During the Holidays, I've been working on several projects which I thought I'd share here.
One of my big Christmas presents Maria surprised me with this year was an amazing Lego Death Star diorama. It has 3 levels depicting around 13 scenes set in the Death Star from Star Wars and Return of the Jedi and contains almost 4000 pieces.
As you can see in the above picture, most of the time spent building the project was spent purely in the hunt for the next piece. It's not always easy searching through 4000 pieces to find the one piece that's needed next! It took three days and probably 20 or so hours to complete. Below is the final product--although without a 360 degree view, it's missing most of the impact.
A second present Maria surprised me with this Christmas was a new synthesizer. I sold my fancy synthesizer years ago when we needed some money. Maria saw me playing around with this cool looking Korg R3 synthesizer/vocoder at a music store a couple months ago and found one for me for Christmas.
It simulates the old analog sounding synthesizers from the 70s like the Moog, and it comes with a microphone to use as a vocoder. A vocoder allows you to use your own vocals as a synthesizer sound input allowing you to play music with your own voice. Remember the theme to "Transformers"? "Transformers. More than meets the eye." That robot voice is done with a vocoder. The kids and I have all been having a lot of fun playing with the synthesizer. There's a lot of fun sounds on there. And I've been spending a lot of time this past month learning about sound synthesis, how synthesizers work, and how to create my own sounds.
A second present was an audio input device to connect the synthesizer to the computer to record it as well as vocals should I ever choose to sing. Here I am trying out everything all wired together with me underneath it all.
After putting everything together, I've spent a lot of time on my Christmas holiday break experimenting with sequencing and recording some music. For fun and educational purposes, I put together this arrangement of music from the old video game "Marble Madness." This was one of the first games I remember that featured a full synthesizer soundtrack. I did a medley of the first three levels. Mainly because I could never get any farther in the game.
If the streaming player doesn't work, click on the image below for the direct link to the mp3.
Finally, my brother Jeffrey, a graphic artist, was commissioned by an old friend to do an animation for his company's end-of-the-year Christmas party. Jeffrey asked if I'd like to collaborate with him. So over Thanksgiving and early December we put together a 4 minute animation.
The company is called Penta, and the animation features their CEO and cameos from other employees. I don't know any of these people, we just worked from a script and pictures sent to us from Jeffrey's friend Jordan who works there. The company is located in Las Vegas and I believe was responsible for building several Casino resorts such as the Luxor which is featured in the animation. I think that's all you need to know to enjoy the animation. From what I understand it was a big hit at the company party and I'm pretty proud of the final product.
I've uploaded the video to YouTube, but it's really pretty grainy. Here is a link to a directory with several different versions of the finished product all much better quality. They are all the same thing, just in different formats. The most reliable version is the largest one, the mpg. I believe most players should be able to do that one if none of the others work.
One of my big Christmas presents Maria surprised me with this year was an amazing Lego Death Star diorama. It has 3 levels depicting around 13 scenes set in the Death Star from Star Wars and Return of the Jedi and contains almost 4000 pieces.
As you can see in the above picture, most of the time spent building the project was spent purely in the hunt for the next piece. It's not always easy searching through 4000 pieces to find the one piece that's needed next! It took three days and probably 20 or so hours to complete. Below is the final product--although without a 360 degree view, it's missing most of the impact.
A second present Maria surprised me with this Christmas was a new synthesizer. I sold my fancy synthesizer years ago when we needed some money. Maria saw me playing around with this cool looking Korg R3 synthesizer/vocoder at a music store a couple months ago and found one for me for Christmas.
It simulates the old analog sounding synthesizers from the 70s like the Moog, and it comes with a microphone to use as a vocoder. A vocoder allows you to use your own vocals as a synthesizer sound input allowing you to play music with your own voice. Remember the theme to "Transformers"? "Transformers. More than meets the eye." That robot voice is done with a vocoder. The kids and I have all been having a lot of fun playing with the synthesizer. There's a lot of fun sounds on there. And I've been spending a lot of time this past month learning about sound synthesis, how synthesizers work, and how to create my own sounds.A second present was an audio input device to connect the synthesizer to the computer to record it as well as vocals should I ever choose to sing. Here I am trying out everything all wired together with me underneath it all.
After putting everything together, I've spent a lot of time on my Christmas holiday break experimenting with sequencing and recording some music. For fun and educational purposes, I put together this arrangement of music from the old video game "Marble Madness." This was one of the first games I remember that featured a full synthesizer soundtrack. I did a medley of the first three levels. Mainly because I could never get any farther in the game.If the streaming player doesn't work, click on the image below for the direct link to the mp3.
Finally, my brother Jeffrey, a graphic artist, was commissioned by an old friend to do an animation for his company's end-of-the-year Christmas party. Jeffrey asked if I'd like to collaborate with him. So over Thanksgiving and early December we put together a 4 minute animation.
The company is called Penta, and the animation features their CEO and cameos from other employees. I don't know any of these people, we just worked from a script and pictures sent to us from Jeffrey's friend Jordan who works there. The company is located in Las Vegas and I believe was responsible for building several Casino resorts such as the Luxor which is featured in the animation. I think that's all you need to know to enjoy the animation. From what I understand it was a big hit at the company party and I'm pretty proud of the final product.I've uploaded the video to YouTube, but it's really pretty grainy. Here is a link to a directory with several different versions of the finished product all much better quality. They are all the same thing, just in different formats. The most reliable version is the largest one, the mpg. I believe most players should be able to do that one if none of the others work.
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