#61, How Not To Get Wet

Memorable Sunset At Ewa Beach, Ewa, Hawaii, October ‘07, artistic view.

After promising last time not to jump head first into ads, you notice something new on top of this page. Yes indeed, those are Ads by Google. Now I am officially selling condos in Hawaii, vacation packages to Hawaii, and if first two are too expensive for you – sheet music. Prices would be approximately $700,000 and up for the condos, $120 and up per night for a stay in a hotel, and $4.95 for the sheet music. I’ve been using the last two options – both are good, with the very last one enhancing your artistic creativity. If you go ahead with the first one and buy an oceanfront property in Hawaii, on any of the several islands of your choice – congratulations, just send me a note and include lots of pictures. I promise to use them in my blog once I up the colors a little bit in Photoshop.

Now seriously, all of this is very experimental and I am learning more and more every day about all aspects of the blog and web sites. Writing blog entries is actually quite fun; it forces you to an extra mental activity almost every day for at least an hour, and sometimes longer. Deciding on a blog appearance, taking care of pictures, etc. is also fun. I like to depart from regular, very technical activities, and spend time on artistic aspects of web sites, music, and photos.

Regular shopping is done for today. Have you noticed how much prices are going up on almost everything grocery related? Week by week the prices are higher, and the recession is supposed to peak around December. That what I heard, or read somewhere. Let us hope things are going to improve at the beginning of 2009!

On the radio, I am hearing even on a classical music channel, how to save gas by driving slower. It is a very unusual subject for such a radio station. You can play any music at any tempo, even prestissimo, but drive slow, you mean like 30 mph all the time? Indeed bizarre!

September is usually quite sunny and hot in California with no signs of rain. If you happen to take your vacations at that time, you are very lucky. However, most people traditionally take time off during June, July, and August. So if you are smart, you can get an excellent weather and slightly lower prices since September is a bit outside of the season’s peak. You can get the whole beach to yourself, and even get naked if you like! No, please do not do that, and don’t tell anybody who sent you! There is no sign of wind around, but something blew me way off course. Hope you put your clothes on by now. A beautiful suntan everywhere, remains.

Time for a walk, it is much cooler now at night. Did you find a clever way to avoid those pesky water sprinklers that turn on at night? Every time I walk, I end up wet because those tend to spray water all over the place. Maybe somebody could invent red/green lights when to stop and when to go! Otherwise it is hit-or-miss.

Now the exciting editing and publishing parts begin.

Google™ is a trademark of Google, Inc. Swarovski™ is a trademark of Swarovski AG.

MP3 music: http://002e972.netsolhost.com/ .

#41, Hawaii Videos Released

Let Us Catch Something Big, North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

Within less than a week, I released four new videos, all of them from Hawaii: Fast Paddles, Sandy Beach, Evening Canoe, and Kite Surfers. The good weather permitted me to film in several places, now quite familiar with, over the period of two weeks. I have chosen for everything to happen on beaches, for a simple reason, no matter where you go - there is another beach there. And some of them are good, famous, and pleasant to spend time at. After some swimming in the Ocean for a while, I would start to film whatever was happening at that time. Hardly ever any script or much planning went into those videos. When I film in California, I usually sit down for a moment and decide where to go and what to shoot, things are a bit more organized. Over there I would grab my equipment bags and go. I wonder if this shows in my videos!
Now I am sitting and composing a new music that is going to end up in one of the next videos. A piano piece is almost done and sounds quite good, must say that is somewhat different from my previous pieces. Not sure what the next video is going to be about yet. I also brought some good quality audio recordings from Oahu, from beaches of course, might use those in some future videos as well.
For a while I was reading about shooting at short shutter speeds, from moving vehicles. That’s why I mention below The Filmmaker’s Handbook. An idea for a new video along those lines is brewing in my head now.

Breakfast: McCann’s Irish Oatmeal with some cinnamon, green tea, http://www.mccanns.ie.

Book: Steven Ascher & Edward Pincus, The Filmmaker’s Handbook, A Plume Book, ISBN 978-0-452-28678-8, http://www.penguin.com.

#40, W Cliff Rd, US Video Is Out

Phalaenopsis Orchid, Santa Clara, California, September ‘07, artistic view.

I managed to release my latest video filmed mostly in Santa Cruz, California. Everything in that video comes from a West Cliff Rd, hence the title, but I expanded it to something broader. And added a little bit of dream quality through color changes. I was cruising up and down the street, filming everything that looked interesting, and then edited the best pieces I could. The filming part is the least time consuming part and most pleasant at the same time. Editing takes much more time, many, many hours. The longest one is writing the music, however, at least several days. It sounds good in stereo, as it is mixed for stereo, but ended up only in mono – not exactly sure why that happened since I did everything to make it sound stereo. The first part of the composed piece is a piano solo, Steinway D to be exact. The second and the third parts just add more instruments but play the same melody. I limited the number of instruments here to: Steinway D piano, Stradivari violin, cello, vertical bass, double bass, string section, and timpani to close it. Not too many but the sound is already getting quite rich. There is a definite need to post my music separately in its highest quality, but this site does not let you do it easily. This becomes more and more urgent. Writing for the piano is indeed the most challenging part of all.
I think I am going to write something for Spanish guitar, finished Celino Romero’s book and listened to the CD, and liked it a lot. Why not give it a try.
Comments do not seem to be working on YouTube very well; the whole site is full of new problems.
What next? Lots of filming, lots of tape, lots of natural sounds, lots of battery recharging, but a little bit of break from editing, and submitting videos.

Lunch: cooked mixed grains of rice, buckwheat, millet, and sorghum with Marie Callender’s marinara sauce and La Mexicana mild salsa. Mint tea to drink, hot not iced. Almost no fat, just pure goodness!

Book: Celino Romero, The Art of Spanish Guitar, Amsco Publications, http://www.musicsales.com, with CD, ISBN-10: 0-8256-3461-X.

#39, Santa Cruz Video

Old Ship, San Francisco, California, April ‘08, artistic view.

Getting new subscribers on YouTube becomes more and more difficult. Seems that times when everybody was subscribing to everybody else are pretty much gone, and now people have plenty of conditions attached to their subscription decisions, and either delay subscribing altogether, or just plain ignore you. The views are also down, probably because the summer is coming, and there are simply more interesting things to do than staring at the monitor. Not long time ago when YouTube was still hot, this would not happen. Oh, well.
In a short period of time I edited four videos filmed in San Francisco around Piers 41, and 42, not far from the Golden Gate Bridge. All of them already went through a 2-3 day peak followed by near death, and received only moderate number of views. I am not sure why, maybe the subject is already exhausted, although I doubt, because I can go and visit those places every single day and there is always something new and exciting to see. But then again, do my videos capture any of that? Maybe, maybe not.
There is no truly good category for my videos, and that has been an issue for a very long time. I do not have much interest in vlogging, and prefer to be on the other side of the lens, and taking care of getting good quality audio as well. I don’t pretend to make travel or documentary videos, but always try to add a bit of artistry to them. Also I almost always write my own music, this actually takes usually several days just for a piece 1-2 minute long. Quite a bit of work. Those are not quite musical videos, either. Simply there is not good category for what I do, could this be partially responsible for lower than expected views? Maybe, maybe not.
Right now I am sitting and writing a piano piece for a Santa Cruz video. It was filmed obviously in Santa Cruz, CA, on a very good and sunny day, under a little bit of clouds. Already decided to change its look quite a bit, why not try something new? As far as music goes, I may add more instruments, violins, cellos, basses, depending on how much more time I am willing to spend on it and when I decide that things already sound good. The piano part alone in its unfinished shape is already good. The Steinway D grand sounds terrific! Aside from filming, I made some really high quality audio recordings at the beach late at night north of Santa Cruz. Those are 24bit / 96kHz recordings on a linear PCM recorder. The weather has changed into something windy, and misty, so I got lots of high wind noise, and trying to prevent various pieces of equipment and my clothing from flying away from me! Good exercise, will do much more of that in the coming days and weeks.
A well known YouTube member announced his departure, renetto, one of the very first members who got things moving around. In my impression he did almost everything he could, got rewarded to some small degree, became popular for better or worse, and the only thing left was to go down. That process already started, and rather than being a witness to his slow demise, exited gracefully near the top. Good job, great job, I would say. Good luck, my friend. Are we going to see much more of that in the near future? Maybe, maybe not.

#37, Four New Videos

View from Hyde St. Pier, San Francisco, California, April ‘08, artistic view.

In the last several days, I managed to release four new videos; Line Secure, Up & Down, Black Birds, and At The Bay. A good weather was a definite factor in filming and getting good results. The subjects are different, the mood is positive, and all of them are easy to watch. Will see how well they do.
YouTube started experiments with playing higher quality videos along with the stereo sound. This definitely works in the right direction, and helps showcase videos a bit closer to their uncompressed originals that I watch so many times.

Dinner: Assorted fish cakes, from Kobe, Japan.

Reading: Pat Pattison, Writing Better Lyrics, The essential guide to powerful songwriting – from generating ideas to developing verse and beyond, Writer’s Digest Books, ISBN-10: 1-58297-066-5.

#34, Moooo, Where Is The Music?

Mooo, North of San Jose, California, April ‘08, artistic view.

Yes it is true, I have no music yet for my next video. Only loose ideas flying over my head and some tiny snippets that I may turn into something musical in the next two to three days. As far as video shooting goes, I probably have enough from similar scenes as in the last video. This one is more or less a test of a new camera, and therefore did not want to go very far just in case I forgot to press one of the switches, or something like that. The weather was not as nice as last time, quite cold, and the sun had lots of blue in it, and much less pleasant yellow and orange. Also there were almost no people around and only cars passing by from time to time. Of course, there were cows as always grazing grass; one of the bulls, #167, came close to me. You see it in the picture above, and after I made a Moooo sound, it came to within several feet of me, apparently to check if I am shooting in 24p or 30p mode! It was 30p; all bulls like quality, then it rejoined the herd. The moving objects are smoother in 30p then they were in 24p, and the movement of leaves in the wind, for example, is now looking very pleasant. Did not have a chance to shoot something moving fast in front of me yet, do not know how it would look like. Whether any of this still remains in the final YouTube version, nobody really knows. Let us post this one and really start to work on music.

Canon web site: http://www.canon.com