The Amazing Rolo's old blog (the new one is at theamazingrolo.net)
Down in the willow garden
Here's a little song I recorded yesterday morning:
Down in the willow garden.(I didn't write it, it's an old traditional song, played by everyone from the Kossoy Sisters to Simon and Garfunkel).
It's just a live take of me with my guitar in my room. Nothing fancy, but I thought it would be interesting to make such a sparse recording, since I usually add so much.
Also, Aurelia came over yesterday to build the set for our short film. It already looks really cool! It has telephone poles and a road and a sky, and the car is nearly finished. Pictures soon.
Everything is new again.
I'm just finishing up a massive redesign and reorganization of all of my websites. Here's what I've done:
The theamazingrolo.net site is now a "hub", with links to all of my other sites.There are several new pages, including a page dedicated to my movies, a FAQ page, and more.Today I'll be reorganizing all the links on all of the old pages to make them all better connected.So there! It's all very exciting, I'm pretty happy with how it's all turning out. Let me know if you find any broken links or if any of the design is really bad.
Exhale solutions.
This is a little anecdote about playing underground hip hop for high school students at a vocational school in France.
Click to listen or download.It's quite short and simple, I did it all this morning using music by
Aesop Rock and an old NPR recording from last November.
In other news, I'm back in Pittsburgh. My trip to the UK was everything I was hoping it to be, and more. Now I'm looking forward to getting back to work on my Projects with a capital P.
[edit: whoops! That mp3 cut off before the end. I'm fixing it now, it should be fixed in a few minutes]
I'm taking a little trip.
Tonight I'm leaving for the UK for a week. I'll be stopping in London and Edinburgh on a fact-finding expedition. Hopefully in about ten days I'll get back to posting mp3s and movies (and probably a few pictures from the british isles). I'm particularly excited about a large-scale stop motion animation that
Aurelia and I will be working on...more on that when I get back.
In other news, my "podcast", if you can call it that, is now available on iTunes! If you have iTunes on your computer then click
here.If you have gotten to this blog through iTunes - welcome! Be sure to check out the archives and links for all sorts of original music and movies and more. And I would love to hear from you.
Yet another website.
Just a quick post to tell you about my newest web page. This one is dedicated to my sound documentaries:
www.theamazingrolo.net/storiesThis is step one in my campaign to get these on the radio!
A car breaks down.
I'm not really sure how to describe this...I've been saying "sound documentary" but it's really more of a story than a documentary. It's the story of my car breaking down on the highway a few weeks ago.
In any event, I've been working on this for the past week or so. I wrote all of the text and music (except the Gillian Welch song, as you'll see). The sound effects are a mix between stuff I recorded in my house and tracks from the BBC Sound Effects Library.
It's long - about 15 minutes - and the file is about 16 mb, so be patient!
Click to listen.Oh, and the song that I talk about at the end can be listened to in its entirety
here.
Going for a walk.
Here's another music video for you! I took all the pictures the last few times I went home to the Farm...I compiled them all in After Effects and then wrote a short song that sort of matches the theme and mood.
Click to watch (16 mb quicktime movie)Thanks to jonbro, as usual, for all the help.
And, as usual, let me know what you think!
Keep to Myself
I'm back in Pittsburgh after a pleasant trip to the Farm, where I hung out with my family, split and sold some firewood, and played a fun show in Chestertown with my brother.
Speaking of my brother, he recorded a really cool gourd banjo track for a new song I've been working on. I finished it up yesterday, and I think it's pretty nice. I'm going to use it in my next sound documentary, which I hope to finish before my trip to the UK in a couple of weeks.
Click here to listen or download.