Andy Best: April 2010 Archives

Books: Love in the Time of Black Magic 2

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waddell violin
Welcome back to indie books. Before I go on I have to give a link and hat tip. A lot of my first ideas and current stats on book publishing come from a site called No Media Kings

It has a slightly different ideology to this site. Jim worked in publishing and noticed that if you are not a million selling super star author but one of the majority then it's better to self publish. Financially. 

Anyway, on to my novel. So, the first draft.

Everyone thinks of good ideas. Everyone. It's quite easy to think of a story or premise and even flesh it out a bit in your mind. We all have a take on the vampire genre after we watched whatever vampire movie, for example. It doesn't take too much effort to list some chapter headings or scene ideas either. I find reading around a topic or researching fun too. What's even better is editing and playing with a story. 

Alas, there's an annoying hard work part in the middle - the first time you have to sit down and write the whole thing out in long form. 

This is tough, every page you manage to write you want to be perfect or you change your mind about, you have to just suck it up and keep going no matter how much you want to edit and play but it's so hard. You get writer's block, you get distracted, you give up or forget about it. But have no fear, the way through is to have some awareness of the numbers before you go in.

Podcasting 1: Kungfuology special

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wee ling pod
Podcasting. Like a radio show but saved onto a computer audio file so you can listen to it at your leisure and on a variety of devices.

Me and Jake Newby have made two six-episode series of podcasts relating to our music scene blogs here at Kungfuology.com. You can hear them for yourselves right here:


So, today we decided to throw out an Expo special to keep things ticking.

First the theory behind our pods. I like the Guardian Unlimited Football Weekly Podcast. I really really like it. I used it as a model for ours in many ways. Here are some key points:

It's about a single specific topic (football).
It talks about current events: what's just happened and what's coming up.
It is 45 minutes long.
It is all talking, nice and clear with no backing track or silly noises.

We record it in my house and the room is not sound proofed or sound dampened in any way. So, if you are not right up to the mic, there will be horrible echo and a tinny sound to the whole thing. Our weapon of chance (we borrow it) is the Zoom H2 Handy Recorder.

This looks like an electric shaver and can do single direction, two-channel (front/back) or surround. I have heard pods done with this using surround with many people sitting around the room - but they sound like a*s because of the previously mentioned point. We use the two channel setting and attach the mini stand. Then it goes on a stool and we sit either side of it about 30cm (a ruler) away. 

Rock Band 2: rehearsing

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expendable band
So, yeah, these band posts are going to come in a fairly random order as we're half way through the steps I outlined in post one.

I just had a great rehearsal. It was a perfect mix of getting the work done and enjoying the moment. Let me go through it.

Firstly. We use Juju rehearsal studios on Huaihai Road/Huashan Road in the basement of Huashan Gardens (1635 Huashan Lu). Their number is 6280 1415.

They have two rooms and we tend to go for the large one. Today we had the large room for 2 hours at the cheaper daytime rate and paid 80 Yuan in total. That's just 20 yuan each (about 3 USA dollars).

Shanghai's studios generally supply all the main equipment. In this case the room came with a drum kit, two guitar amps, a bass amp and a PA with mics. All this was included in the price.

During the two hours we worked on 6 out of our 8 current songs. The average song is around 4 minutes and we did a straight practice-play through of each one 2 or 3 times. This accounted for about an hour and ten minutes. There was some setting up time of course, for a full band maybe 15 mins. After all that we went back and worked on some problem areas or newer parts. We fixed the pacing of our song Paris 68 and worked on parts of the newest song The Rainbow Warrior. 

While clearing up we decided to make a rehearsal tape of The Rainbow Warrior next week as a priority so that our singer could work at home on melodies.

All in all i'd say that out of 2 hours about 85-90 minutes (about 75%) was actual playing. In my view that's pretty good.

Suck it, Nash

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tandem
I have to post this now because it underlines a situation that comes up in everything I do. 

I'm talking about collaboration and situations where by you help someone simply because you find it interesting or natural. People then feel inclined to help you back - but you are not motivated by the hope of reciprocation and have no guarantee of it, nor any idea of comparative values of the actions. 

I find this kind of social behavior to be normal. 

On the other hand, modern society is dominated by an ideology of competition. Like the idea of game theory.These ideas stem from a concept that social life revolves around competition with payoffs.

This idea is so dissonant with actual behavior that people who live by it seem like automatons driven by aliens. The best example of this are networkers.

The difference between the theory and the practice is that in the real world society has a structure, a hierarchy which is imposed by people who value power. Networkers try to base their social interactions on climbing the ladder of society, seeing it as beneficial. They quickly become immersed in it and are unable to see how it eventually consumes all their interactions. 

IF games 1: intro

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graham-web
When I was a young whippersnapper of 12 or 13 or thereabouts, I was very into the text-only adventure games of the time. Graphics were not very advanced in 1984. Me and a couple of mates got into it all through the legendary Level 9 Games

Nowadays these games are known as interactive fiction

I hadn't thought about them for a long time until I was checking out a blog called No Media Kings which I used to use to check out self-publishing. I saw that the site's author, Jim Munroe, had branched out into a bunch of DIY projects and had won acclaim with an IF game called Everybody Dies.

So, it seems that IF games were back in vogue and were even innovating in the world of small games studios and festivals. 

After further research I came across the impetus to write one: Inform 7

Inform 7 is a programming language and interface for creating IF games. Here's the thing, the latest version puts the code into the engine and allows you to write in plain English. The logical construction of the game is made using the rules of English grammar. It's mind blowing, it's free and comes with two excellent manuals. 

So, I'm going to write some games. However there is a large step one:

1) learn and practice Inform 7 to proficiency
2) think of game concepts
3) write an IF game
4) submit it to open competitions

So, yeah, this will be the slowest category at this blog and also the lowest priority to boot.

Rock Band 1: introduction

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Andy Music Shot
I have a band. This is also a project dear to my heart that has a kind of plan. The plan went something like this:

1) write some songs
2) establish a band page online
4) find other band members for a permanent line up
5) rehearse together
6) play a show

I'm at stage five now and there are many helpful practical pointers to blog about so watch this category I will post a lot here, starting back at stage one.

There are two important premises to these posts though and they both come before the start of the project.

Firstly, I've been playing guitar since I was 13 and am very familiar with the workings of songwriting and being in a band. If you are not, then you have to add a few stages on the front of my plan. Secondly, I live downtown and in the area that houses most of the music scene. 

The final consideration is that me and this blog are based in Shanghai. The scene is underground and developing. These posts are not reinventing the wheel, they illustrate the practical realities of having a band here. OK, see you soon.

Books: Love in the Time of Black Magic 1

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leila waddell
This is the first project in books. I have recently made some breakthroughs with full length novel writing. I have chosen one to go with and self-publish for the experience.

It is called Love in the Time of Black Magic

Here is the overview of this project in it's crudest form:

1) write the book
2) have a cover designed with ISBN and barcode
3) have it typeset and formatted
4) have 500 copies made via proper offset printing and 'perfect' binding
5) hold events, flog them via indie shops/cafes and send them to reviewers etc etc

I won't need anyone's blessing for this, every stage of the process can be accomplished by paying for a service, including getting an ISBN and bar-code (you just buy them).

Stage one is by far the hardest part and the lion's share of the work, but more on that in upcoming posts. At the time of this post i'm half way through the second draft and the whole thing will be about 80 000 words (200 pages paperback). I'm using fellow writer and confident Tom Mangione for feedback and comments.

By the end of the project we should have a bunch of posts detailing all the stages. Wish me luck.

What does Indie mean?

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freewillThis blog uses the word indie, but what does it mean?

Indie is a shortened version of independent and in this case is used to refer to the arts. 

The arts are various modes of expressing the human endowments of freewill, self-awareness and creativity. They are extensions of our state of being.

They include thought, written and spoken words, music, painting and pictures, community and play. 

It is meaningless to talk of choosing to realize these independently as we always realize them independently, it's our natural state. The problem is with action that impedes this. Action that sometimes works even at a subconscious level. 

Indie (or Indy) is currently used in the world of arts to describe differing things. Indie music can be talking about a genre or sound. Plenty of indie bands work on major labels. Indy movies are made by huge studios that are called Indy simply because they work outside of certain established systems.

Most other sites on this subject go that way. They start with a D.I.Y ethic and then you build up to be able to break through into the mainstream, on your own terms, or to make the money by yourself. The goal seems the same.

At this blog we are interested only in the notion that we have an idea or an impulse and then we want to bring it in to being and see it externalized in some form. This may require some form of help or collaboration but there will be no controlling factor on your idea except yourself. You will be independent.

About this Archive

This page is a archive of recent entries written by Andy Best in April 2010.

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