reimagining Matt Mason
…in which we revive classic themes.
We’ll be reprising Elegy for Matt Mason—one of our earlier collaborative works—at this fall’s A LOT event in Long Beach, but without our full complement of personnel. That means redubbing the original video so there’s a violin track, and an excuse to embellish and tweak a bit. Cue one weekend….
The band laid down new audio tracks for Elegy for Matt Mason using Skype to synch to video and Jacob’s vocal delivery. Half of Saturday was spent rearranging gear and patching in enough channels to create the virtual recording studio. Then we managed three takes during the afternoon and evening. Yesterday I mixed down and “rendered” the audio sans Jacob’s text, which he’ll deliver live Sunday evening. Tonight I’ll make first-pass splice of audio onto the video, then try to fix some legacy glitches in the 2011 video. I’m anticipating completion of “Elegy” by Wednesday morning. It should weigh in at ~22 minutes.
“Filmredigering” of the video Transit is complete now. I finished mixing down the audio last week Sunday; added the audio stream to the video Monday; and encoded everything to 1080p and m4v formats overnight. Testing Tuesday evening on several machines showed the file is portable, playable, and 19’41” in length. Having it in several formats should mean we can cope with alternative PC and/or projector situations, trade off fidelity for frame drops, etc.
Transit is the last piece in the program and requires a costume change. Unfortunately we’ve been having that rare unfortunate experience with Amazon, where you can receive the wrong model of hard hat three times: twice via ruinously expensive same day shipping. If push comes to shove we’ll be making a trip to the local hardware store instead. The first orange “ultra-cool” safety vest looks fine; we’ll hope Jacob’s arrives in the right size.
So, we have 45 minutes and 42 of them are already filled. The other three will be the opening comments leading right into a improv performance of our Buzz office bingo piece. Becky’s part will be played by me and the V-Synth XT (My dreams of a live Skype session will have to wait).
Jacob printed the posters Friday and managed to get some put up over the weekend. (I have to admit my aged expectations for our media blitz may have been overoptimistic. Back in my college no-cover blues band days, we’d run around town the night before a gig and plaster every kiosk in sight with cheap plain-paper copies, taping up or staple-gunning 50-plus an hour. Either Long Beach culture is more well-mannered or else Amazon failed to deliver the flying monkeys, too. Or we got old….) Look for these carefully hand-placed collectors items at Long Beach culture-friendly businesses near you!
Packing up Thursday and driving Friday looks like the current plan. So, with this much material in the can, we’re actually ahead of schedule compared to prior years.
One more time: the venue
Sunday, September 28, 2014 at 6:30 PM
Just before sundown in the old Acres of Books parking lot
Long Beach Boulevard and East 3rd Street
Long Beach, CA, USA
* No Cover! *
Hope you can make it.
