allow me to explain through interpretive dance
michael’s pretty interesting links
One of my classes ended early, and the next one hadn’t started yet, so I took a few minutes to mess around with Logic. Here is the result. Go forth and be creative!
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I’ve posted my second little essay on our opening tune. This one’s all thinky and stuff.
I don’t know if I’ll be linking all of them from Addison, so keep checking at The Dailies website.
I’ve been on a slow quest to make my lecture slides fit my presentation style better. Moving from content and text heavy slides, where every important definition is typed out, to a style where the slides serve almost as a visual soundtrack to the lecture, emphasizing important ideas with single words, or just a picture.
So, I’m pretty pleased with this slide I built last night, for today’s lecture on transducers. Transducers are a class of objects that convert energy from one format to another. Microphones and speakers are both transducers. To illustrate the idea, I hacked together different images to get this:
My dream is to sometime have a full-on budget where I can hire Corey to build all of my lecture presentations for me (and, of course, dress me), but until then, I’ll muddle through with only my own unerring sense of design and a hefty amount of copyright violation.
This is for all my homeboys who are gearing up for another year of Christmas miracles.
Know what the hardest instrument sample to find is? Handbells. Well, here ya go. FMJ has a very decent set, for the low price of free (for the lo-fi version, fine for arranging) or $5 (for the hi-fi version). Check out the linky link, and go get yourself some piercing ringy dingy xmas tingly in a can.
Charlie Peacock wrote a piece for the final print issue of CCM Magazine, on the future of Christian Music. Well worth a read:
In the future, young musicians will think that all Christian music is dated and boring, and they will create something they think is current, relative and exciting. They will say things like: “We just wanna show people that you can be a Christian and have fun, too.” Or, “We’re not gonna hit people over the head with the Bible. We’re not Christian musicians; we’re musicians who are Christians.” Or, “We are totally sold out to Jesus. We don’t write vague, sugar-coated lyrics.”
It will be nothing but retread hubris though. I will roll my eyes and grumble that history is hell-bent on repeating itself.
Read the whole thing here.
(ht: The Black Nail)
Finnish rock band The Leningrad Cowboys with special guest, the Red Army Choir, performing “Sweet Home Alabama”. Yup. Strap in, and grab some Stoli.
I wrote a song about 3 years ago that we’re pulling back out and dusting off for the next 3 weeks at church. Doug’s starting a series about actually doing things, serving the community in which we’ve been placed, you know, that whole Kingdom thing.
This song seemed to fit. You can download the chart and the demo, and use it freely if you’d like. Or, mock it intensely in the comments, either way.
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Can you guess the song?
Oh man, the memories. Gretchen dug this one up. This is the very first tour rehearsal for the tour with Meredith Brooks. That kid behind the keyboards singing backing vocals should look a little familiar.
I’m gonna enjoy these comments, I think.
So, guess who is coming to talk to my Production Techniques class about how to write and record a song? Charlie Peacock.
You know, the guy who produced albums for Switchfoot, Isaac Slade (The Fray), Nichole Nordeman, Leigh Nash, Amy Grant, David Crowder Band, Audio Adrenaline, Sara Groves, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Al Green, CeCe Winans, Brent Bourgeois, Twila Paris, Sarah Masen, Susan Ashton, Avalon, Philip Bailey, Margaret Becker, Michael Card, Bob Carlisle, Eric Champion, Steven Curtis Chapman, The Choir, Michael English, Béla Fleck, Steve Green, Cheri Keaggy, Phil Keaggy, Scott Krippayne, Kevin Max, Cindy Morgan, Out of the Grey, Ginny Owens, Chris Rice, the 77s, Sixpence None The Richer, Michael Tait, Steve Taylor, and about 2 dozen more.
I think we might need to erect police barricades to keep kids from stuffing his pocket full of demos.