Needs a Title

Posted on January 9, 2019 by SusanG

First thing’s first. A correction. In last week’s post I improperly identified one of the Kennedy Center Honors recipients as Walter Shorter when it should have been Wayne Shorter. My apologies. No disrespect intended, just a bit of lazy memory on my part.

We’re into the new year and a bit past the major holidays so now it’s time to start getting down to business. How’s that going for you? I was a little hit or miss this past weekend, not really getting going until late Saturday and then getting on track and moving again.

I mentioned that I have the good fortune to have a Masterclass all access pass for the year and that I’ve been partaking of the Carlos Santana course so far. It has been really interesting. I still have not downloaded the workbooks for everything I’ve watched so far. I decided to watch all the videos first and then I will go back and get the workbooks and practice the music and look into some of who he suggests listening to. I like that it’s more like a conversation on playing guitar. It gives me things to think about that then I can start to experiment with.

Some of this week’s computer art. I’m working on a set of holly leaves with berries.

You know playing music and making art, they both involve learning tools and techniques and executing them well. But those are just the letters and the words for the conversation you are having with your listener or viewer. You have to learn them. And you have to learn when to use them. Something I saw recently pointed out that ‘vibrato sounds great unless you put it on every note’. It can be the same with an art technique. J.J. Abrams and his lens flare on everything is a good example of this.

So you practice, and you experiment, and you start to learn what vocabulary to use for the conversation you want to have with your viewer or listener. I didn’t start out with just experimenting. I started out learning to read music. I knew that not everyone could read music, that some played by ear. And I always wished I could do that and yet could never figure out how to get there. I had a discussion with my father, many years ago, who was also a musician, and started out playing by learning to read music. Much of our extended family were and are also musicians, most of whom, as I understand it, do not read music, they only learned by ear or by rote and they can play nearly anything. So in the conversation with my father, he mused that perhaps, learning to play music by learning to read music first, got in the way of learning to play by ear.

After listening to some of what Carlos Santana has to say on the subject of reading music and playing music I suspect my father was right. But probably not in quite the way he seemed to mean it. When you only play from notation or sheet music, you learn to play the notes and the timing and all of that. You don’t always learn to feel the music. To hear the conversation that’s happening. And when you are learning a piece from a piece of notated music, your practice is focused on very specific things, learning the notes, intonation, tempo, cadence, transition, and more technical things. You don’t spend much time wondering if you play that note a different way what will you get? Will it feel different? How will it effect the music?

That’s where I started. Learning the notes and the technical stuff. Not that I absorbed that much of it, trust me. Even so, it’s an easy place to stay even while trying to learn to play blues, or rock or country. They publish music for these genres just like they publish classical pieces or movie scores. There are books full of the notation on how to play certain phrases and riffs. I know, I own a few too many. And they will teach you the mechanics. But what is finally sinking in is that if you don’t mess around and play with tempo or pitch or tone or the phrasing you don’t really learn how to use it or how to play it effectively. You only get that by playing with it and learning to make it do what you want. Make it say what you want.

I spent last year getting into the groove of playing music again, trying to get better, and learning how to sing, and learning how to lead a pick up band. All the while knowing, it was time for me to learn how to play lead. I got started on it and made some pretty good strides. I have much further to go. And much further to go playing rhythm as well. And yet, I feel like I’m starting to ‘get it’. I’m starting to spend time noodling around or playing with ideas that thanks to something from the Masterclass, I’ve been thinking about for two days. I take those ideas and see what it’s like to try to incorporate them into my playing. Not just into the lead work but also the rhythm work. That has helped me to better understand things Kevin was telling me three or four months ago. That, yes, I have been pondering that long.

My big win so far came when I was messing around a few days ago. I was working on the idea of how to take the melody that was being sung and translate, it, and the sentiment, into notes on the guitar. As I was doing that I was bending notes and strings and realized that I finally could not only bend a note up to the correct next note, I could also hear the difference. And hear when I got to the right note. From that, you probably guessed I don’t do a lot of bending. So, yes, this was a big moment for me.

Snowman Plays the Blues

I still like to go back to the sheet music for some things, and because it is comfortable. There are great reasons for it and I don’t think being able to read music at least to some extent will hurt anyone. And for some, it is the only way they will be able to play music. But I think I now understand why sometimes it feels so stiff. Reading the notes played in a solo aren’t always going to tell you how to truly play that. You have to hear it, you have to feel it. You have to understand, are you squeezing those notes out, or are you gently coaxing them out.

I think this is what I will be working on this year. Oh I still have the other things to work on. Getting better at rhythm and at singing. Learning new songs and different styles. And learning to play lead without hesitation. And as I’m working on all of that I now understand I need to also work on adding the feeling, really communicating the story whether that is in how I tackle a vocal or a rhythm guitar part or a lead guitar part. I need to bring that into the mix. I think I will enjoy the experiences better and hopefully so will anyone listening and watching.

Speaking of experiences playing music. It’s finally on. We are finally getting the jam back together. (Sorry, couldn’t resist). We’ve got our first Blues Jam of 2019 this coming weekend. I’m still trying to work the kinks out of the fingers from so much time on the computer and I haven’t added anything new to my repertoire so who knows how it’s going to go. It’s ok. I’m still excited about it. I’m looking forward to getting to play and see what happens.

Oh, and I hope you like my little Blues Man Snowman. He’s itching to get back to jamming too.

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A New Year Begins

Posted on January 1, 2019 by SusanG

No, you didn’t miss anything. I did not post anything last week. My apologies to anyone who might have been looking forward to the post.

The last few weeks of 2018 where actually kind of full. Not so much with a lot of going places and things to do. My family is scattered and I and those nearest me tend to keep things a bit low key. Yes there was dinner with family, and the way we can talk it meant it was an all day thing, in spite of our best intentions. Other than that, the time I had off from work was spent doing things that I don’t seem to get around to doing.

The biggest thing I did was to finish up this year’s Christmas card. I did have it done before Christmas Eve. So that is a plus. I say this, at least to myself, every year, I’ll try to do better next year. I’ve got a few ideas already and I’ve been doing some experimenting with bits and pieces to see what I can make happen. I’ll share some of that in a moment.

Sketching on a new tablet

One thing led to another one day while paying bills and I started a technology update and refresh. I was able to increase my internet speed for less than I was paying. That’s a no brainer. When I did that, I realized that my router that was about 8 years old, probably wasn’t going to make the best use of the new speeds. Especially for wifi. I’d purchased a new router about 2 years ago and had never set it up. With the new internet speed I figured it was time. It wasn’t a short project. For a variety of reasons I think the whole process took me about 3 hours. Thus the reason I had not done it yet.

About the same time I purchased the router, I also purchased a network storage device. I was intending to purchase an external drive for backing things up and some how didn’t pay attention and didn’t realize that it wasn’t really intended for that until some weeks later. I didn’t feel like taking it back and I wasn’t ready to set it up yet. Then, I set up the new router and did some moving things around and finally decided it would be the perfect way to handle files that I might want to be able to share across devices. So another two or three hours later and that was all setup as well.

Hair practice

That’s three big things done. I was on a roll. As part of the technology refresh, I finally did what I had been thinking about doing and got me a tablet with LTE. They aren’t easy to find if you want something other than an iPad. I have nothing against iPad or Apple products. It wasn’t really what I wanted. So I was pleased to find something that would do what I need and turn out to be pretty flexible. When I took it in to swap the SIM from the device that I was ready to retire to the new tablet, I went ahead with the phone update.

My cell phone was approaching four years old. I’m really good at using things until I no longer can. That was definitely the case with the last two phones. This time I decided to be a little proactive since I was already seeing signs that it might be time to upgrade. So a new phone, a new tablet, a new router, and network storage. What else could I get into or need? Really? You want to ask that? Grab a fresh cup of coffee or tea.

I was gifted a year of Masterclass. You’ve probably seen them on Facebook and maybe on television. It’s a cool concept. I was asked first if I would be interested and when I went to the site to see some of who was offering classes, all I could say was ‘Thank you’. There are several people for music, which is great for what I’ve been doing so much of this last year. There are also people for writing, directing, acting, photography and other things. I was stunned and thrilled and couldn’t wait to get started. I have started with the course from Carlos Santana on guitar and so far, I think it’s going to be a really good thing. I’ll have to let you know more once I get a bit farther with it.

Guitars!
Still working on Christmas models. Here’s a Christmas stocking

Once I finished the Christmas card, I decided that maybe I’d stick with the theme for a while and do some more modeling. I like the topic, I like to model things related to it so why not. I also wanted to give the new Blender beta a try. So I downloaded the beta build and started working in it. The interface is quite different and takes a little to get used to. But the only way I was really going to do that was by actually making something in it. So I made a Christmas Stocking.

I’m still watching the videos from the Blender conference and one of the ones I came across showed a new tool in Blender, or new to me, maybe it was always there. And yes, I do think it is already in 3DS Max and Maya. It’s a spin tool. I’m not quite sure how to describe it, but I can say that it would let me take half and outline of a bottle and spin it around a center point and create the bottle from it. It is quite a cool tool. So I had to find it and figure out how to use it. I would guess I spent easily two hours working with it before I finally figured out how to get it to do what I wanted.

Hair on a spin object

I was scrolling through the Blender Today site and found a tutorial on hair, or fur, in Blender. The person was making a fluffy ball for a background for something. It was really interesting and though he was using an earlier version of Blender I decided to try to follow along in the beta. I didn’t follow completely as I sort of wandered off on my own about mid way through the materials part. I still learned enough to do some experimenting on my own. Since I have a few things to model that I’m going to want to look fuzzy and a few others that I think a hair modifier might work to get the effect I want, any experimenting and testing I did was going to be time well spent. So I played with the hair for easily another couple of hours. Later there were several more hours experimenting with the particle emitter setting in the particle effects instead of the hair setting.

Another Hair test

I had one other project that I finally finished up. That was getting some of my guitars hung on the wall in the music room. I had two of them hung and needed two more hangers. I was intending to make a trip to the music store to pick them up and just hadn’t got to it. I finally just ordered them and had them a couple of days later to install. And that project is complete.

One more fuzzy hair test

I didn’t watch any of the New Year’s Eve stuff. Nothing really interested me. I did watch the Kennedy Center Honors the week before and was quite impacted by them. I sat down to watch them because Cher was being honored. As fabulous and fun, and amazing, as that part of the show was, it was the other honorees that I found to be eye opening, inspiring, and reminders. The work of Walter Shorter and the performance by Esperanza Spalding. The works by Philip Glass that though described as classical reminded me of electronic music. And I very much appreciated that one of the groups performing in honor of Cher were Little Big Town, a country music act.

And finally a particle test

So it has been a full few weeks with so many things of impact, that trying to decide what to write about has caused a jam between my brain and my fingers. It all wants to be shared. And yet, how to do that without making a post as long as a novel. Especially with some things could be much longer posts with a more in depth or detailed discussion. For this week, I’ve included a variety of pictures. A little about some of them. The bunny picture is a sketch I did on my new tablet with the corresponding pencil/stylus. The furry, or hairy, arch shaped things were the culmination of four or more hours of experimentation in Blender. The fuzzy balls were part of the Blender experimenting as well. I think the stocking and guitars probably speak for themselves.

I’ve got more things in the works and with schedules and life settling back into a more regular pattern there should be many more things to share coming up. We’ve got another jam in a couple of weeks. And I’ve got lots of guitar learning and Blender modeling, and learning, in the works. It’s difficult to say what will be the topic of the week next.

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Holiday Card 2018 – Done Now

Posted on December 19, 2018 by SusanG

As you might have guessed by now, that 3D art project I have been working on is this year’s holiday card. Yes, I know it’s a little late in the season. Sometimes that’s how it happens.

Admittedly, though creating the card has been on my list of things to do all year, I had some doubts as to whether I would get a card created for this year. Then, an early-ish morning text conversation with my sister inspired me. So I finally had an idea for what to create. All I needed to do was make sure I could do it in the software I wanted to use without having to start completely from scratch. Once I was able to determine that, I was off and modeling.

A work in progress image of the 2018 Holiday Card

I’m very happy to have it complete. And yet, I’m not sure I’m done making holiday cards. Or at least assets to be used in holiday cards. Putting together this one, a rather non-traditional take on the season, sparked a few more ideas, and revived a few as well. I’ve come up with a very ambitious scene to create that would be very non-traditional, and a lot of fun. I’ve also remembered the things that I wanted to revisit and revise, or create new completely. And then there are the pieces I’ve been meaning to model since I made my first card. With all those things in mind, I think I may just keep on the theme for a bit and see what else I manage to put together. I may slow down the pace or intensity of the work, a little. I miss my guitar.

That’s the one thing I’ve never tried to balance before. Creating art and making music. It seems I’ve always leaned heavily towards one or the other for several months or years and then the pendulum swings back the other way. I’m at a point now that I think I want to switch from a pendulum of all one or the other to more of a balance board where you put several things all around and get them to balance on a ball or log. I think that would be a lot more fun.

If you are interested, here is the link for the card on my Zazzle store. It may not be completely live for search yet. It can take 24 to 72 hours for it to show up that way. To get around that follow the link. Holiday Card 2018

The card looks a little different than the final art for the project so here’s a look at what the final art looks like before it gets cropped for the printing process.

2018 Holiday Card by SusanG for SusanG Productions

Now, I’m going to go make some music and get my fingers limbered up again. 

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You’d Think

Posted on December 12, 2018 by SusanG

You would think that with having taken an extra day off from the day job. For no good reason. And having enforced inside, at home time. Because of a snowmagadon that wasn’t really in my area. It was mostly just icy. Which is enough reason to stay home for me. With all that. You would think that I would manage to get this written and posted on time. As you guessed. That is definitely not how things turned out.

The challenge of severe storms in the Charlotte area, the ones they want you to plan for, and stock up for, and stay off the roads for, is that you spend a lot of time waiting for this major event that you, and the weather people, don’t know how bad it’s actually going to be. What makes it even more frustrating is that Charlotte is pretty well known for half the metro area getting hit hard and half seeing very little of the storm, or the lighter side of the storm. What I realized this time, this is the second or third storm like this since the summer, is that it makes it very difficult for me to focus and get things done no matter what kind of storm it is. And, especially if I have something I’m planning to do that will be impacted by how bad the storm turns out to be. Do I get ready for the event, or do I just figure I won’t go, or will they cancel anyway.

Beach Umbrella modeled in Blender

Everything I would normally have done on Sunday got canceled and at that point I was finally able to settle in and do some stuff. That does mean that this month’s Blues Jam got canceled. While I’m disappointed I am very happy not have had to try to navigate the potentially icy, very rural roads that I take to get there. As a result I have no cool blues jam things to talk about again this week. And no videos to post of it either.

What I did do was spend more time working on that 3D art project. At least until my hand started getting sore and stiff. I looked down and realized that I had my wrist at a really bad angle and I was going to need to do something about that. I was going to need to either, find a different chair, which would be fast and easy, or raise the height of my desk, which would be a major undertaking. Since raising the height of my desk went along with a different project I was already planning, I opted for the major undertaking jumbo sized. My other project was to change my desk top from a very deep and not entirely useful corner or L shaped top to a straight top. Just one long top. My biggest challenge had been what to do for the top and then how to get it home. I won’t go too much into the details other than, I started with the idea of using a flat panel, hollow core, door, and ended up with essentially the same thing but a bi-fold closet door instead. The first wouldn’t fit in my car. The second one did. Setting up the new top for the desk also involved a bit of re-arranging of that side of the room. So, not even close to a small task.

The new desktop is all set up and everything, except the stacks of stuff I need to go through and put away, is all back in it’s place, or in it’s new place. I have only used it for a few hours and so far I really like the one straight slab much better than what I had. I also like the way moving things around has opened up the room and given me a bit more floor space. Now I need to re-calibrate my Oculus Rift.

Paddle Board modeled in Blender

That 3D art project I have been working on is coming along. I modeled a couple more pieces for the scene. I did them in separate files so that I can organize more easily and find them faster later if I need the model again for something else. I have added one to the new scene to see how it’s going to look. The other one I have one more piece to finish up before I add it. I am still working in Blender. I think it’s the best way to go since I’ll be getting rid of the other software in a few months and I need to get more comfortable in it. Wow. I just realized that the items I just modeled were the first really useful and purpose built items I’ve modeled in Blender. Man that’s a big step. To finally get to the point that I didn’t let the program I was using keep me from making what I wanted. Not only that, it wasn’t even a factor. I knew I wanted these things and since that’s the program I’m using I just did it.

That does not mean that I am anything more than a novice with Blender still. There are plenty of features and tools that I do not yet use and in some cases don’t know where they are. And there are things that I am still learning about. Like rendering and materials. Materials are especially tricky for me. I was a little spoiled by the Mental Ray materials for 3DS Max. There were a lot, and a large variety, and high quality. It meant I didn’t have to do too much work to make what I wanted. That’s not quite the case now and I struggle a little. However, I was watching more of this year’s Blender Conference presentations and found the one on non-destructive shading in Blender to be mind-blowing. The presenter did some great demonstrations of what he was doing to get some cool materials and textures. He explained everything as he was doing it and even showed what you get when you do one thing versus something else. He explained the whole thing much better than many tutorials I have seen on materials in other applications. I’m just stunned and excited and not even sure how or where to begin with it. And yet I can’t wait to try it out and see what I can do.

I did have my test this weekend. It was before the storm was expected to move through the area. I did well I think. There are still a few things I want to work on before my full test in a few more months. That’s what this was all about though. See where I was and figure out what I need to work on even more.

A work in progress render of my current art project

I’ll be getting back to more music stuff this week. As well as more work on the 3D art project. I’m hoping to have that completed, possibly sometime this weekend coming up. Hopefully. I’ve just got a couple more things to model and then the scene to build, and the materials for those last couple of items. Then lighting and rendering. Oh my. Sounds like kind of a lot. Hmm… Well, we’ll see what happens. For now, here are a few more pictures of bits of or for the scene.

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Just Getting On A Roll

Posted on December 4, 2018 by SusanG

And then the weekend comes to an end. I had just got a good head of steam on me with things to do and I looked up and pretty much the weekend was over. Don’t tell me you haven’t had this happen. You know you have.

While the fact that I had to do work for my day job this weekend, which interfered with really getting too deep into anything until Sunday afternoon, didn’t help. I probably wouldn’t have gotten myself kick started much earlier.

I did get the last of the videos posted from the last Blues Jam. I’m happy. I got them up a whole week before the next one. Speaking of. There’s a December Blues Jam coming up this next weekend. I’ve been conspiring with my guitar playing co-worker, who comes out for blues shenanigans, on something we hope will be cool. We’re still working out a couple of minor details. It’ll be fun.

I was listening to some The Manhattan Transfer music and found that they have done a song that I’ve been working on. I’ve heard several versions of the song and have had trouble deciding on a vocal style that really works for me. Their version gave me a different take on how to approach the vocals. I’m going to have to give it a try and see how it goes. And I’m all excited about it. And was ready to get back to practicing it when I ran out of weekend.

I also managed to run out of weekend for 3D art projects. I was humming along making progress on adding materials to my snowman in Blender. And then I was able to add a tree to the scene and get materials on it. And I got some fun renders. I even found a way to handle the sky using the lamp. I used a sky preset. How cool is that. I got all this ready and was thinking I had a couple more things I wanted to try to add, that I will have to model, and no more weekend. Oh well. At least I’m making progress.

Truly. What I managed to do in Blender this weekend was significant progress for me. I was able to apply materials. Even some stuff with patterns to add some texture look and interest. Shiny things were cool. On top of that, I figured out how to bring in objects and meshes from other files to use them in my scene. That’s important because it saves so much time and effort. I probably could have done this just using the full scene that I took the object from. I didn’t. I wasn’t sure how it was going to work so instead I opened the file for that scene. Saved it as something else and then deleted everything I didn’t want. This works out well because I named the file what it is so I’ll be able to find it easier next time I need it.

It’s big progress. Once I finish up what I’m doing with this scene I’ve got a couple more ideas I’m ready to try. They are likely to be a little trippy, or edgy, or at least different. I was partly inspired by another of the presentations from this year’s Blender conference. The presenter, his company has a very distinct style and they have been getting work doing some advertising campaigns in that style. Which is cool because that meant we got to see some of the style before the product that they developed it for is actually out. It got me to thinking of different ways I might approach the holiday cards I create. If it works out, it will definitely be different and something that stands out. First, to finish this up. I’m so close.

So along with making actual progress with Blender, I had another milestone today. I turned off the auto-renew feature for the Autodesk subscription. When it expires in April, it expires. I’m kind of excited about that. I’m also excited by the 20 or so giga-bytes of space I’ll get back on my hard drive. Not to worry. I will rapidly fill that with Blues Jam videos and Blender models.

The weekend coming up has a couple of big things for me. I have a test to determine if I will be ready to test for my next level of black belt in Taekwondo. I’m excited about that, and nervous, and trying to stay in good health and uninjured for the next few days. And there is the Blues Jam. Which is always a good time and could be extra fun if what we have conspired to do is a success. I don’t have any cool music or guitar pictures this week so here are a couple more pictures of the snowman scene I’ve been working on.

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