They Cost Not Lots

I was just browsing a respected music production forum when I came across some tutorials that really made me do a double take. These were “song structure” tutorials. You know… stuff like “How to write a Hard Dance track“. Instruction was along the lines of : put a bass drum on every beat, a cymbal at the beginning of each phrase , bass line running on off beats, etc... that sort of thing. In a nutshell it gave the “formula”, that is to say the rule set, by which each style defines itself.

Now why did these tutorials make me do a double take? Basically I just could not believe that people were honestly trying to write music by constraining themselves to a particular style’s rule sets. I know corporate cock sucking whores like to use formulas to create junk pop in order to sell crap to the masses, but I did not think honest and supposedly creative musicians worked this way. A way, that I might add, is totally foreign to me. When I write, I don’t think “Ok.. Now I’m going to write a trance track” or “hey I might write a song using the 70’s hard rock formula”. I just open up to the muses, let the inspiration flow, and whatever comes… comes. Sometimes what comes is crap, sometimes it is not, and there is always refinement of what was inspired, but for the most part it is 100% inspiration. Music is art, and art is the creative expression of one’s Self (note the capital letter there!). Following a rule set is the antithesis of this. It stifles creativity, discourages innovation, penalises originality and gives birth to ubiquitous mediocrity.

This here is my latest offering from Tryptic 2.0. It is a dance track that fuses electronica and rock elements together and is called "The Mass of the Phoenix". A hi-fi mp3 version can be downloaded HERE . The song was inspired by and named after Aleister Crowley's ritual of the same name and represents my first real steps using the Access Virus TI synth.

After noticing that there are a plethora of wow blogs, but next to none for the shaman class, I thought I'd try to rectify the situation and get one off of the ground. As a result you wont see too much written in this, my personal blog, about my travels in WoW anymore... you find all that sort of stuff over there. the Blog is called Ride the Lightning, and it focuses on Resto spec for a casual playstyle, and Elemental spec in 25 man progression raiding. If that is your gig then go and check it out. Heck.. just go and check it out anyways! :)

Oh my! How awesome was UFC94! I am a fan of the fighting of both GSP and BJ-Penn, so to see these two future hall of famers go at it again was something of a dream come true. Personality wise, BJ is a bit of a dick and is exactly the kind of person I would like to see get his face smashed in. GSP ... quite the opposite. I was rooting for George St-Pierre!

Going into the fight, I expected it to be fairly evenly matched with victory going to the person who managed to capitalize on some small mistake his opponent made. I really felt it could have gone either way. Both were candidates for the best pound for pound fighter and their styles match up well. Once the fight started, however, it was obvious there was nothing even about it. GSP totally dominated, demoralized and humiliated Penn. It was amazing to watch. GSP was able to do what was previously thought impossible. He was easily able to pass Penn's guard and get side control. He did this not just once, but half a dozen times. He made Penn's guard look like that of a White belt! Nobody passes Penn's guard like that. Nobody... except GSP. Wow. Just wow!

It seems Comrade Rudd and his over zealous communications minister Steve Conroy are keen to take us down the same path as those other bastions of freedom, China, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia. Closed tests of mandatory internet filtering at the ISP level have been completed and are now on the verge of being trialed on the nation at large. In short, the Australian government is about to censor every Australian's internet feed and there is no legal way we can opt out of it.

Today has been somewhat of a blast with three new soft-synths to play with. I just purchased the Korg Legacy Collection (Digital Edition) which emulates the M1 and the Wavestation, and also "Viral Outbreak", a VSTi based on the sounds of the awesome Virus TI. There are some very fat and lush sounds to be had here, but also a lot of new info to take in, so it will be a little while before I am doing more than just tweaking presets. I have Viral Outbreak as a Reason Refill as well as a VSTi, which is nice because I am still more comfortable and knowledgeable working in Reason than I am in Cubase. With a VSTi collection that is starting to rival my Reason rack, however, I'm soon going to have to shift my production focus away from Reason and really grab Cubase by the horns. Come on Props! Give us VST support in Reason 5! :)

Whilst the general trend of the Black Orc has remained the same during these next 10 levels, there have been some noticeable changes and of course a slew of new skills. I have taken the mastery path of "Da Toughest", the path dedicated to survivability, and the stats on my gear are weighted Toughness > Wounds > Strength > Initiative > Weapon skill. Whilst the general trend of survivability > dps holds true for levels 10-20, a change I noticed to previous levels is that DPS drops off considerably, and when I say considerably I mean by a very large factor (or so it seems). In contrast, survivability increases only slightly, and is then situational. By situational I mean that there is a difference in the survivability increase depending on whether we are discussing PVE or PVP, and whether we are solo or grouped. The general feel of the Black Orc from 10-20, particularly in the later stage of the bracket, is similar to that of a protection speced Paladin from WoW. That is to say, you are tough as nails... one really tough cookie... but hit like a 3 year old girl with the palsy using a wet noodle for a weapon!

The first 10 levels of my Black Orc have been very enjoyable ones. Thus far, it seems pretty obvious that this class is all about the tanking. It is NOT the equivalent of a WoW fury warrior. The bulk of the skills gained in these first ten levels are geared towards defensively buffing yourself or, on the more offensive side of things, debuffing enemies and being a right royal pain in the arse to them. There are very few pure DPS skills though. By the end of level 10, Black Orcs have the core skills they need to be an effective PVE and PVP tank. They have the ability to taunt mobs and enemy players and a number of useful skills to help defend their allies. There are however very few skills of the type that include "causes addition threat" in the tooltip. I'm sure these will come later. Overall the class has a feel of survivability > damage, and when it comes to survivability the Black Orc has it in spades. "Da Toughest" is the coolest skill ever (gained very early on too) and goes a long way to making the Black Orc the survival machine that he is. Each weapon swing gives a 25% chance to proc an increase in Wounds and a self heal. It is awesome and if it gets nerfed I think I will seriously roll up into the fetal position and cry!

Hooray! After putting my name in the beta-test lottery all those months ago, I've finally been invited to participate in the "Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning" closed beta testing. A little late, what, with the open beta testing not that far off, and the release only a couple of months away, but pretty cool nevertheless. I seem to have been part of the latest intake, to be used for oceanic testing. Now to just to wait out the very, VERY, slow download of the 9 gig client...