Monday, June 30, 2014

BrightWarmBusy Theme

The name says it all. This is a 20 second theme song that is bright, warm, and busy. It strikes a nice balance between happy and sincere. I used a piano, orchestral bass, percussion, and dulcimer with a tape delay effect. This song is the first submission of week #3.

Sunday, June 29, 2014

Free Electron

Free Electron is a little song I wrote with game audio in mind, although it could work for other production projects too. Anything that needs a little "electronic" sounding mid-tempo groove to set the scene. This is the last submission for the week, and I got it my quota of five for week #2.

I'll post the results of my week two submissions when they are all reviewed, but it may take awhile. The last two didn't get in until the 11th hour.

Tremolo Strings & Piano Ident.

This is a 5 second long branding audio clip I made to accompany studio animations for credits. Can be used anywhere a little short background audio is needed for branding or identification purposes. Nothing fancy.


Thursday, June 26, 2014

Week One Score Card

The results are in from last week's submissions. "Wobble Bass," "Victor's Circle," and "Jazz Cat," have all been accepted. "Tech Ident" was rejected. I like to try submit 5 a week, but was one short for the first week. Slow start.

That makes the first summer score card 3/4. I'm tempted to add my early bird submissions to improve my percentage and make my quota, but it would feel dishonest. I couldn't do that to the faithful thousands who read my blog every day. (OK. Maybe I would just be lying to myself. What's the point?)

I have three more working their way through the queue this week. Two to go to recapture my self-respect.

Island Bounce Loop

A little background audio for an island party. It makes a perfect loop at 58 seconds. With a little judicious cutting and pasting, the first four measures can be looped at the beginning or end for more flexibility.

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Harp and Pads Ident

This is a short clip I made using harp, pads, and light tympani for audio branding. Minor, gloomy, and a little other-worldly sounding.

Warm Fuzzies

"Warm Fuzzies" were these little necklaces we made at camp when I was a kid. They were little balls of yarn, and the idea was to give someone a hug, then pull a single strand of yarn out of your ball and tie it to your partner's necklace. Just a little physical metaphor for a nice feeling.

I wrote this little one to try to capture a little of the "warm fuzzy" feelings of my childhood. I just happened to limit those feelings to one minute because that happily coincides with the amount of time that radio spots in need of audio run. What a coincidence.

This is the number one submission for this week, and it's actually bigger than it looks. I included both the straight-through version you hear below, and a looped version to give people flexibility for projects longer than 60 seconds.

Last week I submitted all of the songs for the week in one massed lump. Probably not the best way to do things. This week I'll submit them as I finish them. When I do that, my icon shows up on the main page of Audio Jungle spread out a bit longer. I may get a few more listens by submitting one a day, rather than a clump all at once. Not sure how much difference it makes in the end.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Tech Ident

This is a 4 second long ident I did for branding. Short, quirky, melodic, rhythmic, and technical sounding. A surprising amount of tweaking goes into these little things. They're used for studio credits in video, broadcast, or game credits. They're teeny and cheap to buy, but if a studio latches on to one, they buy it over & over for every project they release.

Victor's Circle

This is a one minute (OK, 1:02 with the audio tail) instrumental underscore for the winner's circle. I mean for it to be a little happy music to be played in the background for someone being given the trophy, getting the laurels placed on their head, or having Champagne uncorked and squirted on them. That sort of thing.
Not so much for having the Gatorade cooler emptied over your head. Maybe I'll do that one sometime too, but it wouldn't sound like this. I'm not sure what it would sound like, but I think it would have to have a harder edge than this song.

"Wobble Bass" is in

For convenience sake, I'm calling the "Wobble Bass Talkover" my first official submission of the summer. I'll just call the two before that 'warm up freebies'.

Why? Because that way I start the summer submission season with 150 items for sale on Audio Jungle, which is easier to keep track of than 148. Pathetic, I know. It's just the way my mind works.

In any case, "Wobble Bass" was accepted by AJ, and is already up for sale on the site. Jazz Cat is #2, and #3 has already been submitted, and will be my next post. So that makes me 1/1 for the summer so far. Well, it's a start.

Jazz Cat

This one is just a short, 30 second loop. For any broadcast, audio, or video project in need of a little cool.

Friday, June 13, 2014

Wobble Bass Talkover Loop

Lately I've been experimenting with the ESX24 Sampler, a software instrument in Logic. It has lots of really awesome built in patches, but why limit yourself?

I built this one minute loop around the patch I made for the wobbling bass. I kept it simple and tossed in a drum kit and distorted guitar using a simple AB pattern with an 8 bar intro of just the bass and drums. It's a little bit more "electronic" sounding than most of my stuff, but it's fun to experiment. It's one minute long and infinitely loops for a fade out.

Friday, June 6, 2014

Approaching Milestones

Renaissance Faire was just approved for sale on Audio Jungle, which makes my 149th item. I consider 150 a milestone worthy of celebration. Probably ice cream. Parkerhouse, if you must know. Yeah, I know it's not very manly, being pink and full of cherries. I just like it. Get over it. Seriously. It's just ice cream.

Another big milestone approaching is the next funding level for my AJ account. With less than $200 to go in sales I will bump up to the next level, and finally get a larger cut of sales than Audio Jungle does. That 51% has been a long time coming.

I'll soon be making (and posting) goals for the summer. Not sure which direction to go here. I'd love to short for 50 additional songs over the summer, but that's kind of a stretch. I don't want to put myself in the position of cranking out stuff I'm less happy with in order to make a self-imposed quota. Sometimes I think I might be better served pouring a lot of energy in to fewer songs. The only problem with that theory is that I have a handful already listed that I worked my butt off on that have never been purchased, and others that I cranked out in a half hour that have turned out to be some of my best sellers. Go figure.

I think I'll just stick with writing & recording whatever pops into my brain and let the cards fall where they may. I really should try something with vocals in it this summer though. You would think a choir director might actually sing on a track at some point. Heck, if I'm nervous about students judging me, I'm good enough with Autotune to make myself flawless. Mwah ha ha.....

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Small Celebration

I just had a really big sale on AJ, and so am pausing to celebrate and pat myself on the back.

What people actually buy on Audio Jungle (aside from the music files themselves) is a license to use the music for commercial projects. So the songs are more expensive that they would be on a site like iTunes or Amazon MP3. A standard license for my "Bottle Jam" song costs $17. Not too shabby.

An extended license for that song lets people use it in larger commercial project that can then be resold to other end users. Like the kind of project someone does for a larger advertising campaign. THAT costs $85, and is a much bigger deal. I just sold one of those.

I'd love to be cool enough to brush it off and say "Oh, yeah...I sell those extended licenses all the time. No biggie." The truth is that extended licenses are still pleasant surprises to me.

The extra cash is nice of course, but the nice thing is to know that someone thinks highly enough of something I've written & recorded that it's worth dropping that kind of cash on. I wouldn't mind getting to the point where it isn't a big deal. For now, it's still cause for a mini-celebration.

This one isn't posted to Soundcloud, so if you would like to hear it, you can use this link... http://audiojungle.net/item/bottle-jam/48638