Nebyoolae – Stringing You Along

I’ve loved playing the guitar for nearly 16 years now. That’s more than half my life. Of course, once I became more well-versed with making music on the computer, using synths and samplers and sequencers, just sitting down to play and maybe record myself playing a solo acoustic guitar became less of an activity. Here and there I’d revisit it, but it’s hard not to play with multi-track sample power once you get a taste of it. I like the timbre of more than just the guitar! I also can’t play everything I can imagine!

Spurred on partly by a request I received several months ago and then delivered upon last weekend (more on that in a minute), I’ve made progress on the new album of music I’m working on. Solo acoustic guitar pieces are the theme this time, with the codename of “Stringing You Along” (until I can think of something less lame), and I’ve gotten about 60% of them recorded. It’s felt really good to just play the guitar a lot, and my confidence as a player is boosted considerably.

A friend of mine makes music. He makes great music. Melodic and unique and…vibe-y. One aspect of his compositional abilities takes on the form of something called Vir Heroicus. Listen below:

One of my earliest musical idols was Joe Satriani. Satch. Satchmo. After picking up the guitar mid-way through high school, I began to get into the instrumental guitar music scene. Crystal Planet was one of my first purchases during this period in my life, and I listened to it quite a bit. By that, I mean track 8, “Ceremony”, which just went on loop for weeks before ever listening to any other track. I had heard it before buying the CD (ha, CDs!) and just laser-focused in on it.

http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro

Apple is doing their WWDC 2012 right now and they just announced their new MBP that is about as thin as an MBA, but also sports a Retina Display (as cheesy as that always sounds, it’s a good thing), complete with all the top-of-the-line specs you’d want. It’s basically an touch-less iPad 3 with a keyboard, but better.

Me wants.

This video is one of my most favorite things now (and possibly forever).

Yes, I have another album in mind and in the works (conceptually, at least). Unlike the past few, however, this new album isn’t going to be new works. Instead, I’m going to recraft some old ideas (some of which are covers, too) into a single collection. Basically, between the rocking 4-piece instrumental rock stuff and the electronic grooves, I occasionally bust out an acoustic number here and there. I started my compositional hobby with just a single guitar with no accompaniment, and I like to return there now and then.

An amazing game currently lives on Xbox Live Arcade, just waiting for you to fork over $10 and enter its world. That game is called Fez, and you may remember it from concept screenshots five years ago. Sometimes, genius takes a while, right? I’ve spent a good portion of time with this cute, deceptively deep, “two-dimensional” platforming game over the last week, and I’ve just started getting to really know it. I’m not going to outright spoil anything, but I can’t be held responsible for describing something you didn’t want described, so play the game first!

The Escort Mission is now live.

I’m in a podcast! Some friends of mine formed a little think tank/consortium/discussion group that gets together about once a week in the NebyooStudio to chat. My humble digital audio workstation powers up, microphones are properly checked, and games, television, movies, music, culture, or whatever else we want gets discussed, contorted, and hopefully hilariously dissected. Our opposing viewpoints both complement each other and diverge enough on the subjects we choose, which we hope makes for a good dialogue.

This is the stuff dreams are literally composed of.

The domain and website of my namesake is dead. Nebyoolae.com, the online home I’ve held to show off my creative pursuits for nearly a decade, is now merely an A record on a DNS server pointing to my new cozy spot at Bandcamp.

As mentioned in my previous post, the cover image for Zoetic was hastily thrown together the day of release as I was still waiting for the proper art from a cohort-in-creativity. Well, she finally finished it and it’s now been uploaded to Bandcamp. Thanks to Kathy for the art, yet again (this is her second cover art contribution for me, the first being for my video game remix album, Gamey Remix).

Introducing Zoetic, now available at Bandcamp!

About 10 years ago I created my first “real” album of original music. It was called Clocks Striking 13. No, it wasn’t an ode to 1984, as I had actually forgotten about that reference at the time. I really just thought it looked cool, and gave me a good visual to base a cover off of.

Making that profile on IndieGameMusic.com 3+ years ago finally paid off.

A few months ago I was approached by an independent developer who had created a new, free, space-themed puzzle game. He said he had placeholder music, but wanted original creations. He also wondered if I was interested in making said creations.

I responded politely, professionally, and most enthusiastically with what amounted to “Hell yes, sir”.

Bastion is a game by Supergiant Games. If you haven’t played it yet, you really should.

I keep toying with some of the track names on my upcoming instrumental rock album Zoetic. Some names just seem right from the get go and others never quite seem right, changing a lot in the process as I listen and work on them. All-instrumental albums are like that: fluid until the time I call it “done”.

I do C# programming for my job. Yesterday, I did a search for something relating to the #region construct, which Visual Studio uses for code-folding organization. I found this article where an emphatic programmer slammed their use and essentially publicly shamed people for using them. His is an extreme position and an extreme headline, both which garner attention (it got mine).

I got home from work yesterday and plugged in my trusty iPhone as quickly as I could.

Why? iOS5 is out, people!

The last time I played Minecraft was in late 2010, back when it was still alpha. There were a lot of bugs, but it was playable. My friends and I enjoyed exploring and surviving and building on our mutual friend’s multiplayer server for a couple weeks. It rocked!

As is usual with me, my interest waned the more I played and my initial projects finished. I saw what others were doing (both in-game and on the Internet) and my desire to build (in my opinion) lesser creations shriveled up. Logging on to the game seemed like more of a chore than a joy, and I eventually lost interest.