Random sketch of the day.
I can only assume that, after a rousing rendition of “C is for Cookie, That’s Good Enough for Me”, he promptly devoured his lute, with pieces flying everywhere.
January 14, 2012
December 9, 2011
Camp Skookum Theme
A new song has been added to the Music Player. It’s the theme for Camp Skookum, a virtual world in development.
The creators of the site asked that I create a simple, catchy tune, so I did. Beware, though… if you listen to it too much, it will get stuck in your head for days.
November 11, 2011
XI/XI/XI
In honor of today being 11/11/11, here’s a quick puzzle. Every one of these answers has XI in it:
- _ _ XI _ _ – Country south of the United States
- _ XI _ – Leave
- _ XI _ – Planet’s center of rotation
- _ _ _ _ XI – Mississippi city
- _ _ XI _ _ _ – Nervous, experiencing worry
- _ _ _ _ XI _ _ – Hydrogen ____, hair bleaching liquid
- _ _ XI – Cab
- _ _ XI _ – Poisonous
- _ _ XI _ _ _ – Upper limit
- _ _ _ _ _ XI _ _ _ – Die from lack of oxygen
November 8, 2011
November 2, 2011
JiA #23 – Dragons on a Campout
Yep, I finally got around to coloring it. Thanks to everyone who encouraged me that it should be a Jellyfish in Armour toon!
September 13, 2011
An Orchestra of One – Chapter 14: Humbled by Beethoven
This will be my last “Orchestra of One” post for awhile. It’s been fun, but I only have so much time available to me, and I want to put other things on Screenhog.com (comic updates, for instance, have been pretty sparse lately). However, before I go on my hiatus, I’d like to share a story.
Last year, I attended a concert in which an orchestra was about to perform Beethoven’s Symphony #5. Now, I’d already been composing music commercially for a few years, and I was feeling pretty confident about my own skills as a composer, thinking that I was a pretty awesome composer, if I said so myself.
However, any pride in my own abilities was pretty much crushed as soon as the orchestra started, though. The entire symphony was absolutely beautiful, and I sat in my seat amazed by the skill in what I’d heard. “Beethoven was able to come up with something this beautiful? 200 years ago? Without computers? WHILE DEAF?!?”
Clearly, I still have a lot to learn.
You do too. Beethoven1, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Bach… we will likely never get the point where we’re considered a master like they were. In some ways, that’s kinda depressing.
But on the other hand, we also have advantages that they could never have dreamed about. We have access to instruments that weren’t even invented when they were alive. Every major song created in the last 200 years can be instantly available to us to learn from. Musicians are paid more than they ever have been in history.2 And, most importantly, we have tools at our disposal capable of almost perfectly recreating the sound of an entire orchestra… by ourselves!
There has never been a better time to be a composer. I hope that the articles I’ve written so far have helped to inspire you, and I imagine I’ll be writing more in the future. If there’s a song you want to share, put it online3 and post about it in the comments! I’d love to hear what you’ve made.
Previous: Chapter 13: How to Get Noticed
Footnotes:
- It’s difficult for me to think of Beethoven without thinking of Schroeder from the Peanuts comic strip. So, here he is. ↩
- Yes, despite the high number of “starving artists” out there. It’s a frequently ignored fact that, throughout most of history, artists didn’t get paid (or if they did, it was in tangible things like room and board, not in money). ↩
- Getting a song online is actually pretty easy. There’s a lot of free webhosting out there. ↩
September 6, 2011
An Orchestra of One – Chapter 13: How to Get Noticed
Since starting this series, I’ve been asked many questions about composing from readers just like you, and the most frequent questions I’ve been asked have been things like “How do I get my music to be noticed by more people?” or “How can I get people to hire me to make music for them?” It’s natural… you’re an artist, which means that a.) you want more people to see the awesome work you do, and b.) you’d probably like to make some money doing it.
Now, honestly, I don’t know how to answer this question for you, specifically. The answer for every artist is different. But I do have some advice, and while it might be a bit boring to read, if you understand it, it should help you. (By the way, unlike my other chapters in this series, this advice can easily apply to all artists.)
There are two keys to long-term success in an art form: what you know and who knows you.
(click to read the rest of this post…)
August 30, 2011
An Orchestra of One – Chapter 12: Echo, Echo
Audio effects are things which are added to sound with the purpose of warping the sound in some way, and up until this point, I haven’t talked about them very much. This is partially due to the fact that I don’t generally use a lot of audio effects in my recordings, but it’s also because I’m just not very good at using most audio effects properly. However, there’s one category of effects that is vital for a composer to try and understand; the echo.
(click to read the rest of this post…)
August 26, 2011
Wii Game Character
Two years ago, I made a post about how much I wanted to create a Wii game. Well, I’d still like to make that Wii game some day, and this is the main character:
Wanna see him in a game? Well, you’ll still have to keep waiting. Mech Mice is consuming most of my work hours right now. But I’m warning you, world, some day he’ll be in a game, and it will be awesome.
August 23, 2011
An Orchestra of One – Chapter 11: Lessons from a Shark
Jaws was a film made in 1975. Directed by Steven Spielberg, it was the story of a shark that terrorized the ocean, and was arguably the first movie to introduce the world to one of the best composers in the film industry, John Williams.
The soundtrack for Jaws is filled with sweeping orchestral arrangements, original themes for the main characters 1, and a high level of musical craftsmanship. However, when you think of the music in Jaws, what is the only thing you remember about it?
You don’t have to know a thing about playing a musical instrument to play the theme to Jaws. Just find a piano, pick a note on the far left-hand side, find the note directly above it, and play those notes alternately, increasing in speed and volume. And yet, it’s one of the most famous movie themes in history. Ridiculous, isn’t it?
But what can we learn from this?
(click to read the rest of this post…)
- When a character in a movie or play has a specific theme relating to them, it’s called a “leitmotif”. John Williams uses a lot of these in his movies, and the technique brings a great deal of consistency to his work. ↩
