Brilliant Mindworks LLC

Category: Music

Random thoughts on music, and musicianship.

  • Agentic Video with Final Cut Pro – The Jury’s Out

    Agentic Video with Final Cut Pro – The Jury’s Out

    I’m torn.  I’ve been working on this music video for about a week as I’ve been polishing the song itself, and approached that video the same way I would any other video project- dropped the MP3 into Final Cut Pro, storyboarded the cuts/scenes/transitions.

    But then – instead of just taking a shot list and capturing things with a camera – sent each individual clip (with hand-drawn storyboards, motion scaffolding and character references) to Google Veo via a series of Python scripts, replacing each still storyboard on the timeline with real video matching the storyboard description.  I really wanted to see what it would be like if AI simply replaced the capture/camera part of the process, leaving the rest intact. And that part was a HUGE success.

    I used XML import/export to have Claude Code review my timeline for continuity errors and mis-aligned elements, and generate the clips to spec, under a strict style guide.  Each individual clip was rendered specifically to a storyboard and story arc/script bible using my own character/style sketches – no guesswork allowed.

    I then hand-assembled all the rendered video clips in FCP, added and timed every damn transition and blend effect by hand, color graded the sections uniquely for effect and then added the titles/motion graphics on top.  Just like I would any other production.  And then sat back to let it all sink in.

    And kinda hated it.

    The visuals match my character sketches.  All the scenes are exactly as I storyboarded them, and the characters/color palettes stay consistent shot-to-shot.  Wardrobe is consistent, the build and narrative came out pretty much as I envisioned it, right down to the opening/final frames.

    Still kinda hated it.  And didn’t feel nearly as proud of it as I would a fully hand-built project, if I’m being really honest.

    It’s not that the pieces weren’t all in place, or that I had let any ‘outside influence’ corrupt the project, as it only used my artwork, style guides and directives.  It’s not that it didn’t really create the clips I asked for with the visual components I specifically outlined, because it did.

    It’s that it just doesn’t feel like me.  Or even like a human.
    It’s kinda OK, I guess – if you don’t know or expect better.  Or if you’re already overloaded with AI slop and this just falls in line.

    If I’m being super honest – I’m not sure I want this visual work representing me as an artist or creative.  Pretty sure I could keep scaffolding, nudging, adding context and hand-rendered art to constrain AI to my specific vision even further… but I’m not sure I want to.  It’s much better suited to helping me automate the technical, non-creative parts of the project so I can focus my right brain on visuals, sound and experience.  Just not the art.

    Anyway, here’s the video/single as I left it.  The single itself still has some vocal tracks to go before it’s finished, but I need to take a break entirely from it now.

    It’s not right… but not wrong, and I’m not sure I want to try to tackle that last 5-10% of time it might take to change that.  Totally understand if you don’t care for the visuals either, but at least the music is 100% human-generated so I can feel 100% comfortable with your opinions on that… (bum notes and all) 🙂

  • New Crazymakers Single – “Still Keep Coming Back”

    New Crazymakers Single – “Still Keep Coming Back”

    Y’all.  We’ve got a brand new single/video for ya today!

    “Still Keep Coming Back” was one of the first songs we worked up for the Crazymakers recording sessions last year, and it’s still one of my favorites to play.  The video shoot for this one was a hoot – we spent all day in a LA soundstage just before the New Year spinning in circles, yet suffered no injuries or severe sprains. Given my history, I’m gonna call that a win.

    Enjoy this fresh cut with a side of love from ours truly, please follow/share/like/etc broadly and join us at the Iggy T and the Crazymakers website.  We’ve got plenty more to come in the coming months!  xoxo

  • New Crazymakers Live Track – “Just Can’t Get Enough”

    New Crazymakers Live Track – “Just Can’t Get Enough”

    Fresh music today – a live video take of a previously unreleased track, “Just Can’t Get Enough”.  Cause sometimes you just can’t.

    The song was recorded a few months back at the Ojai Underground Exchange. My bass tone is my beloved Fender Jazz 5 with a little Darkglass B7K Ultra fuzz/distortion inserted firmly into an Aguilar Tone Hammer 500. Tight, low, and a little bit crunchy, I was dialin’ for something like dub/reggae after a hot-box session. 🙂

    (more…)

  • New Crazymakers Single – “Unchained Melody”

    New Crazymakers Single – “Unchained Melody”

    Aw, yeah.  A beautiful re-imagining of an old classic you might remember. Iggy sings her heart dry on this one, and it’s a contender for my favorite of the 18 tracks I worked on in the studio with the lovely Crazymakers last year.

    That said – to give major props where props are due – the bass tracks on this cut are, I believe, from the original demo and come from the amazingly talented instrumentalist/producer/etc David Franz (and fit beautifully alongside his wonderfully understated drum tracks).  I’ll be pleased to play it for ya live, natch.

    Enjoy and spread the joy, my lovelies…

    (more…)

  • New Crazymakers Single – “All Caught Up”

    New Crazymakers Single – “All Caught Up”

    Although the EP has been out for a few months now to great reviews, the Crazymakers just released the first official single/music video from our upcoming full-length album  – the first of three videos shot over the holiday season.  I really dig this song’s groove and feel, and Iggy’s lyrics and vocals really seal the deal for me.  Click thru for the video – hope you enjoy watching and listening to it as much as we did making it. If you dig it, we’d be truly honored if you share amongst your friends and family – help us spread the love!

    You can also get more info and download the entire EP from our website at iggytandthecrazymakers.com, of course. Keep posted for gig updates and new tracks/videos – much to come in the next few months, for sure.

    (more…)

  • Using 3rd Party Drum Plugins with Ableton Push

    Using 3rd Party Drum Plugins with Ableton Push

    The Ableton Push is a super-flexible songwriting tool and its Drum sequencer view is particularly helpful for building out beats quickly. But when you add a third-party drum plug-in to a MIDI track, Push only gives you its general melodic keyboard interface, not the super-handy Push drum pad and sequencing interface. If you want to use a third-party drum module like NI’s Battery or Toontrack’s Superior Drummer with Push’s drum-programming interface, you’ll need to follow a few simple, but often-overlooked steps.

    (more…)

  • Musical cross-training

    Musical cross-training

    If there’s one title that should be on my gravestone, it’s ‘bassist’.  I know this, it’s the foundation of who I am.  But I’ve got to admit a dirty secret – being relegated to 4 (or more commonly, 5) strings isn’t enough to quell my need to learn.  Musical cross-training is my new jam.  And I’m not sure I can stop.

    (more…)

  • Gear Acquisition Syndrome, or NAMM – Day One

    Gear Acquisition Syndrome, or NAMM – Day One

    It’s the opening day of Winter NAMM 2017, the music gear event of the year for most musicians I know.  Vendors roll out their latest drool-worthy instruments and gear. And there’s a name for the affliction many musicians emerge from NAMM with – Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS).

    Umm… Gear Acquisition Syndrome?

    Yep, it’s a thing. GAS’s key symptom is a relentless drive to grab your wallet and upgrade all your instruments, gear, and accessories to the shiny new hotness you’ve just played with.  When it comes to GAS afflictees, I’m pretty much a poster child – so it’s a good thing that I’m not attending in person this year.  Restraining my wallet hand is getting easier with age, but from early signs we may need medics at NAMM this year.  It’s gonna be a gear acquisition syndrome outbreak!

    Here’s my first two candidates for ‘wallet magnet of the week’.

    (more…)

  • Install a Badass or Omega bridge on your bass.

    Install a Badass or Omega bridge on your bass.

    I’ve installed Badass high-mass bridges in every bass in my collection that will take them. Why? I love ’em to death for their beefy sustain and definition. That said, they often come without string slots cut. This doesn’t exactly make them a drop-in mod, they’ll need some handiwork to install. I avoid the pre-slotted bridges, as cutting them yourself allows you to get a perfect string spacing and fit for your particular bass. If you’ve got an unslotted Badass bridge (or one of the recently-available Omega bass bridges from Allparts, which from what I can tell are exact replicas of the Badasses, even constructed w/zinc), here’s a rundown of how to install them.

    UPDATE: re-edited this in January 2017 to add pictures (finally!) from a new build. Also note- if you’ve got an Omega bridge, these steps should also work.

    (more…)

  • Looping a loop on bass guitar

    Looping a loop on bass guitar

    I recently experimented with an improvised bass loop using a T.C. Electronics Ditto looper pedal I’ve had sitting around for a while. Of course, it was tons of fun. I originally bought the pedal to run simple bass line loops at the front of my pedalboard. It’s helpful for fine-tuning tones and settings without having to play bass at the same time. However, so far I’ve only used it as a test simulator in the studio. I’d secretly been wanting to play around with it more creatively for a while. I wish I hadn’t waited, as live looping is a ton of fun!

    Accordingly, I took the plunge and improvised a quick composition live on the spot.  One pass, under a camera’s eye, with the record light on for a bit of pressure.  Enjoy!

    (more…)

  • An armchair, post-NAMM wishlist.

    An armchair, post-NAMM wishlist.

    I always look forward to January, and my annual trip to the NAMM show in Anaheim to gawk at the cutting edge of music hardware (and software).  When I realized my schedule wouldn’t get me to NAMM this month I was bummed, but kept my ears and eyes peeled online. Despite no significant time on the show floor this year, there were a few announcements and developments at NAMM 2015 that still caught my attention. It should come as no surprise that I’m rather focused on effects & amps for guitar & bass. Here’s my video post-NAMM wishlist, with commentary.

    (more…)

  • July 2013: My ear magnets

    July was an interesting month for listening. I was a bit over-obsessed with French pop/hip-hop and the grandiose new release from Aussie prog-rock uberheroes Karnivool, but still fit in some old Beastie Boys and a spattering of west-coast American hipster pop fluff. Makes a fun mix for a bright summer’s day.

  • Stomp 01: Pedalboard overview.

    pedalboard 4

    Love me some pedalboard. I really do.

    For decades I refused to use any effects on my bass guitars, being strictly fingers–only when it came to dressing up a note. I can’t deny that self–imposed deprivation helped me master my instrument early on without distractions, and taught me volumes on restraint and articulation I wouldn’t have learned had I jumped right into the effects world. However, after 20-odd years my tone had started to get a bit routine, my phrasing uninspired, and I found myself looking for ways to break out of the rut. Salvation came by way of a critical, distorted bassline I needed to cop for one of my fill-in sessions with a Bay Area electronica band – but cranking preamp gain in my painfully-clean SWR SM–900s was a non-starter. So I grabbed a friend’s Big Muff Pi for the gig, and the rest is history.  Years later, I’ve worked and gigged through so many effect combinations, sizes and themes to my pedals and pedalboards that I’ve got my preferences and sounds down to a pretty solid philosophical, aesthetic and ergonomic art.

    Philosophically, it’s all about having *the right* assortment of tonal choices when I need them, easily accessed, with as little impact on my basic tone as possible. I still prefer a tone that’s piano-clean yet asskickingly fat via mostly 18v active basses- any effects are simply additive to my primary fingers/instrument/amp sound.  That way they stick to their role as the spice in my steady diet of groove, never the main course.

    Aesthetically, my effects have got to allow me to enhance my normal tone gracefully (compression, EQ, and chorus), distort the signal six ways from Sunday (boost, distortion, overdrive and fuzz), and filter/add to it (envelope, pitch & synth effects).  Efficiency is also a factor (wireless receivers, digital tuners).  And it’s simply got to look clean and usable, not some random tangle of wires and boxes that could be kicked astray with a errant toe.

    Ergonomically, my pedalboard has got to be playable like an instrument, portable and reliable, and fast to set up & tear down at gigs.  It needs to be laid out in common pairings/groupings of pedals in close proximity to one another so I can trigger the more complex, multiple effect settings with a single ‘stomp’ (or at least without signficant tap-dancing onstage).

    Tall order, but well-filled now in my current pedalboard. Lets take an overview of my main groups of effects.

    (more…)

  • Danny and Jeff.

    Danny Gottlieb and Jeff Berlin conversing via music.
    Danny Gottlieb and Jeff Berlin having an amazing musical conversation.