Dica De Livros MÚSICA - 8 Livros De Alguns Artistas

8 Rockin' Reads That Celebrate Music

First of all thanks to my friend Brad Tolinski for this tip.

Music lovers, read it and weep—here are eight of the best rockin’ reads by and about the musicians we all know and love.

This is Our Song (Simon & Schuster)

Taylor Swift has been doing her sparkly, bigger-than-life, hit song-writing thing for 10 years and this book, put together by author Tyler Conroy and Swift’s fans (aka Swifties), documents and celebrates everything about the 26-year-old songstress.

Play It Loud: An Epic History of the Style, Sound, and Revolution of the Electric Guitar (Doubleday)

Music journalists Brad Tolinski and Alan di Perna are so passionate about the electric guitar they wrote the book on it, delving deep into the instrument’s history, greatest hits and artists.

Paul DuNoyer’s Conversations With McCartney (Hodder & Stoughton) spans 35 years of interviews and conversations with the former Beatle, offering personal and extremely intimate insights into the legendary musician.

Born to Run (Simon & Schuster) 

For decades, fans have been talking about Bruce Springsteen. Now, in his new autobiography, (released along with the companion album, Chapter & Verse), Bruce tells his own story, revealing things we never knew about the song Born to Run as well as everything from his ultimate magic trick to why he says he’s a bit of a fraud.

I Am Brian Wilson (Da Capo Press) 

You know the hits—“Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “God Only Knows,” “I Get Around,”—now read the story as told by the Beach Boy himself.

John Lennon vs. The USA: The Inside Story of the Most Bitterly Contested and Influential Deportation Case in United States History (Ankerwyke Publishing) by Leon Wildes

This is the story of the attempted deportation of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, circa 1972, which is doubly interesting in light of immigration being one of the hottest topics in today’s presidential race.

Morrissey & Marr: The Severed Alliance (The Overlook Press) by Johnny Rogan

This 25th anniversary edition revisits the friendship, musical partnership and tumultuous breakup of The Smiths’ Morrissey and Johnny Marr, adding subtext to the band’s greatest hits.

New York Rock: From the Rise of The Velvet Underground to the Fall of CBGB (St. Martin’s Griffin) 

Author Steven Blush’s go-to book about the sub-cultures of rock n’ roll is packed with anecdotes from 1,500 musicians, journalists, artists and club owners 

 

É Uma Dica Simples - Como Fazer Uma Música Cover Ser Ótima

It's Just Small Tip:  How to Do a Great Cover Songs

First of all than to Robin Yukio

Work with what you’ve got. Play to your strengths (literally). If you have a great range, showcase it with big sweeping melodies (Queen, Mariah Carey, and other non-cheesy artists as well!). If your tone is average but you have a great sense of groove, cover more rhythmic songs that highlight that. Choose a song that could have been written for you.

Find your key. Just because the original singer can hit that low G doesn’t mean that’s what is best for you. Find your best range and make sure you are hitting your sweet spots. There are plenty of apps that can transpose your favorite song to your perfect key if you don’t want to do it yourself (or, there are people like me that can help you).

Do it your way. Unless you are playing a wedding and it’s the couple’s special song, don’t feel married to the original version. Try different embellishments. Find your voice and treat the tune like you wrote it.

Experiment with arrangement. Try changing the time signature/feel. (Here is my rendition of Outkast’s “Hey Ya” as a waltz, for example.) Make a rock song into a ballad, or vice versa. Put jazz chords to a simple pop song. Turn a heavily produced number into a minimalist piece (this is also a good way to go if you are still struggling with self-accompaniment).

Get permission. If you’re playing an open mic, this isn’t such a big issue. But if you plan on recording a cover and sending it out into the world, check out the info on licensing at the Harry Fox Agency.

A Maior Revolução Musical Da História Aconteceu em 1991! Você Concorda?

The biggest musical revolution in the history of popular music happened in 1991 - Do You Agree?

In 1850s, Franz Lizst’s technically demanding Romantic compositions for solo piano had the ladies swooning.

A century later, Elvis Presley did the same belting simple lyrics over three chords on a guitar.

A few short decades after that, Coolio topped the charts with bassy synth, snare, and vocals that mostly consisted of a rhythmically-spoken monologue. 

There’s no doubt that music changes over time, especially popular music.

But it’s rarely easy to say, definitively, exactly how it changed and when.

Now, a group of scientists publishing in the Royal Society of Science says they’ve figured out how to use data to sniff out the most pivotal periods in the history of popular music.

They hope that their approach will bring some objectivity to debates about trends in musical history. 

“You can say, ‘This is really when it happened,’” one of the authors, Armand Leroi, told the LA Times. “It’s not just, ‘Things were really cool at CBGB’s or on the Sunset Strip back then.’”

It turns out that ‘it’ — the biggest musical revolution in the history of popular music — really happened in 1991, with the rise of rap and hip hop to the pop charts.

Making a data set out of the Hot 100

The researchers started with the Billboard Hot 100, a list of the most-successful singles in America dating back to 1958. The Hot 100 is published weekly, but songs will often remain on the chart week to week.

They took the charts from between 1960 and 2010 and used Last.fm to get 30-second-long audio segments of as many as they could — 17,094 songs, or 86% of the unique singles on the Hot 100 from 1960-2010. 

Then they fed these 30-second segments into a couple of programs to analyze them quantitatively.

They used NNLS Chroma to extract the most salient chords from the audio. Then they broke their song segments into relative chord changes. A change from C Major to A minor would be represented as M.9.m — i.e. a change from a Major chord to a minor chord, with the second chord’s root nine half-steps higher than the first chord’s.

Priceonomics

The highlighted bars show the loudest chords.

Then they did something similar for timbre, using mel-frequency cepstral coefficients(MFCCs), “which approximate the human auditory system’s response” to sound.

This gave them a quantitative way to represent timbre. With this, they were able to algorithmically group very short snippets of these songs into audio files like the ones below, based on timbre type.

You can listen to these files — which sound pretty crazy — here.

They then had volunteers annotate these clusters by hand, selecting from the following tag set, (including tags like mellow, aggressive, dark, bright, calm, energetic, smooth, percussive, instrument: piano, `ah', `ee', `ooh').

Then they made topic sets of chord changes or timbre tags that frequently occurred together, and not with other chords changes or timbre tags. In doing so they borrowed a tool out of textual analysis.

Then they tracked the frequency with which these topics occurred across the Hot 100 over the decades:

Priceonomics

Harmonic topics over the decades: H3 correlates most highly to songs tagged disco, funk, and RnB, hence this topic’s swell in popularity in the 1970s.

H5 — no chords — correlates most highly to songs tagged rap and hip hop, thus the sudden rise in chordless songs in the 1990s.

Priceonomics

Timbral topics over the decades: T4 seems to show the sinusoidal popularity of harmonic piano pop; T5, the repeated rise and fall of energetic guitar rock.

About those revolutions

A screenshot from the music video for Biz Markie's "Just a Friend." YouTube

In 1990, in the upswing of the biggest musical revolution of the past 50 years, Biz Markie’s  Just a Friend  peaked at number 9 on the Hot 100.

This analysis, while by no means capturing every feature of these songs, still seems to be tracking some musically meaningful aspects of them.

This study is able to point out that, timbrally, Fall-out Boy is the most “guitar, loud, energetic” artist in the Hot 100 in the past 50 years.

And it's also able to tell that minor 7th chord changes were basically introduced with disco in the 1970s and haven’t left pop music since.

To study how music changed over time, they plotted the rate of change in the proportions of harmonic and timbral topics. “[The analysis] suggested that while musical evolution was ceaseless,” the authors write, “there were periods of relative stasis punctuated by periods of rapid change.”

Priceonomics

Rate of change, represented on a color gradient, for windows of time ranging from 1 to 10 years following each quarter from January 1960 through December 2010.

Blue coordinates indicate least change, followed by green, then yellow, with red and brown being the most. Significant revolutions are marked with vertical black lines.

The climactic periods in the history of American popular music are: the last quarter of 1963, the last quarter of 1982, and the first quarter of 1991.

As they write in the paper, the biggest revolution was the one in 1991 correlated to the proliferation of rap music to the popular charts.

“The rise of rap and related genres,” the paper reads, “appears to be the single most important event that has shaped the musical structure of the American charts in the period that we studied.”

Major musical revolutions 1960-2010

Priceonomics

Their analysis didn’t end there: the researchers also used their data to critique the “British Invasion” theory of American rock and roll.

From the paper: 

On 26 December 1963, The Beatles released I want to hold your hand in the USA. They were swiftly followed by dozens of British acts who, over the next few years, flooded the American charts. It is often claimed that this ’British Invasion’ was responsible for musical changes of the time.

But the revolution of the 1960s hit its peak in late 1963.

The Beatles in 1963. AP

Their analysis revealed that the “evolutionary trajectories” of many musical styles were already established by the time the Beatles hit the scene, “implying that, whereas the British may have contributed to this revolution, they could not have been entirely responsible for it.”

Groups like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones did, “fanned [the revolution’s] flames.”

Earlier revolutions

Leroi said he was surprised that the rap revolution of the 1990s made a bigger splash in the data than the Beatles and their generation did.

“Being a victim of boomer ideology, I would have guessed it was [the 1960s],” he told the LA Times.

The rap revolution of 1991 might be challenged by future research, the paper hints.

“We are interested,” the authors write in the conclusion, “in extending the temporal sample to at least the 1940s — if only to see whether 1955 was, as many have claimed, the birth date of Rock’n’Roll.”

Dê Uma Olhada No Estúdio E Na Casa Do Prince

Get an exclusive first look inside Prince's home and studio, Paisley Park

Al Roker toured the Minnesota estate that became Prince’s home and workshop, and which has been turned into a public museum and tribute to the music legend, who died from an accidental painkiller overdose in April.

Samantha Okazaki / TODAY

Prince recorded some of his greatest hits in the Studio A sound booth and control room, which is still set up just the way he liked it (Prince symbol, and all).

Prince’s handwritten notes remain laying about inside the control room of Studio A, filled with his keyboard and guitars — just two of the 27 instruments he played on his records. Prince was using the studio to work on a jazz album that will be released in the future.

Samantha Okazaki / TODAY

Prince's hand-written notes.

In the Purple Rain room, visitors will see the script, guitar, and even one of the motorcycles Prince rode in the movie. The film generated an album that spent 27 weeks at the top of the charts and sold more than 20 million copies. It also earned a music Oscar for Prince, who became the first person to have the number one movie, song, and album at the same time.

Samantha Okazaki / TODAY

Prince's movie and multi-platinum album Purple Rain serves as the inspiration for this room, which includes this motorcycle. 

Samantha Okazaki / TODAY

Prince's Academy Award for 'Purple Rain' and 2004 Grammy for 'Musicology' on display

Prince was known for his elaborate outfits, all of which were custom made, said Paisley Park’s archivist, Angie Marchese.

“He was a very tiny guy, which actually brings us to very unique and unusual circumstances, sometimes finding mannequins properly sized to be able to display the clothing,” she said.

Samantha Okazaki / TODAY

Prince was known for his complex and radical taste in fashion, but what many don't know is that he kept almost every outfit and he had a pair of matching shoes to go with each one. The archives now contain thousands of articles of clothing. 

“Because like the Purple Rain outfits that you'll see here, Prince had a 22 and a half inch waist at the time, in 1984.”

But Prince rarely threw anything away, making her job a bit easier.

“We do have an amazing inventory because Prince saved everything,” Marchese said.

Samantha Okazaki / TODAY

Just outside of Studio A is Influence Hallway, featuring this custom-designed mural that represents Prince's greatest musical influences.

Al was joined on the tour by two of Prince’s sisters, Norrine and Sharon Nelson, who said their brother’s energy and spirit could definitely be felt in the exhibit, which they described as a good representation of his legacy.

"It is, and he did plan it to be a museum. Everything is strategically placed," Sharon Nelson said. "And when the fans come in they'll see that it is."

Her sister Norrine Nelson agreed.

“It’s truly Prince. He thought all this through," she said. "He had a vision and he finished it.”

Later, during a live interview with Prince's younger sister, Tyka Nelson confirmed that her brother had planned out much of what the museum looks like. She said she hopes guests will experience something personal during their visit.

Com Vinil Tyco (Scott Hansen) Estabelece Uma Presença Física

With Vinyl, the Musician Tyco Establishes a Physical Presence

Scott Hansen, who performs spacey electronic rock under the name Tycho, at a soundcheck in Philadelphia.

In the age of the surprise digital album, what about the vinyl fans?

That has become one of the stranger puzzles in the music industry, as more musicians orchestrate special releases with online services, while at the same time sales of vinyl LPs have come to represent an increasingly important chunk of those artists’ income.

Scott Hansen, who records spacey electronic rock under the name Tycho, has come up with one solution. Tycho’s new album, “Epoch,” was released online on Friday. Following a pattern laid out by stars like Beyoncé, Kanye West and Frank Ocean, it arrived with no advance notice.

Yet to accommodate fans who also want the release on physical formats, Tycho’s record label, Ghostly International, will be offering a custom slipmat — the felt pad that sits on a turntable — to customers who place advance orders for the vinyl record at their local record store. The slipmat will become available in about two weeks, and physical versions of the album, on both vinyl and CD, will come out in January.

The staggered timing lets Mr. Hansen and Ghostly release the music quickly — Mr. Hansen said he put the finishing touches on the recording just two weeks ago — while also giving a tangible dimension to what is otherwise digital ephemera. Mr. Hansen, a former graphic designer, handles the artwork of his records himself, and their look and feel are a major part of their attraction to fans; of the 70,000 copies of Tycho’s last album, “Awake,” that were sold, 26 percent were on vinyl.

Photo

The vinyl version of Tycho’s new album, “Epoch,” will be released in January. CreditMolly Smith 

“We’ve always been really concerned with the physical experience,” Mr. Hansen said. “A lot of people want the vinyl so that they feel that this music is real, it’s not just a digital file.”

The plan also reflects how deeply many basic aspects of music marketing are now in flux, as the industry is being reshaped by streaming media. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, streaming now accounts for 47 percent of retail sales in the United States, and physical formats only 20 percent.

Vinyl records, which are often priced at a premium, have grown so quickly that they now generate almost half the sales revenue of CDs. Yet a decades-old manufacturing infrastructure means that labels must often wait months for a pressing plant to turn around a new record.

Independent labels like Ghostly must also manage the demands of digital services, which want exclusive content, and independent record stores, still a vital channel for sales and promotion.

“It’s a balance to make sure everyone’s happy,” said Bryan Duquette, Tycho’s manager. “If you placate Spotify and Apple, then the physical retailers are bummed.”

Photo

Mr. Hansen at the Mann Center in Philadelphia.CreditKatrina d'Autremont for The New York Times 

For Mr. Hansen and many other artists, an instantaneous digital release has a powerful lure as a means to connect to his audience and jump-start what can otherwise be a grueling monthslong promotional schedule.

“I’m tired of the buildup,” he said. “Just release it. It’s fresh. It hasn’t been sitting around for four months. This is new — it feels like now.”

For fans of major acts, a surprise online release can create a communal moment, with reactions that ricochet across social media. Yet as this release strategy trickles down to lesser-known artists like Tycho, the effect is less clear.

Sam Valenti IV, the founder of Ghostly, described the slipmat as a “passport stamp” for fans, a way to seize on the release of new music yet still have a keepsake in physical form to function as a placeholder until the final product comes out.

“Streaming music is fantastic, but record stores still have a place as the physical manifestation of music culture,” Mr. Valenti said. “How to balance those things is a beautiful tension right now.”

A Trilha Sonora De HALO WARS 2 (Behind The Scenes)

WITNESS THE SOUND OF HALO WARS 2 WITH TWO ORIGINAL SONGS (EXCLUSIVE)

Nothing is more inspiring than sitting in a room as a live orchestra, brimming with talented musicians, puts their all into creating a cohesive magical melody. Watching the conductor’s arms dance through the air while the composers take the lead in the control room, listening and giving notes to ensure the final product is nothing short of perfection, is an experience worth living through if you’re given the chance. This is the scene I witnessed a couple of weeks ago when I visited the Newman Scoring Stage at 20th Century Fox Studios in Los Angeles for the scoring of Halo Wars 2‘s soundtrack.

After the invitation was extended, I trekked out to L.A. and got the lowdown on the recording process. Speaking with composer Gordy Haab, audio director Paul Lipson and Finishing Move composers Brian Trifon and Brian Lee White, I learned how the group collaborates to bring the world of Halo to life. On top of that, we have two exclusive songs to premiere, plus a behind-the-scenes look at the scoring process, which you can check out at the top of the page.

(Left to right: Brian Lee White, Brian Trifon)

The foundation for the soundtrack is strong, as the team behind it has experience in spades. Haab is an award-winning movie, video game, and television composer, who most recently worked on Star Wars: Battlefront. As for the Finishing Move team of Brian Trifon and Brian Lee White, you’ll recognize some of their recent work from The Master Chief Collection, Halo Channel, and Double Fine’s Massive Chalice. Speaking with audio director Paul Lipson (who also worked on Halo before) added an extra layer of depth to our understanding of how everything gets made.

The first song we have for you is called “Run Little Demons,” composed by Gordy Haab and Finishing Move. This scape was created to capture the brute strength and complex nature of Atriox (which is a new badass villain in the game) and the Banished.

“In this specific cue, we use powerful tribal drums and high tech electronic percussion to create an intense rhythmic foundation. Heavy brass and layered synths augment the rhythm with explosive stabs, expressing dread and fear, while strings add tension and color to create contrast,” the composers said. Creating a sound that instantly evokes the right emotions is key, and this is even more important when introducing a new character like Atriox to the universe.

When asked exactly what kind of emotions they wanted Atriox to evoke, Paul Lipson instantly responded, “Other than sheer terror?”

The second track we have for you is “Isabel’s Awakening.” This is the new theme for the “smart” AI introduced into the world, which is supposed to reflect the hardships she’s witnessed, including having all of her friends destroyed during a Banished surprise attack, and the turmoil going on in the universe. “‘Isabel’s Awakening’ is comprised of three sections: First, an introduction and delicate statement of her main melodic theme,” the team said. “Next, a lament to honor fallen heroes and to underscore the present strife and unrest. Then finally, a reprise of her main theme that blossoms and grows into a bold and hopeful hero’s song.” A complex sound for a complex character. 

With Haab, White, Trifon, and Lipson at the helm, the soundtrack has the potential to become something memorable in the Halo universe. Because the team is working on a spin-off of the main series, they had more freedom with its direction. To put it simply, they are not as beholden to the established sound we’re all familiar with, even though they strive to stay true to the franchise… which of course, is a good thing. “It was less restrictive than being part of the main canon, because we get to prop up not only a legacy from the first game, but also new characters, new locations, and some familiar locations,” said Lipson.

So why put this team of composers together? “You’re not going to find one person that’s fantastic at everything,” White said. So while White and Trifon have their own sound and familiarity with the Halo music (as they’ve worked on the series before), they needed an “Orchestra boss”: Gordy Haab. White also emphasised the importance of their teamwork, saying, “It was always a collaborative situation.”

(Gordy Haab)

With all the pieces set, the team wanted to make something new and refreshing, leaving their own mark on the series with an interesting, unique sound. With that in mind, there needed to be some sort of connection to the series. “We wanted to definitely incorporate choir, and then sort of branch from that,” Haab said. “We each had our hands on every piece of music in the entire game.”

A lot of thought also went into how the music will be going into the game, especially since the goal is to have the dialogue, gameplay, and music dynamically interact with each other. Lipson created a color system that ranges from green, yellow, red, and super red, so that depending on what’s going on in the game and the stress level that coordinates with a color, it’ll “ratchet up” the music. So basically, the music will correlate with what the player is experiencing, an important feature for an RTS game.

As for whether there are extra pressures working on an iconic series like Halo, the answer is obvious.”Yes, there’s a ton of pressure working on an existing franchise this large,” Haab said. He’s worked on both Star Wars: Battlefront, and Knights of the Old Republic, so he’s definitely got a lot of experience in that department. He added, “I’m really used to the pressure of an existing franchise, and a large fanbase with expectations.”

(Front row, left to right: Paul Lipson, Gordy Haab)

“Because this is Halo Wars, and it is an offshoot story, it doesn’t have to fully rely on the exact traditional Marty O’Donnell  [composer known for work at Bungie] elements of music. So we can take it in different directions,” stated Trifon. This team knows what a Halo game sounds like, so they were very careful in staying true to the franchise while still taking the liberty to experiment with things like featuring the brass which Haab really wanted to introduce to the soundtrack. It doesn’t end there, though. Saab also mentioned how he really liked the filter effects Trifon and White worked on, so he took the brass section to imitate that using acoustic instruments.

To get an even better understanding of the mindset with the some of the sounds used in the soundtrack, Trifon elaborated on a “space violin”-like sound that he’s used before in the Halogames, explaining that it actually comes from a squeaky oven door. “It sounds organic, but alien. From the non-orchestral point of view, what we’re trying to bring with the textures is, instead of it just being some Daft Punk-like synths, it’s textures that have some sort of organic humanity to it, but still sounding alien and strange.” He continued to express his appreciation of how the franchise has a history for every civilisation in the game, so making the sounds organic is an important factor when bringing everything to life.

When discussing the legacy of the Halo music over the years with Dan Ayoub (Studio Head of Strategy Games, 343 Industries) and Frank O’Connor (Franchise Creative Director, 343 Industries), O’Conner said, “We’ve worked with such amazing composers over the years, from Marty O’Donnell to Neil Davidge to Kazuma Jinnouchi, and everyone we’ve worked with has poured soul and talent into creating a soundscape that is familiar, moving, exciting and elating.”

He continued,” It speaks to a universe and an experience that is hard to put into mere words, and that, ironically is something music can describe just as well as rhetoric. Working with a team of composers, who have created absolutely beloved music for many games, have a slightly more six dimensional problem to solve. They have to tie a new score into the epic legacy of two fantastic composers, all the while sticking to a shared and distributed voice and vision.”

Ayoub added, “But Gordy Haab has created a couple of soundtracks for Star Wars games and Brian Trifon has created scores for Assassin’s Creed and previous Halo games, so they’re already familiar with the nuances of creating music for established franchises.”

One thing is clear: this soundtrack for the game is incredibly important to the team. White sums it up perfectly when discussing everything finally coming together at the studio: “This is going to be so dope.” Music, especially in video games, is too often forgotten, but it’s such an integral part of shaping an experience.

Halo Wars 2 may not be a sequel in the main series, but the sound is getting the love and attention required to make it memorable. And if the game is handled with such high regard on every other spectrum, we’re in for a treat come early next year.

Make sure to check out the clip above from my time at the Newman Scoring Stage at 20th Century Fox Studios, just to get a glimpse of how the magic happens. I’d like to once again thank Microsoft, 343, and the talented composers for giving me a behind-the-scenes look.

Are you looking forward to getting your hands on Halo Wars 2 early next year? What do you think about the two exclusive songs revealed here? What are you favorite video game soundtracks? Where do the Halo series’ soundtracks rank on that list? Let us know in the comments below!

"BEEP" Um Documentário Grandioso Sobre A História Dos Audios Nos Games.

BEHIND ‘BEEP’ – THE GIGANTIC GAME AUDIO HISTORY PROJECT:

The Beep game audio documentary – Karen Collin’s massive undertaking of documenting the history of game audio – is finally complete. 

Over the course of two years, the project has gone from over 100 interviews with the most influential people in the game audio world, 226 hours of raw footage, to an in-depth, 2-hour documentary + a two-volume book to accompany it.

And in this special A Sound Effect feature, she looks back at the ups and downs of this monumental project; a project that grew larger than anyone ever expected. Here’s the story behind the gigantic Beep project – and how you can finally experience the end-result:

The trailer for Beep

Beep began as a humble project a little over two years ago now. Initially, I thought I would be interviewing about twenty people. I would simultaneously write a book around the interviews, interweaving interview content into the book, a history of game audio.
We launched a Kickstarter campaign in August 2014, and during the six weeks of the campaign it was easy to get caught up in the excitement surrounding the project. We were a Kickstarter staff pick and Project of the Day. Major tech press like Engadget and C|net covered us. I was doing three or four press interviews a day. People from all over the game audio community got in touch and wanted to be a part of it.

I was looking at a dizzying list of about a hundred people who had made themselves available to interview

The project’s scope exploded as other people signed on, volunteers lined up, and by the end of the campaign, I was looking at a dizzying list of about a hundred people who had made themselves available to interview. My camera guy, Matt, and I set about with gusto to Los Angeles to begin our interviews in October, 2014. 

World travellers

For the next year or so, Matt and I travelled around the world and shot interviews with people. Los Angeles, Toronto, Maryland, London, San Francisco, Seattle, Japan, Montreal and then Vancouver. It might sound glamorous, but the only time we really got to see the locations we visited was in the taxi from one shoot to the next. Much to Matt’s dismay, despite being five minutes walk from Buckingham Palace in London (a place he’d never been), we never even found the time to walk over and take some tourist shots. Many days I’d get up at 5 a.m. to begin preparing for the day, and wouldn’t get to bed until midnight.

Behind ‘Beep’, the gigantic game audio history project – with Karen Collins:

CLICK TO TWEET

We did have some fun times as well. The day we spent running (quite literally) around Tokyo to shoot b-roll; recording the humorous VO audio in a toilet on a train from London to Liverpool; or just looking up at the Hollywood sign on the way to our first shoot and saying, “Matt, we’re in L.A. shooting a movie!”

Many days I’d get up at 5 a.m. to begin preparing for the day, and wouldn’t get to bed until midnight

We felt like we were constantly running from one item on our schedule to the next, but the times when we could stop and catch our breath—sometimes just for a minute while we were in an elevator on our way up to a shoot—we’d look at each other with a stupid grin and repeat that phrase: “Hey. We’re in London, shooting a movie!” “We’re in Japan, shooting a movie!” In the enormous stress of it all, we managed to keep reminding ourselves how cool what we were doing really was.

How to watch the Beep game audio documentary:

As of today, Beep is available on Vimeo On-Demand here. The book, the DVD version, and Beep soundtrack can also be ordered here.

Running out of money

We rapidly ran out of the Kickstarter money—a combination of a sudden drop in the value of the Canadian dollar, and getting walloped by the loss of our AirBnB during one trip (our breakdown of our budget is here for those interested). We went back to Kickstarter and raised some more funds.
At the end of the year, including the two (and sometimes three) cameras we used, we had 226 hours of footage. 226 hours to wade through. 226 hours to edit down into something cohesive. I began editing. Cutting, cutting, cutting.

I had my first edit — everything I wanted to see go into the film. It was eleven and a half hours long.

After about three months of very long days, I had my first edit—everything I wanted to see go into the film. It was eleven and a half hours long. This would be the Lord of the Rings of documentary film.

I had to get ruthless. I had to cut some great content that I really loved, but which just didn’t fit the story arc. It was probably the hardest work I’ve ever done, to cut down that footage into something under two hours. I kept editing until February, always cutting away, each time felt like cutting off a piece of my own flesh.

The first screening

We screened an almost-done film in March during GDC for cast and crew. It was probably one of the best nights of my life: To sit in a room full of people whose music I’d been hearing since I was a child, who had grown into friends, and watch them on screen altogether in one room, after all that stress and all that work, was indescribable. Matt and I both just cried for the first half of the film.

It was probably one of the best nights of my life

At the end, we have a small dedication to Brad Fuller (who passed away in January of this year). The crowd—most of whom knew Brad personally, all let out a big sigh, and then gave us a standing ovation. Matt and I cried again. I didn’t stop crying for about a week, mostly from the relief of it not being a total disaster. 

Since then, we’ve selectively screened Beep at festivals while we polished it off, adding subtitles (another enormously underestimated task!), building the DVD menus, doing all the artwork, and getting it ready for release in multiple formats. The project still has a ways to go before I can put it to rest. About half of the webisodes have now been released online and can be watched on our Vimeo page.

   

Editing the book this summer showed the ridiculous scope of the project: 410,000 words. To put that in perspective, a normal book is maybe 75,000 words. Typing, editing and copyediting the two-volume book was an enormous task in itself, but I published the e-book last month, and it’s currently at the printers. I’m in the midst of mailing out Kickstarter goods, and spend an hour or so every day at the post office, slowly getting through it all. But now, at least, each step comes with a sense of getting closer to the end of the tunnel. Each step is a box ticked: releasing the e-book, seeing the DVD copies come in, releasing the soundtrack, mailing the goods out, and slowly getting webisodes finished off and released.
 

Leonard J. Paul composed the soundtrack for Beep – believed to be the first feature-length, procedurally-generated film soundtrack

Overwhelmed

If I had to sum up the past two years of my life, it would be with the simple word, “overwhelming.” From Kickstarter campaigns, to planning and background research, to filming, editing, finalising, transcribing, layout, copyediting, to the webisodes and press interviews and film festival submissions and managing all the emails and social media…I underestimated every single task how much time it would take.

I’d done major projects before, but this one was a whole other category of crazy. You never see how much work goes in behind the scenes on these projects, and I was working 12-16 hours a day, 7 days a week, for most of the past two years to pull all of this together.

I was working 12-16 hours a day, 7 days a week, for most of the past two years to pull all of this together

The big lesson learned I think is to assemble a team of people that you trust in advance—and whom you have worked with on smaller projects and know they will not flake out on you. There were plenty of people who volunteered to do work on Beep, but who disappeared when it came to getting work done. I tried hiring people several times to take on tasks, and always ended up re-doing the work myself anyway, disappointed with their results. Nobody is as invested in your project as you are, and ultimately, it falls on your shoulders to get the work done, so unless you’re prepared to do all of it yourself, then you need to raise enough money to hire professionals from the start. Could I have raised that much money? Most likely not.

Looking back at Beep

Looking back on the past two years, I can’t help but feel exhausted—physically, financially, and emotionally. It will take me a long time to recover from this project. People ask about a Beep 2 and I just shake my head. But I’m excited about what we accomplished. I feel giddy holding the DVD in my hand and I watch the mail daily, anxious to get the books. I’m regularly reminded how important the project is.

We lost another of our interviewees, Jory Prum, in April. I didn’t want to change our original dedication at that point, but Jory was a good friend, and has been in my thoughts all the time we finished the project. The film is officially dedicated to Brad, but in reality, it’s dedicated to Jory as well.

It’s dedicated to all of the people who made me fall in love with games, who gave me the soundtrack to my life

It’s dedicated to all of the people who made me fall in love with games, who gave me the soundtrack to my life. The unsung heroes who kept making great music despite toiling away in obscurity, often thinking nobody cared about them. We did care, and I hope that the project shows you how important you are to all of us. Thank you: to those who are part of the project and to those who we couldn’t get to interview. And thanks to all those who helped or supported me–either through backing the project, or just sending a few words of encouragement.