Helen Keller on Bass

<------ Helen Keller and President Eisenhower

Practice makes perfect and the point of Drew's story about his experience with a teacher that was appalled by his bass holding posture was a great start to class - he referred to himself as looking like Helen Keller on Bass to this dude lol Basically, I got a good moral from the story - try a little harder and practice more. I really should practice piano and start trying to learn another instrument (the bassoon .... just kidding, obviously the Guitar for my namesake) and just practice all the time because I know that I could do it.


9.21.11

This week was more about practice and preparation than anything. On Monday, we watched some great film scores from the previous MPA 306 class to get a better idea of what to expect and what videos to look for for our project.

I chose to find multiple dance videos on YouTube and cut them up and piece them together to make a five minute video of dancers. I love watching ballerina's and dancers dance because it is something that I don't do on a normal basis such as singing....

I really like the moral of the piece. It starts out so serious and then you realize that she starts dancing instead of going through with the surgery.
I like it!

It might prove to be a tad too long though. I'm not quite sure because I see more music video to this opposed to real time motion sound effects except for the beginning hospital scenes.

So, the assessment has been moved to Monday which is nice. I was in the lab from 2pm to 6pm today which was nice. I came up with the prettiest and coolest chord progression as I practiced my MIDI AUX AUDIO matrix a bunch of times and my EVENT OPERATIONS window stuff too.

Let's go over the keystrokes we know so far and some new ones I got to remember.

Shift  N - Create a New Track
 = - Toggle between the mix window
 A - Select all
Option = - Toggle between the MIDI editor window
R and T - Zoom in and zoom out
Escape - Toggles between the tools like the smart tool
3 (keypad) - Record
Space bar - Play/Stop/Stop Recording
Option Click - Zeros out any faders or scroll bars
Option (Keypad) 3 - Event Operations Window
 E - Split region
 (keypad) 9 - Bring up the video window

So, the Event Operations window.... Option (Keypad) 3
There are several drop down selections to choose from including Quantize, Velocity, Duration, Transpose, Input Quantize, and Step Input.

1. Quantize - Change the grid to fit the piece you are working on. Program Dependent: The option you  choose it dependent on the the style of the music. (i.e. tempo, time signature, swing etc.)

2. Velocity - You can select all ( A) the notes (unless you only want a few selected) and drag the little velocity spokes down in the MIDI editor window or you can change all in the Event Operations window under Velocity and drag the scroll bar.

3. Duration - You can select all and use the trimmer tool to lengthen or shorten the notes in the MIDI editor window or you can do the same thing in the Event Operations window under change duration.

4. Transpose - Really the same as I said before.... select all and drag with the move tool in the MIDI editor window or transpose in the Event Operations window under transpose.

5. Input quantize - This is pre-production quantize and will quantize the notes as you play them or as the MIDI messages are sent to the virtual instrument.

6. Step Input - depending on the scale of the grid you are using and the settings that are selected, step input will literally input the notes you play as you play them without having to press record and whatnot.

BUT YOU MUST SELECT ENABLE IF YOU WANT TO USE THESE FEATURES OR ELSE YOU LOOK STUPID AND IT WONT WORK. 


If you enable the keystrokes on the Event Operations Window under Step Input, the keypad will do magic! Keypad number 1 selects the whole note, 2 the half note, 3 selects the triplet option, 4 the quarter note, 5 the eighth note, 6 the sixteenth note, 7 the thirty second note, and 8 the sixty forth note.

Next, I kind of have a slight panic attack when... okay here's the story, one of the kids in my class asked if you could quantize audio. I'm shaking my head and laughing my ass off internally thinking "what a dumbass, really?"then Drew is like "yes." WHOAA hold up, what?! Yeah, blew my mind and then I felt bad for laughing at Bobby in my head. Sorry dude. Good question lol There's this thing called Elastic Audio or something that you can quantize live audio with. This is revolutionary. I can't believe medical scientists can't cure cancer and nerdy Pro Tools techies are quantizing audio.

And apparently, Drew likes grooves that swing no matter how strange and lame they start out sounding!

Thoughts

Drew told us a pretty awesome joke so I thought I would post some good one's I think he would really like :)

How many Bass players does it take to change a lightbulb? 1...5...1... (1...4...5...5...1)

How do you make a double bass sound in tune? Chop it up and make it into a xylophone.

Did you hear about the bassist who was so out of tune his section noticed?

How many string bass players does it take to change a light bulb? None, the piano player can do that with his left hand.

Celene Dion walks into a bar and the bartender says, "Why the long face?"

Did you hear that Celine Dion is now an organ donor? Yeah, when she dies, her heart will go on.

hahahahahah

My firewire drive that hasn't come yet and I was astounded when someone explained to me how large the drive is! My computer is going to be okay!!!!! yay!

Anyways, here's a great example of what I can do with lame garageband, a microphone, and the iSight camera on my five year old macbook! Enjoy!


<------------ Firework Cover by Stevie Rae


Peace.