So these two pianists wrote and arranged 3 pieces based on the themes and music from Star Wars. I’m linking the first of the three. I believe they either currently attend Juliard, or recently went there. Anyway, this one is really great, based mostly on the cantina music from Episode IV. I love hearing how they weave in the different themes. Man, and they’re so good at piano too, let’s not forget that. And they play so well together! Man!
I’ve counted at least 5 different themes woven in there, and that’s just my casual-fan Star Wars ear talkin’. My favorite? Around 2:51, remember that one? Good times! How many can you catch?
Back in the summer I wrote a few instrumental pieces / snippets and this was one of them. I had originally envisioned it being a throwback RPG fight song, except with real / rock instruments. I ended up opting for that synth trumpet sound for the lead because it sounded retro like from back in the old Final Fantasy games.
Listening to it on its own was fine and dandy, but I decided I should try to sync it to some RPG fight video to see if it holds up. I think it’s a little weird without the sound effects though… if anyone has some RPG fight scenes with only sound FX and no music, I’ll try this again. It kinda works with this FF VII fight scene. I had to edit down the fight scene so it matched the length of the song, but technically the song could be looped as many times as needed… or I could write a C section to it.
Then when Jabarie heard the song he said it sounded more like the intro to an anime, so I decided to try that out too. I wanted to do my favorite anime, Mai Hime, but the intro was too cutesy and not action-y enough for the music. So I went with this Code Geass intro. It syncs up surprisingly well. I had to cut out some parts of it to make it fit the length of the song, and I letterboxed it to cut out the translation of the original theme music, ’cause it was a little distracting.
Part of me still wants to hear this song with the lead synth trumpet line as a lead guitar solo. Anyway, leave a comment, let me know what you think!
I noticed on TV now that the movie previews have text in the letterboxing. From a marketing standpoint I guess it makes sense. Why have empty space on the screen when you can fill it up with the information you want the viewers to absorb. But I just find it distracting and kinda like… I dunno, amateurish looking? I took a screen shot with my phone, not so good, but I’m sure you know what i’m talking about.
I think they’re really just advertising how good Asian people are with technology.
So I realized that I’m actually never home / have free time while it’s still light outside. So while I had a couple of hours this president’s day, Harry and I trouped out to the backyard so I could play around w/ my Jag lens adapter a little more.
I do have this little spot on the screen I have to clean up… but that’s irrelevant to the rest of this post.
I’m getting better at aiming and shooting with the adapter in place, although it’s still tough! Even harder is holding the camera still, especially while throwing harry’s ball. I would pick up the ball, stick it between my legs, focus on harry, then throw the ball and quickly try to follow the focus as he ran across the yard.
You’ll notice some vignetting on certain shots, and then some hotspots on some other shots. I played around a bit with different lens apertures. The camera compensated for light loss with the aperture, so I locked the camera exposure.
I also realized how difficult it was to try to keep things in focus in bright daylight because I could hardly see the LCD screen. That was kinda too bad.
But all in all, I had fun, daylight looks pretty good through these lenses, and I think Harry had a good time too.
Music: Earth & Venus - Andy Davis.
So I was looking through my hard disk trying to find the original Wave files for the Holiday Hipsters songs so I could upload them to iTunes, and then I found all this footage we took way back in Feb of 2007.
I was going through the clips and thought there were several amusing clips, so I was like: “I’ll just clip these together and upload them to youtube!” But then it was too long, so I started editing it down. And then spent way too much time on it. But hey, it was fun. It actually kinda accurately reflects how we write a hipsters song. I sit at the computer working while Martin makes annoying sounds. Haha.
Good times.