Saturday 30 May 2015

On this day 74 years ago Walter Franklin Tomkins Died


EP Front Cover

On this day 74 years ago Walter Franklin Tomkins died in Fazakerley General Hospital
after being Injured near his home on May 26th 1941 in an air raid.

To commemorate this day today,  i have decided to release
"On The Trail of Walter Franklin Tomkins"  as an MP3 download
It's FREE on google play Here.





Note that although i Can put it on iTunes, Spotify & Amazon
(I am unable to manually set prices on those stores)
So to put it in those stores, i would have to let them set the default prices
To which it is only available on googlePlay (to keep it free)

It's 100% Free and the files will work on Any device that supports MP3 audio.

Walter Franklin Tomkins 1877 to 1941 R.I.P

You can still watch this in video form Here



Sunday 24 May 2015

Paid or Unpaid and How To Professionally React To That Question


This question of   "Do You Charge?"  often offends composers which ive found odd tbh, i mean ive seen the question pop up around facebook, forums and random blogs, most the replies are often pretty sarcastic and seriously unprofessional.


FACT 1.
Their are millions of musicians willing to work for free, you must know this right?
(also note... i am Not saying you should work for free!!!)

The point i am making is the VAST MAJORITY of musos trying make it, will work for free...
(some directors have to ask for legal reasons)

FACT 2.
A lot of directors can NOT work with musicians who work for free

1 example, A project with a budget per department needs receipts, can you provide official invoices with Your Company Header?  do you even understand that side of the industry?

2nd example, insurance, are you even worthy of being held accountable when investors throw a law suit at the director because you failed to deliver on time and share holders want blood.
Do you even have any form of liability insurance?
contract costs, credits, percentage of the gross.. paperwork = back tracking by the tax man or investors..  who wants a benefit fraud on the credits?

FACT 3.
A lot of you uptight composers need to really think outside the box...
and consider just how viable you really are Beyond your sound...
because your in an industry were there are a Zillion Alternatives to you...

If your asked do you charge, say maybe.. depends on the project
(don't say do you lol) Take an interest, this movie could be the making of you and he's doing the actual work and the faffin with all the departments, your jobs simple really, if he can manage a movie, you can do more than just compose music..

Say DEPENDS ON THE PROJECT..   ask if its charity based, then ask/or has it got funding, does the film have a distributor, are there investors, is there a time frame, try and sound like you actually know what your doing, like you've done this before.

The worst thing you can ever say is NO
the 2nd worst thing to say is YES

You should be flexible to hear someone out BUT you should also be versatile in the Industry to be able to see just where this persons heads at, dream land or a real world.

Why not co-direct for credit, or co-produce, take an additional credit, possibly help improve the film, ur composing the music, you have a feel for the scenes, the characters UR the one person on set that's probably got the most empathy to each of the characters.. that's a viable asset and i know as ive worked on a few actual movie sets (amateur stuff, but the odd pause and single word change has brought more depth to a scene) It depends on the project your working on and the directors and the writers.

One rule of thumb.. don't be all exited when a director even gets in touch with you.. after all.. just where is his assistant or secretary.. ber that in mind..  Maybe he likes you ant felt he should aproach you.. or maybe he just can't afford the staff.

Remember NO and YES  are both the wrong answer....


Korg M1 and T1 for iPad Is Finally Here iM1


Its official, its real AND its ON SALE until the end of June  :D  £15.99 for a Korg M1 wooot

Besides the Yamaha DX7 and the odd Hint of a Jupiter 8.. this is it.. This is the synth.. Speed.. Days of Thunder.. countless others.. this is the 1988 classic Evolution of sound.

Downside?  it's iOS 8 and up...

In-App purchases are the M1 expansion cards and also the T1 expansion cards

M1 Card Pack £3.99
T1 Card Pack £3.99

USA Wise, the synth is currently $19.99 and the 2 in-apps are $4.99 each
(will this inspire more in-apps, more cards who knows)

Notes:
Well i was genuinely reluctant to update to iOS 8 and its no strange reason as to why is it lol,  but to be honest ive yet to find an app that wont work (that i thought would honestly have problems) like i figured alchemy would be dead, hell i really thought appGratis would be dead to, but they both open, CMP Grand, SampleTank, even iArmonica still works.

I can also conform that the IO Dock Pro II is working with an iPad 4th Generation running iOS 8.3 (12F69)  I bet that just helped a stack of people lol

Ive seen a stack of people saying its nothing new and it sounds dated...
To begin with it has 2 kaos pads (thats new, its got other new features too)
 and to say it sounds dated?   Hang Your Stupid Heads In Shame!!!
Its a re-creation of a synth from 1988, of course the instruments sound dated, their supposed to..



ORIGINAL POST BELOW

KORG M1 iPad Ready?



Could one of the most classic Korg synths finally be coming to the iPad?
I have seen the rumours and the odd photos but i have yet to seen nothing official. But the other question I have is will it include the kind of stuff the VST pack provides for PC & MAC users, will it contain the M1 cards or will they be In-App Purchases.

Because as a VST user i often found it was fun to start with the cards and then modify the card pre-sets than faf with it from scratch, though it depended on if i was after a specific sound with a twist or something brand new.


Remember the VST brought us a stack of expansion cards while the DLL its self also allowed the use of SYX files and a lot of tweaking was possible. 

Will any of our pre-sets be viable, has this whole project been thought through.




Remember you also got the T1 range of cards in the VST package, which was another stack of classic pre-sets.
Some of the M1 and T1 sounds have been used on varied movie scores, pop songs and been battered across live performances since they came out, Speed, Days of Thunder.
and many more...


I would assume (with such a dependability on the cards to make the hardware worth while)   That at some stage recently maybe the copy-write or the license has expired and now Korg officially own the rights to all the goodies?
to me this would make sense to why its taken so long.


The same could be said for the Korg LegacyCell, i have no idea just how many external companies where involved within that VST, but again their maybe copy-write problem regarding using certain source code, but i have hopes the M1 is real & that it comes with the T1 expansions along with the swift arrival of the legacy at some stage to.

I am not impressed with the current Korg iPad stand alone synths, because frankly i was never into them actual synths.

I shall leave you with some screen shots of the M1 vst so that IF an iPad version is released, then people can look at the videos on youtube between iPad & VST, check out the screen shots, compare features and see if anything missing (before buying anything)

Instrument Browser
Performance Panel
Midi Panel
Master FX Panel
Easy Panel
OSC Panel
VDF Panel
VDA Panel
Control Panel
Insert FX Panel
Will it have this fun drop down?

If i get any more news or the opportunity to beta test it i will keep you updated...
check the App store on the 25th of May  (using your iPad of course)
I PRAY ITS COMPATIBLE WITH iOS 7

Note all screen shots above are of the PC vst running
(ive posted these as the korg site seams to only have Mac vst shots)

UPDATE:
Its out, its real and its fkn iOS 8 only wtf...










iM1  iOS Screen shots by Darryl King




Saturday 9 May 2015

When She Finally Stopped Running 001a



Download: Here

And in this video you can see the Origins of this actual track
and some information on its background story.



Friday 8 May 2015

Am I Mad.. Feel Free To Comment Please

After deciding to take music serious (after around 20 years of messing about like an idiot) I spent a year on and off just playing random stuff, some analogue, some digital, varied ideas mostly real time stuff off the top of my head.

Then after 20+ albums and 1000+ tracks within 11 months a mate said i should put a show reel together (i hadn't as i have no aspirations tbh) but i tried to work with 1000+ pieces and managed to narrow it down to 82 little chunks of emotion (my hardware & software has improved since i made this) but almost everything in the video is from a real time recording with 3 keyboards, 1 pc and 2 sustain peddles.

Feel free to let me know what you thing of my work, no holds barred. I was born with natural music theory "apparently" and i have no training or connections to trained musicians. So any feed back is truly appreciated from one humble muso to another.. Am i on the right path with self employment as a composer? or am i simply mad?  Should i follow this musical path? do i have what it takes?

my own father & grandfather had this gift and this emotional curse by birth
 Neither of them followed it to see where it leads.
Looking for a public Opinion so have your say...