Next Year

So, I've heard talk of the school district is attempting to synchronize the schedules of all the schools. Anyone have any idea on what it'll be? I don't really understand why they're doing it in the first place; we don't have any problems with it now. You know what they say: "All toasters toast toast." Oh, wait, wrong quote. I meant to say "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." There we go. Much better.

Backpacks

We should start taking bets: how long until students rise up in petition against the new backpack policy? I, for one, will refuse to bring any books to school that I have on my laptop -- If I've been given the resource, why not use it? The only other things I have in my backpack are a few folders and a notebook, all of which will conveniently fit in my laptop case. So even with the new policy, I STILL won't be using my locker. That is, unless the school wants to up the amount of time between classes, otherwise, if I MUST use my locker, I'll just have to be late to all my classes repeatedly.

Christmas Time?

Just getting back from Thanksgiving break, and I'm already sick of school. I'm ready to leave school again. Luckily for me, Christmas Break is coming up soon! Hooray!

So, speaking of school, my grades seem to be kinda iffy. My grades are fine on homework assignments, but I always do poorly on tests. It's not because I can't test, because I've always done well on tests until this year. I don't know, it's just sort of annoying.

New Game

So, Coalition is almost done with its first project, and we're already planning on our next. I won't tell you any details (not that you're desperate to know), because I don't want the idea floating around in public.

Also a demo for Facade should (and I mean should) be up soon. I hope. Maybe. Depends on whether or not we can get out crew straightened up.

Anyway I'm out of stuff to say for this post. So, I think I'll leave it at that. Uh... Right. That's it. Stop reading. Really.




Seriously, stop it.




This message will self-destruct if you don't stop.





Boom.

For those of you who actually read these:

Boo.

It's Halloween, meaning a bunch of dead guys are gonna congregate in your backyard and have ghostly bonfires and tell stories about how their graves are haunted by living people.

Also, the ghost in my house is surprisingly quiet tonight. Maybe he's worn out from the long week; I know I sure am. Sadly, school isn't even half over, and I'm already ready to be done with it. It seems like 3/4 of the things we do don't serve any real purpose other than to simply give us work to do.

Plus, the whole "this will prepare you for college" thing. Teachers never have an answer for "What if I'm not going to college?" If one doesn't plan to, then half of the school's purpose is gone.

Off topic much? Anyway, I'm off to say hey to my resident dead guys. They're normally full of cool stuff to listen to. And who says dead men tell no tales?

I'm a bit curious

Who actually listens to and enjoys the radio nowadays? As you know, I'm a rock 'n roll fan, but anytime I tune into a rock station, all I hear is Nickelback and bands who try and sound like them. Maybe it's a bit too much to ask for a little variety. Instead, I find myself forced to listen to a CD or to nothing at all.

Just a little rant on my part. Anyone else have an opinion?

Orchestra

Kinda funny thing is: I play the viola (yes, it's different than a violin) in AHS' orchestra. The catch is, that I can't read Alto clef, in which viola music is written. Plus, the first music we get at the beginning of the year is material that others in the orchestra had trouble with. Much less me, who is on a completely new instrument.

On a completely unrelated note: anyone else think the guy on the poster by Mrs. Matthew's door looks like Rob Zombie?

Speaking of Halloween

My house is haunted. Well, it's more like this dude's grave was haunted by us. When we dug our basement, we ran into a little... obstacle. There's a coffin outside my basement walls right now. A coffin: you know, with a body in it?

Anyway, every night (and occasionally day) you can hear the ghost going about his business. And by business I mean walking around upstairs, and occasionally climbing and descending the staircase.

No joke: ask anyone that's been to my house at night. It's a bit creepy. At least he doesn't mess with anything.

Drums...

OK, so on the topic of good drummers:

Rock drummers: They play one rhythm. And that same rhythm all the time. Not usually too talented (there are exceptions, of course).

Rap drummers: What drummers? Synth drums are the name of the game. No talent at all, because there's no one playing.

Hiphop drummers: See "Rap drummers"

Thrash metal drummers: Only a few beats happening here. HOWEVER, these beats happen extremely fast and extremely consistent. Takes a considerable bit of talent to keep that up for 6+ minutes.

Tool and Dream Theater: Uhhhh... What are they doing exactly?

Rush: Talent? Sure, let's see you play a 360-degree, 52-piece drum kit.

Jazz drummers: These guys...just, wow. Jazz drummers are by far the best in the world. Unique beats in EVERY song; drums are actually played with feeling; the beats are ridiculously intricate. Seriously: go take a listen. King Crimson is a good example.

Fighting Game Rant

First off, I know next to none of you (and by you I mean the only two that read my blog) will understand what I'll talking about, but I need to rant about this.

There's a fighting game I play -- BlazBlue. After only a few short months of the game's release, they're releasing a sequel. I was pretty excited about it, as all the characters from the original are present, plus some.

My favorite character, upon closer inspection of the new game (get it? Nu game? hahaha...again, only a few will understand that), is ruined. Almost all of her moves no longer combo, her damage is nerfed, and they gave her an awful color palette.

My second favorite character, however, is actually better. So overall, I can't tell if I'm going to like this game or not. Oh, well: It's still a few months before it comes out.

I'm not very good at this.

Anyone else think blogging is hard? I can never come up with anything to write about that won't end in three sentences. But, that's just the way I am: to the point. That makes this very difficult for me.

The thing is, I find it really unnecessary to type 3+ paragraphs. If I ever do, I feel like I'm rambling. Plus, I sorta feel like I'm being forced to come up with an idea to blog with, which isn't all false, we do have a deadline.

Anyway, I hope I'll be able to come up with enough stuff to meet the 10 blog deadline...

Words! I Need Words!!!

Ok, so recently I went out and bought Scribblenauts -- A puzzle game for the DS where you have to solve puzzles by spawning just about anything you can think of! For example: One puzzle tells you to catch a butterfly. You can take the obvious way, and spawn a butterfly net, but I chose a different way. I decided to spawn an anchor and drag the butterfly into grabbing distance.

So I need some ideas on stuff to spawn. The word has to follow certain rules, though. It can't be:

an intangible object
a place
a proper name of a person
vulgarity
suggestive material


Let's here some ideas!

Ideas, anyone?

So lets see here: I've already written several songs for our game (the most recent one I just uploaded), and I'm starting to run out of ideas for songs. So, I'm curious of what you guys can come up with. Think of a video game, and then picture what kind of environments you would encounter. THEN, think about what music would accompany that.

I already have:
Desert
Factory
City
Pyramid
Dungeon
Cave
Snowy place
Classical place
Flying Fortress
Ship
Town
Field

Don't let that discourage you from suggesting something already here, just specify what aspects the song should have.

Song Lyrics

Let's play a little game... I'll post a line to a song, and let's see if you can finish it. Don't worry, I won't do songs no one's ever heard of, but I won't promise that they'll be popular.

1. "I'll bet there's a fortune waiting to be had.
If you think I'll let it go you're mad, ___ ___ ___ ___ ___."

2. "Exit, Light; Enter, Night.
Take my hand, ___ ___ ___ ___-___ ___!"

3. "I feel so alone,
Gonna end up a big 'ol pile of ___ ___."

4. "We feel the pain of a lifetime lost in a thousand days,
___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___, we carry on."

5. "What you say about his company
is what you say about ___."

Musical Practices

I've been thinking about the way my musical mind works. I kind of feel the need to list some of my practices. I'd like to know if anyone else is like this, or if I'm just weird like that.

1. I can't even count the number of instruments I play.

2. I can get better at playing a piece by simply staring at the page.

3. I can learn music by both ear and by sheet music.

4. When playing a song, I don't even pay attention to what the note is. Heck, half the time I won't even be able to tell you what note it is. I just sort of know how to play it.

5. When listening to music, I listen to bass notes first, chord progressions second, melody third, and vocals last.

6. I don't like tone-deaf singers (don't laugh, I know people who like them).


Also, I posted a new song (as usual). I also re-ordered the music player to show the most recent songs at the top of the list. Enjoy.

Kind of Embarrassing

So, you guys know me, I like Guitar Hero. I pre-ordered Guitar Hero 5 and picked it up the other day. After blazing through the career on the guitar, I switched to drums. Now for those of you who DON'T know who Rush is, go look them up. Neil Peart, Rush's drummer, is quite possibly the best in the world. Needless to say, Rush songs on Guitar Hero are...difficult.

To put this in scope, an average drum set has 8-9 pieces. Neil Peart's drum set... has 52. It literally circles him completely. He has to use a set of risers to get in, and, honestly, I'm not sure how he gets out.

Anyway, making a Guitar Hero note chart (which is 5 buttons) out of a 52 piece drum performance is going to yield some crazy results. Here's the embarrassing part -- I passed Spirit of Radio (the Rush song) with no problem, HOWEVER, the song I played after that was Ring of Fire, by Johnny Cash. And... I failed... bad.

Oh, and just to make fun of Nick: New song, go listen.

Orchestral Mood

I'm in an orchestral mood. I have been for quite some time now. It was also brought to my attention that I haven't made a desert song for our game, so I put two and two together and wrote an orchestral desert piece. Give it a listen, and I hope you enjoy it.

Anyway, I'm not really sure what to write about past that. I know it gets pretty unoriginal after three posts about the same thing...

Helllllllllllooooooo?

First point I want to make: Is anyone even reading this? Ehh...

Still, as said in my previous entries, I posted my music here to get some feedback. If you listen to any of the songs, please post what you think is good/bad about it.

Personally, I think there needs to be a better system of finding each other, like a group to join or something. That way EVERYONE in the class will be following EVERYONE else. So much for convenient...

Anyway, I've written a rough draft of the story for our game, and a few new tracks (which are in the music player). We're still a little behind schedule, but I'm sure we'll get it done soon (at least, if our art department gets a move on with their work).

My Music

I've written some new material for our game. I'll add it and the previously posted song in a new player in this post. If you have criticism for any of my songs (which is very much welcome, by the way), I'd appreciate it if you tell me which song you're talking about somewhere in the post(the song names are in the player). You may have to give the music player about 10-20 seconds to load completely. Try clicking the play/pause button, it seems to go faster that way. Also, if a song stops in the middle, pause and give it a second to load a little more. Enjoy.

Opinions, please.

Like I said, I'm going to post one of my compositions for our game. Listen to it if you'd like, and if you do, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know what you think. Criticism is welcome, as long as it's constructive.

Composer's Block

Well, it seems I have composer's block. To catch people up, I am one of the lead designers and the entire music department at Coalition Studios. That's a game development studio for those who are... uninformed. Right now I have written about 20 pieces for our upcoming game, Facade. After the 9 tracks last week, I've hit a dead end. Well, that's about all I need to rant about. I may end up posting some of my music if Blogger supports it... I'd like to get some other opinions on the tracks.