In which I score a paid iPhone gig

As if I didn’t have enough work on my plate as it is.  But you know me.  I’ve developed a bad case of workaholism, and I can’t seem to stop myself from taking on more projects.  But this one is different.  Whereas the 4 tracks I did for Movile were ones I did gratis, this one’s going to pay dividends.

I did, as I have done in the past, a review for Tesla Software’s latest AmbiScience brain entrainment/relaxation/mental stimulation app, this time it was An Android’s Odyssey.  I kind of panned it in a way and probably ended up sounding a bit more negative than I intended, but stuff like that all comes down to personal preference, being that it’s musically-oriented, and I just didn’t dig some of the music. But that got me and Tesla’s Ron Watson talking; he picked up on all of the musical terms I used in the review and guessed (rightly) that I seem to know a thing or two about music.  So I pointed him to some of my musical samples (including the ambient backing track I did for my Snapture 2.0 video review).  He liked what he heard, so he made me a decent proposal: A new AmbiScience app based around my music. I pick the theme, I write the music, we share the profits 50/50.  He threw out some average daily sales figures to help sweeten the deal.  They weren’t iShoot-level spectacular by any means, but they were decent enough that it would work out to some decent supplimentary income.

More to the point, I’d have a very major role in an iPhone app — and even more specifically, I’d be getting my music out there.  Mind you, these are going to be very ambient, very ethereal pieces markedly different from my normal trance material — which is kind of new to me as far as composition goes.  It’s funny too.  Trance is my preferred genre, yet when I’m noodling around with instruments looking for inspiration, you would invariably catch me playing chords with lush pads and such in a very ambient, mesmerizing sort of way.  Despite that I never really sat down and wrote anything really ambient; that aforementioned Snapture review backing track was the closest I came, and admittedly that’s pretty ambient, but I rushed that one out just for the review and never really made it a whole song.

So, while I’m already loaded up with things to do, I thought this would be the ideal excuse for me to really explore my ambient side, get my name out there, contribute something more substantial to the iPhone scene, and make a bit of bonus money in the process.  I’d be a fool to turn this down.  So I spent some time Saturday and Sunday night working up the first track in what will become a space exploration daydream-type theme.  I got most of it done I think, and sent a work-in-progress to Ron, who seemed to like it quite a bit, so I’m good to go.  The pieces will all be pretty short as ambient songs go — 2-3 minutes at best — but will be seamlessly looped.  It’ll be a bit of a challenge I think to compress my ideas into such a short window of time, but I think I can manage.  I may even do more full-length versions of the songs after the project is done, either for my personal satisfaction or maybe to publish through the iTunes music store.  Who knows?  I’ll cross that celestial bridge when I come to it.

In the mean time I’m rather excited to be working on this project.  Apart from the obvious, working in ambient soundscapes is a lot different than working on trance.  There isn’t as much knob twiddling for one; sure, I play with enevlopes and filters and events and such, but not to the degree that I do with the average trance piece.  Ambient pieces tend to be a lot lower tempo, too, so instrumentation tends to be dragged out and extended with smooth fades and crossovers.  I’m also using a lot more reverb and echo than I normally do; it helps create that expansive envelope that surrounds you, makes you feel like it’s all there, but off in the distance, watching over.  There’s plenty of filigree to insert and layer, too — and a lot of it is the sort you don’t want to reuse to often, sometimes even just once, because this stuff is all about variety and giving a sense of progression while never really leaving familiar territory.

Perhaps the most interesting thing though is that I’m playing around a lot with chords and accompaniment.  Trance is generally about repetitious refrains, but here I get to really play across the keys.  There’s no musical format to follow here, no real melody to have to accompany, so I get to play around with dramatic builds, chords and counterpoints.  It’s an interesting experience and it’s helping to expand my musical horizons, which is never a bad thing.  These pieces tend to be pretty quick to write; once I’ve picked or crafted some nice complimentary instruments and bits of filigree and such, and picked a general direction to go in, I can probably do two, maybe even three of these in a week.  Ron wants me to shoot for at least 8, so at this pace I might have something ready within a couple of weeks or so.  Give some extra time to retool the app to use my tunes (quick, since all the important stuff is already done, he just has to plug in my songs and change up the colour scheme, credits, and such) and submit to Apple and it’s possible we might be seeing it on the App Store in a month, give or take.

So, there’s my big news.  Probably boring to a lot of you, but I’m excited.  In other news I’ve started Skyworks Week at Frapstr.  I was E-Mailed about three new releases and an update and asked if I wanted to review them — well duh, I like the work they do, so of course I agreed.  I posited the idea of a week-long thing and figured they could throw in a code for their Arcade Basketball game too, just to make it a nice round work week.  So, I’m pretty well set for reviews for the week; besides Skyworks’ games, I have some other things that I have to finish off, too, so I’ll be trying to do 2 reviews a day this week if at all possible.

Speaking of which, I should get back to it.

Tags: ambiscience, android's odyssey, music, snapture, tesla software

Easter is Over, New Staff Begins

I have to say, this has probably been one of the busiest Easters I can recall. The Easter Feaster on Sunday was … copious.  Turkey, as always, flanked by broccoli, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, and cranberry sauce.  Lots of everything.  Oddly, no other side veggie, which we’d usually have — no beans or corn or even (yecch) carrots.  Not that it matters.  There was plenty to nosh on.  Dessert consisted of three different pies: Apple, Strawberry-Rhubarb, and chocolate mousse heaped with whipped cream.  I didn’t make a pig of myself though.  The wife’s nephews, however … oi.  Gorged on dinner, then had no fewer than four pieces of pie.  Half a bloody pie!  Yes, the kid’s fat.  Chins and Chinatown fat.  And he’s completely and unabashedly a pig.  And his mother says nothing.  Granted, his mother’s overweight too, but not quite as badly — and the kid’s only 11 or something like that. I’m overweight, but only by about 40lbs, the vast majority of it in the belly.

Speaking of which, I bought a bike over the weekend.  21-speed Mongoose mountain bike.  First bike I’ve owned in like forever.  Last time I rode on anything resembling a regular basis was over 10 years ago.  Now that I have a new bike, one thing has become clear: Nothing, but nothing beats a bike for showing you exactly how out of shape you are.  First night I biked over to McDonald’s for a late night snack ‘cos neither of us were tired, but we were both peckish and they’re open 24/7.  I started out just fine, but quickly flagged, and during the ride there and back I had to stop no fewer than 8 times to just walk the bike for a few minutes while I recovered my breath and let my legs rest.  By the time I got home, I was still winded despite walking my bike the last 5 minutes home, and my legs felt like rubber.  Not the sort of rubber they make tires or basketballs out of.  The rubber they make rubber bands out of.

Now I’m scared of the bike.  It sits there mocking me, telling me what a total flabbo I am, daring me to go on another night ride with it so it can laugh at me.  Yeah, I know it’s going to take some time and practise to get back into the swing of things, and I aim to do it.  It’ll be a good way to lose some of this flab and get my legs back into shape.  Then I can kick my bike’s ass and say, “What did you call me, bitch?  You want summa this?  Huh?  Because I’ll make you call me daddy…”  I bought a clip-on light and a U-Lock for it, too.  I still have to pick up some chain oil and grease for its various moving bits.

Meanwhile, over at Frapstr, no posts have been made the last couple of days due to the holiday weekend — but we have some new blood.  No, not that guy who still hasn’t written.  Another new guy.  His name is John Aag.  Well, that’s not his real name.  I can’t reveal that due to a situation that brings about a bit of a conflict of interest situation, but I can say he has strong writing skills and he is well-connected in the iPhone industry. Besides that, he’s a great guy.  He won’t be writing a lot — maybe once a week or whenever he has the time, as he has other much more important commitments that he needs to attend to, but he will appear as a guest columnist here from time to time reviewing whatever he thinks is cool and providing a little bit of extra flavour to Frapstr.  I think you’ll like him.

For now though I need to hit the sack.  It’s back to the daily grind once again.  I’ve still got a pile of reviews primed and ready to go, so I’ll have a chance to do that tomorrow.  Until then, say g’night, Gracie.

Tags: bike, easter, john aag, mongoose, ullo John! Got a new motor?

From Leisure to Litany, Spring to Scientology

Funny how that works.

The last week or so has been relatively leisurely — relatively speaking; it’s always a bit of a madhouse around here, but I didn’t have too many apps to review so I polished off what was left in the queue.  Then in the course of two or three days I’ve managed to accrue no fewer than a dozen new apps to review, roughly half of them through promo codes devs suddenly decided to send me.  A veritable litany of new apps.  One of them is a bit stale by a couple of weeks but which I made a point to review anyway, and another was an update, which I already covered today (Submarine).  I also covered the sneak peek of Slope Rider, which was a time-sensitive thing, so it went to the head of the pile.  So I’ve still got 10 in the queue, which I’m going to try and polish off over the next few days. It’s a good thing it’s a long weekend this weekend — not that I’ll have a lot of leisure time anyway.  When it rains, it pours.  Not that I’m complaining.

Wait!  Hold up.  Another one turned up in my E-Mail while I was writing this.  Eleven in the queue.  (I debated doing this one, but there might be an opportunity for some comedy, so… what the hell.)  I’m just a popular blogger this week I guess.

The weather (yes, I’m talking about the weather) has been weird in Toronto the last month and change.  We didn’t get so much as a flake for the entirety of March, and the temperatures were almost consistently above freezing, so March felt much more like early April weather.  Of course, Old Man Winter couldn’t have any of that, so the last few days have been rather cold, and there were copious amounts of snow over a couple of days, through to this morning.  It’s all gone now and the weather seems to be returning to sanity — thankfully.  I hate winter.

I’ve also been getting marketing calls from — get this — the Church of Scientology.  That freakin’ wacko sci-fi cult is now hiring telemarketers to try and recruit weak-minded fools from abroad.  (Well, maybe they’ve always done, I don’t know, but this is the first time recruiters from those nutjobs have ever called here.)  I actually find this offensive.  I’m an atheist, so I don’t ascribe to religion in general — though I adopt a live-and-let-live approach with those who do so long as they don’t proselytize at me — but I find the whole notion that Scientology managed even to achieve religious status offensive in its own right.  I mean, how is it that L. Ron Hubbard — an mediocre sci-fi writer at best — can create this dumbassed “religion” based on space alien parasites and find enough traction in congress to gain religion status, yet people who worship the moon or comets or alien mother ships are deemed crazy cults and generally end their existences surrounded by ATF teams?  Granted, they are crazy and there’s usually a lot of illegal funny business going on like money laundering, drugs, paedophilia or drinking Kool-Aid with an extra kick while scientologists mainly just go around leeching people’s money in a bogus quest to make them “clear” (which I presume is the point at which they realize they’ve just been taken for an assload of money by a bunch of kooks), but still.

Anyway, I didn’t deal with the recruiters on the phone.  My wife did.  She gets all sweary with them and makes threats involving legal action and, in this particular instance, castration.  Had it been normal telemarketers I would have had something to say about flies and sledgehammers, but being that these were scientologists — good for her.  Plus, we’re on the DNC, so they shouldn’t be calling here anyway, which is all the more reason to pour on the vitriol.

Anyway, it’s about time I do a little more preliminary work for more reviews — screenshots and stuff — so I’ll wrap this up.

Tags: l. ron hubbard, promo codes, reviews, scientologists can toss my salad, scientology, weather

Oh, My Achin’ Back

Today was Hell Day.  The day when my in-laws expected their daughter and I to come by and help to clean up the garage in their continuing quest to make the house presentable enough to sell. To help you understand why this is hell, let me explain that its primary user — the father-in-law, is a retired auto mechanic who, despite his advancing age, bad back, and an assortment of maladies which include having lived through two or three strokes, still likes to play at being a mechanic.  He has loads of tools, drill bits, driver bits, saw blades, nails, spikes, coils of copper tubing, random bits of rubber tubing (now cracking and useless), rods of rebar, bottles of antifreeze, buckets of engine oil, a dozen jerry cans of varying sizes containing quantities of unknown liquids (possibly stale gas), outdoor power equipment (and pieces thereof) in various states of disrepair and decomposition, dead spark plugs, and loads of engine parts.  I know this, because a great deal of them lived on the garage floor in and amongst the oil spils and the sawdust that soaked them up.

Being Italian, he also fancied himself a vintner, so there were also huge, bulbous wine brewing bottles nestled in wicker baskets, some empty, some containing wine in varying stages of brew.  Various large bits of equipment also dotted the garage: An arc welder, a table saw, a compressor, a 5-foot tool chest, a 3-foot tool chest, and so on.  The left wall was lined with shelf upon shelf containing jar upon jar and box upon box of screws, bolts, nuts, nails, hose clamps, generic automobile headlights, boxes of bathroom tiles, zip ties, washers, bungee cords, coils of velcro strapping, spark plugs, automotive fuses, miscellaneous wires attached to unidentifiable bits that once presumably conducted electricity, and so on.

All in a 2-car garage.

No, there wasn’t even space to fit a motorcycle in it.  Or a bicycle.  It was like the entire Midas chain exploded in there somewhere around 1973 and nobody could be arsed to do anything about it. And the four of us all got to clean it out.  Did I mention the custom-built loft?  That’s where all other storage went.  And, apparently, itinerant rats, judging by the telltale signs of their former presence.  Yep; cleaning that part out was all my job.  So were a lot of other things, since I was probably the strongest and most capable person there amongst my wife’s parents and my wife herself, so, yeah, I got all the heavy lifting.  8 hours of this crap — though we did get a few breaks for lunch and dinner.  And when we put everything back in that was being kept?  It hardly looked any different than when we started, despite filling up three quarters of a full-size rental dumpster.

So now I’m beat like Michael Vick’s dogs.  I’m sore in places I didn’t even know I had.  And — joy of joys — I have my regular day job tomorrow.  I managed to get one review done this morning before we left for hell, but I think that’s all I’m about capable of doing today.  Right now I just want to curl up somewhere and let my muscles whimper for a while.

On a positive note, Chris of Movile wrote some awesomely nice things about me and Frapstr on the Movile Blog, which was really cool of him.  I didn’t even ask him to, either; he just did it out of a fit of love or something.  (And no, Chris, this doesn’t mean we’re even.  )  His release schedule for the next version of Theme Park Madness has been pushed back a bit due to some unfortunate and unforseeable business that left the next updates a bit high and dry.  Fortunately he still has all of the assets, so he just has to have the update code rewritten before it’s ready for a real App Store update.

Alright, that’s about all I can type.  I’m going to go watch a movie or something while things that are hurting work on not hurting anymore.

Tags: back pain, frapstr, house cleaning, messy garage, movile