Making my music video: Koktail Rings

Hi there. I hope you enjoyed your new year! I made a music video that I hope you will like.
genre: instrumental, classical.
duration: 4:53.
sounds: piano, orchestral strings, xylophone, marimba and flute.

All sounds came from keyboard including: piano, orchestral strings, xylophone and flute. I hooked up the audio interface with to the keyboard's audio jack and computer and speakers. I recorded straight into audacity software (free open source). I adjusted volume levels. When I pressed the record button I was filled with anticipation as my fingers hit the keys. I was improvising. The fun part came when I layered the recorded xylophone sounds with more piano chords. I stopped the recording and listened for artifacts: pops and clicks. I like Audacity because it makes recording simple and it has useful features like noise removal and clip fix and sound smoothening. I exported my musical pieces to wav file so that I could mix them in LMMS software ( free open source) If you don't have a midi keyboard and audio interface you could still make music with LMMS because it has its own virtual instruments and numerous effects and is compatable with many vst plug ins. Mixing music is an art form in itself that I am learning. It is a good idea to place each musical piece in a separate track to adjust the volume separatly plus adding effects like amp and reverb.

Making an animated photo with GIMP (free open source) is simple. You need two photos of the same size. I wanted to make it seem as if the keys were popping out of the typewriter. I first reduced each photo to one letter like "W". So I added a few keys as layers on the photo. When it came time to animate I simply added the second and third photo as layers. I changed the file extension to .gif. I click save as animated Gif. Do not save as flattened photo because this would result in a still photo. I adjusted the the delay to 319 milliseconds. I select to replace each frame. When I used the image in windows movie make each animated gif lasts about 5 seconds on the time line. The bigger the photo the more bytes are used. A simple three layer animated gif in 640 x 480 could use about 600 kilobytes but a two layer gif made of 1600 x1200 image could make a 1.5 MB.

Happy Creating! :)

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LMMS

http://lmms.sourceforge.net/

Audacity

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

GIMP

http://www.gimp.org/

My First Animation with GIMP

feature length: 25 seconds

This is a Raven's Art Shack exclusive peek at Blink.

The simplest form of animation involves the blinking of eyes. You need only two frames, one for closed eyes and one for open eyes. An animated .gif needs a minimum of two layers. I drew the original with red ball point on loose leaf paper. I captured her image with my digital camera and closed her eyes with the smudge tool from GIMP software (open source and free to download). I added the original image as a layer. I select save image as Blink with extension .gif. The window pops up and asks if I want to flatten or save as animation. If I flatten the image it will be a still picture. I select save as animation. I pump up the delay to 368 milliseconds and 410 milliseconds for the second animation. I select to completely replace the frame. Voila I have created my first animated .gif! Yeah!

Making an animated .gif picture is simple with Windows movie maker. Upload the picture to the software. Click and drag the image to the timeline. Each image takes about 5 seconds of timeline. I composed 25 seconds of music using LMMS software (open source and free to download) using about 12 bars of music at 140 bpm.

Why create an animated gif? This kinetic art form is simple and fun to create. In the future I plan to make my own book trailer after I finish writing my first novel.

P.S. Welcom blog hoppers!

My First song with LMMS software!

If you follow this link ravenking5 it will take you to my first music video I composed with LMMS software titled "I Can Rave On with LMMS". My youtube channel is ravenking5. I had so much fun making this video by shooting 20 second clips in the dark and painting over digital photos taken with my Nintendo DSi. This is my first song composed with LMMS so I only used the song beat editor and the presets that came from this software. The genre is trance, industrial at 140 BPM.

I would say that making that first song with a powerful software is start of a wonderful sonorous journey. :)

Fascination

Fascination (4 DAW and VSTi)

I see it

in my dreams

my new obsession

a new arp odyssey

of sine waves

and oscillators,

my motif

of the day

browse by

the day

or by the hour

screenshots

of GUI

my new window

opens up to a new world

of reverb

raising my BPM

dynamics propell

my desire.

Plug in a virtual

instrument,

increases desire

searching

for that elusive sound

so much to learn

so little time

so much to

express with my CPU.

In the middle of writing my novel I found a new obsession: making digital music. There is a lot of software to try, learn and enjoy. If you are new to virtual instruments I recommend that you start with a DAW/ VST host. Once you have a vst host or DAW you can insert your VST i (virtual instrument/ vst plug in) in the VST host.

I tried LMMS which is a VST host and it is a wonderful software that can load in plug ins (virtual instruments), contains a sound font 2 player, song editor with piano roll, beat editor, mixer with many effects and prests. You can export your music file to .wav file.

Here are cool websites to browse for vst host and instruments.

Check out the excitement, tutorials, downloads, forums. :)

LMMS
http://lmms.sourceforge.net/

Check out freeware, free vst hosts and virtual instruments
http://www.vst4free.com/

freeware, vst hosts and vst plugins
http://www.vstplanet.com/