👋 Oi, mga repapips, Brian Dys here! I love music, photography, and creative stuff like UX design and art. This is a place where I collect my thoughts and works. Apart all these, I’m Jaycelle’s better half and Bryce’s dad. 🥰
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Sometime in 1995 I chanced upon a song playing in NU107. It captivated me with “Champagne Supernova” lyrics – me being in hipster phase, being attracted to things that was ironic and overall it just called onto me.
Right after that a voice roped me to go to a local music store. I was there at their glass display counter browsing a wall lined up with all sorts of music in cassette tape.
I hummed the lyrics of “Champagne Supernova” to the sales lady and she pulled out an Oasis.
The first time ever have I known this band. And the rest as they say is that I made them my idols.
Beady Eye, Noel Gallagher – it’s all Oasis to me.
I pay tribute to Oasis for my poetry and photography. Pretentious as it started but hey, we all fake it till we make it.
Originally published in Instagram
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Music plays a substantial part of my everyday life. From activity to inactivity, it’s like second to the air that I breathe.
Apparently, there’s a thing called “second album syndrome” or the sophomore slump. But this isn’t anything about the literal first-released album of a musician but the first album of that musician you’ve heard of and all the songs in the collection kicked ass.
I noticed this after numerous times I have liked an artist/musician mostly for that one album – the first album that let me discover them. It may have stemmed out from the repetitive playback of that record until it came to mind to try to discover other albums of the same artist but seldom have I liked two in a row.
One (or two) album wonders
- Athlete – Tourist
- Bon Jovi – These Days
- Bon Jovi – Lost Highway
- Corinne Bailey Rae – Corine Bailey Rae
- Diana Krall – The Look of Love
- Jack Johnson – In Between Dreams
- Joanna Wang – Start from Here
- Kings of Convenience – Riot On An Empty Street
- KT Tunstall – Eye to the Telescope
- Oasis – (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?
- Oasis – Be Here Now
- Orange and Lemons – Love In The Land Of Rubber Shoes And Dirty Ice Cream
- Rachael Yamagata – Happenstance
- Starsailor – Love Is Here
- Starsailor – Silence Is Easy
- The Sundays – Static And Silence
- The Thrills – So Much for the City
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I got FruityLoops 3 to manipulate and produce tracks, good ol’ Winamp 5 to play exported materials and convert files to uncompressed WAV. And now, Audacity to trim and stitch raw materials.
What is this project all about
It’s all about SoundThemesâ„¢ wherein sound effects is another layer of the user experience. But that’s not all – it wouldn’t be a theme if the collection of sounds is fragmented. This would be used in all kind of actions and hints in any game or app.
So for this prototype, I used our favorite urine-colored drink – Mountain Dew to collect all sorts of soda can sounds. Using iPhone 4’s Voice Memos app, I recorded all clinks and clanks of the can from full to empty to down the trash can.
Let me hear!
Girls and boys, I present to you the raw recording (but that might probably bore you):
So here’s a trimmed and stitched version:
And an electronic version using only the individual sounds of the can:
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Boy did I miss clicking tunes in FruityLoops. I remember the sleepless nights in 2003 just composing electronica. I revisited this app (software as we call it back then) to produce some sound effects for a mobile app.
It was sometime in the early 2000s that I’ve discovered this electronic machine and got hooked to it. It has come a long way now – at version 11. At that time, I was eager to purchase the latest version for Php 25,000 hoping I would become a musician.
Here’s a quick tune to grease up the clunky wheels:
I remember my humble beginnings in Photoshop and didn’t have the files to prove it because my hard drive crashed. Well, it really did and that will be another story.
The second batch of practice files are still with me though. Not everyday did I experiment on lo-res stock photos and found pictures on the internet. So I could’ve not improved drastically from the first few years to the next.
Electronic Music Wow
During the late 90s, armed with an amateurish guitar-playing skill, I got hooked in playing with electronic music using MTV Music Generator in PlayStation 1. And a couple of years after, I upgraded to an early version of Fruity Loops.
Here’s an example of what I managed to produce in the PlayStation:
How I magically got that in MP3 format? I hooked a PC mic in front of the TV speaker while PlayStation is playing the song.
The whole point of this is that I was so excited to design my own (imaginary) album covers. I consider these designs part of my practice files – created out of pure enjoyment.
I followed this up with more “serious” compositions and with that came more “serious” album covers.
Check back soon for Part 2.
I leave you with a saying by the great Confusious:
A true designer only uses solar flare for irony.
Confusious
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Here’s a “music video” with the song, Save Myself, which I composed on August 2, 2003 and recorded it with Jaycelle on June 28 this year. The footage and stills are from her birthday picnic last November 28.
This song is for you, darling.