Gruntilda's Lair, New Equipment, Productivity Stuff, and Super Mario Bros. 3 Medley Preview

Hello everyone!  I decided to take a break during the month of August because it was just way too hot to do anything.  But I’m back now, and I’ve got some cool stuff to share with you, including new equipment, some new productivity tools that I’ve adopted, and a preview of a Super Mario Bros. 3 medley that I’m working on!

New Equipment

I recently discovered a company called Nuvo that makes a lot of neat plastic instruments, including the Clarinéo (a clarinet in the key of C), the TooT (a flute), and the jSax (a soprano saxophone).  The instrument that intrigued me the most was the jSax, partially because it’s so silly looking, but also because I was interested in seeing how it compared to the Xaphoon.  So I decided to order one so that I could use it in my SMB3 medley (you can hear it in the Overworld theme starting at around 3:40).

And here it is!  Turns out this thing is a LOT harder to blow than the Xaphoon, but the fingerings are a lot more intuitive, which is one of the things that really bugs me about the Xaphoon.  The sharp/flat fingerings on the Xaphoon make no sense at all, which makes it difficult to learn to play passages that have a lot of sharps/flats, but the sharps/flats on the jSax all seem perfectly “logical,” making it a lot easier to remember what all the fingerings are.

Oh, and the tone is totally different, too.  The sound that the jSax makes actually resembles the sound of a soprano saxophone, whereas the Xaphoon has a tone that is more reminiscent of a clarinet.

I kinda want to pick up the Nuvo Clarinéo at some point so that I can make an arrangement of “Windy” from Conker’s Bad Fur Day, but I’ll have to wait for the price of the all black one to come down a bit in the US.

Productivity Tools

Just thought I’d take a moment to talk about some productivity tools I’ve adopted over the past several months.  These tools have really helped me to be more productive with my YouTube stuff, so I figured they were worth sharing here just in case any of y’all might find them useful.

The first one is a simple checklist app for Android called To Do List:

This app helps me to keep track of all of the main tasks I have to complete in order to upload a new video.  When I check off a task, it disappears from the list so that the list only unfinished tasks.  When I finish every task and upload my video, I can easily reset the checklist to it’s original state so that I can start working on my next video.

Another app that I use is Productivity Challenge Timer:

This is basically just an automated Pomodoro-style timer.  When you tap “Start Work Session,” the timer starts counting down from 25 minutes.  You’ll get a notification when your work session is over, at which point the app “allows” you to take a 5 minute break.  You’ll get another notification at the end of your break, at which point the app prompts you to start another work session.  After completing four work sessions, the app allows you to take a longer break.  Also, all of the time values the app uses are fully customizable.

The app also keeps track of how long you’ve been working on each of your tasks, along with a bunch of other statistics so you can see how much time you’ve spent working.

For whatever reason, this app really helps me to stay focused on my work.  Normally I wouldn’t have the discipline to stay focused on a boring/tedious task for a full 25 minutes, but when I have this timer running, I can check to see how long I have until a break, and I can challenge myself to stay focused for the remaining time.

Lastly, I recently purchased a Simple Elephant Planner from Amazon.  The planner has a monthly section, a weekly section, and a section in the back to take notes.  I use the notes section to take notes on whatever project I’m currently working on, and I use the weekly section to plan out what I’m going to be doing for the next couple of days.

I’ve found that planning things out in advance results in much greater efficiency, especially when I’m filming videos, as I can sort out all of the shots that require the same lens or the same camera angle and film them all in one day.  That’s typically what I would've tried to do in the past also, but the planner makes it a lot easier to take organized notes on everything.

Super Mario Bros. 3 Medley Preview (Unfinished Audio)

Here’s a link to the preview for my Super Mario Bros. 3 Medley!  I still need to mix it properly, but all the instruments have been recorded.

https://soundcloud.com/user-789983357/smb3medley-premix/s-108Qa 

This is yet another project that I started working on a few years ago and never finished.  This medley came into existence because I really like the “falling from the sky” theme in SMB3, but it’s only like three seconds long, so I figured that the only way I’d be able to cover it is if I integrated it into a medley.  Fortunately there are a lot of other tracks from SMB3 that I really like, so it was easy to pick a few other themes to provide padding to my “falling from the sky” cover.

This medley is going to be accompanied by some brief 16-bit-style animation at the beginning and at the end of the video.  The medley sounds a bit disjointed in some places, but I think it’ll make more sense once all of the visuals are in place.

Here’s a screenshot of the introduction:

And that’s all for now!  And once again, thank you for your support!  I probably say this on every blog post, but I truly appreciate that I now have the freedom to take on whatever project I want to and not have to worry about how much it’s gonna end up costing me.  So thanks!