Egg Heads: a Mix and Mash Animation

Trying something new with illustrator art in the form of an episodic adventure loosely based on Mr.  & Mrs. Pumpkin Head.

The Star Wars Album That Never Was

 Since I can't walk much until my broken ankle heals, I've been listening to a lot of music.  Some old favorites include Pink Floyd "Comfortably Numb," and The Who "See Me, Feel Me," from their Tommy album.  This got me to thinking about when I tried to create a CD of rock and roll music as a soundtrack to one of Lucasfilm's Computer Games.  My idea of expanding the Star Wars universe with books that told new stories had worked out better than I could have imagined, and I thought maybe I could do something similar with music.

In the mid 1990s, the Publishing dept. had coordinated with the Games group and the Toy group on a "movie without the movie" called Shadows of the Empire.   I licensed, and worked on, the novel and an original music soundtrack.  Around the same time, I was looking for other ways to create new music products that might be associated with the Star Wars expanded universe.  So, Virgin Records in the UK put together a compilation as a possible soundtrack for the Dark Forces Game.  This idea didn't make it much further.  Although George Lucas was OK with my dept. developing new stories, it soon became clear that any new Star Wars music would have to be originated by John Williams.

The best result of this failed effort is the great CD compilation soundtrack Virgin Records put together for me, which I've posted above.  The individual tunes can be found on YouTube.  

A Day at Bondi Beach - video

Spent some quality time at Bondi Beach in Australia in October and spent the day taking photographs.  This one added a soundtrack of me playing Satie (not very well) with the addition of various other sound effects to tie in with the action onscreen.  I've done another one uploaded to Vimeo (vimeo.com/user1980254/)

which has a different soundtrack.  Let me know which you prefer.

Some new music now up on my website

Check out the 4 track sample, from the CD Fiddle Tunes and Waltzes, now available on my website.  Go to Lucy Autrey Wilson Art | Exploring My Creative Impulses and click on the new Music link at the top of the page.  

Devil's Dream - new video

My sister Susan and I had fun collaborating on a number of fiddle tunes.  Susan recorded them on her cello, and I added various digital tracks.  This one called out for a video that featured dreamlike imagery with a bit of humor.

Fog Dance

A Mood Video with simulated fog and waves 

Dog Adventures in the Garden - a mini video adventure

A little dog adventure

Teeter Totter

The Taylors come to Marin and we all go to the beach!  Music by Haydn, Mozart, a little original music and some loops.

Dance of the Cymbidium Orchids to Two Bars of Handel's Passacaglia

Spring Orchids, photos & artwork set to Handel's music

Rocket To Another World

The latest video!  

Exquisite Corpse Animation

A family vacation drawing game, becomes an animation

New Video! Falling Into Winter

The older I get, the more I appreciate autumn.  This video is a 2+ minute photo montage, with an original soundtrack featuring Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata theme (played and recorded by me using my Yamaha MX88), and some novel effects.  With over 80 images, the video is a celebration of a beautiful time of year, as photographed in and around Marin County over several seasons.   

Cat Entertainment

Short video featuring three artful cats being entertained by two birds and two rats with an original soundtrack featuring classic music.

Cacophony

 My younger, super cellist sister, recently gave me our grandfather's violin.  I recorded myself playing it and added some other musical elements.  The sound made me think of the word Cacophony, ie "a harsh discordant mixture of sounds."   That, in turn, reminded me of the mixture of experiences that make up life.  In my case, the approximately 75% of allotted time already lived.  Fortunately I have the thousands of photos my father took over the years, as well as a vast trove of other artworks and photos.  Happy technology has advanced to the point where all of this can be easily put together.  Here is one result. 

Learning New Music Skills Combined with Color Theory

After years of playing piano, by reading the notes but not understanding any of the basics, I've gotten interested in learning about music theory and composition.  Fortunately, I located two very old music publications that my late, great, mother had in her music library (she was a superb pianist and composer) which are quite useful:  Modern Styles and Harmonic Construction for Popular Piano Playing by Marvin Kahn and The Majors and Their Relatives by Eula Ashworth Lindfors.  I'm also trying to wade through the Idiot's Guide to Music Composition and Music Theory for Dummies. 

This new music interest was generated initially by a desire to clean up the poor recordings of much of my mother's music, which led to trying to learn both Cubase and Adobe Audition software.  Playing with the new software enabled me to add musical elements to my mother's compositions (sound efx, loops, bird songs, etc.), which has led to a desire to try my hand at making my own original music.

Recently, I noticed a similarity between The Color Wheel (a circular guide to mixing color) and The Chord Wheel (a circular tool for composing one's own music).  So I associated a different color to 8 chord tracks in a very simple scale exercise, then sought to create a video using those same colors synced up with the underlying chords.  My late, great father's photography has also been accessed with an old photo of me filling in for Mary, in the tune Mary had a Little Lamb which appears towards the end of the video's soundtrack. 

This short 55 second video is perhaps a bit too mathematical, the music too elementary and the whole not very artistic.  But the new learning effort is taking my mind off of negative Corona Virus news and bad behavior societal displays.  Escaping from time to time into nature, music and art are essential for trying to maintain some form of sanity in these trying times.

Fondly, Remembering the Band Cream

Playing with the adjustment brush in Lightroom, remembering one of my favorite bands, Cream. Just finished watching a documentary on drummer Ginger Baker, which brought back some happy memories of days filled with great music!