Sunday, October 4, 2015
Hikaru Nara Instrumental Cover
Check out my latest video, also my first collaboration video with multiple musicians.
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
The death of Neopets
http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue-sections/13799/neopets-rise-and-fall/?fb=dd
Aye this was an interesting read. Who didnt play this when they were growing up in the 90s?
Friday, July 3, 2015
To Zanarkand, Music Box arrangement
This is... my story.
Watch in 720p60fps!
I was ecstatic when my 30 Note DIY music box finally came in the mail a month ago. I knew I wanted to do a simple yet beautiful song—To Zanarkand was the perfect composition to perform on the music box due to its relatively slow tempo and variance in notes. There were many challenges in making this video and hence the month long delay in between videos. I arranged the music sheet so that it would mirror the original, with some elements from the Piano Collections version. It took a long time to actually translate the music onto the sheet paper itself. I’m also new at both filming and editing and thus it took many failed retakes in order to get the ideal film/sound quality to work with. There aren’t any HD Remastered versions of AMV/GMV footage made available for download anywhere. I took up the challenge and arranged the sequence of scenes myself. The HOW-TO video is coming soon.
Music box tune of To Zanarkand from Final Fantasy X. Notes designed to be performed on a 30-note music box.
You can play this tune on your own DIY music box! The digital MP3 version and the music sheet can be found on my Google Drive:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BxMIZc1mDd50eEx0NVhETkpIRGM?tab=mo
You can write your own music using the Music Box Composer app, located here:
http://www.jellybiscuits.com/?page_id=705
If you like this video and want to see more, please subscribe, comment and like this video! Leave your comments below on what you would like to see next.
All HD Remastered Final Fantasy X cutscenes and CGI belong to Square Enix. To Zanarkand composed by Nobuo Uematsu.
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
YouTube Channel - Muse Box Corner
I've recently started up my own YouTube channel. I love video game music and making the Let it Go music box gave me an idea: to do music box tunes for the DIY music box for various game music. Of course, at the moment that's my genre and I'm hoping to expand to other areas like anime and pop songs in the future. One of the main challenges of setting up a new YT channel is that in order to qualify for a custom URL, you need 500 subscribers. This is the pain period. You can check out my channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCw5vgVQaAUMHUiDCzEHwWw
See how disgusting the random letters are? I miss the days where not every kid and dog has their own channel. Last week I created a video for the new Super Smash Brothers theme and it has already reached over 1000 views in a week! Okay that might not sound like anything, but it's a huge milestone in my book. Please subscribe if you enjoy what I do!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCw5vgVQaAUMHUiDCzEHwWw
See how disgusting the random letters are? I miss the days where not every kid and dog has their own channel. Last week I created a video for the new Super Smash Brothers theme and it has already reached over 1000 views in a week! Okay that might not sound like anything, but it's a huge milestone in my book. Please subscribe if you enjoy what I do!
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
The Evolution of Kevin Durant
Kevin Durant is changing. Up until the last year's MVP speech, Durant was the face of the NBA. Kevin Durant, the ultimate good guy. A person of utmost humility and respect. He not only is the best player around, he is not arrogant nor does he smack talk others. His brand and image oozed of niceness and I would have never thought he would change into this new persona. For gods sake, Durant is the epitome of a nice guy. What's happening to Kevin Durant is not only interesting, it's completely unexpected and fun to watch.
Here is a recollection of events I found in chronological order:
Nov 2014
Kevin Durant calling Dwight Howard a pussy. At first I surprised because that's not very KD-like. But I gave him a pass since it seems to be a meme for everyone to call Dwight a pussy.
Feb 2015
Kevin Durant shows us his new attitude.
Here is KD taunting Chris Paul telling him "you're still down 20 points homie."
Here is KD flexing his ego by saying "I'm a bad motherfucker."
And here we have KD raging, and committing a flagrant 1 foul.
And here is some fresh beef on social media:
Here's the latest crapshoot: KD finally breaks down his facade and shows us a glimpse of his true self. To quote:
"You guys really don’t know shit. To be honest, man, I’m only here talking to y’all because I have to. So I really don’t care. Y’all not my friends. You’re going to write what you want to write. You’re going to love us one day and hate us the next. That’s a part of it. So I just learn how to deal with y’all. My first few years in the league, I was just finding myself. I think most of the time, I reacted based off of what everybody else wanted and how they viewed me as a person. I am just learning to be myself, not worrying about what everybody else says, I am going to make mistakes. I just want to show kids out here that athletes, entertainers, whoever, so-called celebrities, we aren't robots. We go through emotions and go through feelings and I am just trying to express mine and try to help people along the way. I am not going to sit here and tell you that I am just this guy that is programmed to say the right stuff all the time and politically correct answers. I am done with that. I am just trying to be me and continue to grow as a man." - Kevin Durant to the media
Conclusion
What does this all mean? Kevin Durant is done being a nice guy. For the first part of his career he was a nice guy, and I think he was spoon fed by his marketing team to be a politically correct, restrained, and nice individual. But what he just told us right now is that he is fed up being someone he's not. I applaud you Kevin Durant. Stand up for yourself. You aren't fooling anyone with your facade. Break down this mister nice guy that your agents created for you. Learn from Westbrook my friend, he executes. I mean sure, you won't be liked by everybody anymore, but who cares about that? Look at Kobe Bryant, people love him and people hate him. But if you're well liked by all, you will be loved by none. I think it's ten times more memorable for us if Kevin Durant was a badass rather than some pushover who never did anything. I think as the season progresses, we'll see more and more of the new KD. No one wants to see a boring, bland, nice guy. Cheers to the new, edgy Kevin Durant.
Nov 2014
Kevin Durant calling Dwight Howard a pussy. At first I surprised because that's not very KD-like. But I gave him a pass since it seems to be a meme for everyone to call Dwight a pussy.
Feb 2015
Kevin Durant shows us his new attitude.
Here is KD taunting Chris Paul telling him "you're still down 20 points homie."
Here is KD flexing his ego by saying "I'm a bad motherfucker."
And here we have KD raging, and committing a flagrant 1 foul.
And here is some fresh beef on social media:
Congrats Mr. Thunder, such a honor to play alongside you @nickcollison4
— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) February 3, 2015
Dude who averages 3 pts & 3 rebs gets 2-year/$8M extension. No wonder they won't make the playoffs.
— Chris Palmer (@ChrisPalmerNBA) February 3, 2015
@ChrisPalmerNBA means a lot coming from a dude who got fired for being a dumbass
— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) February 3, 2015
This is hilarious! KD is known to be supportive of both his teammates and his coach. It's not uncommon these days for high profile folks to start shit on Twitter, but KD!?Here's the latest crapshoot: KD finally breaks down his facade and shows us a glimpse of his true self. To quote:
"You guys really don’t know shit. To be honest, man, I’m only here talking to y’all because I have to. So I really don’t care. Y’all not my friends. You’re going to write what you want to write. You’re going to love us one day and hate us the next. That’s a part of it. So I just learn how to deal with y’all. My first few years in the league, I was just finding myself. I think most of the time, I reacted based off of what everybody else wanted and how they viewed me as a person. I am just learning to be myself, not worrying about what everybody else says, I am going to make mistakes. I just want to show kids out here that athletes, entertainers, whoever, so-called celebrities, we aren't robots. We go through emotions and go through feelings and I am just trying to express mine and try to help people along the way. I am not going to sit here and tell you that I am just this guy that is programmed to say the right stuff all the time and politically correct answers. I am done with that. I am just trying to be me and continue to grow as a man." - Kevin Durant to the media
Conclusion
What does this all mean? Kevin Durant is done being a nice guy. For the first part of his career he was a nice guy, and I think he was spoon fed by his marketing team to be a politically correct, restrained, and nice individual. But what he just told us right now is that he is fed up being someone he's not. I applaud you Kevin Durant. Stand up for yourself. You aren't fooling anyone with your facade. Break down this mister nice guy that your agents created for you. Learn from Westbrook my friend, he executes. I mean sure, you won't be liked by everybody anymore, but who cares about that? Look at Kobe Bryant, people love him and people hate him. But if you're well liked by all, you will be loved by none. I think it's ten times more memorable for us if Kevin Durant was a badass rather than some pushover who never did anything. I think as the season progresses, we'll see more and more of the new KD. No one wants to see a boring, bland, nice guy. Cheers to the new, edgy Kevin Durant.
You da REAL MVP
Saturday, February 7, 2015
Thoughts on the Breakdown of Society
Recently I stumbled upon two very interesting articles. They both are somewhat related and I think it’s fascinating. The first article I read was about a scientific experiment performed by scientist John Calhoun. Calhoun is famous for conducting an experiment with rats. He created a “utopia” world for a population of rats. In his experiment, the enclosed environment had all the right variables for a perfect universe: unlimited supply of food, lack of danger (predators), and plentiful of breeding partners. At first, the population grew steadily and at a constant rate. Eventually, the population reached a tipping point and it stopped. Eventually, the utopia became chaotic. Males split into two categories, the violent ones and the passive ones. The rats grew restless and pointless violence would occur randomly. Females no longer reproduced. Non-violent rats withdrew from society altogether, confining themselves into solitude and avoided all but the most basic survival needs: (eating, drinking, and strangely… grooming). In the end, even after the population had gone down to tolerable numbers, the mice never got back to a high reproduction rate, or as I call it; they stopped hooking up with each other. Society broke because everything was too perfect and overpopulation caused havoc amongst the perfect world they lived in.
It’s extremely interesting because no matter how Calhoun changed the variables within his experiments, the same thing would happen over and over. The behavior and end result very predictable. Why does this matter? I think it matters because I can see a trend happening in the human race itself. There is one nation in the world where the number of deaths are surpassing the number of babies being born: Japan. Japan is facing a very real problem, the population is shrinking and shrinking fast. In Japan, stores sell more diapers to the elderly than they do to newborn children.
Here’s why the second article I read about is so fascinating and why it’s relevant. Like I mentioned in my earlier post, Japan is a country of singles. Men don’t pursue the opposite sex, birth rates are in decline, does this sound familiar? In this article, the author explains the concept of hikikomori. The term basically is the equivalent of a person who has gave up on himself on society and never leaves home. The term shut-in defines as a person who never leaves the house other than for basic needs (like buying food). These people have pulled themselves out of society by choice. There are over 1 million Japanese people who currently have this problem.
This looks extremely similar to the social experiment John Calhoun created. In our modern society, we are essentially in a world where all our basic human needs are fulfilled, ex: food, shelter, lack of danger. What’s so similar with the case of Japan and the rat experiment is the lack of living space. Japan is a series of islands that is home to millions of people. Overpopulation is a big problem. Overpopulation was the tipping point for the breakdown of society in the rat experiments. Rats began to turn either violent or pulled themselves out of society. My theory is that the tipping point for Japan has been reached and we are our in the stage where the population will continue to drop until a point where it restores itself when overpopulation is no longer such a big problem. However, the problem with this is that the damage will be catastrophic by that time comes. With an aging population, economic problems arise. When half of the population is enjoying their retirement, the strain on the working class will bring burden to the economy as a whole. How do you expect the Japanese economy to flourish when only half the population is earning income? The breakdown of society looks very real.
There are a ton of factors that go into the problems Japan currently faces. Why does this even matter, after-all we aren’t in Japan? I think this phenomenon is also slowly occurring in the urban cities of America. The only difference is that the land mass here is a lot more spacious and we will not hit that tipping point anytime soon. But there is definitely something going on because in large urban populations, single men and women are increasingly having trouble finding a right partner. Whatever the reason might be, when the tipping point comes, you’ll know where you've read it first.
Documentary on hikikomori: http://vimeo.com/28627261
It’s extremely interesting because no matter how Calhoun changed the variables within his experiments, the same thing would happen over and over. The behavior and end result very predictable. Why does this matter? I think it matters because I can see a trend happening in the human race itself. There is one nation in the world where the number of deaths are surpassing the number of babies being born: Japan. Japan is facing a very real problem, the population is shrinking and shrinking fast. In Japan, stores sell more diapers to the elderly than they do to newborn children.
Here’s why the second article I read about is so fascinating and why it’s relevant. Like I mentioned in my earlier post, Japan is a country of singles. Men don’t pursue the opposite sex, birth rates are in decline, does this sound familiar? In this article, the author explains the concept of hikikomori. The term basically is the equivalent of a person who has gave up on himself on society and never leaves home. The term shut-in defines as a person who never leaves the house other than for basic needs (like buying food). These people have pulled themselves out of society by choice. There are over 1 million Japanese people who currently have this problem.
This looks extremely similar to the social experiment John Calhoun created. In our modern society, we are essentially in a world where all our basic human needs are fulfilled, ex: food, shelter, lack of danger. What’s so similar with the case of Japan and the rat experiment is the lack of living space. Japan is a series of islands that is home to millions of people. Overpopulation is a big problem. Overpopulation was the tipping point for the breakdown of society in the rat experiments. Rats began to turn either violent or pulled themselves out of society. My theory is that the tipping point for Japan has been reached and we are our in the stage where the population will continue to drop until a point where it restores itself when overpopulation is no longer such a big problem. However, the problem with this is that the damage will be catastrophic by that time comes. With an aging population, economic problems arise. When half of the population is enjoying their retirement, the strain on the working class will bring burden to the economy as a whole. How do you expect the Japanese economy to flourish when only half the population is earning income? The breakdown of society looks very real.
There are a ton of factors that go into the problems Japan currently faces. Why does this even matter, after-all we aren’t in Japan? I think this phenomenon is also slowly occurring in the urban cities of America. The only difference is that the land mass here is a lot more spacious and we will not hit that tipping point anytime soon. But there is definitely something going on because in large urban populations, single men and women are increasingly having trouble finding a right partner. Whatever the reason might be, when the tipping point comes, you’ll know where you've read it first.
Documentary on hikikomori: http://vimeo.com/28627261
Sunday, January 11, 2015
The Making of Let It Go Music Box Project
I first came across the 15 note music box when I was searching for a Christmas present last year. The device is pretty simple, it only has 15 notes ranging from C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C. This means it cannot play any flats or sharps and whatever you choose to compose must be transcribed to follow within these note ranges. This becomes extremely difficult because most songs you find on the internet are not composed on the C Major scale and thus I had to do a ton of research. After a couple of weeks playing around on the Music Box Composer, I had pretty much the song down but it still sounded really awful. I asked my friend Nelson who plays the piano and guitar to help me out with the music composition. I could not have done it without him, mad props to my musically gifted friend for helping me out.
Music Box Composer
After printing out the music on normal paper, the biggest and most tedious work begins. Since normal printing paper is too thin, it will not rotate into the device. In order to solve this problem, you must glue two sheets of paper together. I had to cut the glued pieces of paper together with a box cutter and ruler because if they don't have the right size it will not fit or slide in the device. After cutting out the paper, I had to punch the holes out. Half of Let it Go takes about 3 hours to punch out. Luckily for me, I punched out the first piece of sheet paper and played it and then realized the 15 note music box has another major flaw, it CANNOT PLAY CONSECUTIVE EIGHTH NOTES. There are a ton of notes that requires repeats and I was really mad that I did not know it had this problem. Since that was a problem, I re-wrote the music on the Composer and punched out the holes that I needed to play the song. Thus, some notes were omitted in the final printed version. After punching out all the holes, I had to glue each section together. It was incredibly annoying because you have to be exact, or the music sheet will not play right.
You can find the final version (missing some consecutive notes) and the original on my Google Drive. Both the printable version and mp3s are uploaded there. The one that says "printed" means it has omitted consecutive notes, the "half" version is the original version.
Mp3 and Music Sheets
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Predicting the 2015 NBA All Star teams
East:
Lebron James - through votes
Pau Gasol
Jimmy Butler
John Wall
Kyle Lowry
Dwyane Wade - through votes
Carmelo Anthony
Paul Millsap
Nikola Vucevic
Jeff Teague
West:
Anthony Davis
Blake Griffin
Marc Gasol
DeMarcus Cousins
Kevin Durant
LaMarcus Aldrige
Stephen Curry
James Harden
Chris Paul
Damian Lillard
Kobe Bryant
Lebron James - through votes
Pau Gasol
Jimmy Butler
John Wall
Kyle Lowry
Dwyane Wade - through votes
Carmelo Anthony
Paul Millsap
Nikola Vucevic
Jeff Teague
West:
Anthony Davis
Blake Griffin
Marc Gasol
DeMarcus Cousins
Kevin Durant
LaMarcus Aldrige
Stephen Curry
James Harden
Chris Paul
Damian Lillard
Kobe Bryant
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