Recording Vocalists

And thus we return.

Tomorrow i’ll get back to posting fun and interesting bits from the webaverse but today let’s do another little update, shall we?

I’ve returned from London where i’ve recorded some wonderful singers singing 10 songs for the 2 demos. (not all songs will be used but we’ll decide which ones after i’ve mixed them. I’ll probably leave it up to a relative vote) You’ll be introduced to the singers as i premiere the songs but i’ll be mixing and editing over several days, so that will come shortly.

The sessions went smooth as silk (Always good. Trust me, not all sessions go smoothly) and the vocalists were wonderful. I should give a big shout out to the engineer Peter Malkin who made my life infinitely easier, not the least for managing Logic, a program i don’t actually use and could undoubtedly bumble through, but it would take significantly more time to figure out how to finesse. Two more shout outs to Chris Cuming and Jennifer Harding whose behind the scenes organization were also critical in there BEING any singers in the first place to record.

So now i’ve got hundreds of takes (10 songs, 4 vocalists, verses, choruses… those takes add up) although i did manage to mark down at least what i thought at the time were the best ones so it shouldn’t be too painful. I’ve promised a 2 week turnaround until i’m finished, although truthfully it should take MUCH less time. (i’m thinking more 3-4 days) Compress, de-ess (you know, where you take any strong S-es and… de-ess them) gate, add reverb and if necessary EQ although i doubt that will be an issue, and then viola. Sonic beauty.

Sadly, i want nothing more than to start tomorrow, but another project with a deadline stands in my way. However, it is simple, finishing touches on an album (The Silver Key by Ah Pook The Destroyer which i imagine i shall shamelessly plug at an appropriate moment) and so Monday morning we begin.

One would usually like to be regaled with stories of the recording sessions, but the truth is, if all goes ideally, there shouldn’t BE any stories. Like, you know, the lead singer started ODing just before we recorded the final chorus so we had to set up a mic in the ambulance and record her while rushing to the hospital to pump her stomach and inject an IV… great story but usually means the recording session did NOT go smoothly. I far prefer a nice, relaxed, smooth time, and indeed it was. (not that i don’t have some stories of past exploits, although nothing to rival anything like an ambulance recording, which, for the record, i’ve never had to do and given the siren, wouldn’t probably be a useable take anyway.)

So stay tuned for completed tracks and introductions to the singers who made them happen.

 

The Steampunk Opera Update

And so we come around to one of those magic moments where we actually comment on The Steampunk Opera itself and how its creation is proceeding.

First, to recap. The entire thing has been written and the music recorded. The 3rd Act has even been rewritten and indeed i’ll probably touch it up some more.

I am headed to London tonight (technically tomorrow morning) for a 5 Am flight (kill me) and over the course of this next week will be recording an exceptionally talented team of vocalists in order to complete 2 full demos of the project.

We are assembling a 5 song demo of selections from the show and a second demo consisting of the entire 1st Act. These can then be used for multiple purposes, but the most important one is to attract the  resources necessary to premiere the show in 2012.

Naturally, the demos, one of them at least, if not both will be available on this blog and i’ll be replacing the Music Excerpts that are currently up now.

One of the demos, maybe both, i’ll figure it out, will be made widely available and disseminated as much as possible as the most important thing that can be done at this juncture is to create interest in the project and attract parties who can help.

There will be Kickstarter campaign which will focus on raising funds for some particular aspect of The Steampunk Opera, but we’ll deal with that later. (I should have started a bloody campaign to raise finances for this recording session because London is fucking brutal)

Obviously, this will be a dead week for posts. Check back next week and i’ll have more fun shenanigans for your amusement not to mention some completed tracks to listen to.

Cheers.

(PS just to mention, words like “bloody” and “cheers” are not dotting my conversation due to enthusiasm over going to london, i actually use them in my daily conversation. When i was in my early 20s i lived in Chicago and my circle of friends were all English. I picked up both “bloody” and “cheers”, with ‘bloody’ being especially useful as you can use in place of the f-bomb and admittedly, i find swearing to be wonderfully useful as a way of colorfully expressing one’s thoughts. In any case, they long ago got cemented into my speech patterns so sod the fuck off.)

 

Old Time Cons: The Kansas City Shuffle

As part of our continuing series on old time con men, today we’re going to feature not an actual con man, but a con itself. The infamous Kansas City Shuffle.

The con has been around with that name since the beginning of the 20th century and in 1926 was immortalized by musician Bennie Moten is his song The Kansas City Shuffle which does indeed refer to the con.

So what is a Kansas City Shuffle? Well, it’s basically a con which revolves around someone being tricked by thinking that they’re being tricked. Get it?

See, that’s why it’s so brilliant. It’s a con which requires the mark knowing that he’s being conned. All con-games rely on misdirection to some degree, but normally the conman doesn’t want the mark to know there’s a con going on. In a Kansas City Shuffle, 3 requirements must be met:

1. The victim must suspect that it’s a con-game
2. The victim must think that they’ve figured out how to beat the con
3. The victim must be wrong about what the con is.

“All three elements must be present. If the victim doesn’t suspect that they’re being conned, it’s not a Kansas City Shuffle. If the victim doesn’t set themselves up for the real con by doing something to beat the con they think they’ve spotted, it’s not a Kansas City Shuffle. If the victim is right about what the real con is, it’s not a Kansas City Shuffle.”

Example? Anybody watch Lost? Okay, late season 6, Locke/The Man in Black pulls one. He explains to the surviving castaways that he wants them to leave the Island with him in a plane. The good guys however decide to double cross him and lock themselves inside Widmore’s submarine. It looks like they’ve outsmarted him…that is, until Locke/The Man in Black grins and says to his companion Claire, “You don’t want to be anywhere on that sub.” Because he snuck a bomb onboard and by attempting to outsmart him, the castways actually fell for his trap. Bomb goes off, several main characters die and the four survivors barely escape and are left to sob on a beach at night.

In a second layer to that con, The Man in Black cannot kill the castaways himself (if you haven’t sen the show don’t ask and don’t worry) so he lets them think that he conned them into locking themselves in the submarine with a bomb. They discover the bomb before the timer runs down so they figure that they can just disarm the bomb to neutralize the trap. However, ‘disarming’ the bomb actually arms it so the castaways are causing their own deaths which is the Loophole Abuse the Man In Black needed. Ironically Jack figured it out ahead of time but the experienced conman Sawyer insisted on pulling the wires on the bomb. (thanks to TV Tropes for all that. I’ve basically lifted most of this from them)

And we have a Kansas City Shuffle. The show Hustle uses it every 3 episodes. Basically, whenever the mark figures out they’re being conned, you can bet the gang WANTED them to figure it out and there is another layer of con happening. As far as film and TV goes most of this goes back to the classic movie The Sting. While the main con in The Sting is a con known as The Wire, there is also a Kansas City Shuffle in play.

The term comes from the actual location of Kansas City. You’ve all heard of Kansas City, right? Famous town. Big city. Lots of action. Home of the blues and jazz. You want to go to Kansas City, you gotta go to Kansas, right?

Wrong. Actually Kansas City is in Misssouri, right on the other side of the river from Kansas.  But wait, not just on the other side of the river from Kansas, but ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE RIVER FROM KANSAS CITY, KANSAS. Only Kansas City, Kansas is a tiny little dump of a place and NOT the great Kansas City at all. Which is in Missouri. Across the river. Hence the famous phrase “”when they look on one side of the river, you’re on the other”, but in fact you are exactly where you said you’d be, Kansas City.

I should also mention, the entire movie Lucky Number Slevin starring Bruce Willis is one giant Kansas City Shuffle. However, since you cannot google Kansas City Shuffle without pages upon pages of this movie coming up, i thought i’d avoid and talk about other examples.

One last one. I own a pub and throw a pub quiz. Teams can enter and the winning team will win a year’s supply of beer. You want to assemble a team and enter, just to beat me and take my beer, but you also think i’m a slimeball and don’t trust me. You suspect i’m rigging the quiz and so you sniff around and find the team i’m secretly backing in order to win the game myself and avoid paying out the prizes. You sabotage my winning team and win the game. I however WANTED you to win all along for my year’s supply of beer is actually non-alcoholic beer. Had one of the other legitimate teams won, they would have been outraged, but since you already hate me and i wanted to screw you over, i picked you to win, made a killing in business off the whole quiz which brought in droves of people, and got rid of a heap of worthless beer that was taking up much needed space in my cellar.

 

Light Sculptures

And free associated from Kinetic Art, yesterday’s feature, we arrive at Light Art. So today i make sweet, sweet love to your eyes with these photos. Baby. Oh yeah….

Dark Matter:

Michael Bosanko:

The Traffic Light Tree by Pierre Vivant:

Heatherwick Studio :

Paul Schimmel:

Comfort #4 by Lang & Baumann:

Michael Bosanko:

The Beanstalk, by Mike Light, David Rattray, and Wil Van Hazel:

Bruce Munro:

Creative Review:

Paul Friedlander:

Dean Chamberlaine:

Marc B.B.:

Lapp Pro.de:

 

Marque Cornblatt: Kinetic Art of the Media Sapient

“Rubin, in some way that no one quite understands, is a master, a teacher, what the Japanese call a sensei. What he’s the master of, really, is garbage, kipple, refuse, the sea of cast off goods our century floats on. Gomi no sensei. Master of junk.” -William Gibson

“Kinetic art is art that contains moving parts or depends on motion for its effect. The moving parts are generally powered by wind, a motor or the observer. Kinetic art encompasses a wide variety of overlapping techniques and styles.”

“Do not boast about the tempo of technology. The final, essential questions are not altered by technology. They remain. Even in the most modern airplane you travel forever with yourself-your mood, your misery, your world-weariness. You may be able to measure your blood-pressure more accurately than Albert Magnus did. In photographs, you may depict landscapes more precisely than Aristotle could. The ultimate questions still stand before your soul today, as they always have. Take heed that your flight does not carry you beyond that which is essential, but closer to it.”

-Carl Sonnenschein

”

“Marque Cornblatt was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1966 and now lives in San Francisco. He holds an MFA in Conceptual Arts from SFSU; has a diploma in theater technology from the Baltimore School of the Arts and a B.F.A. in film and video production from New York University.

Cornblatt’s robots, machine art and video scuptures have been exhibited at the SF MoMA, San Jose Museum of Art, Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, di Rosa Preserve, Downey Museum of Art, and at galleries throughout California and New York.

A self-described “Promosexual”, Marque has appeared on numerous TV programs and is currently producing and hosting “Gomi Style”, a DIY lifestyle and design series.”

For more of Marque Cornblatt’s work and thought you can go to his website at www.marquecornblatt.com or the Gomi Style blog.

 

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

In our perusement of culture from Weimar era Germany, in particular its ground breaking films, we finally arrive at one of the most astonishingly visionary achievements in film history, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

Directed by Robert Wein, it predates the other giants of film from the era, notably Metropolis, Nostferatu and Der Golem, who aspired to live up its creative high bar. It’s an early high water mark German Expressionism evolved from and whose unbridled creativity it would attempt to emulate.

Why is it so awesome and inspiring and still discussed 90 years later?

For one thing, it’s the first real horror movie. Oh sure, there had been a ghost story or two, but this is the one that all film critics and buffs site as the movie that created the horror genre.

And in hand with that, it also created the twist ending. A great one too, but i don’t want to over spoil it just on the off chance that someone, someday, reads this and actually watches the whole movie for the first time and enjoys it.

What however makes the early film such a masterpiece is the direction. It forwent the use of real scenery and did  not try to attempt to capture the real world. Instead it builds it’s own twisted sets, an architecture or odd angles, straight out of a demonic Dr. Seuss or Lovecraftian dream. Nothing is square or straight, the whole world of the film is…. geometrically impossible. Utterly discordant. Nightmarish.

Add to this the blackness, the shadows always hovering around everything. The strange shots and camera placements, the garrish makeup…  What astonishes is that when one remembers while viewing The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari that the entire medium of motion pictures was new, in its virtual childhood, with film technology at a caveman like level and nothing before it to draw on. All the cliches we know now were yet to be conceived much less overdone. And this is one of the most seminal films in existence that in a wild burst of utter creativity spawned the birth of what eventually evolved down to the tropes we know and love today.

Films of this era can be hard to watch in the same way we enjoy movies today. One issue for me with older films is the method of over acting that just drives me nuts and hampers my ability to suspend disbelief and lose myself in the film’s world. But there is an art to experiencing such things. Trying to imagine seeing a medium in it’s infancy, everything untried an untested, with an alternate reality set of rules for telling it’s story. If you simply had a 16mm camera, could you come up with this crazy shit? What would it be like trying to?

Oh yeah, what’s the damned thing about? From Imdb: “Francis, a young man, recalls in his memory the horrible experiences he and his fiancée Jane recently went through. It is the annual fair in Holstenwall. Francis and his friend Alan visit The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, an exhibit where the mysterious doctor shows the somnambulist Cesare, and awakens him for some moments from his death-like sleep. When Alan asks Cesare about his future, Cesare answers that he will die before dawn. The next morning Alan is found dead. Francis suspects Cesare of being the murderer, and starts spying on him and Dr. Caligari.”

Naturally, i leave you with the whole movie on YouTube.

 

Max Raabe: Wiemar Era Crooner Of Today

Max Raabe is a modern day crooner, who sings 20s era songs and stylings (with some modern day songs reworked into a 20s sound). His voice and mannerisms are… perfect. They are exactly what you hear in those old records only with actual, you know, GOOD sound.

Mr. Raabe is German, and studied at the Berlin University of the Arts where he and 11 other students formed the Palast Orchester in 1985. The ensemble initially used music arrangements that Raabe found whilst shopping at various flea markets. The orchestra worked for one year on learning these arrangements without any public engagements or performances. The orchestra gave its first public performance at the 1987 Berlin Theaterball, in the lobby as a secondary act, but with such success that the audience left the ballroom to hear the orchestra’s performance in the lobby.

Isn’t that just wonderful? I know what you’re thinking. You’re saying “Wow, Paul, that is really, really nice. These tunes are making my day. but you know the only thing that’s missing? I just… i would really love it if he just so happened to have done a version of Britney Spear’s ‘Whoops I Did It Again’. Now THAT would just make your post here complete. Ah, if only…”

Oh, never fear, little voice who lives in my head and yells at me in my quiet moments. Here you go, your day complete:

 

Terry Gilliam: 1884

SOooooooo, Terry Gilliam is doing a steampunk animated movie called 1884: Yesterday’s Future. I’m not sure why nobody told me because Terry Gilliam is an anagram in ancient sanskrit for “fucking awesome”.

The man truly behind the movie is digital animation specialist Tim Ollive and Gilliam will co-produce.The film takes place in 1884, even though it’s supposed to have been made in 1848, in a sly reference to George Orwell’s 1984, written in 1948.

The film is currently in preproduction, but an animated test trailer has been released:

 

Ahnectha

Wtf is this? I don’t know. It’s kind of steampunky. It’s art filmly. It’s slow and meditative and strangely creepy. It’s also kind of awesome.

Undoubtedly, all will cease after the deep silence.
Only will remain thy daughters, through the internal voices within them. We will drown those voices, and in the absence abruptly we will remind them theirs. And then, they will cease along.

.

 

Atompunk Architecture In The Workers’ Paradise

As part of our little affair with atompunk era architecture (for those just joining us, atompunk refers to the period of the 1950s to the 1970s. Not simply that era, but that era’s vision of the future is what is Atompunk) it would be remiss of us not explore the vision of the future as conceived by the Eastern Bloc.