Gravitas

You can now purchase Gravitas on iTunes!

Links for Canada, USA, and UK are available on the Buy CD page.

Here’s another video that uses music from Gravitas. I made this a while ago using the animoto.com website, pretty cool.

The song is called “S.O.S.”, so named for the opening rhythmic figure — three short, three long, three short — which calls to mind the Morse Code for the universal distress signal. Save Our Ships.

I know, nothing to do with the Rockies, but whatever…

There’s an earlier video here, that I did the old-fashioned way using Adobe Premiere.

If you’ve been waiting for a digital download version of Gravitas — and hey, who hasn’t? — then you’re in luck. Effective immediately, you can download the album, or individual tracks, in MP3 format from CD Baby. Here’s the link:

www.cdbaby.com/cd/rgdaniel

On that page you will also find preview links for all 10 songs. CD Baby also has physical CD’s for those who like to have an actual object for their money. Count me in that category!

Gravitas Studio Setup, originally uploaded by rgdaniel.

This is a diagram representing the studio setup of my MIDI environment for the recording of Gravitas.

Click here to view the larger size.

I’ve just been reading the woefully scant stub of an article on Wikipedia about Opcode Vision. Vision, and later StudioVision Pro, was the software platform I used to record, sequence, edit, and generally manage the musical performances in Gravitas.

Gibson, the guitar people, bought Opcode in 1998, and killed it in 1999. I’ve no idea why, but a lot of people were upset, including me. There’s still a fair bit of Opcode nostalgia out there, and maybe even some lingering resentment towards Gibson. Mostly from me. Bastards. (Not being a guitarist, it’s been easier for me to hold that particular grudge…)

Things really got interesting for me from a sound design perspective when I made the move to StudioVision, “the first-ever commercially available product integrating MIDI sequencing and digital audio editing and recording on a personal computer.” I used to be bleeding edge, apparently.

This is what enabled me to integrate small audio clips of either sound effects or musical performances (usually quite short, for computer performance reasons) into the traditional MIDI environment.

Combining MIDI data and audio is exactly analogous to combining, in the DTP world, text and pictures. It really changes the landscape…

The article also reminded me that Vision was the platform of choice for “electronic music pioneers such as Herbie Hancock, Wendy Carlos, Thomas Dolby, and others.”

So I was in good company! You know, in my mind.

The Clips page now has sexy little widgets for playing the clips directly. Makes them sound even better! But don’t take my word for it, check it out!

I am now set up to fulfill your musical desires via PayPal! If you don’t have a PayPal account, you will have an opportunity to create one as part of the process. I use mine a lot, it’s a very handy thing to have if you spend any amount of time online. Check out the Buy CD page for more info.

Gravitas
by Robert George Daniel
price: $10.00
shipping and handling: $5.00
total: $15.00

The moment you’ve all been waiting for! I’ve added a clips page for your free sampling pleasure…

Just a quick heads up that I’ve added a page describing how to buy my CD, for which I deeply thank you. You know, assuming you were to go ahead and buy it.