So I realise I’ve not written much of an audio production blog since January 2013 on my twice over former mike james porter site (and that post wasn’t really much in comparison to the previous updates in October/November 2012) and to be honest, with the exception of fumbling around with a few ideas and the thought of possibly turning the content me and my friends recorded in our joke ‘blog-cast’ series back in 2006 or re-recording my original written song for a first year assignment yet again, I haven’t really produced much outside of employment since then.
What with living in a large converted train workshop block of flats in Bolton with my former partner and house rabbit then becoming single and living in on-site hospital housing in Chorley with people who worked around the clock surrounding my box room there wasn’t really time, space or resources to record. However, now being in my own space with an almost complete mini-house type flat, the possibility to actually produce things again seems more possible. However that does put me about 3 ¼ish years or so out of practice and with limited equipment (one mixer is currently missing a power supply, my Zoom H2 handy recorder has been stolen, my laptop is /Linux Mint over Ubuntu Studio isn’t as stable for recording as my previous laptop was and a portion of my kit being ~120 miles away from me) initially made the prospects look bleak.
However, after a little planning and improvisation, the situation is improving and I hope to look to build things up again.
So whilst this blog post doesn’t quite deliver as much content (of varying quality) as the ones you have become accustomed to this month and whilst I could have saved it for the essay of stuff I could write at the end of the month, here’s a few things I hope to bring to the site once the month is out in addition to the blog posts and posters
- More Ideas – I know people have often told me I’m a stickler for keeping things locked away until release and since composing isn’t my strongest of skills, it can take months before I produce something (unless it’s to a specific deadline) and in the case of my masters and one little part of a song I started in 2011, years. If you visit the link above and you’ve followed my stuff over the years (if not, I wish you the best of luck trying to find some of the previous archived stuff as I certainly can’t!) after my fresher year blog, ‘The Quay of Sea’ (pun intended) when I changed it from a journal to a strictly Music Tech blog, I really sucked at posting updates until it just turned into an annual posting and I spent more time developing the back-end of it all. So hopefully I’ll not give away too much, but hope to produce some things in the hope I can prove I have studied some form of Music Technology and it wasn’t just a 10 year long phase (pun not intended).
- More Stuff – Actually try and create something rather than just flashes of inspiration and then leaving them hanging in limbo for years. Be it a song, an instrumental work, a remake/remix, a podcast, a Max/MSP/Jitter or Pure Data patch (I think my Max 5 license still works) – something. Goodness knows I spent long enough studying it all, now I hope to actually do something with it alongside what it has contributed to AV and a rather interesting project that’s spawned at LTH (which I’ll tell you about in the future…maybe).
- Revival or Reinvention – Bringing back the old wild ideas and trying to breathe new life into them as either projects or pieces. More to hopefully be revealed in the future as I decide…
- More Posts – And not ones just introducing software. I know I have been out of the industry for a while so I need time to acclimatise, but I’ll be putting up posts again to complement the web, AV, animation, Ed Tech and hopefully video too with the first one hopefully out in the next week or two.
So to my brothers and sisters in CMT, Popular Music and performing arts – I apologise for the Radio Silence (pun intended), but I’m coming off the Rainy Island (you know who you are) and will be back on the beat (I’ll stop now) before you know it.
Mike
