Practical Applications

As I have been exploring music in this new way, my practical side wants to know what the heck I am going to do with what I am learning, other than to amuse myself and "show off" to both of the people who read this blog... er  I mean my "worldwide audience."

As you likely already know my wife likes to take pictures. She does a fabulous job with a basic digital camera. I know she could do a lot better with better equipment, but we just haven't deemed it necessary to spend $4000 on a camera for her hobby. For years, with those pictures, and others she has collected from family members and scanned, she has created slide shows for special events. So when she wanted to post a slide show she made on YouTube only to be rudely greeted by the copyright message, which she (unlike most people) did not ignore. She shelved the project as buying licenses for that potential audience was impractical given it was just some photos. We have since started a small business for her surrounding that sort of thing, and really wanted to get those photos up, but we don't have a great deal of capital for the venture, and buying music for a promotional show was not an option.

Given the nature of my new hobby I thought it would be interesting to see if I could create something suitable that she would not have to pay for. The result of that endeavor can be found here. In this case the beginning of the process pre-dated my recent trend to composing my own music, I did not compose the music for that. I did it using Mixcraft loops, as explained in my Tools: Mixcraft post. The major benefit to this is that music arranged in this manner is royalty free. Meaning I can use it anyway I want, and any original arrangement is mine regardless of the origin of the loops (provided they are also royalty free) as obstensibly, nobody has arranged things in the same way I have done it. So I have obtained the individual rights through various means to the little blocks of music (or loops: in this case everything is 8 bars or less) and arranged them in a totally unique way creating art that did not previously exist, even though the individual sounds did. Make sense? Well, I can understand if it doesn't.

Seasons is an arrangement that lasts just under 8 minutes consists of well over 100 individual elements probably a third of that are unique elements. So an interesting puzzle. One that I originally had done in a completely different order (though now I wish I had rendered it to MP3 so you could hear the difference) and remixed sunday for the final version of the slideshow. After the final mix I decided it was good enough to go without composing my own tracks for it.

Now again, this is done with a relatively inexpensive tool, one that I just purchased and figured out as I went along. The video track was created from other relatively inexpensive tools, and while we would like smoother transitions, and a smooth zoom feature, we are not real fond of the super duper transitions seen in many similar productions. This is about the photos, not an exhibition of fancy animations. The music is done simply also. I do not do anything tricky with panning or adding effects. It is a simple thing, designed to compliment another simple thing, all put together to showcase the actual content. In this case the wonderful pictures. It is an old school approach I admit.

The point of the preceding 5 paragraphs is that, this type of thing is obtainable by basically everyone. If you have a desire, there is no reason you shouldn't give it a try.

Thanks for playing along.