The person behind the mess
aMUSiC
This user hasn't shared any biographical information
Posts by aMUSiC
About to give birth…
Aug 5th
We’ve been carrying this baby in our proverbial bellies for quite a few months now, and we’re now having contractions. The baby is kicking and wants to come out and we’re just about ready to go into labor.
Leviathan came over late yesterday night, and as such I couldn’t mix the guitars in the track using my trustworthy Fostex monitors, so I had to revert to the menial method of the 5 headphones. I’ve got 5 sets of headphones laying around, from a borrowed set of Sennheiser monitor headphones, to some studio ones, to some cheapy-cheapy Sony ones or my plug-type cell-phone ones. Each one with a very distinct response range and different sound, but I’m happy that the track sounds good in all of them. I might have erred a bit on the bass side, but since we do have some more time to produce another mix, I’ll give the track a few careful listens on my Reference Audio System™ and then on the Fostex monitors and act accordingly.
I had to remix the sound effects track as with the guitars in quite a few of the effects were no longer audible. Some of them still aren’t, but there’s still time to make some final adjustments. On the other hand, I’ve been contemplating of releasing a special edition of the effects soundtrack which will be 5.1 encoded for those who have such systems =P We’ll see how it goes after Assembly.
So all in all.. we’re pretty much ready. Everyone’s fast asleep (or just waking up), Navis just got out the door to make his way to Finland and I’m deep into hypertension and can’t let myself get some z’s.
Oh.. and Leviathan.. you wanted a sick solo?.. Here.. have a sick solo =P
T minus 1 day for Assembly
Aug 4th
Time is almost out. All night yesterday was spent setting up the recording rig for the guitars over at Leviathan’s place. Had to fight with all the perils of a home studio that’s not even designed to be a home studio (not yet anyhow), noise cancellation, problematic cables, but we finally managed to set up everything and start practicing on the riffs, and fiddling with the sound settings until we get to the desired guitar sound. Today Leviathan is (even as I write these lines) recording the guitars, and later at night he’ll bring over the tracks at my place to mix them into the final piece.
Meanwhile over at Navis’ Blog Stella (Navis’ 3 year old daughter) is throwing spoilers about the demo. She reveals (and tricks Navis also into revealing) that the demo will contain fish (no surprise for an ASD demo =), running people, a labyrinth, a turtle and a.. mermaid.. (!?)..
/me holds breath…
T minus 2 days for Assembly
Aug 3rd
Only two days left… Still no guitars on the tune, but along with Leviathan we took the day (and night) polishing, fixing and trying interesting things in the piece. We changed it quite a bit.. to the better I want to believe =). I spent the night mixing the tracks and leaving the relevant space for the guitars and the sound effects, worked also some more on the sound effects and traditionally I’m about to burn a CD with the latest version (11) of the tune to listen on my reference audio system (my car’s cd player) while driving at work.
Oh.. and traditionally I created the icon for the demo.. which in this case too gives a hint of something found in the demo itself. No big surprise here… most ASD demos have a fish or two in it =)
Tomorrow I’ll head over Leviathan’s place and help him record the guitars. Time is running out… but I can’t wait…
T minus 3 days for Assembly
Aug 2nd
We’re on the run.. With 3 days left we’ve grabbed the mops and started polishing Iconoclash. Trimming the rough edges, testing on various configurations, eliminating show-stopper bugs, creating the .ico, grabbing screenshots and the like..
Oh.. and the music. I spent most of the day yesterday laying out the sound effect track. Lots of effects, lots of syncing and even more coke cans (empty ones.. used as sound effects actually…). What’s going to be different this time around, is that the sound effect track will be a separate entity and not mixed into the music mp3. As such, you will be able to just listen to the music in the final package or have the full blown experience of the demo with the sfx.
Still tweaking minor things and adding details as more ideas spring into mind, while waiting for Leviathan to solidify the guitar parts today, record them tomorrow and mix them together on Wednesday. Boy I can’t wait.. this piece is turning out to be really swell..
Oh and did I just give out that there will be guitars in this one? =P… (and a mind blowing piano solo too!)
The Wind Under My Wings
Jul 26th
This one begun as a generic dance project, which shifted into trance, then into vocal trance and finally ended up being something between oldschool 90′s and Eurodance. Nevertheless, much thanks to Valerie Blonde for singing this in such a short notice.
aMUSiC ft Valerie Blonde - The Wind Under My WingsThis was made for the same titled demo by ASD.
More >
Everything set for Euskal 18
Jul 24th
It’s Saturday, Euskal is already underway and we’re eagerly waiting for the Demo compo tonight. I’m all piss and vinegar that there’s no demoscene.tv coverage, but oh well. The important thing is that the demo was finished way ahead of time, and I managed to finish the music just in time, which included a recording session with a singer and which turned out to go better than I initially thought it would.
Once the demo is out, I’m going to upload the music here. But until then… =)
Do it like Leviathan
Jun 24th
My close bud Leviahtan -who I write music with- has been practicing lately…
Let’s kick some butt mate.. =)
Of woman friendship…
Jun 2nd
My close bud Leviathan re-pointed me to an IRC quote that I’ve found to be hilarious, yet so true…
A woman has a close male friend.
This means that he is probably interested in her, which is why he hangs around so much.
She sees him strictly as a friend.
This always starts out with, you’re a great guy, but I don’t like you in that way.
This is roughly the equivalent for the guy of going to a job interview and the company saying, You have a great resume, you have all the qualifications we are looking for, but we’re not going to hire you.
We will, however, use your resume as the basis for comparison for all other applicants.
But, we’re going to hire somebody who is far less qualified and is probably an alcoholic.
And if he doesn’t work out, we’ll hire somebody else, but still not you.
In fact, we will never hire you.
But we will call you from time to time to complain about the person that we hired.
Rings a bell, anyone?
Magic: The Irony – International Monetary Fund
May 13th
Boosting the Ouch set a bit more. This one could also fit in the Politics set, but if figured it’s gonna hurt so much, the Ouch set is its rightful place.
…and if you don’t get it (assuming of course that you know how to play Magic) guess what’s gonna happen at the end of your turn… =P
Magic: The Irony – Molotov Cocktail
May 13th
As I am waiting for a huge mysql process to take place, I thought I might get my hands dirty by creating a new MtI (read: Magic: the Irony) set, called the “Ouch” set. In this set I’ll be including stuff that hurt, current events and well.. cards that don’t fit into any other category. Let’s start with a traditional Amstel bottle…
There is en errata entry in Oracle about this one: You can include more than 4 instances of Molotov Cocktail in your deck. Athinaiki Zythopoiia would be sooo so happy…
