More Canadian Music Week

Day 2: If you don't have anything nice to say...

Day 3: I finally got to see Bend Sinister at a place called Comfort Zone. I say finally because for over a year I shared a jam space with them while working with Marty Zylstra on various music projects, but of course that means we never were there at the same time, though based on the instrument setup I'd been curious about them from the start. They have a nicely curated modern-but-classic-rock glam-prog sort of sound, and as a keyboard player I am doubly interested in how they use various keyboard sounds in their very high-energy upbeat show. I'll be seeking them out again soon here in Vancouver, from where they also hail!

I think the main thing working against them was the venue they drew in the CMW stage lottery. The sound system there was quite good, I'm not sure how much of it was supplied by CMW - but Comfort Zone, while not quite shit-hole status, had too low a stage and almost no lighting, so any band playing there would have trouble shining, or even being seen. Also I walked by the bar several times while looking for the bar, because it was covered in signage hawking cigarettes, wristbands, glowsticks and other junk, I thought it was a merch booth (no taps??).

After CZ my mate Dan from The Record Room and I went to the Dakota Tavern - which somehow I forgot how much I love - to see a few more acts. I was happy to meet and see The Sumner Brothers, a band fronted by two Vancouver brothers that take turns sounding like Bob Seger and Bruce Springsteen. Very laid back set from them, excellent songwriting and a very accomplished, intentional sound with a bit of that American roots twang (paired Strat and Telecasters, lovely.)

My personal highlight, however, was The National Parks from Utah. These guys were FANTASTIC! With keys, fiddle and acoustic guitar in the band the are well-placed in any mixtape alongside Lumineers, Mumford & Sons, Of Monsters & Men, etc - but they are no emulators. They have superb arrangements and songwriting, and they have crafted a sound and show that really shines. A five star pick. Look them up.

Sadly I probably won't get to see much else of CMW this year as I have to return to Vancouver to play my own shows this weekend. So many of the people I know are jsut getting into town for the week, I think they've been missing out!

Notes from Canadian Music Week

‎CMW‬ Day 1 notables:

Caught the tail end of the set from Machines Géantes at the Central - most clearly described by three words in their bio: "riffs and fuzz." These Montrealers rocked out nice and loud on the little stage they had to work with, but were really groovy and fun. Kind of like a French Monster Truck.

Archie Powell & The Exports: WOW! These guys were fun. They swayed from a slightly more raucous Weezer all the way to the borderline rock crazies of the Vines or Jet. Five piece energetic rock from Chicago. They used every spare decibel The Piston had to offer. Super fun - and they're doing another set on Wednesday at Bovine Sex Club. Kickass.

Inspirations / Distractions – Gordon McGladdery

There was a very inspiring and motivating post over at Designing Sound today from a great young sound designer who I've had the pleasure of getting to know via the Vancouver Sound Design meetups named Gordon McGlattery.

I’ve learned there is a distinct difference between hobbyist/personal inspiration and professional inspiration with deadlines and accountability.

I’ve lived through both and prefer the latter.

I enjoy insights into the journeys people in indie media have taken. They are often solitary journeys in which they have had to find their own support and drive. Gord's is a good one as he's had his hand in many awesome projects already!

You can follow Gord on Twitter at @ashellinthepit

An Unwonted Win!

Nice! The Unwonted Sasquatch documentary I worked on won a Silver Medal at the Fame'us Film Festival in Hollywood - congratulations Darcy!

TrueNuff Comic is updating!

I don't want to jinx it, but my team at TrueNuff Comic (most notably artist Threeboy) has been very productive of late and is putting out regular comics again!

View fullsize

Writing with my friends and having Threeboy realize the final drafts is a super satisfying experience. Producing comedy is such a joy. Taking the silly events of our regular lives and turning them into wacky cartoon adventures is so much fun, especially when we get the greatest emails of all time: fan mail!

There are many way to subscribe to TrueNuff Comic, or just check in regularly at www.truenuff.com

The Unwonted Sasquatch

A friend of mine who recently finished a round of crowd-funding to wrap up production on a years-long passion project of his about the cryptozoological phenomenon known as (many names, including) Sasquatch reached out recently because he wanted to re-master his final cut for submission to film festivals.

The film festival business has always interested me since a previous film I worked on, Kayfabe (2007), was a contender in many indie film festivals and won a handful of trophies (woo hoo!). Today, it's a much easier process to submit - there are services like Withoutabox which, as long as you have the festival submission fees handy (not a new phenomenon), allow you to easily submit to the big banner film festivals and the niche festivals that suit your style of film-making best. It's a brilliant yet elegant solution to the challenges for filmmakers to get their creations in front of interested audiences.

At any rate, the work Darcy (Weir, the director) and I did was brisk, essentially he had no sound post done in the final cut he had released to his crowd-funding backers and so we we able to put the multi-track into the edit and make some repairs, re-mix various scenes and interviews and add some voice-over. There was also a bit of music added and remixing of tracks he had acquired from producers Lee Lustig and Trevor Browne. It was a real trip.

You can see Darcy's Kickstarter page here or visit his website at Occult Journeys.

TrueNuff TV: Stolen Star Wars II

Yeah, so I appeared in another TrueNuff TV video! I'm often showing up on these shoots to hang out with the old crew and lend a hand to production. Here's a rare appearance on camera by me as well. 

We're on the run from the evil empire known as Disney - we stole some 100% legit Star Wars spin-off demo tapes and they are angry. Psycho sound-alike music by J.Rai http://www.soundcloud.com/jrai "Space Wars" music by Errorcube http://www.soundcloud.com/errorcube

The Crew and I are (like millions of others) lifelong Star Wars fans. We've committed to watching The Machete Order as a group, looking forward to doing that soon.

TrueNuff TV has a pretty solid YouTube Channel (over 15 million views) and of course the super-official domain www.truenuff.tv

Don't fear the REAPER

(note: I am fully aware that the majority of blog entries on this topic share the same article title)

There is so much to learn about REAPER!  The scrappy DAW alternative that has been slowly building is reputation over the last 10 years is so incredibly modular, customizable and flexible that to go into it without having a goal in mind of how you want it to work for you is almost counter-productive. It's best to bend it to your will, to mould it in the image of the DAW you want it to be, the DAW you'd like to use.

There are plenty of useful (and some not terribly useful) resources but I can't see anything more valuable or educational that Jon Tidey's The Reaper Blog with articles, tutorials and inks to workshops and personalized training - it's the gateway to a community of power users that revel in sharing their expertise. It's worth any price, and secondary to buying yourself a proper REAPER license (which is kinda sorta not totally necessary but HOT DAMN should you ever do it - SUPPORT)  it is wholly deserving of a contribution to the tip jar. Jon was good enough to visit a meetup I attended at the Centre For Digital Media a few weeks ago and do an intro talk to REAPER. He's an excellent sales pitch and makes it all seem very accessible.

And who doesn't like a good acronym? 

REAPER: a Rapid Environment for Audio Production, Engineering, and Recording. 

Heh. Sure.

Pro Tools: First and 12 (Not about football)

Pro Tools has announced that the new Pro Tools 12 will have another new edition: Pro Tools | First.

Some people may remember the last time Pro Tools did this in the year 2000 (cue Conan O'Brien) with Pro Tools Free (v5.01). The Mac version worked relatively well and the Windows Me version... well it was a Windows Me version. It did, however, let me learn how to use Pro Tools and allowed my university (which no longer exists, so I can admit our possible breach-of-user-agreement without fear) to put a copy on every computer in our lab giving all the prospective sound geeks continuous access to Pro Tools.

Pro Tools | First seems to take a similar approach (back then it was by Digidesign, before Avid bought and since re-coded the entirety of the software) but can be confident of their improved cross-platform performance. Also, it should give them a good opportunity to load-test their new cloud-based project storage system, which is a new feature of the version 12 family. If that became widely used before they iron all the bugs out, they'd only have to lose a couple of big projects before the flaming bags of poo started to fly.

In talking with several other Sound Designers at our Vancouver Sound Designers meetup over the weekend however, the prospect of the new pay-per-month licencing system unsurprisingly has a lot of people turned off; and in some cases downright livid. Discussions immediately turn to what systems current users are thinking of switching to. 

While a monthly licence fee has been gaining ground in the professional media development world (See: Adobe Creative Cloud) and the costs can even be less in some cases for staying up-to-date, it's a daunting prospect for the independent / small-time designers that perhaps only upgrade every-other version or stay behind because, say, they spent $5000 on a digital console that still works perfectly fine but for some reason the new version decides to not support any longer (what do you mean that one sounds personal?)

Contenders around the bar table were Nuendo, Cubase, Logic and REAPER, that last one being new to me but apparently a choice pick (and also there was a brief ironic mention of Audition CC). Different users all seemed to argue the strengths of their favourite over the others, but the prime concerns in switching from Pro Tools generally seemed to be: Keeping your plugins, not having to get an additional hardware licence, and most importantly being able to preserve your workflow. That last one is a challenge because of course because everybody uses their DAW differently, from Old Habits That Die Hard to codependence on other external softwares (I personally can't imagine removing Sony's Sound Forge from my toolkit, I know and love it so well).

A lot of the early emotional reaction to this seems to be that someone else will come and take the lead among the defiant who don't want to be held to a monthly contract - but how many will cave and just add "software" to their monthly operating costs?

Pro Tools 12 is expected to be released in summer of 2015.

An audio essay/poem on Vancouver

I found an old post on VancouverIsAwesome in my "saved links" that I don't remember coming across that was the below-source audio/video piece by Ezra Istiroti on the sounds of Vancouver. I won't offer any criticism on it, but it was an enjoyable piece that, if I were not living in Vancouver currently, would surely make me miss it. 

#BuzzkillFeed

9 mistakes you made in your youth that you thought weren't a big deal at a time and how they changed the course of your life  

Which Fox News personality are you?  

The true story behind the opening sequence of "Up"  

What happened to those animals from the Sarah McLachlan SCPA commercial  

33 names that aren't yours that Starbucks spells correctly every time 

8 ways you didn't notice Nicholas Cage has aged until now  

130 terrorist organizations that used to fight on our side  

13 Black Friday must-buys manufactured by slave labour  

20 Superhero hate crimes from the 50's and 60's  

8 former child stars that voted "Yes" on Prop 8  

10 1980's comedies funded by Nazi gold  

15 stars of your favourite childhood TV shows that have been convicted of assault  

6 of your favourite pastimes that are shortening your lifespan 

10 things you shouldn't have eaten for dinner last month  

17 animals with no sense of currency or economy that make more money than you do  

8 of your exes' weddings in photos 

11 most popular tourist destinations where things you like are illegal 

13 foods that just straight-up can't be sustainably brought to market where you live

Twitter games to play by yourself all day long  

How to hide a lavalier mic

I found lav mics to be the best and worst things when shooting entertainment. I love them for close up sound, the versatile wireless set-and-forget functionality and dynamic range, but the few ways I knew worked for hiding them were sometimes problematic and usually awkward. Usually it involved some method of taping the mic to the inside of the actor's shirt (which you could usually see the tape from the outside) or right to the chest of the actor (I've ripped more chest hair off of strangers than a first-year esthetician). Then, of course, when working with performers of a female persuasion, I get all stammery and sweaty (not because of any problem on their part, they're always pros) but where else would the best place to hide a lav mic on a lady be, than... right... in.. front?

At any rate, once again No Film School has found me the expert tips that I could've used long ago in the guise of one IzzyVideo.

I look forward to having a better relationship with these little sound ninjas in the future! Thanks fellas!

Basics of audio post-production

No Film School shared a video created by the brains at Filmmaker IQ on The Fundamentals of Sound in Post Production. It does a good job of introducing the basic tools that sound editors and mixers use to work with production audio (it doesn't really go into any track-editing tricks, just mixing tools.)

At first I thought it was a little too basic because host John Hess does spend a lot of time on EQ (which of course, as the fundamental sound modifying tool, other than volume, I thought everybody already knows)  but he does a great job of explaining what all the tools are, how they work and how they can be used. He covers EQ, Compression, Limiters, FFT and noise reduction and even some time-adjustment stuff like delay, chorus and reverb.

It's time to open up the digital audio workstation and look at the basics of common tools used in post production audio from Equalizers, Compressors, Noise Reduction, and Delay effects.

One Of Us: Episode 3

Episode 3 went live quite some time ago, I am posting about this now, as this is the new blog page!

Billy The Kid is a long-suffering touring performer of which a great many wonderful and complimentary things have been said, particularly in the year or so since this podcast went up since her latest album has been released to much friendly acclaim and she has been performing all around Europe and North America with the likes of Chuck Ragan, Northcote and Billy Bragg when she's not hanging out with the likes of Ryan Adams and Frank Turner (stories within!)

Please enjoy the attached interview with Billy, and check out her latest record (referred to within) at billythekidonline.com!

One Of Us is available on iTunes

Horseshoes and Hand Grenades by Billy the Kid is available on iTunes

One Of Us: Episode 2

Episode 2 is now up, with what is arguably (audience wise, certainly) the most successful creative project I've been involved in to date: TrueNuff TV!

Moze, James, Cranston and I reminisce about the genesis of the project PRE-YOUTUBE (yes, there was a time) and what going viral is like (or was like back in 2006 before CNN ever learned what the term meant.)

There's a lot of talk about learning by doing, learning by doing the wrong thing, and learning by going along with other people when they assume you know what you're doing. The key lesson here is doing, which is something that when left to my own devices I forget.

These guys, plus Brando & Rob from TrueNuff Comic (Episode 1) have been my closest collaborators and and strongest supporters (and harshest critics) for too long now to fathom. I would be happy knowing that I would get to continue working on fun projects with these guys, even if the final product never got seen by anyone.

Hope you enjoy!

Also, One Of Us is now available via iTunes.

One Of Us: Episode 1

New project! I'm now venturing into the podcast realm with a new series called "One Of Us" - a discussion with an in-group of people so you can get inside! That makes sense, right?

The first episode is with my longest-running creative endeavour of TrueNuff Comic, which just turned 12 (YEARS OLD!). As this was my first one, I'm learning the challenges of the mix and directing the conversation (animated discussion among friends turns into a lot of talking over each other) but I'm happy with how it turned out! I'm hoping to get a feed on iTunes soon and the new website www.oneofuspod.com is still updating but should be online in a day or two one the name records on the domain server update.

Feedback is much appreciated! Listen now at One Of Us.

Correlation does not imply causation

I had to laugh - the day after I decide to try talking more about what I'm doing to keep me going, I read a short article about a long-standing premise that people who talk about what they're doing are less likely to actually to the thing.

Lifehacker: Shhh! Keeping Quiet May Help You Achieve Your Goals

Am I worried this will hinder me? No. It seems like they're saying that it's a personality type that does one and the other, not that the sharing of your intentions makes you less likely to complete them.

Also, I'm not entirely confident my brain functions like a normal person's anyway.

World building

Things have been comatose around the blog of late. I wanted this to be central to the creative projects I’m working on so that’s pretty indicative of how things have been recently- but I’m going to start the development of my next ‘Thing.”

I’ve been playing with the idea mentally for about a year now without any real development. I think everybody has “that idea” that they always think they’ll do someday and I’ve had a lot of those, some which I forget about and others that just get old and are no longer interesting. Everything I’ve read from people who actually get pen to paper to write say that the important is to actually get down to it, whether your idea is “ready” or not- so I want to start getting this one out while I still have the means to do so.

Here’s my project outline (reserving the right to change any of it later!)

• “Radio drama” style production
• Episodic format, (one story per episode but a longer story arc per season)
• Styled in a type of neo-noir detective story
• Hopefully I can make it funny too, but it may not be purely comic.

Anyway, I’m starting a development phase to get the ideas refined. I was linked to a great blog post on Pinterest via Marsha of WhyTheFace. I thought it looked like fun and a good way to get the ball rolling while I get set up in my new Vancouver home with a productive space, so I've signed up and am using it for building a kind of idea-board space. In the coming weeks I'm planning on trying to formalize some of the structure of the first stories, and I hope to go to a bulletin board and cards system to try breaking it. 


No, I've never done any of this before. No I'm not sure how to do it. But I'll let you know how it goes!


Until then: Pinterest: Defiant Robot