Creativity

Top 10 Space Opera Flaws

Alan — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:19:04 +0000

The vast majority of Space Operas have the same flaws. A moment's reflection and they seem obvious.

1. Lightyear is a measurement of distance, not time.

Although it could be considered colloquial hyperbole nowadays, like saying some car is lightyears ahead of another in its technology, would it still be colloquial in the same sense when there is a more basic need to space-faring humans for measuring distance in terms of lightyears?

2. Advanced technology is out of context

You can see some technologies that are lightyears ahead - see 1 above ;-) - of where we are nowadays (FTL drives), but others are barely a decade away (e.g. tv screens as part of a wall, upgraded electrical sockets, fluorescent strip lights). I'm surprised I don't see a normal 13A socket or whatever the US equivalent is for the North American series/Hollywood movies. At least the characters aren't dialling 555 in scifi movies when they need to speak to someone.

3. Historical context suits the plot, not reality

A character will introduce 20th Century music as rock'n'roll in one episode suggesting to the viewers that it's rare and largely unheard of in that century. Other characters in the same society talk about Hitler, Stalin or the politics of American Indians without explaining them to each other, suggesting to the viewer that knowledge of these historical people and their respective histories is common in that century. I find it difficult to understand a world that can remember one part but forget the other. Saying that if I think back through the histories of the 1600s, I can probably remember more about the historical events than I can the music. But the knowledge of the music isn't lost, few of us would be shocked to hear that Bach or Handel existed even if we can't name the music.

So which part of history has been forgotten or which part is taught less in the schools?

What made it even worse was that the series is set only a century away so how could they have forgotten rock'n'roll so quickly?

The saving grace for that series is that it's not alone in this using this warped concept. There are numerous other examples.

4. Time distorts

The time that it takes characters to travel from one place to another changes to suit the episode end or the length of a movie. A whole fight sequence can take 20 minutes of movie time, but only take 2 minutes of character time. It may take another set of characters two hours to get to their objective. But they arrive at the same time. How's that?

Watch the time it takes characters to travel between planets. That really does get distorted even after taking into account the time stated in the plots. This becomes worse in the scenarios where direct planet-to-planet travel isn't possible between solar systems and instead the ships have to pass at FTL speeds through gateways further out in the systems, then travel at slower-than-light speeds in the system.

Some of this could be put down to lack of continuity when reading through scripts, sometimes down to laziness but mainly I think it's so that the story fits better.

5. Non-caucasian Warrior

This is a delicate one to talk about. I guess the issue is down to stereo-typing at the casting stage and I can only applaud series like the reimagined Battlestar Galactica for bucking the trend somewhat, but unfortunately not far enough. That's a guess, it could well be that the author/scriptwriter wrote the character descriptions stating race.

There are two angles on this that bug me:

a) If the Earth is to have united under a single Government, wouldn't the race ratio for the people that were starbound be different to what we see on TV? Perhaps more Chinese, more Indian, to pick two obvious origins, than the typical western caucasian that we do see on our screens. I'd like to watch some non-Western and non-Japanese Space Operas to see if the same or reverse ratios apply.

b) Assuming we have to accommodate the lack of non-caucasian actors for some reason (why? I can guess it's down to the networks and production houses rather than the writers), then why do the non-caucasian male actors have the same roles across the different series? The male non-caucasian actor tends to be a warrior; think Lt Worf or Tyr Anasazi. To some extent even the character Ronon from Stargate: Atlantis. I admit it's not always the case, but the percentages do seem to bear it out.

6. Computer Displays

No imagination. Even the display sequence at the start of the Minority Report gives some insight into how the line between display and interface could be used in the relatively near future compared to the scale used in Space Operas. Even now, we're able to see some of that technology, witness Jeff Han's demonstration and the touch interfaces becoming more prevalent.

I can understand how displays were block graphics back in 60s tv series. The world of computers was new and the rate of advancement in the field wasn't as visible to the average member of the public (or at least to screenwriters and fx designers). However now that we've had 4 or 5 decades of living with computers, we should have a better idea of where the technologies are going. It seems wrong for a Space Opera to have more backward technology than we can find in current research papers.

I've been trying to avoid picking on any one movie or series so far, but in this case I'm going to break that rule. I have no idea why the screens flicker during the identity checks in Gattaca. Either the signal's there or it isn't. Flickering implies that the signal is only partially being received and is an analogue signal in the first place. Is the technology that bad in the future that displays flicker?

7. Childish/Idiotic Characters

Why bother? I think anything by Gene Roddenberry suffered from this, but he's not alone. Trance-Gemini in Andromeda annoyed me a lot and almost made me stop watching it. I'm glad the character was changed after the first series making for a more relaxed viewing experience.

Think of the outcry against Jar-Jar Binks. There are other examples (Dagobot) where the main cast is human and then there are one or two aliens or robots that would be more apt on childrens tv than in a serious Space Opera.

I think the scriptwriters in Farscape managed to avoid this flaw most of the time, ensuring that the alien characters were a full part of the plot with their own character development, despite having a few monomaniacal traits.

8. Infodumps/Expositions

Seems to be a major flaw in sci-fi writing in general of which very few authors, if any at all, have escaped it completely. The better authors manage to weave it into dialogue, the worst authors deftly weave it into dialogue with the agility of a wrecking ball against a concrete dam.

It is a challenge to do do properly and probably a bigger challenge for sci-fi than most. That means the writers have to step up their game. Some present a short intro, show someone reading a story, animate the pages of a book or show some history. All are forms of getting a lot of information about the world in which the series is set. I'd prefer to have a narrator (whether in type or spoken) than have bad infodumps in speech. It's why I'll always give a series a few episodes. In the first couple, the scriptwriters are trying to set the scene and just because they're no good at that, doesn't mean that the rest of the series will be bad although it does make me cringe. That does make it more awkward for feature-length films where you have to figure out how much time to spend informing the audience of the world.

So far there are a few series that I just haven't got past that stage despite there having been several seasons on release. I would've missed out on the better plots of Andromeda if I'd left after the first few episodes (those were very bad, but not because of infodumps).

9. Dirt

Why is Earth called Dirt? One Space Opera (or indeed any sci-fi tale) using the word Dirt is fine, but for other authors to use it is just plain non-originality. I'd say it's plagiarism, theft and/or copying, but it's so prevalent that would be difficult to prove. Sadly, it's become a trope. If future humans were going to forget the word, but still have enough knowledge of what the other senses of the name meant, then why isn't it called Soil, Peat, Ground or, my favourite, Humus. No, not Houmous (ah, the original planet of houmans, consisting of an oily garlic mush), but Humus.

We even have different senses for the word Earth, it can also be in an electrical context. Again, Ground could come in useful.

The use of Dirt is especially abundant in any of the series where the origin of mankind has been lost.

Beyond the multiple senses of the word Earth, isn't it more likely that the planetary government will have changed the name. How many countries now can keep a name for more than a few centuries without changing it? Add in a few annexations, formations of federations and falling empires, then there is a lot of potential for the name to change.

And what happened to Gaia?

10. Not enough thought to the culture and society

The great science fiction writers were (and are) great for a reason. When they created a world, they thought it through, specifically they thought through the implications of the technology on the society. The also thought through how society handled itself. For instance, in a cashless society, how does money-laundering occur? What are the benefits of stealing something if you can't sell it for cash?

Why?

For the side-project I'm setting up, I want to avoid a lot of the cliches and mistakes. Can't avoid them all or it may be a boring waste of time to watch, but I'd at least like to get some concepts straighter than they are in a lot of series. Some of these are tropes, some aren't (yet). I was part way through writing this and a few other articles when I came across tvtropes.org. A lot of work already exists there, all amateur (no offence) but very interesting.

Mind Map of Collaboration

Alan — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:17:07 +0000

I posted a long article broken into 4 parts providing 43 reasons for collaboration in musical activities. Perhaps more interesting is how I ended up with the finished article.

Background

I write my articles in Ecto. It's good for what I want to do with it, helping me write the words of the articles, but it's not much use as a tool for creating articles. What's missing is anything that helps organising thoughts. Fortunately, most new Macs come with a version of OmniOutliner which is a good tool for the job. You could also use the slide feature of MS Powerpoint or OpenOffice/NeoOffice.

This was at a point when I was quickly using up my ideas for articles and had to generate some new ideas before I ran out. I try to keep at least 5 articles ahead of what I'm posting, all in various stages of completion.

At times like these, I revert to mind-mapping and usually with a piece of paper, although a few software tools do come close. There's something better about pen and paper that works well for me.

Creativity

I didn't have my laptop with me, but I did have a small pad I carry most places. It's A5 spiral bound, so half the size of an A4. That made for a challenge for doing mindmaps. I started with what I wanted to focus on in the middle, so I wrote the word "Creativity" and drew a circle around it. Using that as a hub, I wrote out some other words on the spokes and then used them as hubs to generate more ideas or more detail. One of the words was collaboration. That became it's own mindmap. So I started again with Collaboration at the centre. The rest is what you see on the scanned image that's attached below.

Logical

I find mind-maps to be great tools. I like how concepts relate to other concepts. They suit my organised mind as I can see all the relationships at a quick glance. My mind-maps tend to have an inherent logical structure, possibly because I've got a good grounding in logical data model from database design. Mind-maps can have a similar inherent logical structure, but are often visually messier since they're a good way of capturing thoughts as they occur.

Workshops

I've found mindmaps to be highly effective in capturing what a group of people are thinking. Write the central concept down and ask for thoughts. You may need a parking area to capture non-related ideas. The trick is to understand whether the item is truly non-related, it may just need another hub to connect it properly. Take a hub and explore each of the spokes in turn, capture other ideas as they arise. Then make each of the spokes into a hub and explore them.

Further Reading

For a good introduction to mind maps, try the books by Tony Buzan.

Opensource Software

Unfortunately, I've never found a complete open source application for mind-maps. Some of them are useful, but my impression is always that it's better to use paper or flipchart first, then just a diagramming tool afterwards. Alternatively, look at commercial software.

FreeMind - best standard "free" software for mind-mapping, still a bit word- and phrase-based for me. Not quite visual enough

NeoOffice - was the port of OpenOffice to native OS X - has a presentation and diagramming tool

OpenOffice - several platforms, now native beta for OS X

Landscape or Portrait?

The general recommendation is to turn the pad so that the pad is in landscape as opposed to the traditional portrait. It's a good idea, but I've always had issues with writing across lines the wrong way. Just not neat enough! It's a case of blank paper would be better than lined paper.

Have you improved your composing skills? - Musical Creativity 33

Alan — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 21:42:31 +0000

If you're stuck with a composition now, listen back to some of your earliest recordings.

Background
I've been composing for over 15 years now. I've been improving every year. I know that I am because I've recently come across some of my old recordings from the late-80s and I've improved since then. Yet oddly enough, in some ways I prefer them.

I've improved in many areas, yet there's an attractive rawness in the old recordings.

Clarity
The ideas that I want to convey nowadays are clearer. My mixing and mastering is better, recognisably so. Earlier recordings sounded muddy. It doesn't help either that the really early recordings were recorded with an old Tandy/Radioshack DJ mixing desk onto a home cassette recorder - hey, we all have to start somewhere. These were from a time when I was still at school doing DIY recording at home, nothing professional. That said, the quality is sufficient to pick out the notes played, so I could now re-record them if I wanted to. At that point, I hadn't heard of compression or mastering. I was one of those people always confused why my music always sounded quiet compared to commercial recordings.

Performance
There are some styles that I play better now. Oddly enough, I listen to the old recordings and I can hear phrases that I don't think I'd be able to generate today. Given time, I'm sure I could play them again, although I may need a lot of practice. I suppose it's because at that time, I was at the height of my classical guitar phase including all the technical ability and knowledge of theory that came with that. That's now waned and I only really pick up the classical guitar to record a part I think would sound better that way.

Variation
There wasn't much variation in my old music. There were two types - those with guitars and those without. As for those without, they featured several synthesizers, usually one pad, one arpeggio, one lead, plus a casio RZ-1 drum machine with only three levels of dynamics; normal, muted and accented! I still sometimes use 3 synth parts but I'm more likely to mix in real instruments a lot more, or at least believable samples of instruments.

For the pieces involving guitar, I hadn't quite learned how to envisage how I wanted the work to sound. So what you hear is a sequenced phrase, looping over and over for 5 minutes, while I played melodies (or sometimes just soloed) over the top. There wasn't much to it really, and what there is wasn't worth recording

Melody and Harmony
I liked the white notes back then. I wasn't that good a keyboard player (I'm still not that good by professional standards) and couldn't think fast enough to be able to play much on the black notes. Now I'm a lot more used to it, but I still think a lot like a guitarist in that I'm more used to sharps in the key signature or at most a couple of flats. I used other keys, but usually only after writing something then finding it would sound better once transposed.

As for harmony, my concept then was a very pure and simplistic idea of harmony. I could only really write in octaves, 3rds, 4ths and 5ths. Anything else could just about be used as a passing note, but not as a principal note in the harmony. It's amazing how much you can do within those constraints. There's still enough variation to play with. However, add more complicated harmonies as I can now, and music seems more natural.

Progressions
I think this stems from having a preference for white notes again. By not introducing incidentals into the music, I was limiting the chords I could use and so I was limiting the chord progressions available to me.

Rhythm
That RZ-1 was both boon and bane. It was a glorified metronome. I could write drum tracks for songs, combining parts into patches. But the 3 levels of sensitivity made it severely restricted. It was better than nothing for making sounds, but having nothing may have better, by way of forcing to me to have been more creative.

Different Instruments
Back then, if I wanted an orchestral sound, I had to use a FM synth patch for strings, another for brass and so on. With only 2 synths and sometimes able to borrow another two, I didn't have much scope. It changed when I bought a used Roland D110. It's a multi-timbral sound module triggered by midi. I learnt how to sequence more tracks using different patches. It was a revelation for me. Even at that point, my compositions improved.

Move forward a decade or so and Logic Pro with sample banks has helped no end. Now an orchestra can have a violin section, a cello section and so on, or better still separate violins. If you can then pan and mix their levels, it makes for much more variation and realism. Along the way, I've also learnt how to play the bass, drums, different styles of guitars. These give me more flexibility in transferring the sounds in my head into a finished product.

Was the time spent listening to my old compositions wasted?
No, far from it. Here's are some of the gains I found:

I learned how much I'd progressed. That's really good for morale. Really good.
I found one gem of a track that I'd forgotten about. Enough that I want to re-record to the professional quality that I can now.
I found a few other tracks that have potential and may be massaged into something more useful.
I'm now aware of some habits that I don't want to fall back into.
I'm more aware of where I want to focus my composition energies in the future.
I regained up a few musical concepts that I'd forgotten about and I'll bring them into future projects.

Something to think about
So review your old music and ask yourself the following questions:

Where was it compared to where you are now?
Which qualities do you miss?
Did you use different instruments?
What have you learned since then?
Is the last composition you created different to one written years ago?
What can you bring back from those to add to your current compositions?

Look Forward
Whatever answers you come up with, looking forward is more important than looking back to the past. So it's time to plan to fill any gaps that have developed over time. You may decide that some of the gaps aren't worth filling in, after all we all move on to different stages throughout our life. I found it a good way to understand where I wanted to go from here.

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

Find your common themes - Musical Creativity 34

Alan — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:07:46 +0000

Aim
Listen critically to your compositions and spot the similarities. By identifying what you commonly do, you can start to change and improve your range.

My experience
I did this a couple of months ago and I found a lot of my compositions started with same two chord sequence but often using different keys. These were compositions that I'd approached by playing randomly on guitar, not by a more thought-out and planned approach. If I liked the sound, then I'd move to the next chord and so on.

Oddly enough, I don't write the same sequence if I'm planning a composition.

The pattern
What I'd noticed is that the verse started with i-VI (e.g. from D minor to Bb major). I've treated the starting point as the minor chord in a minor key due to the mood of the rest of the music, all moody, rather than thinking of it in F major.

It was only by realising this pattern that I managed to overcome it. It had been hidden from me for a while due to starting in different keys and with different rhythms and styles. After all, it's not immediately obvious that a rock track Dm-Bb is the based on the same foundation as a funky groove in Am-F but just in a different key. Both work well, especially when the VI is lower than the i.

The change

I decided there were three options I could take:

Start the verse on a major chord. A big hint here: If you find yourself composing or even playing primarily in a major key, try a minor instead and vice versa. It's usually enough to get you out of a rut and stop you sounding you turn out the same stuff. Works for soloing in a live band as well.
For the songs starting on a minor chord, I ensured that the following chord wasn't a 6th away from it.
Plan the composition in advance.

The first two steps were simple methods for excluding what I'd done before. It doesn't stop me using the trick in sequence in future but at least I'll be more aware of it.

I already do the 3rd option, but I like the combination of mixing planned compositions and compositions I find by just playing where my fingers (and experience) takes me. So I'm not willing to miss out on the random playing.

Other tracks
Since I noticed the sequence in my own compositions, I've noticed the same chord progression in the chorus of RHCP's Bump de Hump and in Christina Aguilera's Can't Hold Us Down (feat. Lil' Kim).

It's not just chords, there are other patterns you can pick up on. I'll cover another one in the next article.

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

Mixing Rhythms - Musical Creativity 31

Alan — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:55:00 +0000

Mixing rhythms can produce effective results.

Different time signatures

Think of the stress pattern of a 4/4 bar. It will have the main stress on the first beat of the bar. So that's:

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

Now let's look at a 5/4 signature, the stress would again be on the first beat

That's 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5

If we keep them at the same speed, same beats-per-minutes, then the 5/4 bar is 25% longer than the 4/4 bar due to additional crotchet.

Now for a 3/4 signature, it would be 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 and only be 75% the length of the 4/4 bar due to the missing crotchet.

Adding them together

The stress patterns combine at different points in the song. I'll just use patterns with the accent on 1 for this:

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2
1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1

The first we see is where the 1 of 3/4 and the 1 of 4/4 align to result in a heavier accent. Then it happens again with 3/4 and 5/4. And so on. It's like a musical version of the game fizz-buzz. After 15 bars, the process starts again.

Edit - I'm afraid the full repetition wouldn't fit on the page, so I've had to remove it

That's for a very simple process where the accent is on the first beat of the bar for each time signature. Usually, we'd throw in other accents to achieve a rhythm.

I've taken a simple concept of a 3 track piece with very repetitive rhythms to show this. Each channel features a note from the chord of Am (A, C and E) using soft synths triggered by midi pattern.

How did I do this?

Change time signature for the whole song to 4/4
Create a bar
Put a note on every quarter-note/crotchet
Increase the velocity of the first note to near the maximum (it doesn't have to be, I'm using maximum to show the concept)
Reduce the velocity of the 2 and 4th notes
Marginally increase the velocity of the 3rd note so it's roughly equally between the velocities of the 1st and 2nd notes
Repeat this loop through the song
Change time signature for the whole song to 5/4
Create a bar
Put a note on every "quarter"-note/crotchet
Increase the velocity of the first note to near the maximum (it doesn't have to be, I'm using maximum to show the concept)
Reduce the velocity of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th notes
Repeat this loop through the song
Change time signature for the whole song to 3/4
Create a bar
Put a note on every "quarter"-note/crotchet
Increase the velocity of the first note to near the maximum (it doesn't have to be, I'm using maximum to show the concept)
Reduce the velocity of the 2nd and 3rd notes
Repeat this loop through the song
Put the time signature to the one you want to work with, I chose 4/4 because that's what the drum loop is in.
I cut and paste the loops to get the gaps so you can hear the different beats interact

And then what?

It's a quick and easy way for building up an interesting rhythm
It can be used to change between rhythms, e.g. by introducing the following signature over the current one
It can be useful in applying leitmotifs, again by introducing the following signature over the current one
You can vary the notes in the rhythm (I just used Am to show the concept)
You can change the stress pattern so that it's not just accenting the first beat of each bar
It can act as the background so you can add a melody in the foreground

The audio file

The attached audio file is a very simple example of what can be done following the steps above. The tones are electronic 80s. I added 4/4 drums to keep the song driving forward.

The order of the track is as follows:

4/4 on its own
5/4 on its own
4/4 and 5/4 together
3/4 on its own
3/4 and 4/4 together
3/4, 4/4 and 5/4 together

Screenshot

The screenshot shows the later part of the song, starting at point (4) above. You can see the drumloop on top, with the 4/4, 5/4 and 3/4 tracks in order.

Later on

There's another way of dealing with polyrhythms which we'll look at in a later article

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

Articles 31-40

Alan — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:50:26 +0000

Articles 31-40 in the Musical Creativity Series

Focus on the Rhythm - Musical Creativity 29

Alan — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:19:03 +0000

Which is louder, the hard-struck ringing chord or the palm-mute?

I answer both to that question. Let's look in some more detail.

The open, ringing sound starts with a short attack, with the low frequencies marginally occurring before the treble (due to the stroke across the strings). After the initial attack, there follows a very quick decay, a short period of sustain and a longer release. The length of the sustain depends on a number of variables, including the guitar materials, the diameter, materials and freshness guitar strings, amplifier gain, microphone technique and above all, the player. A lot of the time, there may be no sustain at all, just a prolonged release.

The palm-muted chugg is a very short attack mainy in the mid and low frequencies. The treble is more often missing because of the palm-mute which absorbs the ringing of the strings, plus it's mainly effective only on the lower strings. The attack is followed by a quick release. There's a quick decay, hardly any sustain if any at all and no release. It's almost an on-off sound and appears as a spike in the recording.

The comparison

Assuming that the guitarist uses the same sounds, the single ringing chord is louder than the single palm-mute. Both in the peak reached at the attack and the sustain and release.

Let's take a typical situation where the ringing chord plays on 1 and rings through to 8, to start again on the next bar's 1 and so on.

Ringing: 1....... 1....... 1....... 1.......

The chugg would start on 1, repeat on 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 and continue on each 8th note.

Mute: 12345678 12345678 12345678 12345678

The palm-muted chugg works out apparently louder than the ringing chord because the following attacks of 2-8 are louder than the sustain and decay of the ringing chord. In addition, the palm-mute focusses on the lower frequencies reinforcing the 8th rhythm. Assuming that other instruments (e.g. bass and drums) are also playing to the same rhythm, then the guitar starts to take on more percussive effect.

The diagram below is a simplified view of what I was describing above.

How can we use it?

I've always found it odd that a chords played with a palm mute sound louder than chords played ringing. They're a lower volume in isolation, but add volume by repetition.

Change an instrument from following the sequence of chords as they progress across bars/meters to following the rhythm. This works well if palm mute is a regular beat such as eighths. But also works well when there are staccato, off-beat rhythms.

It's a technique I use on a couple of the tracks in my band's live set to liven up an ending. Used correctly and it's a good way to introduce energy to a song. I also use it occasionally at the end of rock track if I want it to end with more energy than it started.

This was brought to back mind when I heard Blind by Breed 77 again and I was dissecting the ending of the track. As well as having multi-tracked and syncopated vocals, the guitars change focus from long-sustained chords to percussive strokes.

Not just guitars

It doesn't have to be guitars, other instruments can do the same, synth patches can be used in the same way, so can changing the arrangement of orchestral instruments as you resort to double-basses and cellos of a string section to provide the staccato notes. In these cases, the amplitude envelope will not be the same as for a guitar, so the sustain may well as be infinite (e.g. in the case of continually-bowed strings or synth pads).

Compression

When I've patched a compressor into the guitar track, I watch out for the continued signal reduction if the compressor's hold value merges into the next note, e.g. above 200ms and it's likely to be continually reducing the signal.

If I've patched a compressor/limiter into the stereo output bus, then again I'm watching out for the continued signal reduction. Yet I'm also listening for pumping if I've got more drastic compressor settings since the guitar may start trigger that effect.

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

How To Keep Being Creative

Alan — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 14:29:59 +0000

"cartoons drawn on the back of business cards": how to be creative features 26 points on creativity, more specifically how it affects people and some of the stumbling blocks along the way. I can't believe how true a lot of this sounds. I know people who fit into most of the categories mentioned. It was written in 2004 and I'm amazed I haven't seen it before. The more I read it, the more I realise little has changed.

Steve Paulina's current (Feb 08) article on How To Build a Successful Online Business has many parallels. Indeed a lot of his related posts such as those concerning motivation, goals, ambition, self-reliance are very relevant to the time when you're thinking about starting a creative venture and, more importantly, keeping that venture and the necessary creativity going.

Resources for Creating a Space Opera

Alan — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 12:56:55 +0000

I wrote recently about my wishes to do a space opera. I think it's the inner child in me wants a release. I was too young to fully appreciate Star Wars, too old for the teddy-bear Ewoks in Return of the Jedi, but I was just the right age for the Empire Strikes Back.

I read a lot of sci-fi as a teen and still come back to it on a regular basis. I've always preferred the near-future sci-fi that makes you think about the social implications, rather than the blinding-with-science-but-no-plot found in many books.

So if I'm going to write something, it should follow certain rules. An article on how sci-fi works is a good place to start. And for my first Space Opera, I think I'm going to ignore most of them.

Why?

Because I'm going to keep the movie length to less than 5 minutes. At that length, I reckon that mood and atmosphere are more important that plot. Longer than that and the plot becomes way more influential.

Resources

Although a couple of years have passed now, I still like some of points in the Grand Space Opera Challenge and the tutorial's are also worthy of a mention

Advice

Budget movies are possible and there are four tips for first time filmmakers

Even the Times has an article on how to make a sci-fi hit for £4000

Some very useful advice on the Space Battles necessary for a full-blown Space Opera.

The Foundation3D forum has a lot of useful advice and the chance for valuable peer-review.

For more peer-review or at least the chance to check what others are doing, the Rendorosity is the site to look at.

Open Source software

Blender - this list has to start with Blender. It's so important and looks one of the best places to start.
Yafray for raytracing. Blender can use Yafray for rendering.
Digital Spaces for Multimedia presentation and demonstration. Still not sure how useful this for the purposes at hand
Celestia is the application that started me thinking about this. I had the idea of a space journey using some modified ships.
Stellarium is the application I came across at the same time as Celestia
Crystal Space is a game engine. It occurs to me that if the game engine is simple but functional enough, then it may be easier to write a quick "game" and make a video of that. In much the same way as Red versus Green came about.
Qavimator has some potential. Hope it succeeds.

Specific direction for Blender

Read the user interface tutorial and the basic animation tutorial

I'm finding it much easier to use the keyboard, partly because I'm on laptop without a numeric keypad.

There are a few Blender plug-ins and scripts that I can imagine using:

Demolition : Can't have a Space Opera without one ship crashing into something else, usually another ship, a missile or an asteroid.
Explode : And when you have the spacecraft collide, you'll need an explosion
Terrain Maker : Could be a better movie if you can show land in it
Blender People : Now you can have some crowds or mass armies to put on your land
Blender World Forge : To generate the worlds that will bring a sense of scale to your spacecraft
MakeHuman : What's a Space Opera without some actors in it?
Walk-o-matic : to generate walking sequences for your new actors
Insect-Walk : to generate walking sequences for insectoid characters. Could be good for aliens, troop carriers or remote devices

My article on Indie Filmmaking Resources is still useful in this context as well.

I'll discuss my experiences with Blender and Celestia in future articles

Lock the Bass in - Musical Creativity 28

Alan — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 13:53:46 +0000

Following on from the article about using gates on drums. I want to describe the main reason I use gates and that's to lock the bass into another pattern such as the kick drum.

It's quite a common use for a gate and when set well, it's subtle and almost unnoticeable, but definitely noticeable when you turn the effect off. It's simple to set up although it does involve a few steps.

The Set-up

Let's say we start with two tracks:

Channel 1 is the drums. Most likely a stereo set from a loop/drum plug-in or a submix from acoustic drums
Channel 2 is the bass guitar. Most likely mono (although a blended mix of mics/DI etc could also be used

The channel order's completely up to you. The only reason I've mentioned track numbers here is so that it's easier to refer to them as I type.

The 1st Gate

We'll put a send on Channel 1 (drums). In Logic, let's say that we send the signal to Bus 1. I usually set it 0dB (that's n oreduction or gain on the send in Logic) most of the time and pre-fader unless I need to process the drums a lot.

Now we go to the send channel (Bus 1). If you've got the drums playing, you should see the meters for the Bus channel moving in sync with the drums. We only want the bass to be in sync with the kick drum, not the whole drum kit.

We now insert the gate on the send channel Bus 1. Set the gate so that it only triggers on the kick drum. If there's a monitor function so you can hear what the gate responds to, then use that. When you've got the setting, stop the send going to the main output or mixbuss. We don't need the sound as an output into the main mix. You should see Bus 1 channel's meters respond to the kick drum only now.

The 2nd Gate

Now go to the bass channel (Channel 1) and insert a noise gate there. You want it to trigger when there's a bass signal so set the threshold accordingly. I usually have the signal reduction set to only -2dB or -3dB. The reason for that such a small dB reduction is that the gate will always let the bass signal through, but will also let the extra 2dB through when the kick drum triggers it. To do that we put Bus 1 as the gate's sidechain.

The Result

Listen to it now and the bass should be accentuated with the kick, giving the impression of being locked-in more that it was previously.

Quick settings in Logic

Setup the gates as above and select the Isolate Kick preset in the gate. Listen to the signal with the monitor function. Actually you can do without this and use the meters instead if you can hear the kick well enough. Change the eq filter and threshold so that only the kickdrum comes through - usually this means reducing the High Cut almost to its lowest level so that it doesn't pick up the snare and bringing down the threshold until the kick triggers the gate. Turn off the monitor in the gate and change the output of the aux channel so that it has no output.

For the gate on the bass, select the Isolate Bass preset. Change the sidechain input to Bus 1. Set the threshold so that the bass always comes through and set the reduction to -2dB.

Why 2 gates?

I find it to be a lot more accurate. It's possible to route the Channel 1 (drums) to the sidechain input of the gate on Channel 2 (bass). You can then change the eq setting so that only the kick drum comes through. But I've always found that there's a little bit of leakage from other instruments doing it this way and rather than just have eq filtering out the drums, I like having the 1st noise gate isolating thekick. At least that way, I can decide whether I'd prefer to miss a few hits of the kick or have it respond to a few hits from the snare as well, depending on how tight the threshold and eq values are.

Other ideas

Vary the reduction amount to get a more dramatic accent until it quickly starts to have a detrimental effect rather than being a positive creative tool. But as always, try it, it may prove useful to you.

You could also switch the gate for a compressor (and again use the Bus 1 as the sidechain input) for the opposite effect. It might sound like it wouldn't work since it would decrease the bond between the kick and bass. I find it useful when the kick has a tone of its own that I'd like to come through. In that case, the bass and the kick together may be too much so using the compressor allows the kick to shine through.

I think you can do something similar by using a positive value in the reduction. This is where the terminology gets confusing: to increase the non-triggered volume, have a positive number for the reduction (i.e. it's not a reduction anymore). To think around this, interpret the reduction value as what the gate does to the non-triggered signal.

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.