So, right, where was I? Oh right, VCON!

Same Con Same Badge Same Picture

Saturday morning, I popped up early for more kaiju programming – this time on monster anatomy and alternate worlds. But being a bit sleepier than I’d expected, I arrived a bit late – still, the pieces I saw were fun. Then the songwriting workshop, which I mentioned previously, rehearsal for the show, a very late lunch/early dinner and some hanging out, then off to set up for the show!

The Supervillain Origin Story set seemed to go over well; my goal is to get you on the supervillain’s side here, and while it’s still missing one part of the story, I think it’s starting to jell. A lot of people were nodding where I want them to during the Rant Segment, which is definitively a good sign.

There may be an unofficial/ninja performance of this at GeekGirlCon, by the way. Just sayin’.

Then I did a second mini-set, this one all piratey! And I have to say, it is so nice to be doing “Last Saskatchewan Pirate” where people both know and do the callbacks. I encouraged them starting the song, and when hitting that first chorus and having the crowd shout back the response lines? That felt nice. You guys were great.

For encore I did an a cappella – because I don’t have chords yet – of “You Can’t Get a Good Kamikaze in Vancouver.” I know I have at least some video and some audio, so we’ll look at how that goes – and thank you so much, VCON Tech Crew, for setting up my camera for me. That was awesome of you.

Then! Con suite and room parties and hangouts and all the rest. The only downside of the con suite this year was that they ran out of cider crazy early, and I ended up indulging in the dubious pleasure of a fake highball made of Canadian Club and Diet Pepsi, emphasis on dubious and fake.

Needless to say, a kamikaze was out of the question. XD

Sunday! Up at a leisurely pace to hit the art show, finally, where I bought this:

Art Lamp

Once again, the art show? Lots of 3D, an awfully good standard of work, most of it more F&SF-y than the lamp above (including most of the other lamps by the same artist). Honestly, it’s the best art show I see at a convention.

“What is Filk?”, my noon panel, saw only slightly more audience than panelists actually kind of stay on topic and get reasonably educational. Then a quick bite and a run down to my personal VCON highlight every year: the Turkey Readings.

Now, you have to understand what this is: it’s “straight” readings of terrible fiction, acted out by members of the audience, with other members of the audience bidding to stop or continue the action. ALL BIDS MUST BE PAID; it’s a fundraiser for the Canadian Unity Fan Fund, which pays to fly fans across the continent to opposite-side conventions.

And that’s all nice, but the best part is the terrible, terrible acting (I’m becoming a regular!) and the terrible, terrible pain. Perry Rhodan books are on the literate end of the scale here, people. It is not a pretty sight.

But it is hilarious.

Anyway, then! Closing ceremonies and the dead dog party. VCON knows how to throw a proper dead dog, I have to tell you. I started to fade around 2am but then people got out instruments in one room and a few of us did some serious jamming until 3:30 when I finally called it a convention. (They really liked my treatment of SJ Tucker’s “Come to the Labyrinth.” Quite different to hers, her fans who’ve heard me do it call it the Led Zeppelin version, even acoustic. Fair cop.) They also sell pre-reg for next year, and I got that sorted out.

After that, it was all sleeping late and Vancouver errands and a really excellent lunch with friends (Hi Geri! Hi Kate! Hi Angela! Hi Lara!) and acquisition of bagels and cider. The pleasant trip home was marred only by another terrible interaction with American customs – I think the last trip where I had to travel by car being unexpectedly pleasant, I had been lulled into a false sense of security; this was a bracing reminder that no, they are just awful – that at least had the benefit of being relatively brief.

Next year’s VCON will also be Canvention! Given that this VCON was of unusual size by itself – my badge had a four-digit number and I’ve never seen that before – next year should be quite the event. They’re changing hotels (again…) for it, which is a shame, because as I told one of the VCON concom at the dead dog: this hotel’s layout is confusing. I like it! Because despite it being confusing the social flow worked really well.

And that counts for a lot.

Next up: GeekGirlCon! And a ninja show! But you didn’t hear that from me – you’ll hear it from me next week. 😀

Experiencing VCON from the programming side… isn’t all that much different to experiencing it from the attendee side. Which is good, since I love attending the convention and didn’t want to lose that part.

Anna and I drove to Vancouver – and yes, we did go to Vancouver, even if the hotel was in Richmond – which we never do. I vastly prefer to go by train, but with all the cargo we had this year? If you’re bringing me in to do panels and a show, I am coming prepared. Handouts, multiple costume changes, gear for the show, bits to show during howto panels, extra instruments to be extra lively at panels – I don’t screw around.

Programming front-loaded me pretty solidly, with three presentations and panels on Friday. From 6-8pm I was talking about building an audio kit on the cheap and, with the help of Joe Fulgham from The Caustic Soda Podcast, the Home Recording 101 panel. We had a funny moment when a few people showed up asking where the knitting panel was – they came back a couple of times until we all figured out what was going on.

Bloginhood gave some very positive feedback, and yeah, I did kind of go off briefly on condenser vs. magnetic-field-vibration microphone head technologies, but dammit, how are you going to do mad science if you don’t know how these things work? Still, I can probably save that for second quarter.

After that, I hopped over to the Kaiju Konfessions Monster Movie Sing-A-Long, which Stan Hyde runs most(?) years, with updates and new material. Stan is a monster kaiju fan (ar ar ar) and really, really knows his kaiju flicks; he’s a lot of fun to listen to. I also ran into Jax, who came as a late-80s Software Pirate, and who lugged a (working!) Commodore SX-64 around all weekend and set it up for games several times.

Did you know Commodore made a luggable?

Friday night’s “Collaborative Filk Creation” panel mostly just turned into a jam, but really, isn’t that kind of the point? I met Greg Cairns there, and we ended up hanging about some at music panels and jamming in the con suite on Sunday. He’s a guitarist and vocalist, and also does DJ work on the side.

My biggest worry on Saturday – the Songwriting Workshop – actually went really well. I’d never hosted one of these before, but had three people (of the four maximum allowed), so it took the form of a presentation followed by work on individual songs. Since it’s an F&SF kind of crowd, that meant I could talk wave physics, so I did. Also maths. I went in all I DO WHAT I WANT and fortunately the audience turned out to be quite receptive. XD

Also, Conflikt have asked me to rerun it at their convention in January, and I’ve said yes. You’d almost think I was getting a reputation for songwriting or something. ^_^

This has got awfully long, so I’m going to post the next part tomorrow.

Off to VCON! A reminder of my schedule:

That’s a big, big room they’ve given me on Saturday night. C’mon out and fill it!

Since I’ll be doing a couple of technical presentations today (scroll down to this post to get the handouts), here’s a nice presentation on digital audio processing, on the waveform level. There are other demonstrations I’d like him to include, but there are already many, and it’s quite interesting no matter how you look at it. Enjoy!

Hello, VCON attendees and members of the West Coast Science Fiction Association! Click here to download your very own copy of the Kitting Out Cheap handout, in convenient PDF form. You’ll also probably be interested in the Studio Buildout Series of blog posts, and maybe the the Home Recording 101 outline.

This post is going up before VCON even starts! If you see it before or during, my concert is Saturday at 10pm, in Sea Island Ballroom A. That sounds like a very large room. Please come fill it or I will be lonely and sad. Also, I have a fifteen tesla magnetic field generator, and I suspect many of you have vehicles. Don’t let me get bored. I’m just saying.

Regardless, enjoy our new free-download single, “Kaiju Meat”, and the Cracksman Betty bonus free download track, “The S-100 Bus.”

Welcome to the Lair! Oh, and, try not to die. (That’s supervillain for “I like you.”)

eta: And here’s songwriting workshop supplemental material version 0.1 alpha.

Here’s my VCON schedule for this coming weekend – they’ve got me pretty busy Friday evening, as you can see! Then the Saturday afternoon workshop, and the concert at 10pm.

VCON 38, October 5-7, Vancouver, BC

I’m not entirely sure why they have me moderating a “What Is Filk?” panel on Sunday, but I’ll do my best. ^_^

VCON asked me to host a songwriter workshop, which is kind of amazing, and I said okay, which is even more amazing. So, Vancouver, if you want to workshop a song with a supervillain? Now is your opportunity. Details below, but move fast, deadlines are kind of now. Or the 30th. One of those.

VCON 38, Song Writers’ Workshop
Instructor: Dara Korra’ti
Date: Saturday, October 5
Start Time: 2 PM
Duration: 2 hr
Max participants: 4

Singer songwriter Dara Korra’ti will meet with workshop participants for a collaborative review of songs-in-progress. The focus will be on general feedback and constructive criticisms for improvement from both her and other participants.

Participants must submit the work-in-progress they wish to have workshopped no later than September 30. To submit, send the lyrics you have written so far and a recording (or a link to a recording) of the song or the music your lyrics are for via email to programming@vcon.ca.

Any quality recording is fine – even a phone recording – though obviously higher quality is better within the constraints of sending a file by email. If your lyrics are written to go with an existing, popular song you can just provide the title name of the artist. If you have written your own music, you may also submit the score but, at Dara’s request, the deadline for a submission with a musical score is a week earlier (September 23) to give her more time to review it.

While not required, participants are encouraged to bring their favourite, portable musical instrument to the workshop.

NOTE: Online registration for VCON hands-on workshops are normally restricted to those who have pre-registered with those who purchase a membership on site only being allowed to register if there are open spaces available the day of the workshop. However, given the nature of this particular workshop (that is, material needs to be pre-submitted), and the fact that pre-registration ended on Sep 15, anyone who would like to participate in this workshop but who has not pre-registered for VCON is invited to contact the VCON Director of Programming atprogramming@vcon.ca to discuss possible options regarding their participation.

Norwescon executive committee have announced the adoption of the anti-harassment policy they’ve been working on over the last year. That “they” is a little disingenuous, as nwcMUSIC is part of Norwescon, and therefore this is also nwcMUSIC’s anti-harassment policy, effective six days ago.

Along with many others, I provided testimony and information to the committee working on it, and I think they’ve done a pretty good job. I’m pleased to be able to say that yes, there is an official policy in place, with intent to enforce.

eta: While I, for one, applaud John Scalzi’s harassment policy pledge, I must note that this process was underway a solid year before his statement, and that it was not, despite some comments made elsewhere, prompted by his pledge movement.

If you didn’t listen to the podcast: we’re ramping up for nwcMUSIC 2014, at the Norwescon science fiction convention, April 17-20, 2014. If you want to be involved in programming, now is the time to ask.

That goes to people who want to be on staff, too. I need a videographer and a second – I don’t want to be the only person who knows how this all works! music at norwescon.org is the official contact address; that gets to me, plus a couple of other people, so if I miss it, it doesn’t get lost.

Surprise! The Geekmusic Podcast! Episode 5, September 2013. It’s a short one (18 minutes) but it’s here. I play some very early bits from the Bone Walker soundtrack, talk about nwcMUSIC 2014, plus – SHOW ANNOUNCEMENT! – I’m an attending pro at Vancouver’s VCON this October! I’ll have a 10pm Saturday show, and will be running a workshop and some panels.

But here’s the podcast:

Tell me who you want to hear about or hopefully just outright hear in a future episode, too! Hopefully in October or November we can get back to normal lengths.

Oh, if you don’t like YouTube, we have direct mp3 download and Soundcloud links at the Podcast page, like usual.

In related news, an update on the post I made yesterday about the return of Seattle Geekly: they made their Kickstarter goal! Go them! But it’s not too late to jump on that bandwagon, they have stretch goals and such, like y’do.

…or at least is the most explosively out-of-nowhere-to-epic fandom I’ve ever seen.

Honestly. This must be what Star Wars must’ve been like. Jaegercon, organised out of nowhere, online, in about two weeks. Real-life gatherings in dozens of cities; Manila got together first, I think, at least on K-Day, thanks to calendar advantages; we had 23 or so Saturday night in Seattle; San Francisco led the pack with 40-something? Vancouver and Toronto had big groups too.

Hundreds if not thousands of people checked in on Tumblr; 500ish have signed the roll call post that went out a couple of hours ago, but you have to both see it and specifically sign it, which will leave out many. There were cosplay events (awards get announced Monday – Mako Mori and fem!Tendo were both particularly popular), videos, gift exchanges, essays (particularly focusing on Mako Mori, who, as a lead character woman of colour, people have been desperately thirsting for, particularly in this Summer Of No Women In Movies), fanart, analysis (my favourites being of the use of politeness levels in the Japanese dialogue), music (not just me)…

…and honestly, I can’t get over the reaction to Kaiju Meat, the song I did for the con. Nearly 600 people have played this thing, it has dozens of notes and reblogs, people have been donating money for this free download, and two people I don’t even know also brought it to the party, posting about it separately, themselves.

I don’t even know how that happened. To borrow a Texas phrase, I am whomperjawed by that.

(If you missed the link, it’s here. It’s a different sound for me, but I really think I hit my T-Rex-in-F-14s goal. Thanks again to tereshkova2001 and Kathryn Tewson for volunteer chorus vocals, and Flatbear for making badges for everybody to print. 😀 )

Then, while all this was happening, the Russians, Sasha and Aleksis, dropped by – or, rather, their actors. As did the Triplets, and three crowd actors who were there for a lot of the Shatterdome scenes in Hong Kong. Then the screenwriter, Travis Beacham, showed up. And the editor of the art book, Elaine Morethansky, and the movie’s producer, then finally the director, Guillermo del Toro. All in interviews, answering questions from the Jaegercon crowd.

There’s already a Fanlore page about it. It has links to the interviews, and to some of the alt-universe threads which have started up.

But, yeah – this has been an amazing out-of-nowhere experience. Tumblr, Pacific Rim fandom; I’m not entirely sure what you’re doing, but please, please keep doing it; you are doing it right.