Final Fantasy III etc

I started playing it last night after giving up on it a couple of years ago.

It's the DS version, and I simply didn't know what I was doing. I gave it another go and finally I found out where I was supposed to go and do -now i have a flying boat and flown off one map onto another. Ooo.

It's the first FF game I've played and it is really fun, well at least it was, I'm trying to pick it up again. The graphics are pretty good and the sounds are cool too.

I realised that far too often I play portable games with the sound muted -so I can watch tv, films, listen to music instead.

So yeah, I was playing FF3 whilst lightscribing more discs -it takes about 22 minues per disc. Then I have to burn all the audio/data on them, which takes about 7 minutes per disc. Totalling half an hour per individual demo CD. Ouch.

Something awesome happened today...

A plane was hovering outside my house! Incredible. I ran inside to get my recorder (because the roar of the jet engines was great!) but it had slowly wandered off, and by the time i hit record there was a lot of traffic outside too. Grr... Still, an awesome sight to see. Followed by glowing red afterburners, a quick loop and a swift flight north west out of sight.

I like planes.

Anyone want to take me for a flight?

Probably won't be blogging for a day or two. I'll talk about the game expo when I've been.

Cool.

Cheerio.

Final done ok good

I've finished my portfolio CD.

Done. It works on CD players as audio and on computers as both audio and data files.

The lightscribe images look good.

And I've made a CD jewel case slip with track listings and that sort of thing. Now I'm not so happy about the print quality, probably because of the printer, and paper, but it looks good enough. I am still a recent graduate in need of a full-time job (in audio?) so I'll have to make do with the resources I have available.

Now... I just hope it shows it's worth this Saturday.

Anyone one to the Eurogamer Expo on Saturday? Should be fun. I hope to chat with developers and indie developers too. And there're a couple of lectures I want to sit in and enjoy. Yeah. Lectures.

Nothing much more to talk about tonight. How about a "Ghosts of Ascalon" review (...haven't I done that yet?) maybe tomorrow if I get time.

I know.

You can't wait.

Me either.

In the meantime, here's something I wrote on the train home from London. A team point to whoever guesses what it's about:

"Like mighty warriors they stand tall in the fields; they carry their burdens far across the lands, serving both large cities and small hamlets. Should they fall, the silent darkness will engulf towns. Upon their shoulders a great power is bestowed."

It's not Monday

But it feels like it after a long weekend.

So my CD is nearly complete.

I've added a couple more fx to my ambience and fx track -i got carried away as usual, and added anything I had recorded and liked. Then I stopped, deleted everything and only added a couple more sounds.

Less is more?

Maybe.

But it sounds better now. I think.

I downloaded a demo of Nero's burning ROM to make an Audio + CD (Audio + data) so I could add video files to the CD as well as have the demo tracks playable on any CD player.

Excellent.

That is all. Progress continues, nearly finished.

The Weekend

Friday I was working then I caught a train to London then to Oxford.

Then for the weekend I was in Oxford.

And today I caught a train to London then back home.

Rather tired now! But wanted to make a blog because I thought I should.

In Oxford, I spent a lot of time with Melody Yates which was excellent.

However once I walked back from the train station (across fields which was a short cut in distance but not in time -muddy fields, heavy mud on boots, slower walking...) I continued with my lovely portfolio CD with clearer intentions.

Instead of lots of files, I now have a few.

One track -mix of music
One track -mix of ambience and fx
Several videos
3D Audiobook extract
CV .pdf

Excellent.

I've burned three CDs with my lightscribing-stuff

I've mixed the music track and the ambience track

All is almost done I think


You can listen to my ambience and fx here.


Thankyou and farewell.

(edit: here is my final CD cover)

Thursday Funtimes

It is indeed Thursday and I'm over half way through The Two Towers (somewhere in book four).

I really wish I'd read the books before the film, I keep waiting for things to happen.

The book is way better than the film of course, especially as it has the full story, not the film version.

Anyway, that's a great book and this is supposed to be a blog about my audio activities. I like to talk about lots of things though. You may have guessed.

So last night I sat in the garage and recorded myself striking matches and extinguishing them in a jam jar of water. Sounds ok.

Then I got two jar jars and grinded them together to makes squeels and grindings.

Then I got two chains and walked them around the floor, like footsteps of a shackled prisoner.

And today I blew in to my open hand and thought it sounded quite good as a roaring wind, such as a spurt from a flamethrower, or a hot air balloon burner, or after burners. I'm yet to record that though. And changing the shape of ones hand and the blowing force, you'll change the sound. Simple.

Ah, and tonight I wrote a short piece of music, on the piano, and am yet to write it down/record it. But I will do. Maybe next week. I'm going to Oxford this weekend, so I'll see what sounds Oxford has to record (although I'm not going there to record sounds, so I'm not too bothered).

Oh and seeing as I didn't think I had much to talk about tonight... here's yet another picture. I think it's quite fun. You might not think the same.

Anyway, here it is (in colour!) and good day.

More CD images

Ok, here we go.

I went browsing through pictures I have, and most of my pictures are not of me. But I did find three pictures.

Yes three.

And so here's what I came up with...

Me, a background image (happens to be Bradgate park near Leicester) and some piano keys.











Any of the above any good?

I think they're a bit more intesting than yesterdays attempt. They show me, some piano keys (music) and a nice background. They look pretty awesome in full colour, but because lightscribe won't do colour, I makde a black & white version (tinted).

That's all for tonight. Short blog. Cheerio.

Today

I have done nothing interesting.

My rear wheel fell out of my bicycle today, that wasn't interesting though, no drama there.

I've just been watching Rush Hour 2! Which is awesome. So that's good.

I updated my CV today.


Oh and I've been thinking more about my demo CD...

I was thinking of implementing a CD menu screen for better interactivity, as well as autorun stuff, but then I realised that it may be viewed on any computer, not just windows, so I gave up on the idea.

Instead, I might make an enhanced CD allowing playback of a demo reel on any CD player, and ROM content available on any computer.

Yet, thinking of that, an employer might listen to the CD and leave it at that... instead of browsing through the disc.

Hmm... thinking in progress

King Flux (from GAF) helpfully suggested CDs tend to get thrown in top drawers and not really looked at, and instead I should get a website.

I do have a website.

So I'm still going ahead with a fancy CD portfolio. And I'm going to redo my website, when I get time, to work more as an online portfolio -with more than just a few music tracks, including SFX and ambient stuff too. It's on the to do list.

Oh and before I go, I got an email from the editor at Firefly Productions with a cool video snippet from the new film, "When London Slept". It's a new scene, just been added, and I love it! Plus I got to listen to some of the music for the film which also sounds awesome.

When the music is finished, I'll mix it to the dialogue and FX I've already recieved and then the film is complete. Hooray! I can't wait to share more information with you, but I won't, so don't ask.

Now I'm going.

Bye all

CD Portfolio

Hellodle

Today I thought it's about time I thought about my portfolio CD, not the content, but the CD itself.

Do I get standard a CD-R in plastic sleeve, or jewel case, with a hand written label on the CD or a printed sticker or do I go for something like a LightScribe CD?

I decided on LightScribe.

It's cool, should be more memorable and make a better impression.

So I bought some LightScribe CDs tonight, in slim-line jewel cases.

Then I played on Photoshop to make a cool looking LightScribe image. I came up with this...



Yes, it does have my name, something about audio and it states it's a portfolio but it's not great. I'm working on it. Maybe something more audio related, and striking, an interesting picture maybe... any thoughts? Also I'm thinking of making a short paper CV style thing to go in the jewel case. All in all it should be an interesting item to recieve.

Obviously first impressions are rather important, I want potential employers to want to find out more about me. I want them to listen. I ultimately want them to give me a job!

I hope my portfolio is good enough to live in such an awesome CD.

Oh one more thing, should it be a CD-ROM (use a computer to access the info, and listen to tisten to tracks/SFX) or should it be an Audio CD (plays on any CD player, like a demo-reel) or both?

Let me know your thoughts!

Here's One More...

As I've been sorting through various sound files I found a recording of a wind turbine at my Aunt's place (download here to listen). Because it was too windy for my home-made windshield, my microphones were close if not touching the metal frame at the base of the wind tubine, out of the direct wind.

I thought it sounded pretty cool.

So I played around with it, resampled it, added some reverb, of course, and created "Deserted Wreckage" (download here). It's an ambient track, possibly set in a desert where there's some abandoned wreckage of some description.

Just have a listen and see what your imagination paints for you.

Anyway, I'm busy, but wanted to let you hear something of my "audio creation".

Let me know what you think.

Stay creative!

Friday

No wait, it's Saturday.

I didn't post anything last night, sorry, but here's something to make up for it...

Here is a download link for a quick aeroplane audio file I rumbled together today. I'm in the process, as I've previously mentioned, of creating sounds and effects for a portfolio CD to take to the EuroGamer expo.

What do you think?

I should probably start using an embedded media player or something so you can listen to my files through streaming, rather than downloading, for convenience. But for now, you'll have to download it.

I've lost my battery charger so I can't go out recording until I get a new one or find the old one. I've no idea where it's gone? It's a UniRoss charger with 2700mAh batteries -i need high mAh for my Zoom H4n or else I can't record for very long.

Still, when someone gives me that all important job, I shall hopefully purchase a decent field mixer, a couple of shotgun mics and some windshields and can use my H4n just as a recorder. But for now, the H4n is very useful and I hope will continue to be so. I also really want to try out the Canon 550d DSLR because it records in full HD and has a mic-input for decent production recording, as well as being a great camera.

Well. Enough talk about things I can't afford.

I bought some thick paper, some charcoal and some pencils. Yes. I'm going to draw... something. Well, at leasts that's the plan. It's in keeping with my, "be creative" attitude.

So that's what I'm going to do now...

Stay (or become) creative!

Nothing

I've done nothing

at all

Well, that's obviously not true... I have been at work and photoshopped about 60 different images. Then i cycled home, did nothing, then went to get some food shopping, and here I am. But I've done nothing other than that.

I had things planned... like re-editing yesterdays Korg DS-10 tracks and making something that sounds good.

Have you ever been caught up with something, then the next day you wonder what on earth you were doing? I think that happened to me with those tracks yesterday, in the blog post below this one if you wanted to listen.

Nevermind.

It's all good practice for that one day when someone asks:

"Could you do some commissioned work for us?"

Or better still...

"Come. Join us as an in-house sound engineer."

"We want you, Michael, to be our creative Audio Artist."

It could happen...

Still, a job is certainly on the horizon but I just can't see it yet. Maybe I'll get arthritis and never make it to the horizon. That'd be annoying. Or worse, I wander over to the horizon and realise I was looking in a mirror, and walk into the mirror -except the mirror was actually a very realistic picture, then i'd haved annoyed the artist by walking into his picture and I couldn't afford to pay for the breakage so I'd have to work for the artist, mixing paint colours and washing brushes until I'd paid my debt. By which time, the sun had probably set (a few times), so heading to the horizon, now covered by darkness, would be tricky without accurately determining where to go...

What am I talking about?

Hmm... anyway...

I'll try and have something interesting to tell tomorrow.


Do you really want a review of Ghosts of Ascalon? I don't generally read books, and I don't do reviews either. So it'd just be an overview of the story and what I thought about it. No comparisons. No rating system. Still want that review?

A Couple of Tracks

Hello

Not much time for a longer post but here's what I've been doing...

Using the Korg DS-10 synthesizer, I made two tracks for you to download and have a listen. The first one I started last night and recorded when I got back from work. It's a basic tune and I just played about with some delay effects and chorus and flanger too. It's all done live, recorded straight in to a Zoom H4n recorder.

I've named it "8-bit Infinity" because it sounds cool, and goes on a while...

Download here.

Next, track number two, named simply as game music or something like that. It didn't turn out how I hoped (I didn't listen to it through decent speakers until after i recorded it) -I just used the inbuilt DS speakers. This track involved practicing using the drum patches as well as the two lead synths to get a full sound.

This didn't work. Too much white noise sound.

You see (or hear).

Download here.

That's all for today, I'm going to sleep.

Night

Korg DS-10

Hey Folks!

Today I've been taking photographs of wine glasses and photoshopping any reflections out of them for use on the website. But the silver goblets i painted in photoshop entirely to get rid of the many many reflections. And that was my entire 7.5 hours spent at work. Tomorrow I'm taking pictures of hip flasks, mirrors, frames and other items...

So now you know, I do audio, photography and photo manipulation... among other things

As soon as I cycled back from work (yeah, i'm cycling these days seeing as the weather is turning greyer and more miserable, I think it's fun) I got started recording Ghosts of Ascalon for practicing narration skills.

I'm not good at narrating...

...yet. I'm working on it...

I want to add it to my portfolio and skills, maybe that will help me get a job...

Come on job, where are you?

Now, regarding the title of this blog post. I've got a Korg DS-10 and I've had it about a year now, but I've only really used it for short sound effects and interesting synth sounds. But today I'm inspired. Yes, creativity has spurred me on to write a couple of good tracks using this synth only. I may well master it a bit using Adobe Audition and Pro Tools, but the entire sound generation is from my DS and this synth.

So that's what I'm going to do.

Although, like I said, they have to be good tracks. That might take some time and creative thought, but i've got plenty of that swimming around in my head.

And about that book review...

maybe I'll do it tomorrow ;-)

Dah... It's Monday

Good evening.

The weekend has passed far too quickly! My plans for some music and recording and general sound design fell short and did not come to pass. The only thing I did manage to do is sort out my demo/portfolio a bit more. So far my portfolio CD is like this:

Music - a variety of short extracts of my music
Binaural 3D Audiobook - two different extracts of a well known story
Videos - a selection of videos of projects I've done

And a forth folder, "Sounds and Effects" which is subdivided further...

Ambience - a selection of different ambient tracks
Fantasy SFX - a selection of sound effects you might find in fantasy games
Short SFX - a selection of short, 8-bit sounds

So that's how my portfolio stands, in CD form anyway. I'm going to keep adding to it, hopefully to take a few copies down to the Euro Gamer expo in a few weeks time to hand out with a CV. I would really like a job.

I'm going to continue to see what fun SFX I can make out of my library of recorded sounds I've made over the last couple of years. More things to add to the portfolio.

Now... this evening I finished reading, "Ghosts of Ascalon". I think I enjoyed it more because I could picture the Guild Wars characters and landscapes, written so wonderfully by Matt Forbeck and Jeff Grubb. I think I read somewhere a second book was being written, and I can't wait for it's release! If I have nothing else to say, I'll review it tomorrow.

Tomorrow I start some more exciting work -I've finished writing desriptions for the website I was employed to work on and now they want me to help with some photography and photoshopping for pictures. Way more creative and should be more enjoyable. However, it's still a temporary job and I would like a creative audio full-time job!

Until next time... cheerio

It's Friday!

Good evening all,

It is indeed Friday, finally. I've been looking forward to some useful time...

I'm currently working in a temporary job (I've pretty much finished it too) editing product descriptions for a Christmas website. It's fairly repetitive but it's not simple cut and paste repetition unfortunately. Anyway, once I've finished this work I need to find another job, hopefully something more permenant and hopefully something more creative (maybe something in audio? please).

Well, today I'm at the 9th chapter of Ghosts of Ascalon. It's quite quick to read, but still exciting and I'm really enjoying it. I hear a second book is in the making too, which should be equally exciting. I'm really getting in the mood for Guild Wars 2!

Oh and my creative thing for the day was to draw two characters in the hope that I get Photoshop fired up and I put some life into these pen drawings, then write some short stories about adventures/scenes that these characters get involved in. One thing I've noticed is that I often write in the 1st person (I did this and I saw that etc) so it'll be a good change to write about characters.

As it's the weekend (useful time), as of now I suppose, and I want to carry on with some portfolio audio work -sound effects and ambiences, maybe I'll get Sibelius whirring into action and score some music too. As you may have heard, the Euro Gamer expo is next month, well in three weeks time, and I want to have a well balanced and intersting portfolio to share with the developers and plead for a job! Well, maybe not plead, but at least strongly enquire... I'll be there on the Saturday (2nd of October) with a couple of friends:

Simon Hughes - environment artist for Codemasters
Ed Hawkridge - photoshopper for Willow SoundVision

These guys are great fun, we all met at uni and enjoyed Halo matches and a mighty fire or two every now and again! Check out that video on youtube, it was quite a tall fire. Great fun. It'll be great catching up with them again.

Well, I'm going to continue reading my book tonight.


Stay creative!
or become creative if you're not ;-)

Hoorah for Hero!

Hia,

So here's some of that further information I was talking about...

My friend called me up and asked if I could write some music for a short video he was creating. Of course I agreed.

Later he got back in touch, and sent me a couple of video files which were the full edits and had the dailogue already recorded, so all I had to do was add some music.

Now here's were the creativity kicked in!

Unfortunately I'm a sucker for sounds, so as I was browsing through some virtual instruments for some fun synyth stuff I can't help myself but play every instrument I go through. I guess it didn't matter so much on this occassion because I had plenty of time, but it's not so good on more demanding deadlines!

Anyway, I start writing away and sound sidetrack from the suggested reference material and end up with something a bit more r'n'b -I recorded myself playing some chords on an acoustic guitar, layered another a/c guitar track on top and added some drum loops then got carried away in the music.

Oops.

So I stopped working on that and went and wrote another piece. Well, basically i picked up my electric guitar and played through a clean amp with a lot of delay and digital reverb (built in to the amp, Hughes and Kettner Matrix 100) and came up with what they later decided was ideal for their video.

That was good!

So sent the music .wav mix and they added it to their video. The result is here if you want to watch and listen.

If you want to hear my original r'n'b creation I'll upload it or add a download link or something if you so request.

And also, great news! I finally got my copy of "Ghosts of Ascalon" which I'm reading right now, well, almost right now, after I finish typing I'll continue reading it... It's a book based on the world set in Guild Wars.

I can't wait for Guild Wars 2 to be released but in the meantime I have a good story book to read, that and i've just started reading the second book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy -it shows how much the films don't show. Go read the book now if you liked the films!

Awesome. Wait, no, one more thing... I hear LOTRO is being released as a free-to-play online game which has got to be awesome this very autumn. If you've never played it, you've got no reason not to now that it's free!

Until I blog again...

Mikey

(yeah, i know the colours and theme of this blog still need to be changed. I'll do it when I'm ready...)

Be creative!

All those who were at the Games Developers Conference in 2009 (i wasn't) may have gone to the "Creativity Boot Camp"

Did you?

Anyway, the .pdf is available to download here

It's a really good read, to spark off some creative ideas or just helpful ways to keep the creativity flowing. It's worth a read, and even better if you have a go at some of the suggested ideas.

Yesterday and today I've been trying to write short stories to spark some creativity. I'm not going to post the stories, well not yet, but they are short and shall remain so -I'm not planning on writing a novel, not yet.

But so far my first short story is about a wanted a rich copper deposit in LOTRO, but there's a bear in the way, and my second story is that of a recon soldier fighting in the Atacama Desert in BFBC2. Yep, that's what my creativity came up with. Tomorrow I might write some sudden fiction based on some other fantasy land. We'll see what happens. Remember don't spend too much time trying to write your story, be creative and be quick about it.

Have a creative day!

-Michael

Hello (1st Post)

I'm going to try and remember to keep this blog updated! And change the graphics and colours too!

Right, ok, hello.

I'm Michael, or Mikey, whichever I don't mind as long as it's clear you're talking to me. I'm do a variety of audio things, from recording, sound design, mixing, editing, composing, all sorts of things. This blog should be relatively up-to-date following whatever I get up to, hopefully it should be fun to read too.

I write things as I'd say them, you might have guessed that so far...

Ok, well here's a quick catch up from when I left uni until now -so the past four or five months I guess.

I left uni, De Montfort University in Leicester (I'll talk more about uni in other posts, probably) in June following the technology degree show. I passed university with a 1st Class (hons) degree in Music Technology and Innovation which is really cool.

Then, I was sent a project to mix -"When London Slept... It Came Alive" by FireFly Productions UK. Here's a link to their website, you can see some of the things they're doing. The feature length film is coming to a close really soon so you'll be able to watch and enjoy it. You can read more about the film here. I'll talk more about this project when it gets closer to the release.

I've been taking picture and making my own video projects to compose some music to, you can have a look at my excellent youtube channel, TheMightyTree, to check those out if you so desire.

I guess I've been job hunting for the last few months, I've not had any luck with a permanent job so far but if you're reading this and have a position in your audio department or something, please get in touch...

And finally, as I've noticed there's a lot of dull looking text above, I've been writing some music for a friend's video. More info on that when the video is finished.

I'm sorry, I've not really said anything detailed so far. More info to follow in the next blog I suppose. And if you're reading this, let me know, it's always nice to know someone's out there!