Tom

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I run a small but CD quality voiceover studio and make music on the side mostly for fun, but I also use the keys to make custom music for commercials. I'm married, a dad with 2 teenage kids-both honor roll students doing so much with high school that they are likely to graduate early and hit college at 17. Alex is probably going to be a game designer or maybe write columns in the gaming mags. Brianna has always wanted to be a lawyer, but her involvement in music has influenced her a great deal and now might major in music and minor in law... At any rate, I, like Doc Brown in BTTF3 said to Clara, am a student of all sciences. Though I've not actually taken college level physics, astronomy or engineering courses, by dint of the amount of research on countless topics done over the years, its safe to say I probably have a low-level major equivalant comprehention of many scientific subjects. My most urgent concern today is what we humans are doing to our planet. Our consumerism and energy gluttony is rapidly making Earth an unhappy planet. In my fantasy world where everything went my way, the link to oil and politics which seriously impeded the progress of a cleaner renewable energy infrastructure didn't exist. Everything that possibly could be recycled is recycled. All vehicles would be hybrid and would run on alcohol, biodiesel or hydrogen. All electrical power we used would also come from a cleaner renewable resource, and there would be much more usage of geothermal, solar and wind power. Ahhh but it isn't my world to run, alas. I like movies, a lot. I watch them as combinations of many arts and a failure of any one of these genres can make an almost great movie a failure. Casting, Scoring, sound effects, Foley, ADR, cinematography/camera choreography, actual script/story, direction all this has to be "just right" to me for a movie to really work. A couple of examples of the overall way I do NOT like movies to be made..for real and for sure-I've checked out enough of these people's work to be sure about this. I've tried to enjoy the works of Tim Burton, Terry Gillian, and Quenton Tarentino. Sorry folks. I know what I like and I know what I don't like. As far as movies that have gotten it "just right" in various genres (just so you know I don't only pick megabuck blockbusters): >The Indy Jones trilogy >The Original Star Wars trilogy >Hellraiser >Hellraiser 2: Hellbound >The Back To The Future trilogy >The Abyss >Halloween >The Princess Bride >Phantasm >Charade (1964) And a couple that coulda-almost-maybe... but didn't make the big one: >The Day After Tomorrow >Independance Day >I, Robot In my opinion, in NO case can fancy expensive CGI and wirework bolster up a basically crappy script to make a really good movie. If you can tell a GREAT story against a plain black background, then you can make it better with CGI spicing. Continuing with the seasoning analogy, clubbing the viewer with hunks of the spice in the hope that they won't notice there's no story won't work. They may go see it once, but not twice. Well... on to the podcast itself. You might have noticed that in most of my shows all you hear is music. Yes. That's what I chose to dedicate my pod quota to. Although lately, I've decided to do more spoken word casts on a variety of subjects. However if its music you are hearing on a podcast, all the pieces are composed, arranged, edited, mixed and mastered by me. I use an old Ensoniq ESQ1 with 3.5 software and as much sequencer memory as it can hold. MIDI slaved to the ESQ is another Ensoniq keyboard, the Halo (Also known as the E-Mu PK6). Where the ESQ's sounds are old-sounding (this is an 80s vintage board, folks!), the sequencer and the MIDI work fine and runs the much more complex palette of sounds the Halo has to offer. All of the drum and percussion sounds come from the Halo...all of them...this includes the hoots, whistles, vibraslap, triangle and all other species of odd farts and kraks that can be heard throughout the Bent Ears output. The Halo also provides much fuller and more realistic orchestral string sounds...better bass...better everything. What effects I can't do in the Halo itself are finished by the Cool Edit Pro recording software. Most pieces are at least 4 tracks deep before I mix them into regular stereo; some have been as complex as 9 tracks. I have fun doing these pieces. Each one is a form of improvisation- the idea I started off with usually ends up mutated until only a tiny piano phrase is all that remains of the original huge mental picture which started the whole recording spate. The one common thread in my mind that holds these together is the fact that I composed them all with the idea that they would one day be used in movies. And in all cases, I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoy creating.

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