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Weaving In a Loose End I Missed, Then Starting Work On Something Else
Sep. 17th, 2025 08:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elisem posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
communal_creators When I went to try on the buttoned crocheted collar, I found there was a loose end (or rather a pair of loose ends, since I had done the fuzzy edging with two yarns at once, and that needed fixing. So I did.
After that, I assessed the other crocheted thing I had gotten out, decided that it does indeed need to be partly taken apart, and began frogging. This may take quite a while, but I know what the garment wants now.
So far, all my crochet is free-form and made up out of my head. Some day I should learn to read patterns, which would also let me write down what I've done in case anybody else wants to try it.
Craft: crochet at first, and then uncrocheting
Time: one hour
Notes: having Blittle League on as I am taking something fairly simple apart turns out to work wonderfully, and I have been wanting to watch those episodes again
Thoughts: one of these times I should try crocheting something that involves putting pieces together, like hexagons or squares or weird escherian shapes
After that, I assessed the other crocheted thing I had gotten out, decided that it does indeed need to be partly taken apart, and began frogging. This may take quite a while, but I know what the garment wants now.
So far, all my crochet is free-form and made up out of my head. Some day I should learn to read patterns, which would also let me write down what I've done in case anybody else wants to try it.
Craft: crochet at first, and then uncrocheting
Time: one hour
Notes: having Blittle League on as I am taking something fairly simple apart turns out to work wonderfully, and I have been wanting to watch those episodes again
Thoughts: one of these times I should try crocheting something that involves putting pieces together, like hexagons or squares or weird escherian shapes
CROCHET FINISHING, or, I Can't Find the Butter Cookies Tin But Managed To Sew a Button On Anyway
Sep. 16th, 2025 12:36 amelisem posting in communal_creatorsToday's thing to work on (yesterday's, really; day 1, 15th September) was a sparkly collar I crocheted years ago but never sewed the button onto.
The button is now on. It's a vintage metalwork and glass, very sparkly. Starting was delayed by the complete unfindability of the Danish butter cookies tin where sewing supplies live. Once I found some button & carpet thread and needles stashed elsewhere, it took me a while because I'm not at all good at sewing. But it's done now and seems sturdy.
When I tested the button, the buttonhole was too big and stretchier than was useful. So I set to work on that with the button and carpet thread, going around and around the edge, sometimes gathering things in a bit. Eventually it was a lot sturdier and a little smaller, and the button and buttonhole work together now.
The crocheted collar s several shades of blue, and very fuzzy and sparkly around the edges, and the button itself has great sparkle. When I can, I will try to do pictures.
Craft: crochet, although to be accurate it was the sewing part, the finishing of the crocheted part, that I did today
Time: one hour
Notes: I had The Leftist Cooks playing while I worked, which was pretty good company
Thoughts: perhaps sometime I will learn how hand-sewing is actually supposed to work
The button is now on. It's a vintage metalwork and glass, very sparkly. Starting was delayed by the complete unfindability of the Danish butter cookies tin where sewing supplies live. Once I found some button & carpet thread and needles stashed elsewhere, it took me a while because I'm not at all good at sewing. But it's done now and seems sturdy.
When I tested the button, the buttonhole was too big and stretchier than was useful. So I set to work on that with the button and carpet thread, going around and around the edge, sometimes gathering things in a bit. Eventually it was a lot sturdier and a little smaller, and the button and buttonhole work together now.
The crocheted collar s several shades of blue, and very fuzzy and sparkly around the edges, and the button itself has great sparkle. When I can, I will try to do pictures.
Craft: crochet, although to be accurate it was the sewing part, the finishing of the crocheted part, that I did today
Time: one hour
Notes: I had The Leftist Cooks playing while I worked, which was pretty good company
Thoughts: perhaps sometime I will learn how hand-sewing is actually supposed to work
foxmoth posting in communal_creatorspreviously:
- part 0: preliminaries
- part 1: brief demo of engraving software + playback
ETA #2: Okay, back home, I think this uploaded all ~15 minutes correctly. :]
ETA: augh sorry, I borked the project locators so it cuts off after one minute. Re-exporting and re-uploading, give me a sec.
Brief walkthrough of the start of a fake piano sketch in Cubase Pro that I'll build into a hybrid orchestral piece using MIDI and VSTs. I don't claim this is good music, just something for demonstration purposes and to talk through some of the technical details. This is musically unexciting but covering DAW basics will make the later hybrid orchestra bits easier to understand, hypothetically.
(Sorry, the audio recorded in mono; I will look at my audio interface settings again.)
For those curious about my usual style(s) of music, my music reel.
next up:
- (more to come)
- part 0: preliminaries
- part 1: brief demo of engraving software + playback
ETA #2: Okay, back home, I think this uploaded all ~15 minutes correctly. :]
ETA: augh sorry, I borked the project locators so it cuts off after one minute. Re-exporting and re-uploading, give me a sec.
Brief walkthrough of the start of a fake piano sketch in Cubase Pro that I'll build into a hybrid orchestral piece using MIDI and VSTs. I don't claim this is good music, just something for demonstration purposes and to talk through some of the technical details. This is musically unexciting but covering DAW basics will make the later hybrid orchestra bits easier to understand, hypothetically.
(Sorry, the audio recorded in mono; I will look at my audio interface settings again.)
For those curious about my usual style(s) of music, my music reel.
next up:
- (more to come)
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Just Create: Food poisoning edition
Sep. 14th, 2025 11:21 pmdianec42 posting in justcreateWhat are you working on? What have you finished? What do you need encouragement on?
Are there any cool events or challenges happening that you want to hype?
What do you just want to talk about?
What have you been watching or reading?
Chores and other not-fun things count!
Remember to encourage other commenters and we have a discord where we can do work-alongs and chat, linked in the sticky.
Are there any cool events or challenges happening that you want to hype?
What do you just want to talk about?
What have you been watching or reading?
Chores and other not-fun things count!
Remember to encourage other commenters and we have a discord where we can do work-alongs and chat, linked in the sticky.
Photos: Fairy Garden Lantern Deconstruction
Sep. 14th, 2025 10:20 pmysabetwordsmith posting in justcreateSomeone overheard that I'm working with terraria and gave me this fairy garden lantern so I could turn it into a terrarium. :D So today I deconstructed it and cleaned the container.
The lantern part has an open top with a hanging loop and a solid base. It has a hexagonal shape with a narrow top, widest part below the middle, and slightly narrower base. The panes appear to be rigid plastic. The frame seems to be metal. There's a bit of heft to the base, even when empty.
( Read more... )
The lantern part has an open top with a hanging loop and a solid base. It has a hexagonal shape with a narrow top, widest part below the middle, and slightly narrower base. The panes appear to be rigid plastic. The frame seems to be metal. There's a bit of heft to the base, even when empty.
( Read more... )
foxmoth posting in communal_creatorsEarlier:
- part 0: preliminaries (includes partial glossary of terms)
I know there are a lot of people who haaaaaate being forced to sit through video but since audio playback is inherent to the enterprise...This is under a minute, promise.
This is a brief demonstration of the opening of one of my compositions partially engraved (~sheet music typesetting) in Dorico. The two industry-standard engraving apps in media composition scoring are Dorico and Sibelius; Finale used to be a third but was sunsetted to much consternation.
If you come from classical music (especially classical orchestral music), you may be ??? about the score formatting. This is because scores for session orchestra and concert/classical orchestra have different formatting! (See part 0: preliminaries for more detail as to why). Differences for session orchestra you see here include:
- Score is in C (NOT a transposing score for the conductor - nota bene, transposing is "allowed" for octaves), but we won't have e.g. horn in F or trumpet in Bb. ( Read more... )
As for playback:
- Guess what, Dorico and Sibelius at the level of orchestral scores are spendy. :]
- I'm using NotePerformer, which is the standard higher-quality playback engine, especially if you don't have time to mock it up in the DAW (or you're an art/concert composer for whom a mockup is not part of your workflow). But that's also money (~$130 USD).
NotePerformer is pretty credible with a lot of orchestral instruments. You still have to massage its output. For example, in Sibelius [not shown] you can set playback to molto espressivo (LOTS OF FEELING) vs. senza espressivo (NO FEELINGS EVER!!!) (etc). My experience is that particular instruments can be less "real"-sounding and the "vocalists" (both SATB choir and associated "solo" voices) are absolutely terrible, as in "my vacuum cleaner sings more credibly than this" terrible.
Aside: There are some good vocal VST libraries for specific use cases. I hate that I am often able to straight-up identify "Oh yeah, XYZ floating ethereal ~Celtic Twilight vibes soprano 'ahhh' ululation in this trailer/score/whatever was $SPECIFIC_VST_LIBRARY" because, apparently, I have no life; but this is not unusual in this field.
I know at least one full-time composer/orchestrator/musician who straight-up bounces (= "renders audio output," usually to WAV or maybe mp3 if a compressed format is okitty, like rendering video for vidding; I have no idea where this term comes from!) NotePerformer output and then processes that in the DAW (reverb etc) and, you know, this person makes a living doing this. So that's one route one can take.
Why, you ask, can't we just export this score-stuff into a DAW with all the fancy (...spendy) VST instruments and "paste in" nicer/more individualized instruments? Dorico (and Sibelius) do in fact export to MIDI and MusicXML. [1] This is a very reasonable question that will be the topic of the next walkthrough (part 2), mainly because it's a surprisingly (annoying) complicated topic as to why this is rarely straightforward. (Let me tell you all about negative track delay...)
[1] Missed these glossary items earlier! ( brief explanations of MIDI and MusicXML )
Happy to answer questions, although I have no idea if anyone else finds this interesting. :p
next up:
- part 2: demo of a simple piano sketch in Cubase (DAW)
- (more to come)
- part 0: preliminaries (includes partial glossary of terms)
I know there are a lot of people who haaaaaate being forced to sit through video but since audio playback is inherent to the enterprise...This is under a minute, promise.
This is a brief demonstration of the opening of one of my compositions partially engraved (~sheet music typesetting) in Dorico. The two industry-standard engraving apps in media composition scoring are Dorico and Sibelius; Finale used to be a third but was sunsetted to much consternation.
If you come from classical music (especially classical orchestral music), you may be ??? about the score formatting. This is because scores for session orchestra and concert/classical orchestra have different formatting! (See part 0: preliminaries for more detail as to why). Differences for session orchestra you see here include:
- Score is in C (NOT a transposing score for the conductor - nota bene, transposing is "allowed" for octaves), but we won't have e.g. horn in F or trumpet in Bb. ( Read more... )
As for playback:
- Guess what, Dorico and Sibelius at the level of orchestral scores are spendy. :]
- I'm using NotePerformer, which is the standard higher-quality playback engine, especially if you don't have time to mock it up in the DAW (or you're an art/concert composer for whom a mockup is not part of your workflow). But that's also money (~$130 USD).
NotePerformer is pretty credible with a lot of orchestral instruments. You still have to massage its output. For example, in Sibelius [not shown] you can set playback to molto espressivo (LOTS OF FEELING) vs. senza espressivo (NO FEELINGS EVER!!!) (etc). My experience is that particular instruments can be less "real"-sounding and the "vocalists" (both SATB choir and associated "solo" voices) are absolutely terrible, as in "my vacuum cleaner sings more credibly than this" terrible.
Aside: There are some good vocal VST libraries for specific use cases. I hate that I am often able to straight-up identify "Oh yeah, XYZ floating ethereal ~Celtic Twilight vibes soprano 'ahhh' ululation in this trailer/score/whatever was $SPECIFIC_VST_LIBRARY" because, apparently, I have no life; but this is not unusual in this field.
I know at least one full-time composer/orchestrator/musician who straight-up bounces (= "renders audio output," usually to WAV or maybe mp3 if a compressed format is okitty, like rendering video for vidding; I have no idea where this term comes from!) NotePerformer output and then processes that in the DAW (reverb etc) and, you know, this person makes a living doing this. So that's one route one can take.
Why, you ask, can't we just export this score-stuff into a DAW with all the fancy (...spendy) VST instruments and "paste in" nicer/more individualized instruments? Dorico (and Sibelius) do in fact export to MIDI and MusicXML. [1] This is a very reasonable question that will be the topic of the next walkthrough (part 2), mainly because it's a surprisingly (annoying) complicated topic as to why this is rarely straightforward. (Let me tell you all about negative track delay...)
[1] Missed these glossary items earlier! ( brief explanations of MIDI and MusicXML )
Happy to answer questions, although I have no idea if anyone else finds this interesting. :p
next up:
- part 2: demo of a simple piano sketch in Cubase (DAW)
- (more to come)
![Welcome to the Linguistics Department - It has been [2] [DAYS] since someone noticed that the Biology Department sign has a one-day-long singular/plural disagreement after it resets.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/biology_department.png "Welcome to the Linguistics Department - It has been [2] [DAYS] since someone noticed that the Biology Department sign has a one-day-long singular/plural disagreement after it resets.")