Don't owe anybody anything!

Did you get to see a bunch of fireworks? Did you spend good quality time with your loved ones? Did you have a BBQ dinner cookout? See any good movies?

I had to work during the day, though I did do pretty well on book sales. Could have earned more if there were people interested in my plants and garden statues, but oh well...

I'm still pleased with how good the photos of them came out, especially when making them look even gorgeous and in high quality after some slight touches on the photobucket editor. I'll share some and leave a link to my Gallery page in a bit.

Back to the rest of how my 4th of July went. For dinner, my family and I had cheeseburgers with lettuce and tomato with hash browns. For desert, we had strawberry crème pie! Mmmmm, so good...

Later on into the evening, Mom and I went over to our friend Bob's house to play a few board games. On the way there, we saw a firework after crossing the bridge! Cool. Board gaming was fun. I ALMOST won at Alhambra that night! Everything in my city was connected by a badass 17 point bordering, and I had the most green tiles (and the most blue at the end, it's 18 points). Bob had the most purple and a 15 pointer border, and he beat me by one point. Wow, what a game! It was my longest ever wall, and Mom's wall was just as long.

We also played 2 games of Ugh, and a game of Splendor. Geez, our friend Rich is really good at Splendor! Mom and I will have to start taking more chances around him from now on. Oh, and in the background, Bob's neighbors were lighting fireworks. We could hear all the whistling and popping noises. :)

( And now, for the awesome plant photos... )

Sometime later on I'll upload a new plant vlog on my main variety channel.

( Wong Fu Productions )

( Fu Music bros... )

( Last and most certainly not least... )

For those who may be curiously wondering about my fun and enjoyable process, I feel like sharing. I don't think I really posted into detail about this on here before. I'm cross posting this from a blog entry on my website. I'm copying and pasting what I typed from there, to here.

(If you haven't seen my website yet, you might want to. I showcase my podcasts and art on it, aside from my music... I love how the appearance of the website looks, along with how my site's forum looks--even though that hasn't been active in a while.)

The way I do remixes is a lot of fun. I have a method of dividing a lot of everything individually. I'm doing the same kind of thing I've done towards Mortal Kombat Komputer.

First, I listen to the original version of a game theme enough times just to memorize at least the main melodies of it. My memory is often really good, but it's always handy to have the original version to listen to. It's nothing too hard, since I've self-taught myself to play stuff by ear over the 10 years of playing music. Though, I at times surprise myself when I find out certain things are harder or easier to produce when I least expect it!

So, after I get original melodies and other original things (bass, chords, whatever) down and edited to the way I love and want them to sound, along the way and after that part's done, I come up with original melodies and things to mix into the track. This would be the experimentation process! I blend certain things to find out how well they sound together before I start making the track itself. For the Mortal Kombat remix, as some of you who check back on this blog frequently may already know, almost everything I put together and planned on in advance made it into the final 1.2 version.

In the last part of making a remix, it's likely I'll come up with some other really neat things while putting the track together.

Mortal Kombat Komputer is 7 minutes and 41 seconds. I didn't think it would be that lengthy, but in the end, it became an excellent masterpiece for a gaming remix debut. There are some really supportive and thoughtful musicians I've come across on NewGrounds, and their tips toward cutting back and varying the drums for 1.2 made such a difference. With that in mind, I'll be looking forward to whatever feedback I get once this new track is complete!

With better luck, I might submit it to OverClocked Remix! They only accept material that are straight from the video games themselves. Mortal Kombat Komputer is a remix of the Techno Syndrome, by The Immortals. One person's remix of that had been taken off and moved to this archive website they've put together... Once I found that out, I decided not to submit it to them. (However, I am considering on allowing the creators of the Mortal Kombat games to check it out! I believe they'll dig it.)

(The following I've mostly copied and pasted from my other current blog, at my website.)

Yay, I'm making time to update again!

I'd first like to list some songs that sound good when heard twice as fast. I was on YouTube again when trying this.

"Enter Sandman" and "Master of Puppets" by Metallica (If you need to hear something really, really energetic to wake you up, that should do the trick! XD)

"Don't Speak" by No Doubt (It sounds funky in places!)

"Say it Ain't So" by Weezer (This track sounds funky in places too!)

"Diary of Jane" by Breaking Benjamin (This song at 1.5 playback speed is just awesome to rock out to.)

When I heard the following twice as fast, I cracked up.

"Original Prankster" by The Offspring (Hearing Dexter Holland rapping twice as fast in this song is hilarious. I could not stop laughing! I'm chuckling right now as I type this part.)

"Like a Surgeon", "Word Crimes", and "Amish Paradise" by Weird Al Yankovic (The third song's tempo is so Dance-y!)

I'm thinking I ought to share this whenever I do another podcast for my website. It would be something entertaining. I think some of my buddies around Proboards and Newgrounds might enjoy this. I'll do this, in addition to a list of topics I'll write down to talk about.

Luxliev I have not heard from for some weeks now, he might enjoy a podcast like that too. I know I mentioned him before on a previous podcast. If you missed that and can't be bothered to find it on my site's previous blog posts, I'll state that he is a musician and composer I found on Proboards one evening. He does game remixes as well as his own stuff. I just knew he has the potential to get better and gain a number of listeners, so I offered to give him advice. :)

I must say he's getting better at his own original music! I'm very happy for Lux. His remix of J-E-N-O-V-A is pretty good too.

Doing my own remix of that would be such a challenge, I just know it. I know I heard this awesome guitarist on YouTube, on his channel called Artificial Fear. His rock remix version amazed me so much! It's THE BEST! It's even better than the rendition in the Advent Children movie. All fans of Final Fantasy 7 really should look that up and listen to it!

It may be a really long while until I blow myself away doing my own version of it... I still want to make room for the Darius Twin Boss Fight remix I started weeks ago. (Darius Twin is a 2D scroller spaceship fighter game on the SNES. I enjoyed playing that so much as a kid, and I've taught myself on how to play the melodies from some of the game's music on two of my keyboards.) It's been fun on the RP sessions but I know I'm on a roll there!

...I also started on a new original project over the weekend, something with a hip-hop like beat to it. There's so few hip hop artists I actually like, that do not rap about money, sex, drugs, and gangs. (Hip hop instrumentals are what I like more.) I rarely listen to hip hop at all--but the elements to this genre are fun to experiment with.

Seriously, I am not putting the music on hiatus anytime soon. I've made at least five that sound really good. (For all of you on Dreamwidth, I'll put a list of hyperlinks to them.) I have a handful of ideas for other music projects in my head, and I just need to be persistent with myself to keep on making tunes.

Catching up with favorites and friends on SoundCloud and Newgrounds is something else I'd like to do at some point. I know I have some buddies at NG. Some are super talented at what they do. They're amazing. Step, theeketel, Pandasticality, VideoGameManiac...

Coming up: a second separate post that's a questions meme. I found this on my Dreamwidth.com friends list.

Yet, before I do so, here are links to five of my completed music tracks I've been thinking about when writing part of this entry.

The Underground Machine (Newgrounds wouldn't let me put in the full title, Presenting the Underground Machine, so I had to shorten it. Why that title? Well, first let me say that I'm visual in my mind when writing and doing music. I imagine some kind of underground dance party music machine that's sort of defunct. The voice part kind of sputters and that cool guitar part is trying to be showcased, and the operator is trying to stop the voice part but is having a bit of technical difficulties at first on doing that... I think this is the first time I've mentioned this anywhere online ever. I don't know why, lol.)

That Big Loud Bass (This one has gotten over a hundred listens on my SoundCloud page! Also, a bunch of downloads. People who go there really like this one, and I understand why. The beats and low bass, and that snare are what I love most about this track. To pick up on the really low bass, you'd need to put on headphones to hear it clearly.)

Windows Sounds Mix (This one's actually a medley of mostly Windows sounds to different beats. Be sure to read the description about it. I say much more there, and the link to the track that inspired me to do this is on it. I might need to improve on the transitions here one day, but that will likely happen whenever I'll have less ideas I really want to get done!)

Mortal Kombat Komputer (My first video game remix ever! Oh my gosh, I really did an epic job on this one. This turned out to be longer and better than I first expected. In fact, this wasn't how it all first turned out, which is why I labeled it as version 1.2. I varied and cut back more on the percussion on this more than the first. A few of my friends at NG had given me some really good advice, and it made a huge difference. You're welcome to hear the first version if you want, but 1.2 is as good as it gets!)

Sonic.EXE Comes Out to Play (This has been my latest track, a tribute to a cool Creepy Pasta character! Creepily awesome! I say more about this in the description under the audio player.)