I HAVE THE MIDIS! I’ve actually had them for a while, but I just recorded a bunch of MIDI chimes for the Chapter 22/23 set part of the Free Court of Seattle soundtrack.

Bendy Keyboard is Not Actually Bendy

The MIDI part worked fine. I’ve actually played with it a little before; I used it (and this loverly Roland) for sound effects before, but this is the first time it’s ending up in music.

It’s also the first time I’ve tried to use Garage Band for much of anything since, idk, 2009? And damn, a girl could learn to hate that thing. DO NOT SILENTLY RESAMPLE AND RETEMPO MY RECORDINGS, GARAGE BAND, I WILL END YOU. But it did. Like, twice.

Also, I rageflip over the lack of any pictures of someone rageflipping a MIDI keyboard.

And that’s why it took like four goes to get a proper export of the sound. Still, I got it.

inb4 Why Garage Band?: Existing instruments that I could edit to sound right. I need some instrument libraries for my DAW, f’srs.

I put a few photos from yesterday’s 700,000-person Seahawks superbowl victory parade up on Flickr. That’s more people at the parade than live within city limits.

Here’s one photo as a preview:

More at the link.

Yes, yes, zillions of people have made floppy drives play music. That’s cool.

Rupert, though – six-voice single-controller system, complete with DIY printed-circuit board. Epic.

(HT to Klopfenpop for the link)

There’s video at the site of the build, and some demo footage. G’wan, it’s cool.

PS: As I’m writing this, nobody has figured out the right answer yet. Go, listen, try!

I’m sick of talking about eye surgery and all that other crap. Remember the Bone Walker/Free Court of Seattle soundtrack album? Here, have a sneak preview work track – it’s the Irish tunes set which goes with Chapter 23 of Faerie Blood:

Normally I wouldn’t throw a work track out there, not even as a sneak preview, but yeah. This is missing the percussion, a male voice counting in individual tunes in Gaelic (because plot reasons), some chimes, and final assembly, but it has the right shape. You can see what rough beast caleighs its way towards Newfoundland in this.

That’s Ellen Eades on hammer dulcimer, Sunnie Larsen on fiddle, me on mandolin and Irish bozouki, and…

You may notice also notice a bass instrument in there. I’ve posted it separately:

I am so pleased with myself over this entirely accidental discovery. Everyone I’ve played it for has guessed standup bass or double-bass (including a professional cellist), but give your opinion; then guess what it actually is. I dare you. I double dog dare you.

I’ll tell you this much: it’s not synthetic, and it’s not a double-bass.

Actually, should I make this a contest? I haven’t done a contest in forever. First person to guess right – WHO HASN’T ALREADY BEEN TOLD AND YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE – gets a download of any album I have on Bandcamp, including this one once it comes out, which it hasn’t yet. Go!

Okay! I am now officially off “positioning.” I still have a variety of restrictions (no facing up except briefly, no heavy lifting, can’t cut back eye steroid drops yet, no contacts yet, etc) but, still, this will be far more normal.

Also, my vision is still a mess, but that’ll improve over time – there’ll be a big jump when the last of the bubble clears out of my right eye. Looking at it, as I can’t avoid, I’d say Monday for that, probably. Possibly Tuesday.

Hopefully this time it will stick. Literally, as I told Anna.

As a long-time Great Big Sea fangirl, I’ve watched all the talk and drama about Séan’s departure from the band over the last few months with particular interest. Anna and I both kind of see the changes in the band as being akin to a Doctor Who regeneration; my Great Big Sea had Darrell Power in it. That doesn’t mean a third incarnation would be a bad thing, but it’d certainly be different.

Séan has finally given an interview about his departure, and several people have reacted with variations on the phrase “see?! It’s just artistic differences!” – as opposed to, I don’t know, homicide. Or some other source of dissent, more conventional, more recognisable to most.

But that bothers me, because… because it’s wrong.

Because carried in all of that is the idea that “artistic differences” are not such a big deal, not really. There’s the idea that there’s nothing much personal about it. Like it’s some sort of career choice.

To be fair, there’s a bit of the latter in that if you’ve been so lucky as to make your art your primary career. But at the core, that is so wrong. At least, it’s so wrong in music.

Music, in my way of thinking about it, is transcription of emotion. Notes and phrases are the letters with which you write out your feels.

And if your music has been pushed to the side in your band, if it’s being stifled, or even, if it just doesn’t feel like your music is part of your group’s music… well, there are things more personal than that, I’m sure. But not many.

I’ve listened to Séan’s new album, Help Your Self. It’s little like my Great Big Sea, and even less like the second incarnation he just left. I’m reminded more of David Gilmour’s solo work than anything else – particularly the slower songs of About Face.

Some have called it bitter – I can hear that, and I hear it in the interview with the Telegram, linked above. But if he’s been holding his music in for as long as he says he has, then he’s going to need recovery time. He’ll need to clear all this out. Albums may and may not make for good therapy, but, in a very real way, that’s what this album is – it’s a concept album, and it’s about him feeling his way back to life.

Which brings us back to how big “artistic differences” really are.

A more successful musician than I once told me, “People don’t know what they like; they like what they know.” Great Big Sea fans may not know this Séan, and may, simply from that, decide they do not like him. I hope he’s ready for that. Putting everything out there as he’s done may not be the wisest of business moves.

But given the well-established economic downsides, it’s certainly brave. I’ll give all the credit in the world for that. And the fact that he feels he has to do this, as he obviously does, and that it’s worth walking away from what is – let’s face it – a cash-cow supergroup with one of Canada’s largest fan bases…

…that’s how big “artistic differences” are.

They aren’t a small thing. They’re the biggest thing there is.

Being an enthusiastic Kigo (Kim Possible/Shego) shipper, I know that will never be official, but my friend Criacow told me about D.E.B.S, a supervillain-and-hero lesbian romance film, and I had to look.

It’s not quite Kigo. It’s more more like Shego and Buffy Summers, if D.E.B.S. agent Amy Bradshaw was Buffy Summers working for the Feds. But supervillain Lucy Diamond in many ways is a lot like Shego (“What do you have against Australia?” “I don’t like their attitude!”) and, I have tell you, Anna and I agree she can crash over at our lair any time.

There’s not a lot of depth here, but that’s kind of its charm; dyke film without Horrible Things Happen are thin on the ground – hero-supervillain lesbian romance without Horrible Things Happening even moreso – so it’s really kind of amazing that any examples exist at all. If you think of it as PG-rated Kigo / BufGo live-action comedic slash, it succeeds fantastically well! Just don’t expect something else.

Honestly, it’s such a tiny market that I have to assume they wrote this movie for me, and I didn’t even know. So, thanks, Angela Robinson! And sorry I didn’t know at the time. I’d’ve, I don’t know, stolen some money for you or something. Make another one, I’ll see what I can do. ♥

Eye doctor says everything’s fine, but he wants me positioning the rest of the week. Yay, another lost week, another week on the couch. Well, until Friday, anyway.

god dammit.

At least nothing’s actually wrong. It’s all because of my history, not because of anything else – this is actually the fastest recovery I’ve had yet. Vision in the operated eye is already up to 20/100 range – 20/50 with the pinhole aid – and he thinks he’s being light on me.

But I’m still going a little bit extra crazy.

Next week. I hope.

Follow-up today with the eye surgeon at 2pm; since I’m pretty familiar with the progression of recovery on this kind of eye surgery now, and know where I am, I should come back with good news.

My vision will still be a mess for weeks, though. Aside from the three-month recovery time for focus, the remaining eye bubble is intensely distracting, even with an opaque eye patch.

Still, it’ll be nice to have the motion-restrictions at least eased. And it’s not that bad looking, is it?

Just finished watching The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, extended edition Blu-Ray. I think the most notable difference is in pacing; it’s much better, overall, and there’re more bits from the book included.

Scenes of a common tone and mood now feel equally paced, which eliminates contrast between “faster” and “slower” segments set at the same urgency level of storytelling. Usually, that sort of unevenness is a problem fixed by more cuts in the “slower” segments. Adding even more material – as was done here – to achieve properly equal pacing can be very risky; most of the time you’ll make a padded film feel even more padded. But here, I’m glad to say it’s a change for the better.

Directly related is that the film actually feels less fighty. The theactrical cut felt like a runaround between fights. But the battle scenes were not extended much if at all, so take up a smaller percentage of screen time. The result feels – for lack of a better word – a bit more Hobbitesque.

I particularly liked the additional material in the prelude, and in Rivendell; I doubt anyone would be displeased with either. Watch it for that, if nothing else.

At any rate, an improved version; only 13 minutes additional, but it’s all well-placed. I suppose someone wanted to keep the theatre version below the scary three hour mark, because with one exception, I really do think all these bits needed to be there. Give it a watch, see what you think.

eta: Anna’s spoilerriffic review post here, with details about the specifics of the added footage.