Posts from #music

Three hours in GarageBand for a three-minute tune. Worth it, I’d say.

<Rig> Totally gonna use this for B-roll cyberpunk city footage.

I’ve been a little short on things to do this holiday season, so I decided to do the traditional thing and make a resource pack for 0x40, everyone’s favorite Flash tool for setting sampled music loops to shifting images of anime characters. It currently has five songs, none of which has anything to do with the others:

OutKast, “B.O.B.” (bad choice for a first song to transcribe)
LCD Soundsystem, “Us V Them” (by request of @abandonedsteel)
The Touch feat. Lina, “Le Night Dominator”
The Avalanches, “Frontier Psychiatrist”
Stereo Dive Foundation, “Daisy”

Usage instructions:

Download the pack.
Open 0x40 and press R when it’s loaded.
Click “Load ZIP” and select 0100.zip.
Use the menus to select a song.
…
Yeah.

No points for figuring out why it’s called “0100.”

Meanwhile, on IllFlower’s GarageBand adventures.

Anime opening and closing sequences are usually rather perfunctory; even good music can’t mask the fact that they’re mostly there to put a bunch of names in front of your face. Servant × Service is one of those rare series that manages to buck this trend with an opening animation that’s actually compelling in its own right. The sequence smoothly incorporates the credits and characters into a dynamic version of the show’s office locale that mixes animation and photography – on the one hand reinforcing the environment, on the other literally physically deconstructing it with reckless whimsical abandon. The use of natural-looking typography not only keeps the text of the credits from sticking out like a sore thumb, but also leaves the show’s distinctly human mark on a setting that is often bland and impersonal. Backed by peppy theme music sung by the female voice cast, the opening does a perfect job of establishing the show’s lighthearted, comedic tone. It’s something to look forward to at the beginning of every episode, unlike most of its largely skippable anime credit brethren, and no less than an integral part of Servant × Service’s charm. Future animators, take note.

(Aside: Surely the entire reason you save a post as a draft is to revise it later, right? Then why in the world does Tumblr hide the “Edit” command for drafts behind an opaque gear menu?)