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