The talented Sunnie Larsen, as seen from the engineer’s desk, recording tracks for the Bone Walker soundtrack album.

The sound is clearer than the photo

If anyone’s curious, the two microphones involved are an Octava 012 (underneath, for lows) and an AKG Perception 200 (overhead), which seems to like Sunnie’s violin.

More SFWAdenfreude: word is that SpecFriction, the site leaking all the SFF.net SFWA commentary, is getting DMCA takedown notices. Grab screencaps while you can. Also, you may be interested in S. L. Huang’s comprehensive timeline of the SFWA clusterfuck. Finally, Anna links to some juicy sexist criticising-me-is-violating-my-free-speech whinging in her latest post.

I love fireworks season, don’t you?
 

eta: Mary Robinette Kowal just lets some people absolutely have it. Tasty.

I made a desklamp out of an LED bar and a reasonably-weighted vertical USB extension:

Run from computer

My system and its external wireless adaptor^* are connected to a power switch box. When I shut down the system, I also turn off the power to the CPU and the power to the external wireless adaptor via this switch box.

Lately I’d been forgetting to turn off the power switch box, and thus, the adaptor. It wasn’t much power wasted – no more than a nightlight’s worth – but it bothered me.

Separately, I’ve lately been grabbing my battery-powered LED sheet music lights and using them as desk lamps for electronics work at this very desk, which uses up their batteries.

So: two solutions at once. USB extension cable with vertical port plugs into the unused back-of-system USB hub, which is separate internally to the system USB port my sound interface lives on. Computer doesn’t even have to be on to use the lamp; just turn on the external power switch box and the CPU’s USB ports get power without ever starting the CPU itself. So if the light is on, I know I’ve left the power box on again and need to turn it off.

Most of the time, the lamp lives behind the left monitor, where it’s out of the way but throwing enough light on the desk to serve as an indicator. But really I’m just pleased with how it looks, so you get a picture. ^_^

Oh, zouk part for the finale tunes set is about, oh, 50% done. Enough to have a yellow tag, not orange. Lots of timing edit work to do – because tunes on zouk are stupidly hard, particularly at 300 notes per minute (150bpm, but everything’s eight notes). So y’do what y’must.

*: External adaptor necessary because the Linux realtime^** kernel works well only with a very limited number of network drivers, none of which are wireless because of reasons, and using essentially any Linux or WINE-translated wireless driver will defeat the RT kernel’s quasi-RT scheduling. So I use a supported card, which I then connect to the wireless adaptor. It’s crude, but effective.
**: Yes, yes, I know, it’s not really realtime, it’s … sorta realtime. Realtimey-wimey. (Real timey-wimey… ish.)

Bone Walker, the soundtrack for The Free Court of Seattle, has its very first blue tag on the Big Board.

Blue means ‘finished.’

There are many more blue tags to go, but this is a major milestone, because as of yesterday, all of the session tunes sets have yellow or blue tags. All of them.

With all the new DLC, I’m back to Skyrim a lot lately, and I’ve only now found out that you can custom name items, so now I need to make some custom items just so I can name them. Like, maybe, Daedric Bow of Fucking Your Shit Up and Ebony Mace of Sit the Fuck Down.

See what font I used there?

Also, I’m doing the Companion storyline this time, and they want me to become a werewolf. But I don’t wanna be a werewolf! Fortunately, they’re being cool about it, but now everything’s just a little awkward. I hate that.

Anyway, back to tracking. Irish Bouzouki today. Anna was up last night working on sheet music to the fight set, because people other than me will need it and can use it, and we don’t have music for some of this, not even the parts. Glad that’s not my job! I could write anything – it’s all dots and lines to me. XD

Bone Walker, the second book in the Free Court of Seattle series, is off to the editor. This is, of course, awesome, and big news.

Bone Walker cover pencils (draft 2)

What you don’t see in the Kickstarter update – that only project backers get to see – is that we also dropped a rough-mix of one track from the soundtrack album. It’s not complete – the flute part isn’t even recorded yet – but Anna really wanted to let the backers hear what’s going on. It’s the song for a higher-powered-than-seen-before fight, in Bone Walker, on the Burke-Gilman trail, with elves and kitsune and a dragon.

You’re gonna like that one. It’s boomy. But I have to wonder what’s up with that trail in this universe, because it seems to attract a lot of fights.

Me, I was up late last night laying down more instruments for more tracks. This one’s currently just called “Chapter 23.” It’ll need a better name! But right now I’m just working on getting the music finished. Titles can come later.

Sorry for no update on Wednesday; I’ve just been kind of swamped. But I had a fun interview with a couple of BCIT students doing a student documentary project for class; it’ll have some of my music in it, too.

The soundtrack album is in a frustrating stage, on a frustrating cycle. I’m in a spot where I learn a bunch of new tunes well enough to play them for recording in studio – takes about a week – then timing-edit them into a basis track, the track everybody else will use as foundation for timing and rhythm. Then I drop that track entirely, move on to the next set of tunes, and repeat.

None of this is much fun or creative. I’m having to do this on both mandolin and zouk, neither of which are optimal instruments for this kind of melody; the zouk is particularly difficult. A fair number of musicians outright say you can’t do this on zouk, effectively, and often I feel like agreeing with them, particularly when I’m in hour three of timing edits making every note exactly. rhythm. perfect.

So it’s kinda gruelling and not highly motivating. It’s like being an expressive metronome.

My heart is not a metronome

But this is partly my own fault. Once I realised I was going to have to do this – the original intent was that I wouldn’t have to do this part, but, well, things go the way they go – I stacked my work schedule all together this way up front. “Pile-drive my way through this,” I thought, “and then I can get arty.”

This was not my most brilliant decision.

I’ve actually had to let myself get a little arty already. I wish I could throw you a player for the fight scene music. There’s a chapter in Bone Walker, the second book in the Free Court of Seattle series, and I’m arranging Odeo Nihonbashi (Japanese folk, and there are reasons), a Scots tattoo called Douce Dame Jolie, and an Irish jig that I’ve turned into a march, as kind of a really really short symphonic movement with leitmotifs and everything. I did this one first, because it’s the most difficult of the tune sets to integrate, and honestly I can’t wait for this one to get out there.

There are big, big drums. Really, really big drums, along with some Irish bodhran. And that is where it’s been fun. HUGE DRUMS! I love them. But it’s not finished. Those instruments are recorded, but we still need the flute – and it has to be chromatic due to key changes, so I can’d do it myself – and some other work. So not yet.

But soon. I hope.

Encourage me, will you? I’m hip-deep in the draggy part of this. MOTIVATE THE METRONOME!

Of course this had to be out there, too.

For reasons directly related to the soundtrack album, I need to know how to count to four in Scots Gaelic. Ideally, I can get someone who can record this being done correctly, and if possible, even, work with me on pronunciation so I get it right.

Or, failing that, get it with a Newfoundland accent. That would also be okay. Arguably, hilarious, but probably only to us.

beep

Since there’s usually more than one way to count (Japanese has nine systems, English has at least five (one, two, three four; first, second, third, fourth; primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary; triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon, heptagon; others, more obscure)), I need one that’s mostly single-syllable, if at all possible. Like for, oh, a four-beat count-in.

Anna found this page of numbers for me, but I don’t know whether those are appropriate numbers, much less how to pronounce them. Anybody know?

ETA: Thanks to everyone replying so far, and to @GaelicTweets for the retweet! I now know the website numbers are correct – but I’m rubbish at reading phonetics and the linked website’s sound link doesn’t work for me. I would dearly love a recording of a native speaker or first-generation non-native fluent speaker pronouncing these. (The latter would actually describe the character exactly; he’s fluent, but not native; his father was a native speaker.) You’d get liner notes mention and a download code for the album once it comes out… ^_^

Hey kids, I was up until 3am last night working on the Faerie Blood/Bone Walker soundtrack, and this drum track sounds pretty damn cool, but Iiiiiiii’m pretty sleepy. The plan was to sleep in today and then head down to Conflikt, but you know how once in a while you just get one of those

PANG! AWAKE!

mornings? And you’re still tired, but sleep has taken a holiday? Yeah.

Pretty much me

So, enjoy this article about deleting skyscrapers from the top down, and yes, there is video, and yes, it’s kind of freaky but awesome. And here’s an article talking how the ground actually moves during an earthquake. There’s an animation and it’s SCIENCE! Not bullshit.

Anybody gonna be at Conflikt? Any of you there already?

I mentioned in that last post being miced up – excuse me, apparently, miked^* up – and surrounded by drums, which was making it hard to use the keyboard on my studio’s digital audio workstation.

This is why. I’ve been talking about doing a bunch of engineering for Leannan Sidhe recently, but the whole “possibly doing a guest appearance on their album” thing has gone unsaid – well, until now.

I was the turkey the WHOLE TIME!

Sadly, it is not the return of Fake Drumkit. It’s two tracks of bodhran (tuned differently and effected quite differently), two kinds of bells (Chinese and African), and a ratchet noisemaker which sounds a little like kokiriko, but with more harshness. If anything, the result is a little bit kabuki; I was afraid they’d find it a little sparse and alien. But they liked the test mix I sent over last weekend so much that they said it might not even need cello! And everything they do has cello. So we’re on.

The song is called “Once More,” and it’ll be on the album Mine to Love. They have the money to complete recording and mixing, but are a little short on funds for mastering and replication, so have a campaign going for that. You want to hear it? Awesome. Help them pay me. XD

*: Goddamn, English is stupid. Is there a K in microphone? No. Do you call it a mik? No. You call it a mic. And yet.

There’s no such thing as GoodListens, is there?

Sure, there are music reviewers, a few. But while lots of people review books they read on their journals and blogs, and while goodreads.com is pretty much a staple of both the geek community and the greater reading community, you don’t seem to see so much of that for music.

I do wonder why. Is it the lack of music education, leading to a lack of common vocabulary? Is it the marketing from the labels, turning people off? Both combined plus something else? I honestly don’t know.

But occasionally people do post reviews! It’s really great to see them, particularly since they’re pretty uncommon and obviously difficult. Paul Tristan Fergus at Diamond Island gave Cracksman Betty a really nice write-up a few days ago – there’s even a little cartoon with it. I swoon! Also, at the 5/5 rating. Yay!

If you don’t mind a little politics, this quote gets to the heart of things:

There’s an element of public disobedience inherent in the songs, of being a lowdown outsider who is unapproved of by the rulers. In a way this is just what a gathering of super-villains actually is: ordinary people with extraordinary viewpoints hearing the call to gather into an assembly and defy authority that serves only a few superheroes and their estates. Hanging out in the pub singing songs might be the most dangerous place on earth for the League of Justice for the Fortunate Few.

Yeah. We may be part of the problem, but we are not part of that problem. You’ll see some of that closer to the surface in Din of Thieves – albeit leavened by humour, like always.

Talking of, albums cost money to make. And that takes fan support. If you’re willing, help share the… love? rage? problem? All of the above? Physical CDs are still on holiday discount. Dick Tracy Must Die is $10, Cracksman Betty is a piffle at $5, and there’s still time before the holidays for shipping. Or if you just want to download and hand over files, that works fine for me!

But people still like physical presents, as far as I can tell. Particularly in stockings. Particularly when the Elfin National Resistance Front has finally got to that sweatshop-running bastard, Nicholas Santa “the Hutt” Claus. “Saint” Nicholas, my shiny metal ass:

Nobody expects the tinsel garrotte. Nobody.