July 2012
30 posts
Eximplode - Places I Knew (WIP 4)
Eximplode
Eximplode - Places I Knew (WIP 4)
Still workin’ on it. I’ll do something with the melody when I have a better idea of where I want to go with it, but for now, I’ve just applied a few suggestions from Soulfully/DystopianMyopia/other tumblr folks, and fixed a few issues.Still need to run this through some proper monitors for a good mixdown - seems like it has a dent in the middle on the ones in class - but that can wait for now. I’ll probably take down the other WIPs and tidy up my front page a little once WIP 5 is posted.
I really like all the subtle changes that you’ve made here. :D Here are some thoughts and suggestions that I’m writing down as I listen to it along the way.
Time Machine: Return to Me (feat. Soulfully)
40mP (Remixed by Marking)
Marking and Soulfully take you back to an old Vocaloid classic through their “Time Machine”…
Whoot whoot! :D It was great working on this. Thanks to you for taking all the time to carefully edit and produce this, Em. :D We should also put this before forgetting:
Based on: タイムマシン [Time Machine]
Music: 40mP
Lyrics: 164
English Lyrics: Lucy
Vocals: Soulfully
Remix and additional production by Marking
(Lyrics)
(Download)
a constant motion of the heart: Twelve. →
hereinbloom.tumblr.com
There are spaces in her heart like the spaces that used to open between her teeth — swells of tender skin and seeping sunrises and growth’s uncomfortable aches — and there had been times when she’d known how to fix this, but it had always been when she was a child; when she would sit on the porch in her backyard, legs dangling and ankles crossed, braids fluttering and mind attempting to decipher the messages left behind by the flourishing wings of passing birds, as she would wiggle her rattling tooth and her fingertips would be stained with the posies that bled through the cloth.
Now, as she reflects, as the yawns resonate, as the last webs of adolescence pull and bounce from her skin, she wishes that she could use that remedy for everything — that she could dive into her stomach and exorcise herself of each butterfly corpse; that she could open the arms of her rib cage and whisper air into her lungs; that she could reach into her chest and wiggle around her heart (till it could be removed and maybe buried, maybe shaken, maybe held, maybe emptied); that she could dislocate herself from herself as if she were a crippled bud or a first tooth: temporary and simply holding place — but nothing’s quite so easy, few cuts are ever so clean, and she knows.
So she deals it in the ways that she can, through old comforts that hurt and rainy places that give reason for frowns, through disguising her limbs and imagining the way contemplation would move his mouth, but even with each skin-deep phantasm, each grasp for shelter, the spaces in her heart never really feel as if they’ve gone.
I am absolutely baffled and left breathless at your intricate art of words. I’ve already read through much of your prose, poetry, single sentences, and I’d reblog all of them but this is the first I saw. It is amazing. (How could you be following me?) My literal reaction went from expressionless to my jaw dropping wide open. Help, I need to pick it back up.
Your rhythm of words, your metaphors, and little insights are spectacular and as a fellow amateur poet / writer / musician, I hardly compare. Keep on writing. I can only hope to look at your works and learn from them, Amy. (I hope it is fine to call you that, you wrote it in your description.)
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How to Save a Life (Fray), wip
30 second preview of what I’m working on. It is still unedited. It usually takes me about 6 - 10 hours to record and finish a song, but I will be taking meticulous planning and care in this especially — it’s full of emotional depth, and very suited for my voice. Here are some notes on what I learned today and what I’m fixing tomorrow. It’s a laundry list… no, more than one. (And pardon me for cutting off before the good part. I do have to offer something worth looking forward to!)
June 2012
41 posts
How You Can Have a Bunch of Great Ideas but Still Fuck Up Real Bad: A Korra Essay →
chirart.tumblr.com
Hahahaha ever since Saturday the Korra finale seems to make me angrier and angrier. As a storyteller and as a fan of solid storytelling, it is an atrocious mess! I stand by the creators are amazing directors, amazing concept artists, amazing producers, but wow are they terrible writers. They have absolutely no understanding of dramatic convention, and so the first season of The Legend of Korra suffered greatly from terrible execution, and the core ideas were so good it should’ve been a gamechanger. It should’ve been the most brilliant thing on television and instead we were given a 12-week narrative case of blue balls.
Disclaimer:if you enjoyed/love/fanatic about Korra, by all means continue to do so! I enjoyed a lot about Korra. In fact that is why I am so frustrated. But that aside, this is meant as a critique and a dissection and as such you can take it or you can leave it. Nothing I have to say will change the show, nor will anything I have to say will have any effect on what season 2 will bring. Mostly I have been ranting about it to everyone on a daily basis since Saturday and this is my way to finally just. get. it. all. out. So this is me shouting into the ether for my own cathartic glee.
Cool? Cool.I have never agreed with anyone about something this much ever
This is a pretty spot-on and reasonable perspective on the many flaws present in the Legend of Korra. It was never really as emotionally gripping or appealing as Avatar, but some may argue that I (or anyone else) may be biased. ATLA was very engaging from the get-go. It had and still has a stronger foundation and intricate detail in its story, which made all the more engrossing to viewers and story-lovers alike. I struggled to keep up with LoK because all I saw were missed opportunities, unnecessary plot points, and allusions to ATLA that made it stuck in the past, rather than moving it forward to make it a show stand for itself. I hope that Season Two gets better, but it won’t change that fact that Season One was unfortunately disappointing for the most part, at least to me and many others.
Not-so-brief rant about artistic pursuits.
I’m putting this in a separate post, because there have been several people who’ve been asking me about this stuff, and I just want to set the record straight, I guess. Regarding what I think about interpreting things.
Heya, I read this and felt like it was probably relevant to the feedback I posted earlier which I apologize for since it might not have helped as much as I thought it would be. I’m not someone formally educated in music, just someone scrapping by with things I barely know about. I do understand what you meant when you say artist mentality. I don’t like it either, and it may seem like I do this often in my feedbacks because it’s hard to write anything when I don’t know what you want feedback on specifically. And when that’s vague, I question a lot on what someone intends to do with their song to better understand them so I could know what to write about.
Perhaps that’s an unnecessary step, it could lead to me saying things that someone wants to hear, or confuse them even more when they don’t know what to look for. Pardon if that wasn’t what you were looking for in a feedback. I’ll keep that point in mind.
I’ll understand — and others would too — if you simply want to make music because you want to or you can. And if you want feedback on specifically how it sounds or from an average listener, then I’ll do just that. I’m not the best when it comes to technicalities as much as I hope to write about it, so most of what I could offer is more insight on direction.
This is a nice post overall, mainly because I feel pressured myself to add meaning in everything I do. That probably go off into tangents of my own insecurities and the way I grew up, and the least I hoped was that reflecting in these feedback posts when it’s not about me, but you. I know that trying too hard to add meaning could be superfluous and restricting sometimes, because it makes singing angry venting “fuuuuckkk you” songs or simple random tunes left feeling renderless and silly.
Even if this post isn’t specifically directed to what I wrote earlier (if it is, that’s fine too) and just to a general person who thinks this way, I’m really glad you wrote it.
Listen
Eximplode- Places I Knew (WIP 3.5)
Not enough work done to be a full WIP. Just experimenting with some things so I can show Dystopianmyopia what I’m planning on doing. Also on my to-do list; a proper white noise transition. That Xfer cymbal sample is nice but it’s too short.
Oh I love the kicks you added at the beginning! I actually internally spazzed because it made all the difference from WIP #3.
Anyway, I want to focus more on asking you questions so I figure out what direction you want to take this song in. What do you want to make out of this? Is it to focus on sound design, melody, or …? (Just for the note of it, I’m listening to both WIP 3.5 & 3 — 3 for the specific times because you uploaded that on Soundcloud.)
- I believe that there’s a small, perhaps accidental transitional error at the very beginning (could it be the one that you wrote about?) — it’s the part where the ambient noise where sound / white noise repeats itself? It’s sort of like this leftover echo. I can’t get an exact time on this, but on WIP #3 it’s exactly at 0:35 seconds.
- The song from 0:36: it gives me a feeling of wonder and enchantment, almost ethereal. It’s like the soundscape to a fantasy world but that’s my interpretation. It’d be a good time to think about what you want to achieve emotionally and technically in Places I Knew. It’s an obvious question, but as much as the song means and reflects yourself, what is it that you want to feed your listeners with?
- The melody is simple, and I like simplicity! The only part that I’d suggest working on are those 3 consecutive notes (first appears from 1:33 - 1:35). The three notes make the song feel stuck in one place and doesn’t help to make the song move forward, which is what I feel you’d want. If what you want is familiarity, then you could stick with it. However, it does seem a little odd to do that considering “Places I Knew” seems to be a reflective song — on change and moving on. I could come up with 3 ideas with what to do: 1) change the 3 notes, 2) keep it but make it somewhat dynamic (not the same volume, make the notes fade out a bit)
- 1:47 - 2:11 feels a little confused, it sounds like a filler. I think you could do something interesting those chimes / ambient noise, because they’re there waiting to do something. Maybe something pleasantly unpredictable. The transition 2:11 is fine. Smooth transition in. (Edit!!:) I think I know what I was hoping for. How good would it sound, do you think, if you reversed the ambient noise from 1:47 - 2:25? A little like what you did at the beginning. It would transition out to a suspenseful peak. Here’s what I’m talking about, although it’s a very simple example from me. Unlike the example though, it should be more complicated — it’d sound very interactive if you reversed and reversed it (almost like a tape) and made the ambient noise a little louder than your synths. Perhaps shift the focus to it for 1:47 - 2:25?
- I love the use of silence as transition at 2:25. It could, however, mislead listeners into thinking that it’s the end of the song. (I almost closed the tab at this moment, which is bad) I’d give a little more echo so there’s no misunderstanding.
- 2:27 to the end: There’s potential here to work on the melody, like I mentioned in #3. The purpose of this part sounds more like a cooldown — which is why I suggested the reversing idea earlier. If it is meant to be a cooldown, then I have nothing else to say about it. What do you think is the purpose of 2:27 - end? Is it to bring the song to a resolution, or to introduce something after that? You might work on this part more because it doesn’t introduces anything new (despite the noise in the background). However, that might be good if this is supposed to be the end of the song.
I guess that’s it for now. In a wrap: The beginning is made brilliantly. The melody and ending could use some work overall. The transitions only need minor fixing (like at 0:35). I really like Places I Knew so far. Good luck.
Hey thanks for the feedback on my last piece! I really really really really really really really appreciate it! :D Your feedback is always great.
Hey there!
This msg yesterday made my day (then again it was at 12am but okay it makes today too)! You’re welcome, but really, I’m just glad to give it when I can. I give feedback mainly because I love watching people — such as you! — continuously improve beyond your limits. ;D
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Hehe gosh this is late by over a week but Happy (SUPER LATE) Birthday Alice! :D
I know there are times when you’re not feeling the best so hopefully when you hear this song you might cheer up? :3 (Okay maybe not)
Anyway I hope you had a great birthday :)
(Btw my mixcraft wasn’t working so I had to use audacity’s noise removal ;_;)
Haha thank you Jordan ; - ;
It sounds wonderful \(◕△◕✿)/
I MUST PLASTER THIS EVERYWHERE
Listen
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO CHECARIA YOU, YOU ARE PERFECT.
OH GOSH I’M 15 MINUTES LATE.
HERE, HERE. I’M SORRY. HERE’S A BAD HAPPY BIRTHDAY SONG FOR YOU I RECORDED JUST NOW LOL (singing at 12 am yeapyeap)
OH MY GOSH birthday qurl i will be annoying you all day tomorrow!! I’ll have something more official up in the next few days
You’re a fantastic friend ugh let me unload all my friend feels about you??? OK THAT’S IT
Eximplode - Places I Knew (WIP 3)
Eximplode
Eximplode - Places I Knew (WIP 3)
Uploading this while the England match is still on because it’s getting a bit too much for me down there. I extended/messed around with a few of the sections, so we now have a more appropriate sort of length (about 3:30) for a 110 track.
Playing around more with ambient noise - I’ll probably run the existing track through a spectrometer or something to try and determine which frequencies I should eliminate/enhance (in the ambient effect) for better overall sound quality.
Any constructive criticism is, as always, very welcome.
I really like this so far, Exi! And surprised I only saw this now.
I’m reblogging as a reminder to self to leave feedback on this, will edit / reblog the post when I can.
[Sketch] Monday Morning
#29/1000 Monday Mornings
Just a musical sketch I made this morning. I like to think it’s a pretty lazy song. It was also (subconsciously?) inspired by the Jungle theme song for those of you that know the show Mr. Monk. Hopefully the cheap midi saxophone sound is bearable to your ears. :D
sounds: saxophone, piano, cello (as usual)
Um, gosh. I've been being silly and taking forever and a half to ask about this, but is there any way I can get a download for your Kanaya song, Jaded Requiem? It was one of my favorites for the contest and still a song I love dearly, and, well, I guess I'm a bit odd for waiting so long to ask this! umu (To be honest, I love all the music of yours I've listened to; this is just the one song I'm singling out right now.)
Oh, that’s really flattering to hear! I’m glad you liked it. :D I’m surprised that I never put up a download link, so sorry about that! The original file was 155mb (yeah, really downloadable), but here’s the 5mb MP3 version I converted just now. :)
— Download —
I also fixed the original post with it. On a side note, there’s a lot of technical & rhythmic mistakes that I made back then. Pardon the high pitched frequencies if they get hard to bear with. I may consider reworking on this again sometime in the future. :D
Woke up and just realized that in what I posted yesterday (Breeze), the piano part sounds awfully unfitting to the whole song. Oh boy. I have later to fix it I guess.
