New Samurai Styling

Wrote this for fun today. Enjoy!

Improved new mix of flute and guitar piece

I posted an updated mix here.

I think this is a pretty big improvement over the original; I reduced the reverb tails substantially and tweeked the delay settings on the early reflections to create more of a "concert hall" ambiance.

I also used some EQ tricks to clarify and separate the woodwinds, brass and strings a little more clearly.

Upbeat and dancy new track

I was just messing around and came up with this yesterday. I was especially pleased with the catchy piano loop and the general upbeat-ness of the whole thing. Enjoy!

Bach Fugue

Here, for the sake of amusement is a rendition of one of my favorite Bach organ fugues, in G Minor, performed by yours truly.

New Flute and Guitar Piece

Over the past few weeks I've remixed one of my classic video game tracks, now featuring some live performances from Ardelle Potter on flute and Michele Vanni on guitar.

I posted the track on New Grounds.

Another track posted at "NewGrounds"

Here's another music track, this one is a creepy forest sound-scape inspired by the wood elves from "Warhammer". Enjoy, and please vote! (instructions in previous post)

New music track posted on "NewGrounds"

I added a music track to this website called "NewGrounds" today. Members of the site rate people's work on a voting system, so if you have a second to follow the link and rate this, I'd really appreciate it. There will be a series of icons on the left of the screen, possibly off the bottom of the screen that rate the track on a 0 to 5 scale. 5 is the best. Please vote! Thanks!

This was originally the end credit music for a student film I was helping with, that wound up not getting finished. In any event, the spirit lives on here...

Interview with me at "The Score"

I recently gave an interview with Emmett Cooke at "The Score", an online magazine about film and game composers. The link is here.

New review for boxing day

Hi everyone, my first feature film "Boxing Day" got a great write up at "Geeks of Doom". Check it out!

New Clarinet Sonata Published

My publisher, BRS Music, has posted my new clarinet sonata for sale on their website, here: http://www.brsmusic.net/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=204

New Action Track "Mayhem"

Here's a pretty furious action score that I was working on recently. It's up on Cue Pop if anyone is looking for some dark / industrial driven fight sequence music. Might work for horror too.

http://www.cuepop.com/details.asp?LibraryID=2283#

(the "play" button on CuePop is the small green arrow in the mid upper right)

New World Music Track

I had a fun time yesterday putting together some "world" music.

The creepy background noises are from extended techniques on a gong. Its amazing the weird noises you can get. Other special effects include a synth-xylophone in a super high register, with an echo effect to create the "raindrops" background effect.

Noah Potter - Forgotten Eden

Grand Tournament Las Vegas

Looking forward to this event in a few weeks. I need to "finalize" my strategy to take advantage of the new rules changes. I think mainly I'm just going to go to have a good time rather than to be truly competitive: next year the gloves come off :D

Just Web-Published My Clarinet Sonata

I just put up a web page featuring my clarinet sonata, with both the score, parts and recording. I'm hoping to use Google advertising to drive some traffic to the page, and maybe follow up by contacting some prominent clarinetists.

The piece was a lot of fun to play & perform. I like to think that it strikes a nice balance of being modern but also accessible and enjoyable.

Nothing in particular

I figure it’s a more authentic blogging experience if I let my entire audience disappear between blog updates. What can you do.

So, while waiting rabidly for the next democratic primary elections, I started using face book more regularly. Specifically there’s this one game called Knighthood, which is really fascinating. It’s like playing Nobunaga’s ambition but with real people as vassals. I’m really impressed with how it uses a social network as a platform. Its almost the next step for those ancient Bulletin Board based games like trade wars, but with a much larger audience. They’ve got a great viral model, in that you must invite friends in order to get any where. I worry that this fact makes it too much like a pyramid scheme rather than a game. What chance to late arrivals have?

In other news, I think I’m going to check out the Warhammer 40k grand tournament in Los Vegas this year. It looks like a good excuse to drag the wife to Vegas. We’ve been looking to see some of the cirque shows, and also play some more video poker.

Second Day in Tokyo

We got up at 4:30 to trek over to the famous Tsuigi (pronounced Skee-jee apparently) fish market in Tokyo. The streets were practically deserted as we walked over to our subway station. The key reason to go this early is the Tuna auction. Unfortunately, we had heard that due to a variety of mishaps involving some clueless tourists disrupting the auction, we would not be allowed into the actual auction event itself. We had no clarification as to what those mishaps were specifically – maybe someone decided to grab a 500lb tuna and run, who knows. Aside from that, we had no idea what to expect.

On the ride there, a decal on the subway door puzzled us. As best as we could tell, it suggested that in case of raccoon attack, we should drop flash-bombs and run for it. However, it was to be a raccoon-free commute this morning, lucky for us. The smell of fish guided us in the right direction out of the subway once we arrived. The market is a huge warehouse, with barrel-front motorized platforms careening at high speed down the narrow walk-ways. The endless variety of fish and seafood is stored in rectangular Styrofoam casings.

The scale is mind boggling – from the enormous tuna slabs being hacked open with swords to individual store owners filling wicker baskets of the freshest catch. We were greeted with bemused smiles from some of the shopkeepers, as they weaved around us to plop still flopping flounders into tanks of water for shipping, or stabbed a struggling snapper to fill an order. We saw scallops in their large triangular shells, as well as octopus and squid lined up like sardines. Some of the stalls had tasting samples for serious buyers. The whole thing was a sort of macabre aquarium, with everything you can imagine having been fished out of the ocean present.

Outside of the market, there was a smaller row of shops and eating places. There were several empty Sushi restaurants, as well as one with a 45 minute wait outside. Ardelle suggested that we follow the crowd, and we did. We stumbled upon perhaps the best Sushi bar in the world, “Dai Wa”. My extremely limited Japanese vocabulary gets me nowhere – it is self evident that we need a table for two before I get a chance to say so. However, sinister phase two of the waitress’ dialog was incomprehensible. Fortunately, the Sushi chef spoke English and invited us to enjoy a “set”. The focus seems to be slightly less on presentation than I expected. The Nigiri was set down with no plate on a lacquer counter in front of you. The chef brushed each mouth watering slice with soy sauce before serving. The Uni, sea urchin, was indescribably better than in the States. I commented that the fish we were eating probably had moved in a more or less direct line from boat to plate since it was caught.

Last Week's Concert

As many of you know, I premiered my Clarinet Sonata last week at Fulton Recital Hall in Chicago. Many thanks to Charlie for all of his hard work learning the thing, it was a great experience all around.

The recording is available at my website.

New Music added to website

I added a computer-rendition of my Clarinet Sonata to my web page today. Also, a dance for flute and piano that I wrote for my wife's birthday last year. The link to that site is in the title here.

I will be performing the clarinet sonata on the 31st of May at 12:00 at Godspeed Hall on the University of Chicago Campus, for any interested.

A Pre-Show Obstacle Course

So the GSB’s year end extravaganza “Follies” was last week. I played piano for my friend Kathryn who was singing homage to Milton Freidman set to the tune of “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman”. The performance was a lot of fun. I got to reconnect with some classmates who I hadn’t seen in a while. At any rate, I feel that most people didn’t fully appreciate what was involved in preparing for the act. I don’t mean 25 years of piano study or hours of practice. I mean getting the piano onto the frikkin’ stage.

So the piano at Mandel hall is this gorgeous concert grand. Unfortunately, despite the wheeled undercarriage, this beast doesn’t exactly turn on a dime. Indeed, it floats into place with all the grace and elegance of a slow-motion Hippopotamus on ice skates. We didn’t have any sort of stage crew for Follies, so I had to recruit whomever was standing nearby before our act to help move the thing into place. So the challenge, which recalls a LEAD Outdoor Experience exercise from o-week, is to maneuver the piano from its shaded hiding spot backstage through to its appointed spot stage left. Standing in the way of this are:

• a 12’ hanging video projection screen which is being watched by the audience, so that everyone would notice if you hit it by accident.
  
• a row of 4 chairs from the “Oompa Loompa” skit (don’t ask) placed directly between the piano and the stage
  
• a thick backstage curtain, draped over an orchestral percussion set (yes, really)
  
• the main stage curtain
  
• a motley assortment of audio and lighting cables
  
• a special floor that is apparently traction-free for shoes while being quite resistant to pianos
  

You have exactly 45 seconds to move the piano into position before the spotlight turns on. Ready, Set, Go!

Who’s paw prints are these?

As some of you may now, we’re right now in the process of selling our condo. We’ll be living in a museum for the next few weeks as open houses begin. Of course, the kitchen appliances are always spotless, the spices always organized alphabetically and the hallway mirrors always windexed, so there wasn’t much work involved there. However, our new bedroom door needed to be repainted.

Fortunately, we still had the original paint cans from the move-in period. This sidestepped the entire debate over the precise “eggshell” finish we needed, and enabled us to cut right to the chase, the actual painting. I was in the middle of putting a second coat on the back of the door, and the paint lid was on the floor face up next to me.

Suddenly, in a bounding blur of grey fur one of our two cats came prancing through the doorway. I did a quick double take as the white paw prints starting trailing from the doorway to our bed. My effort to leap after the cat only encouraged her to jump onto the bed. There were four white kitty prints on our brown sheets by the time I caught her. Cici (the cat) wasn’t amused with the “get the white acrylic paint out of my back paws” process which ensued.