RESTRUCTURE - the New album is coming soon!

 I've got some new music coming to all your favorite streaming/music services next month!

This album is worth a listen to when it comes out. The last piece in the album –Ru– is certainly the best piece in all my currently released albums.

Check out this Loink: GavOnyx - HyperFollow 

Loink to Spotify: GavOnyx - spoopfiy

 

* Copyright: GavOnyx 2020 *

Scout Trooper Helmet Finished!

 I finally completed my project to make a scout trooper helmet. It took over 45 hours of printing time (printing at .3 mm layer height) and over 10 hours of sanding/painting/other work. It ended up costing around $55 as well. But it's finally finished! (and to boot, because it covers my mouth and nose it counts as a "facial covering" so I can wear that in stores instead of a normal mask like all the pleeebs).

The process and materials I used to make it are using modelling acrylic to fix any major issues; sanding it down, gradually getting to 400 grit sandpaper; using 2 in one primer/spray paint; painting the details with not-spray-paint; using thick foam weather stripping to add comfort and support; and using window tinting as a visor.

         

         

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the window tint blurs lines a bit. Makes it hard to read but its good enough.

Now, as cool as it is, it's not perfect. There are a lot of things I would do differently if/when I make another. Mostly, I would copy the process of the youtuber 'Galactic Armory.' He makes these things for a living and has got the process down to get the speed and ease and quality he wants. Here's a quick rundown.
Use Bondo putty to hide the layer lines
Sand the bondo carefully using a powered sanding tool
use filler/primer to fill any thing missed by the bondo and to prime the surface
buy actual helmet pads rather than using weather stripping
buy a tinted face shield rather than window tint so I can see more easily

All in all, it turned out really well. It's comfy, it didn't cost too much, and it looks flipping awesome.

Here's a Loink to galactic armory: The Big Baby

Loink to video where he covers his process: Mando helmet

Here's the Money shots:

(the first two pictures are before the paint job and visor were added)

*Copyright: GavOnyx 2020. All Rights Reserved*

Large 3D Print Project

 I've had a 3d printer for a while now (the FLSUN QQS). Ever since I got it I've wanted to make something big and useful. So I decided to try to print the helmet of a Scout Trooper from Star Wars ep 6.

I of course did a few test prints to work dial in the settings. I was using Cura and doing these tests on a new full roll of white PLA. The manufacturer was Overture and boy oh boy, it sucked! Under extrusion galore. I went looking around online to find out why and I came across an old reddit thread explaining that the user was also experiencing under extrusion with Overture PLA. The user decided to weigh the Overture PLA against a higher quality PLA brand and found out that the Overture stuff weighed less! Apparently this stuff is less dense than other PLA brands. Yuck!
I also tried printing it at .4 mm layer height but it never seems to work. I ended up printing the whole thing at .3 mm layer height and just doing that immediately helped. I turned up the Flow rate to 110% and the extruder temp to 220 C for good measure (the upper rating for overture pla).

After doing the test prints I was ready to print all the parts. I decided to try to print the thing in 4 sections. The Top half of the helmet, the bottom half, the mask and the visor. I cut the helmet in half using blender and removed the built in water marks (the link to the guy who made the model down below). I also cut a small concave area for my ears using the boolean modifier. 

Each of these 4 pieces took more than 8 hours to print. The mask was the fastest at 8 & 1/2. The visor took 9 hours, and the two halves of the helmet took 11 hours each! I had the speed at 60 mm per second for inner walls and infill, 30 mm for outer walls, and the infill as cubic and 12% density. I even scaled the models down by 5% to fit my head better. I knew it was gonna be a long print time but I guess I wasn't expecting 10 hours average per part!

At this point all the big stuff has been printed and I only need to print the details. I'm in the process of sanding and painting all the big stuff right now. Enjoy some pictures!

Yoink this guys Loink: Biker Scout Helmet (Scout Trooper) By SurfinBird132

These pictures are not exactly in order.

*Copyright: GavOnyx 2020. All Rights Reserved*

Second Album Incoming: Moldies! (sep 20)

My second Album, Moldies, is coming to all the places on Sep 20!  It's the "B side" to my first album. In my personal opinion most of the pieces on Moldies aren't as good as Oldies, but if you enjoyed Oldies, Moldies will give you that same vibe.
I have a link to it that works for spotify users,
 

 Loink to Moldies: Hyper Moldies

UPDATE: It's here!

Yoink this loink to listen on spotify: Moldies

*Copyright: GavOnyx 2020. All Rights Reserved*

My first Album on Spotify!

Finally after years of having these things lying around I finally got em on spotify. I would recommend listening to a few but bare in mind they are my first ever compositions. At that time I had no (or at least very little) musical training so they pretty much suck.
simply looking up the name "GavOnyx" will get to my page in spotify
Album title: Oldies

Loink to list of places to follow: Hyper Follow

Loink to Spoopify: GavOnyx

*Copyright: GavOnyx 2020. All Rights Reserved*

Telegram Goodies

Telegram is fantastic. I could go on and on but I don't want this to sound like an advert for em. Just go check out the FAQ.
Anywho, telegram makes stickers and sticker packs but they give the freedom to create custom sticker packs to all users. They're really easy to make and they've got a bot that take you through the process.
I've created a few sticker packs now but I am most proud of one created with the 'Earl of Lemongrab' from the tv show "Adventure Time." I've got a loink to it down below. I created the sticker pack by taking screenshots of the show, removing the background and cleaning them up, and then editing certain aspects of some of them to make the stickers really quite good. I did all the editing using GIMP, so I suppose I'll leave a loink for that as well.
I'm currently working on a sticker pack using the characters from a youtube animator called "Cas van de Pol." Specifically the character Maxmoefoe, the goblin, and Grömpie.

Telegram FAQ: start at telegram basics for features

Sticker Bot: Custom stickers, baby!

Lemongrab Stickers: LEMONY JUICES

MaxMoeFoe/Cas Stickers: Ik ben het Grömpie!

GIMP, Open Source Photo Editor: GIMP

Western Tonality and Music today

I have some college education on music and music theory. For any composer I highly recommend looking for and buying "Tonal Harmony – with an introduction to twentieth-century music" by Stefan Kostka, seventh edition. (isbn: 978-0-07-802514-3 ).

That book is chock full of information and any level of composer would benefit from reading it. One of the interesting things I learned had to do with melody. Melody in today's music is often overlooked, not only in pop but in other common genres like rap, synthwave, chill-hop, electronic, and virtually every genre excluding jazz and classical.
This isn't a rant on "how terrible music is nowadays! Ooohooho nOoooo." Rather it is pointing out certain rules of melody writing and pointing out that most songs nowadays do not follow those rules.

The first rule of melody of western tonality I would like to discuss is shape. According to western tonality, a melody should have a clear yet interesting shape to it. A melody without a shape would be one note type melodies. If you were to draw that out, it would be a flat line. Now, flat lines are pretty boring so not only are one note melodies boring but melodies that only ascend or descend are also uninteresting.
Old composer melodies are actually fantastic examples of this. Bach, Mozart, etc. Here's one from bach.

Here's the lines but exaggerated a little for clarity

This shape as a melody shape is much more interesting than just flat lines. yet, they aren't complex. If you had to look at the shape for 10 seconds and then turn around to draw it from memory, everyone could easily accomplish that.
For most melodies found in pop music, there is either very little shape or they violate the second rule I will talk about.

The second rule has to do with the melody having a single focal point. And a focal point is simply the highest note in a melody. Looking at the above melody you'll see that it follows this rule as well. Bear in mind that while there are 2 lines, in reality it is one melody. The focal point for that melody is in the second line and it is a D. There is no other note higher than that D and no other D exists in the melody making that high note the focal point. (of course bach gets pretty close with multiple C's but there is only one D).
In today's music, especially pop music, this rule is completely left out. Many many melodies in tunes played on the radio have no focal point, no highest note, unless it's the end of the song where the singer jumps up an octave to make a huge finish.

Take for example the melody to Shawn Mendes' 'senorita'. For the main melody, if I counted right, there isn't one focal point. In fact there aren't 2, there aren't 3, and there aren't 4.  There are 9 focal points.  . . . which makes it so none of the high notes are actually focal points . . . meaning the song doesn't obey the rules of western tonality because the melody has one high note which it repeatedly comes back to but never goes above.
(I will not have a picture to demonstrate because of copyright reasons)

The biggest problem I have with this fact is that that song, senorita, topped the charts a while ago cementing it as a huge success and widely popular. But the song doesn't follow the rules of western tonality. So for aspiring musicians and composers of our time, many will listen to these songs and assume that having no focal point and having a shapeless melody is a correct way to structure a melody.

Some might ask, "well, why exactly is that bad?" And this question is mildly difficult. The best answer I have is that we have these various rules for a reason. That reason is mysterious to me but I do know that when humans create music they mostly all end up following these and other rules whether or not they even consciously know them. The reason to follow these rules is because they add structure, they help to avoid monotony, they make your music sound good.
That being said, music is of course an art form. And art, being subjective and totally controlled by the creator, is subject to the artists wishes and desires. If you as an artist want your music to have a good deal of repetition (like most pop music), or if you want it to have structure (by using these rules), etc, then do it. Nobody is stopping you. The only advice I have is to say that when creating a piece of music or a song, keep in mind your purpose. They 'why' of it all. "why do I want the melody to go up at this point?" "does that further the purpose or message I'm trying to get across with this piece?" "What does having one versus many focal points convey to the audience."

Really what I want is for people to think.
Don't do/create because it sounds cool. Do it for a purpose and really think about every aspect of your music.

MattC Links to music

MattC, another artist and a co-producer, has his music on Spotify and youtube. I encourage everyone to check it out.
His genre is a mix of electronic, jazz, hip hop, and synth. I know, it seems like too many, but one of the interesting things about our music is we are not tied to any genre.

Here's the loink to spotify: MattC

Here's the loink to youtube: MattC Youtube

*image used with permission. Copyright: MattC 2020*

Blog Background

Here's the background I created and then used for this blog.

G&M Music is a custom label. Copyright owned by GavOnyx, all rights reserved. contact via comment

I created this and many other desktop backgrounds using GIMP. Find em on telegram: My Channel