Amy Adams
May 25th, 2009
So here’s a weird coincidence - “Cousin Beth” in the episode of Buffy where Tara’s family comes back to get her is Amy Adams from Disney’s Enchanted. Just thought I’d share.
The Long Fall Back to Earth
May 16th, 2009
Jars of Clay’s latest album is “The Long Fall Back to Earth” - and so far, it’s not really my favorite effort of theirs. With every album they release they give themselves a new “sound,” but the melodic quality is usually pretty good throughout - up until the self-consciously folksy “Who We Are Instead,” and declining ever since. There are still a few good songs in each album, though.
Mostly, “The Long Fall” sounds like a mellow mush (even more than “Much Afraid”, which is saying something) - you eventually learn to distinguish the songs (some of them) after listening several times, but the first time through it all sounds pretty much the same. This album also breaks new ground for Jars in presenting the first songs I find aggressively bad - and these are ostensible the album’s “singles:” “Closer” and “Two Hands.” The melodies are oversimplistic and highly repetitive, the lyrics ride the melody awkwardly, and there’s nothing really interesting going on in the chord department either.
Nevertheless, “Safe to Land” is an excellent song, and “Weapons,” “Heaven,” “Headphones,” and some of the other tracks are all right. The sound for this album is a dreary 80’s sound, heavy on the electronic mellowness and piano wash. I tend to like minor-key 80s music, of course, but it has its limits. If you can stand that for a whole album with no variation, then the album might be worth it. Otherwise, I recommend getting “Safe to Land” from iTunes and being done with it.
The weird thing to me is how so many of the Internet reviews seem to rate each successive Jars of Clay album as superlatively awesome and groundbreaking. There seems to be no connection whatsoever to the reviews Google calls up and the actual quality of the songs as I perceive them. Maybe music criticism is too subjective? Or maybe these music reviews are designed to sell albums more than gauge quality? I don’t read pop music criticism very often, so I just don’t know. But it is frustrating.
Eddie Sotto on Imagineering
May 15th, 2009
The ImagineeringDisney blog has an interesting post by a former Imagineer named Eddie Sotto on what he would do with the current Disney parks. Most of what he says resonates with me pretty well, but then he comes to how he would revamp Epcot - make the World Showcase pavilions more authentic (Japan would have the neon of Ginza as well as the serenity of Kyoto, etc), make the Future World pavilions be more “legit,” demonstrate by example rather than preach, etc.
This kind of thinking turns my stomach a little - it satisfies the superego rather than the id, so to speak, and that’s not why people go to theme parks. The first and foremost job of a theme park, it seems to me, is the same as that of a video game or a musical or any other number of creative projects - to make an emotional connection with people. Authenticity and political correctness are joyless values - something else entirely.
Castle Graphics
May 6th, 2009
Just to prove I’ve gotten at least some work on RiftMaker done, I’m posting my current draft of my castle tileset master. I’m not terribly good at the graphic arts, so it takes me a lot of effort and study of existing RPG sprites to get even this far.
RiftMaker Castle Exterior Tileset Master
Prodigal God
April 21st, 2009
Someone I took a musical writing class with last year has just released a 5-song demo for a new musical called “Prodigal God,” along with a snazzy website.
There are several encouraging elements to this show. (1) The music is actually enjoyable. It feels a lot like evangelical worship music, but well… I like that kind of music pretty well (within limits). (2) One of the collaborators is evidently a pastor. Exactly what kind of theological perspective this play has is not entirely clear to me, granted, but it’s dealing with Christian subject matter one way or another, and that’s encouraging.
My only real concern is that this demo sounds fairly album-y to me - I really don’t understand how it plays as a theater piece. It might work as sort of a narrative concert, a la Jesus Christ Superstar. But the production values don’t seem easily translatable to, say, an off-Broadway production with 5 instrumentalists. Not to say that it can’t be. The mental image just isn’t forthcoming.
New RiftMaker Music
April 19th, 2009
Just to prove that I’m making some progress in the RiftMaker department, I thought I’d post mp3s of some new songs - hope you enjoy!
How to Get Started Writing the Score… Tomorrow
April 9th, 2009
I’ve been perusing various “engraving” programs, or sheet-music writing tools. The idea here is actually to get my songs for Tell Me a Beautiful Lie written out so that folks can sing them, or at least try to sing them before telling me that it’s too high/too low/too awkward.
The two main packages, from what I can tell, appear to be Sibelius and Finale, but they’re both horrendously expensive, and it’s not clear that I need all their features. Fortunately, both programs offer a wide assortment of less expensive versions of their main packages with various features unceremoniously hacked off. It doesn’t seem like a terribly good way to design a program - I’m not sure that there’s a real meaningful line between Finale PrintMusic and Finale SongWriter that says, “Yes! I need a program that allows me to write lyrics but NOT space the lyrics legibly under the notes!”
Hopefully, PrintMusic will do the trick for me. Either way, it’s going to be a painstakingly tedious process.
A New “As Far As I Know”
April 5th, 2009
I’ve been playing around with the idea of a new version for “As Far As I Know,” Katya’s plaintive song that ends the opening sequence (after “When the Red Morning Dawns”). I like the original song well enough, but I fear that it’s structure limits its memorability (the ostensible title is heard only twice, and no musical theme, with the exception of the connecting melody, ever repeats). You have to establish what kind of musical you are up front, and if you throw a wandering melody at the audience that early, they may get the impression that “Oh, this is THAT kind of show - a show with pretty but aimless music,” and first impressions are not easily counteracted.
So I’ve written another attempt at the melody, restructing the song so that the title appears more often and the main theme repeats, while still trying to retain that feeling of build-up that I liked so much from the original number. Let me know what you think.
KATYA:
As far as I know,
He’s still out there, somewhere…
Perhaps some cafe, still debating.
As far as I know,
He still writes me from there…
In his pack
There might be
A great stack
Of letters for me!
And somehow I know that he’s waiting…
Waiting for me.
As far as I know,
He still dreams he’ll kiss me
And I’m in the poems he’s creating
As far as I know
He will always miss me
Til he flees
From that war,
And he sees
His girl by the shore!
As far as I know,
He could ride tomorrow
Far from the storm that’s abating!
As far as I know,
There’s an end to sorrow -
Never fear!
Never doubt!
When it’s clear
Love will win out!
And somehow he’ll know, I’ve been waiting…
Waiting so long!
So long!
So long!
As far as I know…
Welcome to Chris Guin Creations!
April 2nd, 2009
So the first wave of my website redesign has now been instituted - the idea being to make the site easier to navigate (no flash), and a little more grown up. Also, I just really like changing the look every so often - the way some people like rearranging the furniture. (The presentation is more grown-up, there’s still plenty of goofy content.) narfscavern.com and creativelavatory.com still both point here, so old links don’t need to be updated, but now chrisguincreations.com is the official url.
I’ll be phasing in more old content shortly, and I’ve also been continuing work on both Tell Me a Beautiful Lie and RiftMaker, and should have things to post before too long.
Thanks to Nikky Wood for helping with the redesign (and to the Plotts and Williamses for their feedback).
Next to Normal Creative Team
March 24th, 2009
Over on Broadway.com, you can watch a fascinating video interview with the composer and lyricist of an upcoming Broadway musical called Next to Normal, about a woman with various psychological issues undergoing increasingly extreme forms of therapy.
I always find it interesting to get an insight into the creation of things like this, but primarily what fascinates me is how, in this case, they occasionally write lyrics first, and occasionally music first - and either way, it all comes out sounding pretty much the same - a style I’m not a fan of at all. It feels bland and predictable to me. I’m not sure what it is about this kind of music that leads people to either write it or listen to it. I honestly don’t understand.
But whatever it is, it’s not the fault of a songwriting team putting too much emphasis on lyrics, since those songs written music-first sound the same. So, I’m left with the unsettling conclusion that there must be lots of people out there who like this kind of music. The composers themselves must like it. It weirds me out.
That’s fine, I guess. I’ve long accepted that I have strange tastes in entertainment (not sophisticated, necessarily, just weird). I hope that it doesn’t mean that the music I create isn’t appealing to people in the way that it’s appealing to me.