I found Lorde

I found her music. Not her. I knew there was popular artist called Lorde but I thought her music was different than it actually is. I don't know why I thought she made dance music. Maybe her name was attached someone I label as dance music artist. I don't listen radio so I have no idea what each artist does. Usually radios play boring music. Sometimes they play interesting artists. I assume they play Lorde because she is quite popular.

I was tempted to buy all her records right that moment but I tried keep my plan on music purchases. I try to buy only one album a week or two cheaper ones. That happens on weekend or Thursday because I can get albums released on Friday during Thursday night. I found Lorde last Thursday but I had already bought last weeks albums. That was completing Lily Allen's It's Not Me, It's You and Scarlet Sail's EP. That counted as two cheaper albums.

I had planned to buy something else for this week but those have to wait for next week. I had to get some Lorde to my iTunes and iPod. I am on phase where I want to get music from interesting female artists. I don't have too many of them on my playlists. You can blame Paloma Faith for this. I have had her Do You Want Truth or Something Beautiful on my iTunes for ages. After hearing one song from the album I felt like checking more from her. Soon I had her Fall to Grace and her other albums on wishlist.

When I searched for artists like Paloma Faith, Lana Del Rey and Lily Allen I found Lorde and few others. Lorde was only one I had to get this right now. Some of the suggestion I got from LastFM were reasons why I don't listen radio. Lorde and couple others got to my wishlist. Some of the suggestions were so generic I couldn't listen to them after few seconds.

Buying less music didn't start so well this year. I bought Melodrama and Yellow Flicker Beat. I am still on schedule if I won't buy any music this week.

Lux Helsinki 2017

Lux Helsinki 2018 starts tomorrow. Here is video I shot from last year's event. You have to wait two weeks for this year's video. I don't know which day I go there. Probably not tomorrow. Which means I would have to do editing and music during workdays' evenings if I wanted video ready next week. Lux Helsinki 2016 had cold weather. This had little snow but weather was quite warm for winter and snow was melting away. This year it looks like no snow and even warmer weather.

You can find video from Lux Helsinki 2016 here.

New Year's Eve 2017

This is second part of lighting the darkness trilogy. First part was last week's Return of Black Christmas and third one will be Lux 2018. Each video show how to light the darkness that is Helsinki during end of December and beginning of January.

Weather was same as week before, but this time there were more people and fireworks.

Making music for NYE 2017 video

I named project as NYE2018 by mistake. It was first time I used wrong year. The video and titles in it will have correct year in them. I had big idea for the video both soundtrack and color grading. I probably won't do it for the video. For soundtrack I did it. It sounds quite weird on its own but works on video. Idea was to make video go from old to new as year changes. It was easier to do to soundtrack. Color grading was hard enough without trying to make age of the video change between shots and make it look consistent. Maybe if I had more time.

Soundtrack have only one piano with two midi tracks. It is sent to two audio tracks with different effects. Then some automation and cross fading and piano goes from worn old piano to weird space piano madness. Effect is quite subtle. You may not notice what is happening if you don't know it is happening. Just like I planned. This might be taste of things to come. This was first time I automated effects. I started to get some hold of it. I bought last weekend few plugins which can do amazing things automated.

I will post the video here tomorrow. Then you can see and hear the video and the music in it. I still need to do something for the video but I am pretty happy with the music and other sounds.

Ruoholahti 20160706

Something less dark for a change. If you follow me on Instagram you have seen some of these places few times. Maybe too many times. I take too many photos from there. This not only video where you see same places. Ruoholahti have many interesting looking places which make me shoot them again and again. If I remember correctly this is only video where I use Make Noise 0-Coast. That is about to change. I plan to make Fun With video using it in near future. If I don't buy new synths I have to use ones I have.

Happy New Year

I didn't felt like going out to shoot last night. But after almost four hours of walking and shooting I got some good footage. I got really good footage of fireworks. I am tempted to color grade it and releasing it without cutting. I might do that if I don't manage to do proper video for this week. I usually do music on Sundays but I haven't even started to edit footage yet and it might require some heavy color grading. I won't be able to start making music today. Editing should be done by today.

Video will probably be three to four minutes with one and half minute of fireworks. I wasn't sure what I was doing but guessing worked. I had my second widest lens on camera. It was 12 mm. Widest would have been 10 mm. Not big difference there. I just guessed where to point the camera and got almost everything without having fireworks on small part of the frame. I didn't need to adjust anything during fireworks. I just let camera do its work and enjoyed the fireworks.

I tried new way to stabilize camera with strap. It worked nice when I tested it. I still need to learn it better. It doesn't give as stable image as gimbal but it is faster and draws less attention. It could be close to gimbal if you are good at it. It looked really good In video where I learned it from. Idea is to make strap one point of contact and stabilize camera against strap. It might look bit silly but it works better than I expected.

Not buying new gear got good start. I bought plugin from sales during weekend and learned to use older ones. I might still need more analog sounding delay but I should have reverbs and delays covered now. Just don't ask how many of them I bought during weekend. Good thing is I learned to use them better when tested what I had and compared to demos. I should manage with what I have at least until next sale.

Monday is training day but I still feel last night's almost four hours shooting trip. I probably force myself to gym to keep the schedule. Right now I don't feel like it.