I'l just do your conventional biography thing here.

Hi, I'm WritersBlock, and music is a large part of my life. I was born in September of 1990, in a small town in Western Australia. I'm 17 years old. I finished high school last year, with my exam results placing me in the top 15% in the state, which is pretty good considering that I barely studied. I took the toughest subjects the school offered: Calculus, Applicable Maths, Chemistry and Physics, as well as Music (which I chose not to sit the final exam for) and standard TEE (tertiary entance exam) English.

I also participated in the "Countryweek" school camp, where schools from all over the state come to Perth to compete in team sporting events to find the best talent in rural WA. I'm not particularly athletic, as my chosen "sport" was in the drama section: Prepared Speech and Monologue. I like the theater, and my creative side loves the prospect of acting, but I spent a lot of time before the camp rehearsing my monologue and writing a speech. Both went pretty well, although I failed to make the finals for my monologue, my prepared speech (which was a parody on advertising through television) came third for B-grade. Yes, one of the best young speech writers in the state right here. You've probably already picked up on the irony that is my alias by now... but just to highlight it more, my friend, who was doing a speech in A grade hadn't written his speech because he didn't know what to write. He ended up writing his speech the night before he had to present it. The topic: Writer's block. He got through to the finals but failed to place.

Now, I have a job at the local Bunnings (DIY Warehouse type business) even though I know little about the DIY market... But the money is a nice change, as I'll be needing lots of it when I go to uni next year. I'll be packing my bags up and moving to Perth to live with my brother, so that I can attend Curtin university, and spend 4-5 years on a double degree: Bachelor of Education and Bachelor of Arts. It's a nice balance, I think. I'll study secondary teaching (Maths) as my main subject, and maybe music as my second option, and the bachelor of arts will probably cover things like literature editing and publishing, creative writing, that sort of thing, so that I've got some good options into what field of work I want to go into when I'm finished.

As you can see, the main focus of my life at the moment isn't music. Music is my passion, but it's also just a hobby. I'm not so ambitious that I want to write music and get famous without stopping to actually think how realistic that dream is to me. So I thoroughly enjoy tinkering around on my piano or guitar, composing stuff for newgrounds, knowing full well that I'm not going to try and end up with a record deal. So anyway, I think you should know SOMETHING about how I got to here with my music.

At the start of the year 2000 (I was nine at the time), I started learning the piano with the teacher that lives across the road. She holds a funnel up to the window to hear if I'm practicing when I'm not having lessons (lol not really, she's a nice, supportive teacher, as you'll find more about a bit later). Around about the start of the school year, my school had a test for all the kids in my year, to see if we had a natural ear for music. It was all simple stuff really, but to the kids that did best in that test, they offered free music lessons for an instrument of the kids choosing. If I didn't have the instrument I wanted, there was the option to hire, but since I already had my dad's old 3/4 length classical guitar (restrung to accommodate for my left handed playing style), I decided to learn the guitar. In October of that year, I performed in my first music festival for piano and guitar. Over the next few years, my skills developed, and then came high school...

My town has about 4 primary schools, and there's only 1 high school (there's a new Anglican one opening soon though...). So, I went from my little primary school, being the biggest and smartest little kid, to being the new kid in a school of about a thousand kids. There were two kids that had kept up music lessons through primary school in my year: One was me, the other was one of my best friends, who moved away at the end of the year. So I kept up my private piano lessons, and my guitar lessons in school, but I also had actual music classes for 3 periods a week, and I was in a class of about 30 kids (that's not counting the other music class), and I knew no-one.

But everyone was pretty awesome, and I was having fun learning theory, rather than just reading notes. I started learning compositional tips and tricks and I got to go on the annual "music camp", where we go up to Perth for a week and go watch performances, and perform and do artsy/music stuff. Our music camps were awesome, almost legendary. But the next year, the music teacher moved to a school over east, and the guy replacing him was a big jerk, making us watch videos on the beatles, and sniffing whiteboard markers and telling us about marijuana cakes. It might sound like fun, but we learned nothing. And then he needed to present some sort of test results to the principal, so he gave us a surprise of 2 tests on one day, which we knew little about, and which I could only get one done. That year my grade was about 50%, and I blame that solely on the fact of the teacher being a total knob-for-brains. That year we had no music camp, because apparently there's nothing in Perth that we can't learn locally. And the grand finale of this guy's asshole-ery is his description of a guitar as "a box with strings". So... any old box, with any old strings can make a perfect guitar sound? [/rant]

The next year, year 10, jerk-face left and the awesome teacher from year 8 came back. Rejoice. His students over in Melbourne were assholes, so he came back to the kids that truly appreciated him. by this time, there was a dwindling number of students in the class. It was from about 5-10 kids. The teacher was quite disturbed that a year had been wasted on the beatles and stories about drugs. So we had a lot of catch up going on in that year, and I think I ended up winning an award for being at the top of the class at the end of the year. The music camp was back on again, with the typical going to an art exhibition here, going to the opera there (the opera we saw was really mediochre "shut up and die already, bitch!") and the dormitory raids in the middle of the night, it was music camp at its finest.

Meanwhile, my piano grade at this point was at grade 3. I was doing well with the music festival and my AMEB (Australian Music Examination Board) exams, but next year the piano would make me its bitch. Year 11. The year when the school started doing its exams. I was doing TEE level music. There were 4 people in the class, and there were 3 different courses within the class spread over 2 year levels. One student was doing year 12 TEE, who's now studying music at UWA (University of Western Australia: The elite uni of WA. My brother studies there). There was one year 11 doing non TEE music, and myself and one other learning year 11 TEE music (she's also studying music at UWA at the moment). There are several different sections in the TEE music course that we're graded on: Perception (ear tests, for rhythm, pitch, cadences, that sort of stuff), which I was kinda average at, Literature (analysing scores, history) I was pretty good at that, but I remember a lot more now, than when I was sitting in the exam rooms, Composition (rearranging 8 bars for piano into a piece for 4 instruments, one of which has to be transposing, adding 8 more bars in that same style and adding appropriate articulation for a given style), I usually did alright/pretty good with these, Performance; I had to perform on the piano at a 5th grade level, I did really poorly with this, as I had to skip a grade, and my sight reading was pretty average. But I plugged away at it anyway, and there was a silver lining on the cloud, as this year, I had my last music camp (technically it was just a guitar camp), we went to Margaret River for a week and participated in a big performance, as well as getting up to the usual shenanigans.

Overall, my academic achievements were of a high standard. And then came year 12. This year raped me with truth. I was not going to get into music at uni, and I did not want to become an engineer. I kept on keeping on with my music until my mid year exams. My grade in music and my skills on the piano were getting increasingly better. But when the results came in, it hit me like a frozen fish to the face. My performance was judged by unbiassed teachers. I think the score was less than 20%. I filled out a form stating that I didn't want to sit the final music exam. It was tough for me to do that. I'd been learning for 7 years, and this was the end of the line. Filling out that form tore me up inside. I wanted to keep going, but I was also breaking down inside by keeping going. I was nervous to perform, and I was feeling so much pressure, I was ashamed of the standard of my performances compared to where I should have been. And it was affecting my other classes. My morale was low, and I wasn't studying nearly as much as I should have. My grades were dropping. But I came to realise that giving up the burden of the hard practice of my music lifted a huge pressure off my shoulders. I realised that these exams were really important to me. So I made a huge push at the end of the year to get my act together and pull through to the end. I was still doing my music classes, theory, composition, and performance. While I had put down that I wasn't sitting the exam, I never gave up the class, and that was one thing that I was desperate to hold on to. Without the pressure and importance on my music results, I could relax and enjoy those classes, and my performances were doing better for it. I finished the year with a C, I think. And I'm proud to say that I've finished the course.

There was also that other side of my music, the composition and the internet alias of me, WritersBlock. In December of 2006 I started making music on a site called bandAmp. It's pretty small, but I got a lot of support from there. Sometimes I feel guilty that I haven't been back there in ages, and my main focus of music is newgrounds now, but now I'm making music for me, I've learned a lot from my years of guitar and piano lessons, and the 5 (technically 4, year 9 doesn't count) years of music theory, added onto the year and a bit I've been making music online, I feel that I've gained a lot out of music, and a lot out of life. I love music, and I love art (I'm not as good at it), and I love literature, and writing fiction, and movies and games. I love creativity. I embrace it with open arms. I'm excited to see where my future is headed, and I hope that I'll always have my own music with me wherever I go.

Thanks for reading, whoever you may be. A friend, a fan, an anonymous user. Thanks for letting me share this part of my life with you. I think that it's pretty detailed, but I keep anonymity towards the people in my life.

Cheers.
-WritersBlock

I lied, this blog isn't about pico day.

[edit] It's not about sandcastles anymore, either.
It's about the bullet that rig's about to put into your black and white skull.

Yes, check it out here!
Leave a comment on this blog or on that page, or alternatively, PM me, if you would like to give the alpha a thorough testing, give opinions, criticisms, etc. to make it better. I'm looking to get some feedback before I go further and put information in the tut. So far, all the scroll type buttons have the same descriptions and titles. That will all change, and each are kept in seperate folders for each page. It was a copy/paste job.
Once I've got a sufficient response, I'll take it through to a Beta stage, where it'll have the information in, and I'll require some audio guys to proof read/edit to make sure I'm not providing misleading information.
So, yeah, check it out, and let me know what you think!
Also, the credits, the information provided by the guys in there isn't in yet, but I wanted to get the credits done and out of the way.

Cheers!

Moving on to more random ramblings. Guitar Hero 2. I have it. And I'm starting to get some accomplishments out of it.
Easy and medium 5 stars all the way. Passed hard mode. Over half way through expert. The solos are a total bitch, but I think I'm getting pretty awesome at that game. 99% on Heart Shaped Box on expert. Missed ONE FRIGGIN NOTE! Score of 305K. I've only got one other song above 200K (Sweet Child O' Mine), but I'm stuck on Freya right now, so I'm 5 starring the bonus songs on easy mode. Yes, I am that hardcore, lulz >:(

Also, Newgrounds related random ramblings. Tankmen, Mastermind, two sides of a horribly defaced coin.
Tankmen: Yellow/Orange. Mastermind: Red. Tankmen: Tanks and cock jokes. Mastermind: Minions and puns and cock jokes. Tankmen is on the lighter side, considering they're at the front line in a warzone, and Mastermind is just twisted and dark, a powerful genius destroying things.
In conclusion, Mastermind and Tankmen are two sides of the same coin. Tankmen is the side with the queen on it, and someone has drawn a penis next to her mouth with permanent marker. The Mastermind side is impossible to tell what was originally there, but if you try to deface it even more, a cock will probably jump out and strangle you.
That's my hypothesis anyway. I just thought I'd share that.

So, yeah, 3 news posts in 1, bonus. But the main focus is the tutorial. Go check it out, now.

[Edit]
Muahaha, another topic up for discussion: I have a new song, that's the first in ALMOST A MONTH!
Check it: The Broken God

My brother, game maker, and coding wizz, has given birth to "Loveblimp Industries", a team of two. He's the flash animator/programmer, and I'm the musician. And we'll be represented by a jolly blimp. Rejoice, all! Loveblimp Industries is here, to give you that warm fuzzy feeling inside, then takes it away as you play the awesome zelda themed action adventure, with an epic budget orchestra soundtrack that is exclusive to the game and non-downloadable.
Anyway, my brother's got a university project to make a web page. So it'll feature our stuff, his games, my music, it's going to be great!
Anyway, I just thought I'd like to share that news.

I had begun working on an electronica album a little while ago, a few songs were made, some were below the standards I had set, and so I've put it on the shelf again for the time being. But I still felt like putting together a collection of some sort, just to showcase my best stuff. That turned out to be 7 tracks over the last 4 months out of almost 100 tracks and around about a year playing around with musical composition.
So, anyway, I got together these songs, overall lasting about 20 minutes, and I don't have a name for the EP. The tracklisting is below, and any serious suggestions are appreciated. I don't have a huge status, so I doubt I'll generate any interest, but it's just for my own personal gain, really, a bit of fun, I'm doing what I love, and if people want to listen to these songs, which I personally consider to be my best to date, despite them still requiring touching up, it's just something that you can listen to for free, there's a bit of a variety, classical, jazz, chiptune, techno, so it's pretty diverse.
Tracklisting (+ links):
After the Fallout (2:20)
Astronaut's Waltz (2:44)
Eternal Train (2:29)
I Like to Hit Things (3:58)
Interlude (1:56)
Man in the Smoking Mirror (5:00)
Winter Division (3:47) Note: The link goes to a song titled: =Snowboard Kids: Hidden Track=, it's the same song, I just didn't get around to changing the title...
So, anyone who happens to wander into my page, these are my personal recommendations for listening to my music.
Also, my Beginner Musician's Tutorial is still in the works, if you want to see information about that.

Cheers.

WB

Edit: Title found! In NMM's comment.
Cover art contains a friendly newgrounds face (or is it faic?)

Edit2: I've got it up on LastFM
I have a LastFM page.

No, not here, but coming soon!
I've started a tutorial in flash, that, upon completion, will contain everything required for a budding musician to get off the ground. Links to free programs, advice on how to use them, links to downloads to use with the programs, as well as a huge, in depth tutorial on the fundamentals of classical composition, starting out basic, and ending up real complex. And in the end you should be able to read and write classical music the traditional way, with the sheet music and time signatures and key signatures. I'll try and get consent from various musicians on NG, to include their tutorials and advice in this tutorial, to make it a lot more broad, with a lot more perspective. I've got the layout down, the information will be pretty easy to combine, so I think it'll look really good, and have plenty of information to keep you satisfied. I'm reasonably confident that once it's complete, it'll get a nice reception in the flash portal. I've had a couple of actionscript problems, but nothing too dramatic.

Anyway, I thought it'd be good to get the word out, if you've got anything that you think should be in the tutorial, any suggestions/links, I'll be more than welcome to listen.

Cheers.

[Edit] Here's a screenshot. I don't know how readable the text is, but here's the basic design. The little reflection runs across the button when you highlight it. I've written out a terminology page, and I've got it so that you scroll over the terms (I've only got 4, everything else'll be explained later on..) and the text slides out of the button, it looks so damn cool. I've also set up a quick menu selection on the side of the screen that does some pretty cool movements (that's for the first 2 sections). I've also got 4 classical/jazz loops to play within the tutorial (I'll make reference to them), so the main tutorial has lots of junk hogging the screen space, so there's not much room to actually write everything out, but I can take several pages to cover each topic, and I might do screenshots of programs in a roll over button (similar to the terminology text), so I think it'll end up looking awesome. I've got a few other musicians that'll provide their own tutorials and information, so, I think it's going to be big. Right now the .fla is 16 MB and the .swf is 240 KB, but with some screenshots in there, and lots more information (the main timeline has taken up 9 frames so far), I think it won't stay so light for long.

[Edit2] Ok, the text in some parts were a little too small, and the screen was too cramped, but now I've made it a lot wider, and I'm making some good progress on the layout. Today I added a "gallery", which will showcase images, with compact descriptions, and maybe the images themselves will be interactive. Overall, I'm adding a ton of stuff as I go along, but the basic information will still all be there, I'm just making it as neat and accessible as possible. However, I'm making so many symbols, I probably could have done the same layout and design using far less symbols, but it's alright, it's not like filesize will become an issue. It's only a bit over 250kb at the moment, with 14 frames done, but there's about 250 items in the library, and that'll probably be far greater when it's all done. I'm still figuring out existing content to put in the advanced section (I should probably change that title to extras, or something like that). Anyway, I'll add some information of MaestroRage's, all his fancy pants professional VSTi's and reviews. And he's offered to host it on his site (http://www.symphonyofspecters.com/) once it's done. But that's only once it's finished, my target at the moment is to finish off implimenting the layout (I'm probably about 30-40% done in that aspect), and I'll lay out the information last. I'll probably write that up by hand when I'm sick of doing the layout, and then edit it and type it up later. Another thing, I'll probably run my information by the guys who've allowed me to use their material, just to edit and proof-check it before I submit it, so that when it's ready, it should be clear to understand, and not misleading in any way. =P

[Edit3] Still a long way from completion, but the organisation of everything is still pretty good. I'm up to 428 symbols and I've still got to put the images and text in. The layout of the first section is just about ready for all the information to be put in, the second part is also not far off, but the external information/tutorials are still pretty plain, as with the credits/links page (but they'll be a lot simpler to put together). I also have to put in a help page, in case the layout confuses people, which might be a few, because it's starting to get really complex (text appearing from scrolling over buttons, interactive art gallery, the scene selection from the technique section is quite elaborate, but it's nothing compared to my folders organising my symbols.
Preloader (preloader files)
Music (music files)
Other (loose shit that needed to be stored away)
Buttons (this is where the maze of folders begins)
Button sub-menu:
-Chapter selections
-Basic (separates further to files for each chapter within the basic section + return to menu [8])
-Technique (separates into basic, intermediate and expert sections + return to menu, with the first 3 having roughly 5 more folders within them for sub-chapters)
-Advanced (I probably won't have sub-menus for the credits/links, they're pretty straight forward) It'll probably be similar to the basic chapter selection.
-Gallery
-Sub-menu same as chapter selection, each chapter having its own folder for the gallery + images.
-General
-General links, back, proceed, menu buttons, music buttons, etc. Simple.
-5 folders for each section, where they're all organised similar to chapter selection, with 4 folders for 4 buttons with scrollover text.

So, they all branch out all over the place, but as long as I understand where everything is, then it should have an easy to navigate interface.
I'm getting through it. Still a long way off, still tossing around a few ideas, still need to write up the information, although I've got a good rough concept of what information will end up in the tut.

So... yeah, lotsa music in the works. Too many ideas, and not enough of them are finished. Too many songs haven't been started yet. I've got a couple of soundtracks that I should be working on, I've made small starts... but the other people behind the projects are still a way away from needing them, so I'm okay for the meantime. I've also been trying to come up with a loop suitable for a restaraunt scene (request). So far, I've come up with a few jazz loops, but they don't quite hit the nail on the head, so to speak. Feel free to use them in your games, they're low filesize, and pretty catchy, considering they're less than 10 seconds long ;D
Links:
Restaraunt Music (Major)
Restaraunt Music (Minor)
Jazzy Loop
The restaraunt loops were submitted at the same time (see pic below).

Also, I've been toying around with the idea of doing a seasons themed song cycle. I've messed around with a couple of classical tunes (Autumn and Winter), and I think that maybe I could have 3 movements per season, and have the first as a straight forward neo-classical piece, the second as n ambient/soundscape type piece (Summer would resemble the desert and sparse dry landscape) and third could be something very different again. I don't know, just ideas, although the melodies thus far, I'm quite proud of.

Maybe one day I'll be organised...

I've updated my MAC8 submission: I Like to Hit Things.
It's based on the Newgrounds game, Dad 'n Me.
It's a Jazzy piano instrumental with lots of tempo changes, modulations, and accidentals, to capture the style of the Newgrounds artist, Dan Paladin and the musical king of ragtime, Scott Joplin.
Link.

Also, 1337.

[Edit] The song's up! Check it out here! Last Days of Summer

Hey, I'm just making another promo for my 6 minute happy techno song due for release on the 29th February. It's called "Last Days of Summer", and it's pretty much been finished for a while now, but it lacked a certain... polish and professionality of it. I've spent a fair chunk of today working on buffing it up for the release, and listening back, I've found that it sounds a lot like one of my other songs, "Eternal Train", except that it's a lot longer, it's a bit slower and uses different drums, there's more patterns, and today, I've gone through and added a crowd cheer sample and more panning and some extra colour to make it more exciting, I want it to feast your ears with wonderful happy music. I think the bass is pretty weak, I might try and fix that up, the drums have a heavy bass punch to them, which is awesome, so, I'll finish it up and post it tomorrow, a bit after lunch time (my timezone), so you can probably expect it a bit after midnight on the 29th ;D
I feel really good about this, because I composed it quite quickly, but I've had it sitting around for a while doing nothing, and I listened back, and I still really like it, so hopefully that's a good sign. So, there's been a large gap between the composing part and the technical mixing part. The mixing on this song is so much easier than "Man In the Smoking Mirror", that one took me a few days solidly plugging away at it, and even after it, I'd play it back, and think, damn, I really should have changed that, or whatever, but whatever, so yeah.
Check the song out tomorrow, leave a review and a vote, and I'd be really happy if you did that. I can understand if you give a vote lower than what I expect, but I'd like constructive reviews if it goes below a 4, because I'm proud of it, and I want to make it the best that it can be.

Ok, I've done a little more distracted rambling than I intended. Don't forget, check out "Last Days of Summer" on February 29.

Cheers.

WB

Yes!