The Pale Blue Dot: Music Video & Comic

 

Blue Dot, a 1280x720p 12fps video. Mostly instrumental with simple 2D animation. More in a bit.

This is using the awesome UGRITONE drum VST picked up for $10 in their closing down sale, and also uses a few bars from their Black Metal midi pack, got for $2. 

In the same sale, I also got AMPENSTEIN, but in these tracks I only use the graphic EQ and IR Player on guitars and bass. Distortion is a Waza Craft Metal Zone they are recorded with. 

I have found the guitar tuner in this is great, and so much faster than my KORG pitchblack portable.

This is the first recording using the Harley Benton Fan Fret 8 string. Started as an exercise in the Lydian Mode getting used to the neck, but loved the rhythm and lead guitar parts I was getting while playing with the drums.  So extended that out to a 3+ minute track.  A bit simple and repetitive maybe, but suits me.

This also used my Squire JBASS that I put WILDE humbucking pickups in, and this was the first time I recorded the bridge pickup only sound. Couldn't do that before due to HUM. I like the sound I get here playing with a pick.  I am not actually a bass player. That is okay, as I don't really think I am a guitar player either. Music is core to my life, but guitar isn't.

The Blue Dot lyric was just an off the cuff thing during recording a vocal, and the first time to put that Megaphone sound to use.  Kept thinking of that Gorillaz track "Feel Good Inc." , and that Steve Wilson used that sound a lot too.  So only three sentences, but it is an unconventionally structed track anyway, bound to be played by, maybe, 10 people. I will play it a lot more than that, so really do it just for myself.  

The reaper project:

The most right-ish guitar part has Valhalla Space Modulator on it and that meant for MONO compatibility that part level had to be increased more than it was in the first release. For MONO, the bass had to be reduced a bit too.  Without those the changes, when played in mono, the bass was over powering and the lead almost vanished. This was one of several changes we made in the versions that replaced the initial Bandcamp upload.  It seems everything is fine UNTIL it is released. I love that Bandcamp lets you replace the file anytime you like. 

The track on Bandcamp is here.

It is a simple thing, with simple parts. My whole goal is to be able to hum the parts, so simple, memorable is actually a thing I try for. 

I have bought the latest "Grow Your Own Mustache"  and expect, eventually, I will be incorporating some more complicated things into my guitar playing. 

Have been playing the non-stripped tracks quite a bit, getting familiar with the material, to know where I want to go with it. The "Native Hue Of Resolution" is where I think I will start. 

But not today. Or even tomorrow.

I am a fan of Japanese POP ARTIST Takashi Murakami, particularly SUPERFLAT and his use of color, and have presently revisited my color comic and added some Murakami inspired color textures to a couple of panels, and combining the music and this look was interesting. 

My IN THE NEXT DIMENSION comic is based around Multiverse Archeological Exploration and investigation, which looks at lost and destroyed civilizations and planets.

And thinking of Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot this morning, and how fragile it all looks. It seemed to fit together. Like a future history piece. It also made me think of how I could represent the infinite number of universes (more pale blue dots), that lead to THAT universe, to THAT galaxy, to THAT planet. 

The expanding universe and the distances between solar systems is so vast, it is impossible that any intelligent life could visit us, or us, them. There is no credible UFO evidence, even though there must be an infinite number of intelligent civilizations such as ourselves in the universe.   Even at the speed of light the distances are just far too great. 

IN THE NEXT DIMENSION takes the approach that changing dimensions, and travelling via other dimensions bypasses all that.  There is no evidence that this is possible, but makes these stories possible. Some of the lifeforms capable of that may not even recognize any life on our Pale Blue Dot.

Doing this has given me some ideas on some more comic panels. Maybe a series of POP ART Postcards that are the pages of a comic? A mockup of such a thing in a Postcard album:

 

I haven't seen that done before, but it probably has been done somewhere.  Postcards are 100x148mm (はがき) size and still a major thing for New Years in Japan, with lots of options for printing quantities of photo or plain graphic cards around. 

The music video was directly made in MOHO Pro V12. Images mostly made in CorelDraw, the way I make my comics.  

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