theshaggyfreak

http://www.bsodcomic.net/2012/01/15/makin-beer/ Today Kate and I started the first part of the process of making our first batch of homemade brew. It's not nearly as expensive or time consuming as I thought it would be. It also doesn't take up a lot of room in your house to do. The link above goes to a post that chronicles what we did today and I'll be updating my site with more stuff as we go through the process. The Mr. Beer kit is pretty easy to use so far and it seems pretty popular with a lot of home brewers. Here's their website: http://www.mrbeer.com I think it'd be awesome if we had a little crew of OCR folks who brewed their own beer and maybe next MAGfest (or some such gathering) we could have a little competition. Either way, Kate and I had a lot of fun with what we've done so far. I'm looking forward to seeing how it tastes!

You know, I never thought about it but I can see the resemblance. I still need to work on making the lead line feel a bit more expressive in spots but I have a few ideas for that. ***UPDATED 1/16/12*** More refining and filling in sparse areas in the Overworld section.

http://bitley.laconicsounds.net/refills/platinum/ If you don't have this baby, it's certainly worth looking into. There's a ton of bread and butter stuff in there plus more. Here's my write up on it with a little thing I put together with it: http://www.bsodcomic.net/2012/01/14/fairlight-platinum-by-bitley/

Did a bit more work on this today. Here's what's new/different 1. Changed the sound of the lead line during the Overworld theme. It needs to be EQ'd a bit better, though, after I listened to it on a couple different pairs of speakers. I also doubled the lead line an octave up in parts. 2. Gave the guitar work a bit of a tape delay so that it trails out for a bit of atmosphere. 3. General mixing stuff The same link on the first post will be good. *** Updated 1/14/12 I did a bit more with the lead line to give it more 'feeling'. Still need to fill things up a bit more and refine things before I move on to the Underworld section.

1. OCR has evolved into a community of very talented people who can give great advise. No matter how good you are, you should always keep learning. 2. After several years of hanging around OCR, I'm now just working on my first VG remix. I'm starting to feel more confident in my remixing skills and I think it's time I give back to the community.

I do tend to revisit my own music often. Sometimes it's because I really enjoy something I've done or it's because I like to see how I could have made it better.

To expand on DaMonz thoughts on 'how to find a sound', another thing that would probably be helpful is stuff on basic synthesis. You know, cover some things like what various controls on a typical synth do such as filter cutoff, LFO, etc. Some people just don't have a grasp on those simple things.

You're a good guy, Wes, and probably one of the nicest dudes in the bunch. You're always welcome in my home. As far as the booze issue goes, it's just one of those things. If you buy booze and set it out, people will drink it without any regard to who bought it. My advise is the stuff you leave out for public consumption is just going to be a loss. It's kind of hard to keep track of these things in a party atmosphere but it's best to find a place to keep it out of public view and then offer drinks to people instead of just letting them have at it. Since I will most likely have a room to myself again next year, you're more then welcome to stash stuff in my room since it's quite unlikely that I'd drink any myself.

I hope you had a good birthday!

BTW, despite all of my idiosyncrasies, I really do think of many of you all as close friends. I'm know that Im not an easy person to get to know but I'm really not that scary of a guy. Weird, maybe. I really do appreciate all the time that I get to spend with people at places like MAGfest. It means a lot to me and it keeps me grounded. My cup runneth over.

For you DC Metro folks and those near by, I'll be celebrating my 38th birthday with a sushi lunch at Todai in the Fair Oaks Mall around noonish. Let me know if you'd like to come hang out and eat tons of tasty food and then some gaming afterwards at our house (Centreville). Below is a link to where Todai is and such: http://www.todaifairfax.com/directions.html BTW, they have other food than fish/sushi. The buffet is quite large with many dishes.

I have a few vids on YouTube. You can find them here: http://www.youtube.com/user/theshaggyfreak

Oh, and drunk he was but so were a lot of people. Ah, the fun of watching my fellow geeks party down!

http://www.steinberg.net/en/newsandevents/news/newsdetail/article/neon-and-karlette-plug-ins-revived-1829.html I haven't played with them yet but I know that the community is always looking for decent freebies. From what I understand, these fit that category nicely.

Here's my wrapup blog post. Please go check out out and click all the lovely links! http://www.bsodcomic.net/2012/01/09/magfest-wrapup/

I just posted a video from Virt's set a bit ago: http://youtu.be/0vRYqDKLRMI

Here's a sound sample to use in your remixes. For those who stayed at the Gaylord, this sound will stay in your head and heart forever: http://bsodcomic.net/misc/that_beep.wav

The rest of my pics are uploaded. I have a few video clips to put on youtube but that's going to wait till tomorrow. I'm too damn tired to care right now. MAGfest X was one of the best convention experiences I've ever had. I got to hang out with some awesome people and I made a bunch of new friends. You all do a great job in reminding me that even this introvert can make new friends. I'm quite grateful to have met you all.

For those of you playing at home, I'm updating my MAGfest pics as the days go and many have already been posted. You can check them out in the MAGfest X folder here: http://picasaweb.com/wchrapcynski

This picture really needs a caption -

The funny thing about the source music is that the intro is quite nice full compared to the over world music in the Rock Zone. That section is pretty understated but I'm working to make it a little more exciting with any luck. My plans for the lead line are to replace it with something from my Mopho or Little Phatty once I'm set on the melody. Once the under world section kicks in, there guitars will be more prevalent and somewhat darker since there will be a key change. As far as the scratching, I need to make that stand out more but I really haven't EQ'd that stuff yet. More layers will be added as time goes. Songs are like oinions...they have layers. For those that wana hear/see the Rock Zone level, here it is

http://soundcloud.com/theshaggyfreak/kc-intro So, this is going to eventually be my first video game remix. I've been reluctant to do them in the past because I never really felt like I had a handle on how I wanted to go about the process of remixing. Now that I'm feeling more comfortable with the idea, I wanted to start working on something that hasn't been covered very much in OCR which is Turbo Grafx games. I chose Keith Courage in Alpha Zones since it's one of the more popular titles. I'm doing the intro music as well as the music for the first level, Rock Zone, in both the over world and under wold sections. In the WIP so far, there's the intro and the over world music. It's still a bit sparse in areas and I'm still working on getting more variations in there but I thought I'd go ahead and let it loose in the forums. I'll post more updates as I get more work done on it. BTW, this is all done in Reason. Guitars and Bass were recording live but everything else is inside of Reason.

The Naga looks damn interesting but I'm not sure I can bring myself to pay that much for a moues. I'll definitely keep that one in mind, though. It seems like I just may settle for a fairly standard mouse.

Yeah, I've been using a wired mouse on that machine for ages. My desk is set up in such a way where the wire doesn't get in the way at all.

So, I'm getting tired of the wonky mouse that's on my audio machine. This particular computer is pretty much only used for recording and such and I'm wonderful if there's a mouse out there that'd be geared towards this specific task or if I should just get something more typical. I've been using a Microsoft mouse for so long, though. Maybe I should just stick with that? Suggestions are welcome!