The ghost of Admiral Shack continues to fail me.

I thought I’d already choked this guy to death.

I mean honestly, how do you even get here? In an adaptor, I mean. With a cable it’d be easy, but adaptors are solid pieces of shaped metal. I didn’t even cheat to make this happen.

You are in command now, Admiral Monoprice!

place your bets

I’m going to end up walking off the bridge in silent rage again, aren’t I?

It’s a 15 second ident, to be used with the podcast. Whaddya think, sirs?

First show’s first segment is all edited. Second segment recording had to be delayed due to the guest waking up with a head cold. Hopefully she’ll be feeling better soon.

Back to learning some tunes. Last session-style track on the soundtrack album needs to be recorded next week, and I don’t know these at all yet. Yay?

Hi, visitors from Gawker‘s comment sections! Nice to meet you! Welcome to rage-driven acoustic elfmetal.

I know you’re here for the triple-rainbow pictures and the aftereffects of the Rainmaker 68000, but if you get a chance to listen to our music or watch any of Dara’s solo-performance video, that’d be awesome too.

We’re currently in studio working on our new album (Din of Thieves), a second project involving a book soundtrack for a fantasy novel series, and a couple of side-projects with other bands. Lots of planning, lots of plotting, lots of mayhem, hopefully lots of sales! Ah, a supervillain musician can dream, can’t she?

Anyway, no rest for the wicked and all that. We’ve moved a bunch of wires around so more of you should be seeing this. Thanks for coming by, and thanks to whoever for the link – Gawker obsfucates the referral URL so we can’t tell.

Recorded the first segment for the nwcMUSIC pilot podcast last night, with Nicole Dieker from Hello The Future! It went really well and we may actually keep some the second half of the conversation for episode two, because we got going on musical culture and what that means, and went well over time. It was a lot of fun; I think you’ll enjoy listening to it.

We are specifically incorporating some of the feedback we got, by the way. Hopefully you’ll be able to tell.

Still have a few more interviews to do, though. I’m trying to have four different people on this pilot episode, representing a bunch of different kinds of geekmusic. Mostly people have already signed up, but there’s still scheduling to work out.

Hopefully we can get this in the can quickly; I want this out as soon as I can manage, so there’s time for people to listen to it before Norwescon. Zoom zoom zoom!

The writer of The Free Court of Seattle series – my partner Anna – has a second fantasy novel series starting up through Carina Press! The first book, Valor of the Healer, is coming out in April, and she’s giving away a copy! It’s a raffle, so go check that out.

Carina started out as a romance imprint. Can you tell?

She’s publishing it under a pen name because there’s simply no way the book databases will not screw up our last name. Which is annoying, but trust me, it’s true. But it’s still her. ^_^

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… ^_^

If you have access to a command line:

traceroute 216.81.59.173

Amusement is to be had.