Category: The Journey

Music 30/30 – Day 30

All right! Day 30, and another challenge successfully completed. So how did it all turn out? I’m going to grade it as Satisfactory. I certainly know a lot more music theory than I did when I started. I’ve got a much better grasp of the early basics than I had when I started, and while I’ve got a lot more to learn about composition, I learned enough to be able to create a small handful of tracks that at least don’t make people’s ears bleed and sound pretty decent.

I can’t say with any kind of honesty that I know how to play the piano, but I’m getting pretty decent at being able to play the simpler songs, so it’s a beginning, and I’m starting to get some of the muscle memory going. I knew going into it that that particular skill was going to take an incredible amount of physical practice, and that even then it was going to be slow going without an actual instructor, so within the bounds of what could be reasonably expected, I think it came out about as good as could be expected.

Other

So, with another challenge down, the question becomes: what’s next? And to be honest, I’ve been going back and forth on that one myself. In the end I landed on: nothing. Nothing is next.

By which I mean, for the month of October, there will be no 30/30 challenge. I’ve got NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) coming up in November, so that’s pretty much a built in 30/30 writing challenge on its own, but in order for that pace of writing to be effective I need to do some preparation work in October. I’ve got to take some time to plan out the stories that I’m going to be writing, and that’s going to mean a lot of plot work and character work so that I can just write when the time comes.

I considered trying to make a 30/30 challenge out of that, and I suppose it would be possible, but it would also be really boring to hear about, especially since I can’t really share details of what I would be working on. I considered doing a 30/30 challenge around game development in the meantime, but I can’t guarantee that it wouldn’t interfere in the plot work that I need to do. And, to be honest, after three straight months of skill improvement, I could use a bit of a break.

So, the plan at this stage is to take a bit of time off, let my brain reset an rest a bit, before coming back to do my writing prep with some game development on the side.

I still plan on doing blog updates on a regular basis, even if they won’t have much to say for the first several days, but with no focus behind them or much to actually share I feel like the video updates would be extra pointless and boring, so the vlog will be on hiatus until after NaNoWriMo at least. For the moment I’m still planning on doing a second round of Drawing, 3d, and Music challenges, most likely starting in December (though I am debating the start date due to potential interference from the holidays). When that happens I’ll bring back the vlog updates as well.

Music 30/30 – Day 29

More study and review today, finishing up the homework sections for part 4 of the class. That only leaves one very very busy day left to try to complete the work for part 5, which would finish out the semester. Considering everything else that’s going on tomorrow I don’t think I’m going to make it, but we’ll see.

Music 30/30 – Day 28

Managed to get through a lot more of the music homework today, getting close to the end, but I don’t think close enough. On the plus side, I think reviewing the material is proving to be really useful for driving it home, so I certainly can’t complain.

Other

Aside from that, I feel like I really need to stop putting these updates off until the next morning. It seems like any time I do that they don’t get written until the next evening anyway, and I have to scramble to remember what I was doing the day before.

Music 30/30 – Day 27

Getting close to the end now, and I’m getting a bit antsy about being able to finish everything on time. I launched into the next homework assignment, an analysis of The Scientist, but it’s a long song, and I didn’t get a chance to complete it. It doesn’t help that I’m letting myself get a bit sidetracked by other projects, time to get focused.

Other

Speaking of sidetracking, I mentioned the gigantic “learn to code 40 games” udemy course I picked up, and my general displeasure with it. That has sadly only grown, but it kind of sent me off on a tangent of wanting to improve my own coding. I started experimenting around with an idea I had, trying to recreate the original Legend of Zelda, working off of the assumption that if I can figure out how to do that, I can then take that knowledge to make my own original game in that style, sort of an homage to the classic. I’m sure I won’t reach that goal any time soon, but it’s another item for the back burner at least.

Music 30/30 – Day 26

Oh, wow. Really late with this one, so yesterday, I mean, today, I carried on with my current process. Piano practice and homework catch-up for music theory. Sorry if these updates are getting a bit repetitive, but I guess that’s what happens when you end up doing more or less the same thing for days in a row.

If it helps change the pace a bit, the homework for today was a full song analysis of Greensleeves. That’s not actually something that I’ve done yet, despite having already made plans to do so with a couple of different tracks from Final Fantasy. I’m still getting to those, but the rest of the homework will have to come first.

Other

Outside of the music practice, time was spent today diving deeper into game development. As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been on a kick lately when it comes to picking up learning resources, specifically classes aimed at the sorts of things I’m trying to do. This time I picked up a couple of additional classes on game development in Unity, one claiming to teach you the basics of forty different games. So far I am super unimpressed. I worked through the first batch of tutorials to make a very simplified space shooter. The result is about what I expected, so that’s not the disappointment, the problem is that I have a sneaky suspicion that the instructor doesn’t actually know what he’s doing, not at a fundamental level, and certainly isn’t going out of his way to teach it if he does. And the second “game” in the series is exactly the first game, just from the side, and taught almost exactly the same, which means the class isn’t trying to build on and reinforce knowledge that has already been covered, it’s just going to assume you are starting from scratch each time. I’m going to try to stick it out for a while, in the hopes that some of the later “games” will actually have some interesting techniques in them, but I’m not terribly hopeful.

Music 30/30 – Day 25

More homework today, primarily, but at least I’m getting closer to the finish line. I’m really hoping that I have time to finish it all up before the end of the challenge. If not, I guess I’ll just have to carry it over into next month, but it would be nice to get it done all in one go.

Aside from that, I put together a new piece:

It’s fairly simple, but I think I like the way it came out. I went with a bit more of an organic approach this time, actually “playing” the built in piano with the computer keyboard for the main melody line.

Other

In other news, I’ve picked up a few new reference sources for game development, which I’m hoping will turn out to be alright. I’m already a little leery of the first one, considering that the instructor keeps saying “brackets” when he means “parentheses” and “voids” when he should really be saying “functions” or “methods”. And his advice early on was to use comments only when absolutely necessary, which is just plain dumb advice no matter what you are coding. Seriously, any developers or potential future developers reading this: use freaking comments. Comment the crap out of your code. Have more comments than actual code, if you want. It gets left out of the compile, so it’s only adding size to your source code, and good commenting practices will save you a ton of time when you inevitably have to come back to that code to edit it later. If you are writing scripts in a non-compiled language and trying to store those scripts on a floppy disk in 1982, then by all means, keep them sparse, but otherwise do yourself a favor and comment that code.

Music 30/30 – Day 24

Another day concentrating on the homework, I will get through this class. Outside of that, there’s actually not much to report today.

Other

I did spend a little bit of time today bouncing around some of the other fields, watching some videos on writing and drawing in addition to the music review. To be honest, it all gets a bit overwhelming sometimes.

I also made some progress on Runic Alchemy, implementing functions to automatically generate the runic books. I’m still trying to work out the best way to display them for the user, it’s going to take some thought and probably some trial and error. I really can’t wait to get through this section though, once the books are fully operational I’ve just got the magic generators to get in place and my core gameplay is finally complete.

Music 30/30 – Day 23

Another weekend day, so not a ton going on to report outside of the standard practice. I’m afraid it isn’t particularly interesting to read about, but it’s a bit of progress all the same. I did flesh out my 30 minutes with a bit of actual composition, though it’s still a work in progress. Thought I’d try using my actual full-blown DAW this time, since I still haven’t actually done any real work in it, so far everything has been written in the online version. Cakewalk is going to take some getting used to.

Music 30/30 – Day 22

A fairly light day today, spent some time reviewing modes and how they work, specifically in relation to video game music. And of course the ever present piano practice, including some tracks that I don’t usually include in the practice rotation. It went well enough, but I’m wondering if I should be spending more time focusing on straight scales.

Music 30/30 – Day 21

Another day, and more homework completed, including a more or less successful attempt at analysis. Some of this stuff is starting to actually sink in, so I count that as a win. I also feel like today’s piano practice actually went fairly well, I tried a couple of the tracks that I haven’t really played and did a decent job with both. It’s possible that they are just extra easy, but I’m going to count that as a win as well.

Other

In other news: an actual video today! At least, I hope. I still have to try to edit it, so there’s still plenty of space for things to go wrong, but as of the time of my original posting, things are at least looking hopeful.

I’ve recently picked up a replacement for my old and ailing smartphone, opting for the at this time current flagship device from the Samsung Galaxy line: the Note 9. It’s supposed to have one of the better cameras available at the moment, and actually has a full HD front facing camera, which should let me get decent video quality while still getting feedback on the video without having to mirror my screen off to a laptop. And, I was pleased to find out, I have the option of directly connecting my digital voice recorder and microphone to it for improved audio quality without the need for recording a separate audio track and combining it with the video in the editing stage. If the video that it produces actually plays nice with my editor, or I can find an alternative editor that does play nice with it, then the new setup should be considerably more reliable and efficient.