John Lagomarsino
Video · Photography · Music · Motion Graphics

And now a visit to John’s Time Capsule. I found the mp3 of this piano trio the other day. It’s the second movement of a piece called “Recollections of an Aging Secret Agent” (the first movement is, well, terrible, so I’m not posting it here). The file date is December of 2007, so I assume I wrote this as the final assignment of that semester’s composition class. It’s piano, cello, and violin, and the idea seems to have been variations of a theme. I like it, generally, though there are sections and orchestration choices that I would change now. The audio below is (obviously) a computer-played demo that I handed in.

It’s also funny how this demo was created. I seem to remember that it was my first time really using Reason (on a PC!) for anything, and I basically made Finale channel MIDI into Reason’s factory sounds. All things considered, it’s actually decent-sounding, especially since it was 2007. My, how things have changed.

If you’re interested, you can also see the woefully under-marked PDF of the score. It’s cool-looking, if nothing else. And of course, if you want to actually perform it or something, just let me know before you do!

This past week was a busy one!  Along with MDing The Three Little Pigs with the West Hudson Council for the Arts, we finished up the final project of the first year in the BMI Workshop.  I got to work with the incredibly talented Jake Honoroff on a 10-Minute musical called Re: My Luck.  We hassled some awesome performers into putting it on its feet, so many thanks to Jeannine Frumess, Patrick Gallagher, and Jon Fuller for their enormous help.  Luckily, we have a video of the reading, so enjoy!

I just got my hands on Logic Pro 9, which has all kinds of killer features. In the last 36 hours alone, I’ve been able to use almost all of them to improve tracks I’ve been working on. The most useful (and frankly, incredible) new tool is called FlexTime, and among other things, it can quantize audio. Incredible to watch.

But that’s not what I’m writing about.  No, I’m writing about what happened when I first opened the box.  Inside the packaging theres a smaller box which contains all the installation discs for the various components of Logic Studio, and the bundled bonus content.  And sitting right on top of all those discs, was one labeled “Final Cut Pro.”  I kid you not.

It’s not even like this disc looked similar.  Final Cut comes on white-colored discs, Logic on black.  It was the opposite color.  I was distressed at first, so I decided to pop it into the computer just to see how bad a mistake this was.  Confusingly, the software on the disc was indeed Logic Pro 9.  Somehow in manufacturing, they printed this disc with the Final Cut branding, apparently.  So now I’ll own a legitimate install disc that I had to label with a sharpie.

Pictures of all this after the break. (more…)

Well, well, well. If you’re reading this on johnlago.com, you’ve probably noticed the new look around here. I chose to upgrade because the old theme was really just a blog, where this site should really be more about, well, me. This design puts emphasis on the static information, and moves the blog to the periphery, where it should be. What do you think? Does it do the job? Is it as attractive as I think it is?

In other news, I’m now involved in the exciting production of Jon Fuller’s new album. I’m playing producer/engineer, and it’s quite the undertaking. So far we’ve got piano and bass, with a drum session tomorrow. Check out his site for more up-to-date blogging about the project.

Well, maybe not, but this is still pretty cool news.  I just set up a new music section, and it’s actually hosted entirely by Bandcamp.  If you haven’t heard of them, they’re a startup that streams, hosts, and sells (kind-of) music for independent artists.

The way my Bandcamp site is set up, you can download the Ditties, and the other random songs I’ve posted here, under the “album” called “Unfinished Business.”  You can stream and download individual tracks, as well as entire albums there.  And more interestingly for me, if you feel compelled to pay for any of the content there, you can.  That’s right – download all my music for free, or name your own price if you wanna help out.  Also, for you audiophiles, the music is available in a ridiculously varied collection of codecs and bitrates, all the way up to completely lossless.

So go poke around, and let me know if there’s any way you think I can improve the offerings over there (or even if you think I should scrap it altogether).

OK, so I’ve got this blog, here.  And it hasn’t been touched or updated in about three months.  And I’ve offered no explanation.  Whoops.  Simply put, life has just started getting in the way of producing these ditties every day, and it seems kind of silly to make them sporadically, since the whole game was that I needed to make one each and every day.  It was an ongoing challenge, and it’s what made it fun for everyone.

So, that said, I’m not going to make the claim that Ditty a Day is dead forever.  It’s just on a temporary hiatus, until I find myself with some more steady time to actually devote to making it a regular, ongoing thing again.  Sorry if you enjoyed hearing the ditties – they’re still here, for your repeat pleasure, and there will probably be more in the unspecified future.

In the meantime, though, please enjoy this clip, showing just a little bit of what I have been up to recently.  (And come see the show on November 7, if you’re so inclined!  I’m the MD!)

I’m pretty sure this is the coolest, most mind-blowing thing I’ve ever seen.  I’ve never used Melodyne, but evidently the public beta of the newest version is now available to existent users.  The idea behind the new Direct Note Access is that Melodyne listens to polyphonic audio sources, picks apart the individual notes, and then lets you edit the whole thing in a fashion much like that of a MIDI piano roll.

This is just so cool.  It also means that you can use sampled loop libraries in an entirely different way now.  For instance, I don’t play the guitar, but I’ve got lots of strumming acoustic loops that I can use.  However, these are loops tend to be stock chords/voicing/progressions.  But apparently, you can change all that now, and use the timbre and feel of a sample and mold the pitch independently.  It also means that spot-on guitar track you recorded without noticing the E string was flat is now usable again.  This is blowing my mind.

The reason there was no ditty yesterday can probably be described by what you see below; it’s not even done yet.  Get ready for something loud later this week!