my exercises...

Taking care of things at home...  Lazy cats...

More exercising...

Oh... and some more friend time:

S'mores anyone?

Before the board arrived, Mok came over and was curious to check out the backlights with me.  We set about taking apart the entire screen.

Removing the front plastic bezel

Snapping out the metal frame that encases the inner screen components.

For those of you that don't know how an LCD screen works.  There's several layers to the whole thing.  Here's how it goes.  Below you can see the Panel which is covered with a diffusion anti-glare material.

Beneath the actual panel is several layers of Diffuser sheets, think of them as transparency sheets like those used in schools for overhead projectors, except they help to evenly scatter the light instead of being completely transparent.

Underneath those diffuser sheets is a large and thick panel that is somewhat diffusive.

This panel acts like a lens when light is emitted into it from it's sides, it illuminates the whole area scattering the light in all directions and as the light catches on the diffusive surface area, it brightens the whole thing.

These backlights are very tiny, long and thin. There are two sets, a pair on top and a pair on the bottom, which are powered by the power inverter board.

The logic board is connected directly to the LCD matrix panel which controls the various cells in the matrix.

And there you have it.  While we had fun taking it completely apart and reassembling it we found nothing wrong with the CCFLs.  Backlights had absolutely no burn marks, blackened edges or anything that would be akin to failure.

The board arrived, and I have some free time during the day to tackle a quick modification to the plastic shell with my dremel. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now that I got the plastic piece completely cut out the shell could be completely removed from the chassis.  I cleaned up everything and took it back inside to remove the old power board and put the new one in.

I quickly and easily took out the old powerboard thanks to the handy removal of that plastic section that bound the shell to the hinge.

Swapped out the old power board, put the new one in, screwed it in place, and reconnected the power to the logic board, and the two CCFL backlight sets. 

Swung the chassis back on top of the screen and connected the data cable to the logic board for the display and the connection for the power sensor on the front bezel piece, plugged the thing back in to some power and tested it out.  The whole thing lit up perfectly so I finished snapping together the shell, put the mount piece back on the hinge and stem and placed it back on my desk.  I hooked my screen back up to my computer and now everything is back up and running!

The rest of this month has been rather slow.  The usual daily exercising, routine job hunting, working on the final bits of the orchestra project commissioned by Trials & Memories which can be found on facebook.  Lots of working on my novel project as well.

School should be back in session, summer is closing to its end, and my guess is if you're reading this late on a school night you're probably chatting with me on facebook!  Hope everyone enjoyed their summer.  Hopefully I'll have more buzzworthy stuff to post on here soon.