I’ve Been Promoted
Soon after my most recent post, I got promoted to the Audio Embedded Tester! This is a huge deal for me. I went from being one out of an army of QA people to being the only Audio QA person! I’ve been working hard this past month, hence why there haven’t been any posts. Just to emphasize, I could have been promoted to numerous positions, but I landed in the position best suited for my aspirations.
P.S. Mountain King is now content complete, and I am in the beginning stages of mixing the album. I hope to have the album finished being mixed and mastered by sometime in August. I plan to give it a lot of attention, so I don’t have so many things I wish I could change later, like most albums.
Update #2: Mountain King
Besides work, these past 3 months I’ve been working on my upcoming album Mountain King. I know the 5 songs that will be on the album, and hope to have recording, mixing and mastering all done by July. This album will definitely flow together better than my albums of the past. Volthair was kind enough to make the album art:
Update: What’s been going on the past 3 months
So, I kind of took a break from updating this thing 3 months ago. That’s because I got a job at BioWare! I’m working on Star Wars: The Old Republic as a quality assurance tester. It’s a huge deal for me! I get to chat up all the audio people at work whenever I want, and get tips on how to get a job in audio.
An Update
We’ve done 3 performances of the play now. The first was terrible, but after that, we’ve gotten a lot better. Last performance was almost flawless in the sound department, which is saying a lot with how many technical difficulties I have to deal with.
We’ve got one more performance this Thursday, and then the play is done for good! Then I’ll need to be focusing on the video game soundtrack.
In the meantime, here’s a picture of kitties!!
Case 146
The play I’m sound teching for is premiering tomorrow night at the Blue Theater in Austin!
My first Video Game Soundtrack!
I’ve found another project to work on. I will be working on the soundtrack for a local paper-craft video game! I’m really excited! The first level will be underwater, and everyone knows the underwater stages of games have the best music. (Think Donkey Kong Country)
A New Year, and Reformed Goals
This is the future right? When I was little, 2011 seemed so far away, but I guess we can only conceive things we’ve already perceived in some way.
I need to stay on track, so it’s time to state my goals for the near future.
1. I eventually want to start a video game production company with Kathy Tran, and my brother Caleb Weir. Kathy could do the animations and some script writing. I would like to do script writing and soundtracks. And my brother wants to do soundtracks, and possibly some programming. This goal is a long term goal. Right now we all need to build our skills up, so I have to come up with ways to reach this goal.
2. I want to release my album Mountain King as a Waffles.fm exclusive this winter, or spring. Sometimes it’s hard for me to stay on track recording an album, because I can’t get something to sound exactly the way I want it to. So I go for long periods working on other things. I don’t want that to happen this time. And if the album is a Waffles.fm exclusive, I should be able to net around 1000 downloads in the first week, before I release it to the rest of the public.
3. I want to revolutionize my live show, and start playing shows a lot more. I used to play about a show every week when I lived in St. Louis, but it’s hard to get the right connections in Austin to play that many shows. I would be happy playing a show every month. My shows used to have a lot more impact than they do now too. That’s because I used to sing a lot more in my songs, and my voice is good for grabbing the listeners attention. Now that most of my music is instrumental, I need to find a way to present it in a way that grabs the listener’s attention. I’ll come up with something…I’m sure of it.
4. I need to come up with a cohesive soundtrack for the animation I am working on. This is a more practical do-it-right-now goal. I can come up with a cohesive work, but I always need to remember that it’s my goal. I have a melody that I like hammered out. Now I just need to come up with a few variations on it, and instrument variations.
I’m getting some exposure!
On Wednesday I decided to upload all of my albums to Waffles.fm. For those of you that don’t know about Waffles, it’s a private torrent community, by invite only. I was surprised to find that my albums took off! I basically doubled my entire distribution in one day, with 80 downloads. I was second most downloaded on the site! This has really pushed my to move forward with recording my next album Mountain King.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor is back
I never thought I’d see the day, but one of my favorite bands Godspeed You! Black Emperor is back touring again after a 7 year hiatus. They aren’t coming to Austin on this tour, but they will be playing 3 days in Chicago, and I plan to make it to one, or maybe all.
For those of you that don’t know, Godspeed reshaped a genre so completely. The members all went on to do big things in the Montreal music scene too.
Listen to one of Godspeed’s sets from their current tour here!
I’ve LANDed
My solo project, Malachi Constant, got covered by LAND MAGAZINE today!
http://www.comeintoland.com/2010/12/malachi-constant/
