Daily Creation Challenge

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Daily Creation Challenge | Day 31 - One down eleven to go

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So I am already one month in and it seems to be going well. I have written a post about my feelings and thoughts on the DCC, you can read it here. I am really chuffed at the amount of output currently and I am hoping that is the impetus to get a lot more out there. I have also managed to knock of a few quick guitar lessons as well, which you can view on youtube or here. There are a few more in the pipeline in the next couple of days, along with some more gear reviews! I have also been doing some Macro photography and you can see more of this on my Flick siteSo here is today's piece, again I have had to hijack some space on Soundcloud from my syncro:sound account. I will hopefully be getting some more space on my account in the next day or two.Today's piece was written in Logic Studio using and manipulating some existing loops from the Logic library and doing some sound design on them. It is a bit of a strange piece I know :)Enjoy!PeaceNeil

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Daily Creation Challenge - One month in

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I am nearly a month into my challenge and I think it is going well so far.

I thought I would take time to reflect and share some of my thoughts. Similar to the comments I made about my piece a day challenge, I really believe this is a fantastic creative project to for me (or anyone) to undertake, it is amazing how it focuses the mind and it is amazing how all of the doubts and "writer's block" problems that I used to have before doing something creative now seem to disappear. Now, I am not say that any of these pieces are a grand work of art or even that good, but it does reinforce the point that about 95% of any creative project is spent worrying about, rather than actually doing it. Deadlines really are fantastic things for creative types I think! Interestingly I have found that the whole "staring" at a blank page seems to disappear, when time is against you, there is a need to simple throw something down as a skeleton and get going. It works really well, because once something is down, you tend to go with it!

Creating a piece of 'creation' be it video, sound, or music really is habit forming, it really is! My day doesn't feel complete now unless I do it now. Which is a really interesting phenomena, I now think I should apply it to other things, such as guitar practice and most importantly exercise!

So what about the outputs so far?

Well I think the fact I have been able to to create a number of films is a good thing, admittedly they aren't anything special, but it takes the creation challenge to another levelSimilarly with the piece a day project, I am not sure I am totally producing music in different styles, and this to me is a problem, I think I now need to expand my stylistic base, and the way I intend to do this is through creating mini-tasks (I am open to suggestions!). The first of these will be 'found sound' February! I will be creating at least one piece per week in February using only found sounds!I also need to perform some basic house keeping tasks to make the whole process more streamlined, the main one being setting up Logic templates to work with. I already have a few but they are a bit messy and out of date with some of my new libraries.So the big pro's of this challenge are

  • My speed of working has increased dramatically.
  • I have lots of content
  • I have increased my own self believe that I can actually produce a final product

and some of the downsides are

  • I easy to fall into traps and some of the outputs are very similar

and my like to do's are

  • Time to do proper orchestration
  • Time to work on bigger projects, including new Light B4 Sound album

Check out all the works here.Enjoy!!PeaceNeil

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Daily Creation Challenge | Day 30 - Sunrise timelapse

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A timelapse that i shot to capture the amazing sunrises we have been having in Manchester over the last few weeks. Unfortunately it was too cold to have the window open, so I had to shoot it through the window. A big shame really as there is a nasty reflection, which ruins an amazing sunrise. There is no colour correction on this either.Shot on a Sony EX 3EnjoyPeaceNeil

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Daily Creation Challenge | Day - 28 Creation

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Bit of a quick one today, I really wanted to try out the Ostinatum feature on Spitfire Albion. I am not sure I totally got it to sound how I wanted. It is a great feature and really useful, bit on some notes it sounded perfect, yet on others it sounded wrong. Today's piece is basic to provide a background for the feature. I think i need to spend more time with it to get it to sound how I want. Alternatively perhaps it is simpler to just recorded it, I mean I do like the fact that it uses a variety of round robin samples which give you a much more natural sounding passage, but even this sounded a little wrong to my ears.EnjoyPeaceNeil

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Daily Creation Challenge - Day 28 ambition

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Again another little film as part of my daily creation challenge. Thought I would be a bit experimental today, I already had the idea for the music based on the little snippet of speech I had from Castro talking about ambition. So I shot some footage using a Sigma 50mm f2.8 macro lens (although no macro photography in this!) and this is the end result. Enjoy.Peace Neil

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Daily Creation Challenge - Day 27 jump jump jump

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 Something very silly I shot as part of my daily creation challenge! Specifically so I could write a piece of music!! So this is it! Blu Tac and a Shrek toy! Shot on a Canon 550D using 50mm f1.8 lens direct into Final Cut Pro, although the raw footage was transcoded using the fantastic Mpeg Streamclip in to Apple ProRes 422 for editing, there is no colour correction or grading on this piece. The music was as usual done in Logic Studio, but was more sound design today, with lots of reversing and reverbs!EnjoyPeaceNeil