I originally sent this idea to TonyV earlier this week, but haven't heard anything back from him, so I'm taking it that he has WAY larger fish to fry right now than my small effort. However, since he didn't send me a "No", I'll just run with it.
In the name of "Getting the word out" to our Geeky Allies who may not actually play CoH, I have written a parody song based on Meatloaf's "(Life is a Lemon) I Want My Money Back" titled "I Want My City Back". I did a parody CD several years ago to promote my gaming podcast and several of the songs got quite a bit of "air-play" on internet comedy stations at the time. Make no mistake, this will not be a "funny" song, but is still considered parody due to using a mainstream song as a base. I do not mention NCSoft by name and do not swear in this song. I still have many contacts in the gaming podcast and parody/filk music communities that I believe I could get to play this song and mention the campaign to save CoH on their shows.
I was hoping to make this more of a community project, however. There are several lines that call for a chorus of voices. While I could do this myself by changing my voice and layering it, I would rather have some of you join me on this and I would layer us all together on the chorus lines. There are also some long instrumental sections that I'd like to layer with the sounds of CoH style battle (Power activations and Battle Cries).
So, if you would like to be a part of this project I need you to be sure you can do the following things and then email me at wgpodcast (at) gmail (dot) com for more exacting details.
1) <This is most important> Can you record your voice with minimal hiss (A built-in laptop mic will probably not work for this), save it to an MP3 file at 128k bit-rate and send it to me? If you do not have a recording program, may I suggest Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/), it is free and quite good. You will also need to to install the LAME MP3 Encoder, which is also free, to the program. It is not built in due to Patent Restrictions, but the Audacity folks have this page to walk you though it. (http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Lame_Installation)
2) Find a copy of "Bat Out Of Hell II" by Meatloaf or an MP3 Single of "(Life is a Lemon) I Want My Money Back" so that you can get an idea of the tune and cadence of the chant at the opening. (Do not worry too much it you can't carry a tune in a bucket, it's a chorus part, there will be others to blend in with.)
3) I will be needing "Battle Cries" for the instrumental sections, so if you think you could say yours IN CHARACTER I could really use you. Keep in mind, I'm talking Battle Cry, as in the game, not a speech. (This is totally optional for individual contributors. I could use about 10-12 of these, if I get more I'll have to judge them by audio quality more than anything.)
4) If you've never done anything like voice acting before, I'll warn you, you WILL feel foolish when you first try it. But I ask that you please try it a few times and send in your best results.
I know this isn't much, but it's the only thing I could think of to contribute to the effort besides writing letters and commenting on news posts. It ain't "We are the World", but maybe it can get us a little more attention among people who know what it's like to be part of a community like ours. We need to Save CoH!
DrewBlue
AKA – Curt "The Camera Guy"
wgpodcast (at) gmail (dot) com
I haven't the control over my vocal cords required for singing without making my dog howl in the background.
The battle cry might be interesting, but I'll have to wait until I get home to see if I have time to try that.
I did however, just tweet this thread on the Titan twitter feed, so let's see if we can't get some traffic in here. :)
I'll see what I can do with it. I have audacity installed here already, just gotta add the LAME encoder. Also, retweeting Titans tweet thru @SaveCoH. Also relaying this into several FB groups.
Scott Dinwiddie
Thanks for the Tweets, I'm technically on Twitter, but I'm not exactly fluent on it's use.
Quote from: DrewBlue on September 05, 2012, 04:47:58 PMThanks for the Tweets, I'm technically on Twitter, but I'm not exactly fluent on it's use.
That's OK. If you watch the Titan feed very closely at all, you'll see that I'm not that fluent either. :)
Quote from: DrewBlue on September 05, 2012, 04:05:27 PM
I originally sent this idea to TonyV earlier this week, but haven't heard anything back from him, so I'm taking it that he has WAY larger fish to fry right now than my small effort. However, since he didn't send me a "No", I'll just run with it.
ABSOLUTELY!!! I promise that any non-response isn't because I don't like your idea, it's because I've been deluged with hundreds of messages and various communications over the past few days. I wonder how much Andy Belford would charge to be our community relations manager for the next couple of weeks? Ah, I digress...
I think that not only is this an awesome idea, but it is absolutely a key piece in us being successful.
Please run with this, and anyone who sees someone working on a creative effort like this that produces something that we can point at and say, "Do you see how passionate we are?", give them as much support as you can! Oh, and get the word out--I saw this post among a bunch specifically because someone linked to it on Facebook.
Just another idea concerning music:
My friend (I believe he's @Dragon Claw on protector, that or @Dragon-Claw.) has shown me some videos of a Dan Bull on Youtube that creates "Epic raps" for popular video games, such as The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, League of Legends, etc.
He's pretty popular to my knowledge. If he could create an Epic Rap for City Of Heroes, it'd get the game's name out there, and some great PR.
Someone might want to hit him up with a message about it, it'd probably also get him some good ethos in the process for helping the game out.
Omega Mk. V, out.
It might be worth contacting Jonathon Coulton if anyone has contact information for him. He's done quite a lot of music work in the gaming industry, and has contacts with Valve as well.
Let me talk to my husband. He's a musician with a new massive mixer on his computer and a way to record songs/voice. We both play CoH and we can even get our kids in on this. I'll link him to this if you don't mind.
The more the marrier. So far there hasn't been much of a response, I can use all the help I can get. I think this is one of those things that people either think "they can't do" or that "someone else will be all over it". Trust me folks, neither of those thoughts are true, you CAN and "they" AREN'T.
Hi. I'm Kheprera's husband. My setup is a dynamic Shure microphone going into a Behringer mixer, with USB output to a pc.
If it sounds useful to you then please let Kheprera know.
Hey DrewBlue, I sent you a PM if you wanna get in touch listing my skills/connections. The sound engineer I mentioned was my sound engineer teacher so he will happily help me if I set up an appointment with him. Let me know if my skills can be of use!
I'm interested in helping with this and some of my friends might be too. I also still have a few contacts at KJSR.net and The Switch Radio who might play it when it's done. I'll let you know.
I just had an idea for when this is done...
@MrsSOsbourne
Sharon Osbourne's Twitter account. She can maybe help spread the message to her over 1M followers.
Just a thought, since it's her husband's song we'd be using.
Quote from: Kheprera on September 06, 2012, 04:09:18 PM
Just a thought, since it's her husband's song we'd be using.
Actually, this is song is done by Meatloaf, not Ozzy Osbourne. To the best of my knowledge Ozzy didn't write it either, so I'm not sure what the connection is.
Along this line however, I did try to contact Meatloaf via his Twitter account (The only direct point of contact I could find) today in an attempt to get his blessing on the project.
:-[
My bad. I, for some reason, had Ozzy on the brain for this. *embarrassed*
Quote from: Kheprera on September 06, 2012, 06:15:42 PM
I, for some reason, had Ozzy on the brain
That sounds serious. You should see someone about that. ;)
I will be sending out my "Chorus Instruction" email later today. I will try to get them to everyone who volunteered here on the forum, but a faster way for me to get them to you is if you emailed me at <wgpodcast(at)gmail(dot)com> with "Want my city back" in the subject line so I can have a centralized list. If you have not gotten something from me by Friday morning, please yell at me for it. I want as many people who want to be a part of this to have the opportunity.
I sent a link to this thread to a couple of The Cape DJs. *did I say that already? Tax forms are making my brain mush!*
Also a thought, my brother-in-law, also a musician and radio dj for a Michigan college campus, is also a CoH player (though not as avid with work/school). I might can hit him up for airtime for he finished song.
I have the email, hubby and I will record tomorrow hopefully. We'll also include the boys (one, 8, has a character named The Purple Armpit; the four year old was looking forward to start playing when he turned 5... have "I want my City back" in children's voices .may lend a heart-string pull...)
Didn't get our boys (they got shy) but hubby and I emailed links to our parts.
I got them Kheprera, thanks!
This is sort of a last call for anyone else who would like to parpicipate in this project. Please contact me as soon as you can, I can hold the portal open a bit longer for you.
Hello there. I'm both a voice actor and have a modicum of experience singing, should you need additional help!
-Forrest Jameson of 40 Psychic Frames (forrest40pf@gmail.com)
Quote from: forrest40pf on September 10, 2012, 03:54:40 PM
Hello there. I'm both a voice actor and have a modicum of experience singing, should you need additional help!
-Forrest Jameson of 40 Psychic Frames (forrest40pf@gmail.com)
Sorry, Forest, your reply got burried under the weight of all those other posts and I didn't see it until today when I finally got it done.
Well, Real Life had decidedly gotten in the way, but I've finally got the Parody Song ready to go to our sound Engineer. I'm really excited to see what he can do with the audio files I am sending him. :)
In the mean time I've got a couple of other things to line-up so we can try to hit the ground running when the finished product comes back.
1) I do not have server space anywhere, so I'm hoping that someone could host the MP3 file. Obviously Titan Network would be nice, but it's being released Creative Commons, so so any port will do in this storm if that isn't a possiblility.
2) If there's anyone who enjoys do Machinima that would like to make music video, please contact me and I will send you the Raw (NOT for release) Mix so you could get started on it while the song is being mastered and given it's final mix.
Thanks again to everyone who is/has ehlped out with this project!