This always happens to me. Always. I get addicted to the NG forums, spending a while scanning them, posting some stupid malarkey comments for about a period of a month or two. And then, I dunno what happens, but I stop visiting so much cos it's the same people, and a lot of the topics seem to be samey.

And I've been busying away at university too. I've been spending less time on my PC, which is a bit strange as I'm meant to be a computer scientist, and facebook's no help either. So yeh, haven't been here much recently.

Buuut, I'm working on something that could actually be submittable. I've realised that I'm in no way an animator, so I'm using my new found comp sci programming skills to make a Flash game, which I'm hoping to upload in a couple of weeks or months, depending on how much I work on it and how complex it all gets. And I'm pretty sure that this concept hasn't been uploaded on NG either yet, so I'm hoping I can do it some justice...

My good friend, Xennethy, has been making me a music video on and off for well over a year now for my song Stratosphere. As he neared completion, I felt that I needed to redo the song entirely in order to make it sound much better, and I had to start it from scratch as I had lost the original file.

Anyway, the final result of the music video is available to watch here.

The song is available to download from my Soundclick page. Sorry if you wanted it for free, but I need funding. =/

If you want it badly enough for free, I might upload a lo-fi quality version on the Audio portal.

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EDIT: Holy shit, it was front paged. If Xen wasn't away this week, then I'm sure he'd be thrilled. Thanks Tom. =D

Well, this past week has been a slowly inflating blast due to nothing to do. I've been on half term, and instead of getting a bit of work done, I've ended up procrastinating and leaving it to the last minute, AGAIN.

Music-wise, I've bought a Kaoss pad, which I hope to use with my guitar to fucker the sound of the guitar up. Nothing like making instruments not sound like how they're supposed to. Also, I've come up with a couple of chord sequences on piano, and a couple of guitar riffs as well.

To change the subject, before half term, me and a couple of friends were thinking of getting a webcomic going as well, and I've been playing around on Adobe Fireworks and my graphics tablet trying to work out the best ways to get the colouring/outlines/etc done.

The picture below is one of my tests:

Whilst watching a video of Muse playing live, I saw that Matt Bellamy was using a touchscreen device to control the sound that his guitar was producing. After further investigation, I found that the guitar had a built in Korg Kaoss pad (look it up), and that it had been custom built to his exact specification. Several of his guitars in fact had been built as custom, and have included circuitry like Fuzz Factory, and MIDI pickups.

Because of this now, I want to get a guitar custom built for myself. I know that they'll cost in the region of a couple of thousand pounds, which is why I'm going to wait for a couple of years (and save up). I've decided on some of the features that I would like my guitar to have (e.g. body paint, whammy bar), but I'm still thinking about what circuitry should be built into the guitar.

So, for those members of NG who own guitar effects, reckon you could help me pick out which effects I should get built in?

I admit it. I'm a complete technophile, and get all excited when I buy myself a new gadget. In this case, I recently imported a Rocktron Banshee talkbox from Thomann.de, and I've spent over a week learning how to use it properly.

If you don't know, a talkbox is a musical effect close to that of a vocoder. It takes the sound from an instrument, such as guitar/keyboard, and then sends the sound down a tube. You hold the opposite end of the tube in between your molars (I'm expecting jokes because of this), and shape your mouth which modifies the sound and makes it sound like the instrument is talking. It is THE effect used by Daft Punk in Harder Better Faster Stronger, Around the World, and most of their album Human After All. It's also used by Bon Jovi and Peter Frampton to throw in some other names.

Now, I can not tell you how odd it is to be using this effect. It's like the suction tube you get when you're getting fillings from your dentist, except it doesn't remove you saliva. Unfortunately, saliva ducts are right next to my molars, and so there's the tendency to drool like a bulldog. Next, there's the challenge of learning to shape your mouth properly to get the instrument to talk. H and S sounds are particularly hard as the whole point is not to produce sound from your voicebox when using it, and these sounds require it.

But due to the nature of the talkbox, it also doubles as a wah pedal and a phaser, except with much more control. So it's effectively a three-in-one product, and can be used for hours of fun. Unfortunately, it's picky with what sounds it wants to use from my synth. I need a Saw/Sine wave in order to make it understandable.

Currently, I'm using it to learn how to play HBFS, so once that's done, I might upload to Youtube or even here on NG. I'm also planning on buying a Digitech synth wah pedal soon, so if I do, you'll be reading all about it shortly.

Pic:

Holy shit, the year goes fast. I can still vividly remember the huge disappointment that last Christmas was, but the increased number of presents underneath the tree this year should stop that from recurring (yes, I am materialistic).

So at the time of writing, there's 5 days left until I can finally unwrap presents, have the much-loved Christmas dinner, and try and find something good on TV which isn't the Snowman or the Queen's speech. To give things a fresh twist, this will be the first Christmas without my parents as they've flown over to Cyprus to furnish our holiday home over there. So it's just me and my two older siblings by ourselves alone over the Christmas period, where all three of us can drive and are legally old enough to buy alcohol. What can possibly go wrong?

So if for some reason you happen to be reading this, which I doubt as I'm not a well known user, I hope you have an average Christmas (or Winter Solstice for all you Pagans), and let's just hope you don't get food poisoning from the turkey.

So, since last time I posted on my own page, I bought some new speakers, and re-arranged my desk to make it easier for me to do my music. So I have a rudimentary but effective home studio, and I'm trying to learn the best methods for recording instruments like electric guitar and so forth.

So, now that I've improved the way I work with my program a lot, I think that I'll be re-recording my better songs on Soundclick.com, and then adding many new ones. Problem here lies with the fact that I've been very eclectic with the songs I produce, and so the album might not be that coherent. Eg, I started off experimental, and now I've become more synthpop-y.

So far I have:
2 songs which I'm happy with
3 songs which I have music for, but I need to write and record lyrics
3 previously written songs which need re-recording or altering to make them sound fab
3 songs in the works
2 song ideas that I'm gonna develop

I'm pretty sure if I finish all this, I'd have enough songs to make an album. It would just end up being a weird mix of happy synthpop for one song, and a dark dance track on another. So, I guess that if I can't make the track listing work, I'll need to do more songs. And given my work rate, that could be ages.

For those who know me, they know I'm a musical individual. As well as listening to songs as often as I can (which pretty much everyone does anyway), I've spent the last couple of years building up and trying to sort out my own home personal studio.

In bulletpoints:
Early 04 - Downloaded Noteworthy Composer
Summer 04 - Composed loads of tunes
Autumn 05 - Managed to get my hands on a sequencer program.
December 05 - Bought a Fender Toronado GT HH (discontinued, baby!), and an amp.
September 06 - Bought a KORG Microkorg synthesizer.
December 06 - Bought an M-Audio Fast Track Pro MIDI/Audio Interface
August 07 - Upgraded to new sequencer program.

So, that looks all cool there, and I've spent too much of my own cash trying to get everything sorted. But now I've run into problems. My new sequencer (called Cakewalk Project5) won't allow me to record audio through my audio interface, and then run the sound out through the PC's internal sound card. I know my audio interface isn't dodgy either cos it works perfectly with Audacity. And I can't use the old program cos basically, it fucked up, and won't install on my PC any more.

So, at the moment, I'm trying to see whether I can run all of my PC's audio through the interface, which'll require me to buy some RCA cables and a new set of speakers. If it works, it basically means I'll be able to start recording the songs that have come to my head since I took a hiatus about this time last year, which are synth/guitar based. And if I can make them sound exactly how they sound in my noggin, then they'll be worth the wait. =P

-Krykos

Btw, Juno 106 - is it worth getting eventually? =)

Just read in a local paper that two lads saved a baby's life when a woman "lost control of the wheelchair, and it plunged into a river with the baby still strapped in".

Now, I'm no parent, but I think that if you manage to lose control of a pram, you shouldn't be one in the first place.

Good thing the two lads were there to save the poor kid though.

Ah, British Summer. Two and a half months of no school, and rain in between the rare bursts of sunshine. Like anyone else, I've been looking forward to it since last September when the school year began, but now that I'm on it, I haven't a clue how the hell I'm gonna spend my time.

I could like last Summer, and the Summer before that, try to learn how to use Flash. But history has told me that sitting on a PC and looking for Internet tutorials are 1. likely to make me procrastinate, and 2. make me frustrated as I can't find what I'm looking for, or that the tutorial is just plain crap.

I could get a job, but most of the positions that I'm looking for have already been filled, aka all games/electronics stores. It's not that I'm fussy when it comes to a job, it's just I don't want to lower myself to working in McDonalds or Tesco's. And also, some places like HMV want people 18+, which is a bit unfair seeing as I'll be that age in late September.

Going out with friends is an obvious choice, and it would be great to do so every day. But, going to school in a different county means that almost all of your friends live there. So in order to get there, I'd need a couple of pounds for bus money cos I haven't taken my practical driving test, and I doubt my parents would give me money for bus fare every day, and would want me to get a job, which I can't fucking find. Oh yeh, and most of the people who live in my area and go to my school I find to be pricks anyway.

So I reckon overall, this Summer is going to be inevitable. Being at home most days, taking opportunities as they come, waiting for the day when I actually take my driving test. Hopefully, I'll pass and be able to get around by myself. But unless something interesting pops up soon (i.e. not TV, Wii, DS, PC, guitar or Harry Potter), I hate to say it, I'd rather be at school.