Holy cow: WHERE DID THE SUMMER GO?!?

Most of my time has been going into my wedding! My fiancé and I are getting married on Sept 28, 2013, so lots of projects and details to take care of. Last weekend was the bachelor party, which was attended exclusively by musicians, so you know we worked some time in to rock out around the campfire a bit! My band has a few gigs after the wedding, so our honeymoon to Hawaii will have to wait for a month or so. I’ve been to Maui three times and can’t wait to get back to the Aloha State for some snorkelling, hiking, and relaxing!

Right after the last Pirate101 TV commercial, I did another Wizard101 TV spot with Kings Isle… this one was the first commercial to feature live action along with the CG action, and looks great. Doing the normal commercials is awesome, but there’s something about real actors shot on a real set that makes everything feel… real, I guess. 😛 Speaking of Kings Isle, I’ve been asked to do a short article for their site, so I’ll let you know when that happens in case you’d like to hear me drone on some more!

I was just directed to this YouTube vid:

Kind of surreal to see someone work out some themes I’ve written and post it on YT for the world! I’ve gotten a lot of requests for sheet music for W101 and P101 themes, but it’s really up to Kings Isle if they want to make that available. It would be a pretty big project, as most of my music uses a lot of instruments – taking all those instrumental lines and making it work for two hands on a piano would take a lot of thought, and some of the themes would be pretty challenging in that format. A few people have sent me remixes of my stuff and I really enjoy hearing what people do to it. I used to listen to a lot of techno back in the day, and my favorite albums were remix imports: an disc with maybe six versions of the same track. Most of them took a piece of the source material, maybe a sound or a phrase, and expanded on it. If I liked the song in the first place, I always wanted to hear what else the track could have been, which is why I love seeing what other people do with my material.

Just finished another Hello Kitty game. It’s been a really great change of pace from the huge epic stuff I’m normally asked to write. I also got to do the ingame SFX, which is another nice change up for me because I get to set up mics and record sounds instead of using MIDI and samples… although I do try to record SOME live tracks for every project I do.

I finally moved up to Pro Tools v10, right as v11 was released! 11 has a lot of new features that require a bunch of prep work on my studio computer, so I’ll probably install it and mess around with it when I get some time off after the wedding. So far, v10 has been rock solid and a joy to work with… and for anybody who relies on their computer for the income knows: IF IT AIN’T BROKE DON’T FIX IT, but some of the features in 11 sound really intriguing: 64 bit, offline bouncing, dynamic host processing, new video engine… all of these will help me work faster if I can just devote a few hours to upgrading all of my plugins and libraries. I currently teach Pro Tools part time at a local community college and they have to upgrade all their hardware to be able to use 11, but I’m fortunately not in that boat. It probably helps that I use Pro Tools mostly for MIDI composition and so all my hardware and resources are geared towards that area, whereas many people use Pro Tools more for live recording or sound design.

I’ve got a few exciting projects going on currently that I can’t announce yet, some old and some brand new! I’ve had a short break from composing, which always recharges my batteries and enthusiasm. I love coming to a project with something to say instead of forcing inspiration… which I can usually do, but it’s much harder! I’ve been fortunate to work with some great companies and great people who give me tons of inspiration in their artwork and creative words, and it really does make a difference when I sit down with the proverbial blank piece of paper in front of me.

I’ve decided it’s probably time to update the site with more functionality and material to encourage people to come back. If you’re out there, please speak up in the comments and let me know you’re out there!

n