Music – Page 8 – WIL WHEATON dot NET

the audacity of derivative works

Posted on 27 October, 2014 By Wil

Anne and Wil Wheaton 1920s outfits — Click to Embiggen

This weekend, my friends hosted a 1920s occult party. There were tarot readings, Ouija boards, and a seance. Everyone was encouraged to attend in appropriate attire, and we sipped absinthe while movies like The Golem and Fantomas were projected on the walls.

Anne and I got our clothes from Unique Vintage and Clockwork Couture. While we were getting dressed, Anne said, “I kind of love that I’m cosplaying with my husband,” and I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

I had this idea to track down some 1920s music to play during the afternoon and evening, leading up to the party, so I started by looking on Amazon. I didn’t see anything that I liked, so I checked the Google Play store, and then iTunes. Again, I couldn’t find the original recordings that I was looking for, and as I was about to give up, a voice inside my head sort of kicked me behind the eyeballs and said, “Hey, stupid, music from the 1920s is in the public domain. Go look on the Internet Archive and I bet you’ll find more original recordings than you know what to do with.”

People, you should always listen to the voices in your head, because they know things. They know things that you don’t know. THEY KNOW THINGS THAT THE OTHERS DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW AND GREAT CTHU–

Sorry. I got a little carried away, there.

So I went to the Internet Archive, and I found a treasure trove of incredible recordings.

Here are a few of them:

I grabbed them all, because that’s what you can legally and ethically do with the Internet Archive, and I made playlists that I shuffled through our Sonos to fill our house with the sounds of the Roaring Twenties. By the time we left for the party, I was ready to hop in a plane with Lucky Lindy and fly to New York to watch Murder’s Row in action.

So the party was fantastic, and everyone there looked incredible, but that’s not what I set out to write about this morning. What I wanted to write about was this thing I made, using free (as in speech and beer) tools, to create something where something wasn’t before.

Within one of the collections I downloaded, there was a jaunty little tune called JaDa.

I enjoyed it, and I had this idea to slow it down and completely transform it into something that sounds very, very different.

Longtime readers may remember that I freaking love the ambient music of the early 1990s. Well, I loaded JaDa into a free and open source audio editing program called Audacity, and I played around with some of audacity’s effects to turn this three minute jazz tune into nearly an hour of sinister dark ambient that was directly inspired by the occult party we attended. When I finished it, I was happy with what I’d made, and I wanted to share it with the world. So I put it on SoundCloud. While I was uploading it, I saw that I could add some sort of album art. Keeping with the theme of transforming existing public domain works, using open source tools, I went back to the Internet Archive, and found a page of a 1927 seed catalog that had some bright strawberries on it. I captured part of that image, loaded it into Gimp, and applied a bunch of filters to it, until I’d turned an image of luscious strawberries into something very different, that I thought matched the mood and tone of the audio I’d created.

Here’s what I made:

I’ve talked a lot in the past about how I believe this is a really great time to be a creative person, because the tools we need to make things, as well as the ability to get those things out into the world, are never farther away than our keyboards. I hope this inspires some of you to Get Excited and Make Things.

Episode Seven Jitters

Posted on 22 July, 2014 By Wil

When we visited Stoopid Buddy Studios earlier this season on my show, Seth Green showed me some works in progress, including this song about Star Wars Episode VII:

The Wil Wheaton Project moves back to 10pm tonight. I love this episode a LOT. We have Kevin Smith, Sonequa Martin-Green, and Skeletor.

wil wheaton project tickets, music, tabletop, rampart

Posted on 8 May, 2014 By Wil

A couple quick things before I leave for work:

We are taping an actual episode of The Wil Wheaton Project on Monday afternoon, in Hollywood. There are a limited number of free tickets available, for any of you who are local and would like to come.
The Wil Wheaton Project has its own Twitter. It’s funny, but I don’t run it. I suspect that it would impress the network if it got lots of followers.
Tonight, Evil Wil Wheaton (who is slightly less evil than before) returns to the Big Bang Theory, co-starring with Penny in a movie that is truly unforgettable.
Tomorrow, I’m brewing w00tstout 2.0 with Drew Curtis and Aisha Tyler! 2.0 will be released at Hop Con in July.
We posted a thank you video with some details about Season 3 of Tabletop, and the RPG show we’re going to be able to make, because over 20,000 people have backed our show.
My tattoo artist gave me a phenomenal record, and I made it my new jam. I promise you that you won’t regret spending three minutes listening to it.
I did a Reddit AMA yesterday, so if you’d like to spend some time reading it, now you know. Of course, if you don’t have time, you could just read my embarrassing childhood WWF story.

midnight highway

Posted on 4 March, 20144 March, 2014 By Wil

The second song on the Kill Bill Volume 1 soundtrack is a fantastic rockabilly number called That Certain Female. It has this great thick guitar riff with a lot of echo and delay and, for me, it conjures up images of Route 66 under a new moon, windows down and radio blaring as a ’58 Chevy puts miles between its mysterious driver and Chicago as fast as he can lay them down.

This music fills the dark and bug-spattered spaces between Amarillo and Tucumcari, staccato white lines flashing by in the headlights, the smell of exhaust and old tobacco swirling with dust.

Is he running toward something or away from something? Or is it a she behind the wheel? What’s in the trunk? What’s in the backseat? When we see the driver’s eyes in the rear view mirror, briefly lit by the glowing cherry of a cigarette, are they determined? Resigned? Afraid? Tear-stained? Vengeful?

Maybe they are all these things.

The road goes on.

mona lisas and mad hatters

Posted on 9 December, 2013 By Wil

When I was little, like, really little, before my brother was born in 1976, my parents were really into Elton John. One of my earliest childhood memories is sitting in the living room of our tiny house in the valley (where it was still all farmland), listening to Captain Fantastic and Goodbye Yellowbrick Road and Madman Across The Water while I sat on the yellow shag carpeting, and my parents sat on the black and white checkered couch.

When I was that little, I didn’t know the words, or what they meant, or anything, really (I was 4, after all), but sometimes, I play those albums, and Caribou and Honky Chateau, and I have this sense memory that feels like a security blanket that I can’t see, or touch, but is there nevertheless.

Tonight’s been one of those nights.