For those of you who don’t know, my siblings and I have been working on a Kickstarter for the fantasy world that my brother and sister have been creating: Wulfgard
As promised to the Wulfgard backers, I’ve started releasing music to go along with the release of the novel (Wulfgard: Knightfall) and graphic novel (Wulfgard: Into the North)!
Thanks for listening!
kickstarter, music, wulfgardAny and all comments and criticisms are much appreciated! 🙂
EDIT: Why do all of my musical works in progress that I post end up becoming “completed” pieces? When is a piece of music, art, or writing really “complete,” anyway? :-/
music, work in progressIt happens to the best of us. You’ve set up your training routine, and you’ve been following it closely for weeks, even months. But lately you just aren’t feeling the motivation to continue it. Luckily, there are many methods to try to help keep you inspired to workout.
1. MUSIC!Seriously, if it were not for music, I would have missed many a workout, and many would have been of less quality. Get yourself a small, durable MP3 player that can clip onto clothing, such as the modestly-priced SanDisk Sansa Clip+
2. MIX IT UP!Your routine is not set in stone. You can replace those isolation exercises with ones that work the same muscles. You can switch from a hypertrophy routine to a strength routine for a few weeks (actually, you should do this anyway). You could try doing endurance running instead of high-intensity interval training, or vice versa. Cross train! Go play a sport you never play. Rock climb. Snowboard. Surf. Keep it fresh!
3. REWARD YOURSELF!So you’ve been dieting strictly for months now. Don’t you think it’s about time a cheat meal was in order? Seriously, a cheat meal once in a while can actually be good for you, if for no other reason than because eating the same thing all the time without any change whatsoever can cause your metabolism to get stuck. It doesn’t even have to be a cheat meal, just alter your diet for a change! Get weird vegetables and bizarre health foods you’ve never tried before. Yet when all else fails, it never hurts to have an occasional pizza, as long as it isn’t every day.
4. LOOK BACK ON YOUR RESULTS!As mentioned in a previous post, this can be really beneficial if you’ve been tracking your progress via workout and dietary logging, as well as taking pictures of your physique (if improving your physique is one of your goals). By looking back on what you’ve accomplished, you’ll be more inspired to attain greater results. Remember, you’re awesome!
5. WATCH COOL VIDEOS!What’s your sport? Bodybuilding? Parkour? Tricking? Mountain Biking? Snowboarding? Whatever it is, there are awesome videos of awesome people doing your sport awesomely on YouTube. Go watch a few videos of them being awesome, and strive to be as awesome. Just don’t watch too many videos and end up wasting your time…
Whatever you do, don’t give up. Remember, there are Navy SEALs out there busting it while you’re complaining about your little workout routine, which is surely not half as bad as freezing your ass off in the surf zone at 5 am. Kick some ass!
inspiration, music, results, workout progress, youtubeI haven’t posted any new music in a while, so here is a preview of something I’ve been working on. At least this piece is in-time better than usual:
Slug It – 3.8 MB MP3 320 kbps
I have no idea why I named it that. The name should change.
Please excuse the premature cutoff of some samples near the end of the piece – particularly the strings and drums! Also, if I ever finish this piece, I plan for it to be much longer.
composition, music, updates, wip
This is a pretty common topic among modern-day computer musicians. In this day and age, so many people create music using samples and loops for the basis of their songs. Is this “cheating”?
I don’t think so. Where do you draw the line, anyway? If you use a microphone to record a set of drums being played live, then should it be “cheating” because you did not build the drums yourself? Come on. Besides, if you have pro recording equipment, then the recording of the drum beat played live versus the drum beat played using samples isn’t going to sound very different, as long as you use the same kind of drums and play them the same way. Using samples of recorded instruments isn’t a lot different from just recording instruments to begin with – especially with these crazy, multi-sampled libraries of today, where each note / drum has multiple recordings and nuances to make the beat sound more “real.” Add to that the degree to which you can alter the sound using effects, and you can really make the sound “your own.” The biggest problem with recording things yourself is simply that in order to get professional results it’s going to take a lot more time, effort, money, and equipment. Don’t get me wrong – nothing beats the real thing, but if all you’re doing is trying to lay down a good beat, why not use samples? In this day and age, it’s almost expected.Read More
Andy Warhol, Campbell's soup, cheating, computer music, computers, loops, music, recording, sampler
This article was originally written in July of 2008.
Please note that I’ve removed all links from this article (they just led to pages of zZounds.com).
The Computer:
First of all, you’re going to need a decent computer — as good of one as you can afford. It doesn’t have to be a supercomputer, but you can’t have too good of a computer; especially when you get into the more advanced applications. Nearly all aspects of the computer will factor in, including the CPU power, the amount of RAM, the speed of the hard drive(s) and how much space they can hold, the quality of the sound card, etc… For audio creation, your sound card will be one of the most important components of your computer. You should get a sound card built to be used for audio creation, preferably from a company such as Creative Labs (or even more preferably, from their “Pro”-level subsidiary company, E-MU). M-Audio also makes good sound cards for this purpose.Read More
Have you ever wanted to record the audio that your soundcard is outputting, whatever it is? Maybe you’ve Googled the name of a song, and noticed that there are tons of sites (like iLike, Rhapsody, etc.) that show up in the top of the Google searches and let you play the entire song in high-quality, for free, right there in a pop-up window. Of course, the next time you listen to the song, it will only be a 30-second demo (although this can be worked around by simply clearing your web browser’s cache – boom, you can listen to the whole song again). Well, if you simply record what your sound card is outputting, you can record that song that is playing into an MP3 file and save it on your PC. Cool, huh? And then you can go to iTunes or eBay and actually purchase the album because you like the song so much (hint, hint). I’m not trying to support illegal music downloading or anything – but this is a cool trick that has tons of uses.Read More
