5/23 - Creativity strikes once a semester

Whoa.

It feels like a millennia has passed since I last updated, but it's only been 11 days. I mean, don't get me wrong, 11 days is a good lot of time. It's enough time, in fact, for me to have finished 3 (almost 4) more books. #Humblebrag

It's also enough time to finish my Creative Arts visual art and music project! So, if you're keen to check out my silliness in music you can watch either of the following videos

Here's the final video and mix I made for the King of Spain cover I did. We were focusing on the elements of music, so here was my 100 word(-ish) artist statement about the piece and why it was made.

"The pitch and tone colour refer to the highs and lows as well as the timbre of the music. Loose harmonies on vocal parts were implemented to emphasize certain lines of the song and to create a rich, light texture. The backing instruments were likewise chosen to give a “skippy” feel of the song. Tambourine and claps then serve as the main instrumental fundamental instead of more solid drums because of this and guiro and guitar serve as cute flavourings to create a quality like that of a campfire song. The video also serves to demonstrate the layering of the music."

The other song I made was supposed to be contrasting to this one so I kind of did that by picking a slower, mushy song. I initially wanted to try and cover, perform all the parts for, and tape myself singing "seasons of love" from Rent, but eventually decided that was perhaps a bit too ambitious. I didn't have a guitar anymore because I gave it back to my friend Quinn after recording King of Spain so I knew I'd do something with a piano and eventually settled on getting back in touch with my scene phase and covering this cute song from All Time Low that was decently in my vocal range.

Here's my artist statement about that piece, just to give you an idea of why I did this:

"Structure refers the songs organization. This song presents in a Dyadic form where the piano alternates between the A of the verse, with two chords (I,vi), and the B of the chorus with a four chord progression (IV,I,vi,V,[I]). The song builds dynamically, with each return to the B as parts are either added or crescendo to louder volumes, leading up to the climax of the song, the final chorus, that then slows down and reverts to the A before fading away. This is most evident in the bell part where the duration of space between each note is halved between the second and third chorus, increasing the motion, reverting back to slower durational parts when the piece slows into the outro."

To be clear, this is me being extra.

We weren't required to do anything beyond create some pieces that demonstrated the elements of music. Most groups record them playing it with their phone in one take and have it done. I'm just that one dweeb who decided to make a big thing out of it. I did this for a couple reasons. The first of which was because, aside from some frustratingly stressful deadlines, this is a lot of fun for me. The performing, the recording (now that I know how to do it), the video editing; I really enjoy having these kinds of projects and I've always dreamed of filming or performing in a music video...now I'm kind of doing both! Secondly, it helps hone those technical skills in recording, mixing, and video editing. I'm not sure when in my life I will fully utilise these skills, but GOSH DARN I SWEAR AT ONE POINT I WILL. I'm still learning and getting used to Protools especially so stretching this project in a way where I could integrate a use of Protools reaaaaaaaally helped.

I can't help but feel that you probably think I'm bragging. I am. A bit. But that's because I've spent hours working on this and I really like how it all turned out, not because I think I'm special for having done this. I did so much unnecessary stuff for this project. And, honestly, I worry I may have slightly missed off mark on what the project was actually about...buT OH WELL. I really like how it turned out and what I learned from doing this. I'm hoping to make at least one more song & video before the session is out because I have access to such great equipment here and I don't want it to go to waste.

NEXT. Oh yeah, I also did 3 different art pieces for the project. The full justifications, presentation, and artist's statements are here, but I'll just keep it short and post the final iterations of each for your viewing pleasure on this blog.

The Wings of Ra

Matryoshka Universum

"Down Again"

I'm excited that I've completed all this in the 11(ish) days that I've been working on it. More than that though, I'm pretty proud of my work. One of the books I read in the last 11 days was a book called, "How to be miserable" which is a self help book that's inverted in a humorous and pretty helpful way. One of the suggestions for being miserable is to never take credit when you do something good or cool. So I'm avoiding that. I made this and I like it :D I'm taking credit here. Modesty is for times that aren't this one.

I guess it really wasn't 11 days. More like 7. Because in the middle of it I ventured to Girroween national park for my Outdoor Education class!

The trip was overall pretty good. There were some really beautiful sights there and between caving at Mt. Norman (oh yeah. You betcha that's the SECOND mountain I've climbed now), caving at South Bald rock, climbing Bald rock and Little Bald rock, and just the overall camping feel, it was a hoot and a half. It was very cold though and every night we would bundle up in all our clothes and hats and try to sleep. We all went to bed super early each night (like 8pm) and slept in and out because of the cold. Still fun though! There were a few points where we had to just go off trail and climb our way through the woods to get to where we needed to go (which is apparently just something they do here normally. I'm still surprised by it, having spent several summers in parks with strict "adhere to trails" policies.)

So it was a good lot of fun! We got back a day earlier than I had thought because for some reason I was convinced it was a 5 day trip but I was wrong. It worked out well though for me because that meant I had more time to finish the CA project above. 

5/12 - "Geez Marc, it wouldn't hurt to give an update one of these days" - A Procrastination Saga

I've been looking to give an update for a while, but truth be told, I've been pretty darn busy and it's been with a lot of things that aren't really travel related.

Like, you know...class and stuff.

Also D&D.

But that got me thinking that I really should document my progress with my classes as well because I've been doing some interesting things in class! At least interesting to me, and this is my blog so buckle up I'm going to talk about them.

In my creative arts class we have finished up our dance and drama assessment pieces. I got my grades back to find that I got a High Distinction (like, A+) on my dance piece! Which is exciting! And amazing! But also, I got only a Pass (like C) on my drama piece (ouch). Since dance and drama though, we've been moving on to doing work with music and visual art. More on the music later, but the visual art is definitely interesting for me because, although I've done graphic design and photography on occasion, I have little to no experience hand drawing, sculpting, or painting.

(this is my attempt at a halfway decent portrait drawing. I don't think there will ever be a day where I don't draw like I'm still in 2nd grade)

Since we need to do 3 different pieces of art (ideally 3 different styles) for our assessment, I've challenged myself not to do too much of what I'm familiar with and have settled on one drawing based piece, one painting based piece, and one other piece (TBD on what that one will be).

But perhaps I may be cheating a bit because the drawing piece I'm planning on right now involves doing a half drawing/half photography piece where I put drawn angel wings together with a photo of a person.

Like this, but not terribly thrown together in 2 minutes using Microsoft Paint.

The painting I may also be slightly cheating myself on, but I count it as something relatively new. I bought a bunch of spray paints at the store and am going to paint some galactic star painting with them. I've been looking up spray paint tutorials on different techniques using newspapers and bowls and coverings and I'm really excited to play around with it more.

Now, you may be reading this and be mad that I'm just goofing around when other students are doing serious school work. But I did my time, so you know, I'm gonna relish in the fact that, for the second time in my college career, I get to play around with spray paint as a part of a school project (and technically, I've also played with spray paint twice more for work-related reasons). Besides, I AM doing serious work.

My Sound production class has got me pulling my hair out over the projects we're working on and the peculiarity of the content. On April 27th, I spent an entire day in a studio trying to record a small percussion instrument using the microphones and studio equipment. The project goal was to play around with different microphone placements and techniques for recording. It's all super cool, but even though I can now at least somewhat confidently handle the equipment and ProTools, at the time I was LOST AS HELLLLLL. 

Here was some of my recording set up. The instrument I am attempting to record is a small Japanese percussion instrument called a Kokiriko... something I learned after intense googling.

I learned 2 weeks later that these microphones are actually only Cardiod (single directional) and this set up with these mics is about 136% wrong.

But I made it through. If not barely. The next assessment we had for this class was to take a bunch of already recorded tracks and mix them down using ProTools and various plug-ins to work the track to a mix that we found acceptable. "This will be a breeze" I lied to myself. "I won't find this difficult at all."

Long story short, it was difficult. And it was far from a breeze. But! Gotta give the course some credit because after several frustrating hours, I can at least hesitantly add ProTools to the list of programs that I can work my way around without making a complete fool of myself!

Which eventually led me to this! For my music section of the Creative Arts project, I've elected to do two different covers of songs that show dynamics and rhythm and pitch and stuff. I went down to the studio yesterday to test out how I was going to record the first one and ended up spending nearly the entire day there finishing the track because it was exciting and once I got going and editing and punching in recordings, I started to really understand it all! I understood the signal flow, the ProTools things that were useful to me, and the recording became something that was extremely enjoyable! I keep wanting to listen to my personal abridged* version of this song (King of Spain by Tallest Man on Earth) because I'm proud that it turned out good and exciting because the world of recording has always been something I've wanted to get into but never had the time and always had an excuse. Now, I did it! And I like this a lot so I am hoping to do a couple more at least to really hone in my basic recording skills.

*The CA project has to be 2 different songs adding to 3-4 minutes total of music. I shortened the song to about 1 minute and 30 seconds so I have enough time to do the other song. Also, it sounds a lot different in genre because I'm not very good at guitar. Here's the original if you're curious.

The last of my classes to update is my Outdoor education class! Soon I will be heading out on a trip to Girroween National Park on the border between New South Wales and Queensland. We've spent the last few weeks in class preparing for the trip and I'm really excited for it. Also on the 10th we had a test worth 50% of our class grade. It's pretty low pressure, and I think I did pretty well...but still.

The group of people I'm going to Girroween with though are pretty cool and it's going to be a beautiful trip. We leave on the 18th of May and will be out there until around 4pm on the 22nd of May, so it will all in all be a 4 1/2 day adventure out in the wilderness! The biggest thing though is that I need to plan ahead because I will only have 3 days between me getting back from that trip and the CA Art and Music project being due. Essentially I have this next week to plan and execute my Art projects and the other half of my music, which is doable, but a little stressful!

I will be updating my blog next roughly after girroween or after my trip to Sydney the weekend after. Other than that stuff, I've been hanging out with friends, playing a good amount of D&D, and reading some really good books. Since my last blog update, I've gotten into the habit of showing up to movie nights with some friends who are really cool and enjoyable people to be around. Last night we had a family dinner and I made deviled eggs as a snack for everybody to munch on :D Also since my last update, I've finished 5 books (woot woot!).

Tl;Dr: Class stuff. Listen to the cover I made! I'm proud of it and like words of affirmation :D