Prairie Producers Collaborate in Creative Contest

When I did a callout on Twitter looking for any hypercubists who were musicians and interested in collaborating on doing a mix of one of their songs, Hearts and Clefs had also stepped up.

Hearts and Clefs is from Saskatchewan, and I'm from Alberta, so it was a grand ol' time for a couple of prairie guys to work on a collaboration like this.

When it came to choosing a song for the project, Hearts and Clefs gave me the opportunity to pick any song from his web sites. I selected Three Years... a nice little song that tugs at the heart-strings a bit with a nice guitar, some bass, a little sax, and some interesting vocals/lyrics... A nice little selection of source tracks to work with.

The original recordings, however, had some obtrusive pops throughout (possibly from a bad cable/jack during recording). But that didn't deter me! Using filters, EQ's, compression, etc., I was able to eliminate most of those pops. I couldn't remove some of them from the main vocals, so I added an effect to the vocals such that the dull pops sounded like they were part of the effect.

The additional mixing and mastering to the song really brought out some of the interesting parts of the song, and gave it a little more emotional tug. I hope you enjoy the new mix.

Visit my contest canvas to compare the original Three Years song (written and performed by Hearts and Clefs) with the new mix, Three Years (Qubic's Lonely Mix), produced by me, Qubic. And while you're there, please cast a vote for me.

Also visit Hearts and Clefs contest canvas to experience his creative work, and cast a vote for him, too, while you're there.

East Meets West for Creative Contest Collaboration

I did a callout on Twitter to all hypercubists looking for any musicians in the hypercube contest interested in collaborating on a remix of sorts of one of their songs. I figured this would be a great way for a couple of us to show our creative abilities and have some fun doing it.

Strych9 stepped up right away for this little creative challenge. Strych9 is from Montreal, and I'm from Calgary, so this was an opportunity to add a little cross-Canada creative to this cross-Canada contest.

The two of us immediately got to work on a new mix for his fabulous and fun rockabilly style cube song called 3 Dimensional Rock.

I asked Strych9 to produce some additional guitar segments and vocals for the new mix, and he quickly produced some very useful pieces for the mix. With additional feedback from Strych9 to guide me in keeping his original intent for the song, it was now up to me to rework the mix and apply additional mixing and mastering techniques to make his music shine.

When it comes to music production, there's a creative side and there's a technical side (I'm sure there's other sides, but just go with me on this one). My expertise lies more on the technical side and trying to bring the creative and technical together to produce the right results. My technical production work allows musicians to focus on the creative stuff, and leave the techy stuff to people like me.

Watch the 3 Dimensional Rock original music video by Strych9. And while you're there, please cast a vote in his direction.

Listen to 3 Dimensional Rock (Qubic Tesseract Mix), mixed and mastered by me (Qubic). And while you're there, please cast a vote in my direction.

I recommend that you first listen to the original version by Strych9, then listen to the mix I produced so you can hear how post-production mixing and mastering can enhance the musician's music and make it more enjoyable.

Gold (Ticket) Cube

Woohoo! I mean, Yeehaw!!! (I'm supposed to be a Calgarian)

I received an email today from The Hypercube with the fabulous news that I was selected as one of the 500 final hypercubists to audition for 1 of the 50 Nissan Cubes.

So in celebration, here's my precious Gold (Ticket) Cube...

Check back here in a few days... I'll have more information on how to vote for me, and how you can check out the creativity of the other 499 finalists.

Papercraft R/C Nissan Cube

I had a little fun with a papercraft Nissan Cube that I downloaded from SH Illustration Studio, and the chassis from a 1:26 scale Nissan 180SX R/C car (borrowed from a colleague).

Since it was a JDM model (Japanese Domestic Market), I had to tweak the image to flip certain items left-to-right because vehicles in Japan are right-hand drive, and USDM models (U.S. Domestic Market) are left-hand drive. I also had to scale the papercraft images so it would fit over the R/C chassis.

I used wooden stir sticks, which are thinner but longer than popsicle sticks, to reinforce the papercraft construction as well as attach it to the R/C chassis.

The result... my colleague and I had a little cubicle fun driving this little papercraft R/C Nissan Cube around our work area. I only have a Canon A95 Sureshot still camera, but it took decent enough video for me to create this little segment to promote the Nissan Cube campaign...

Sweet Ride

I couldn't leave this series of X Cubes at only two. It needed at least 3 Cubes to keep this a well-balanced cubular theme.

This could be the sweetest ride this summer...

Got Cheese?

One of the other hypercubists, PhantomJoe, left a tweet for me on twitter, "cheesy but I love it!". I'm assuming he was referring to my Nissan Ice Cube image. Thanks for the, uh, compliment, Joe. :)

Well, the contriver of puns that I am, be it literal or visual, I could not resist the challenge. PhantomJoe, I give you the cheesiest cube of them all...

Note: No cheese was harmed in the making of this image.

Cool as an Ice Cube

I couldn't resist... the coolest car this summer would be a Nissan Ice Cube.

So here comes the puns...

You could really keep your cool in a hot situation with a cube like this.

Having a tough time meeting someone? This cube would be the ideal ice breaker.

If you've got other cool puns, one liners, or pick-up lines to go with this ice cube, leave it in a comment.

Cube Events and the Hypercube Presentation Stand

The Hypercube announced that Cube events will be held in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver (possibly other cities), where the winners will receive their new Nissan Cube. But The Hypercube also asked for possible names for the event from us hypercubists (contestants), and the name of the event will be selected from the submissions.

I presented 2 possible names for the event:

1. Hypercube's Boxy Day Extravaganza
   Tagline: Where the box is the gift and Christmas arrives early for 50 Canadians
   
   
2. Hypercube's Block Party

Regardless of whether any of my submissions are selected, I thought it would be interesting if each of the Cubes were presented in a hypercube stand. After all, this whole Word-of-Mouth (WOM) campaign has been branded as "Hypercube", so why not go all the way with the brand.

Here's an illustration I quickly put together to illustrate how the hypercube presentation stand could look:

The hypercube shape lends nicely to having a natural ramp at both ends. Depending on the number of Cubes being given away at each event, they could have a separate presentation stand for each Cube car, where the Cube is parked on the stand prior to the start of the event. Or, if the stands are too costly to construct several of them, they could drive one Cube onto the stand, present it to one winner, who then drives it off the stand. Then the next winner's cube is driven onto the stand and presented, and so on.

Movies Cubed

Since this hypercube promotion is kicking off ideas from creative Canadians about all things cubed, I thought I'd take a moment and point out a couple of interesting Canadian-made sci-fi movies that are cube-related and worth the watch (if you can find it in your local video rental store)...

Cube "A man wakes up in a white cube with strange symbols engraved on the walls, the light comes through the squares that the symbols are engraved on. On each wall is a square door about two feet wide with an opening device on the front. The man stands up and opens one, inside is a small passageway and then another identical room only it's blue instead of white..." Filmed in Toronto, it won 13 awards and was nominated for additional 6 awards. Although it was a low budget film, it was not short on quality and relied on good character development around a simple plot to maintain mystery, suspense, and conflict. Check out the full details of Cube on IMDB.

Cube 2: Hypercube "Eight strangers find themselves waking up in a strange cube-shaped room with no recollection of how they came to be there. Soon discovering that they're in a strange fourth dimension where our laws of physics don't apply, they have to unravel the secrets of the "hypercube" in order to survive." Although this was a Canadian-made film, it was filmed in the U.S. and required a slightly bigger budget to accommodate the special effects. Cube 2 fell short of the high expectations set by the initial Cube movie and only received 1 award and 1 nomination. Despite it's short comings, Cube 2 was still a decent movie. Check out the full details of Cube 2: Hypercube on IMDB.

Coincidences Speak Volumes

When I first received the notice from Nissan about the cube® contest, I couldn't help but notice some similarities between the hypercube branding and my own Qubic branding... cube-like name, cube-within-a-cube design, and even one of the colours (blue) is used in both designs.

Coincidence?! Perhaps more like a sign... a little carrot and a bit of a nudge to persuade me to enter this social contest.

I created the Qubic brand when I first started my hobby in music production back in Jan 2008. The word Qubic is a combination of a couple of words and concepts.

First, the word cubic means having the form of a cube but is also associated with cubic metre, which is a measure of volume (gas, liquids, solids). But another meaning of volume is a measure of loudness of sound.

Second, the word cue, which means a signal to begin an action, as in cue the music to start, or cue an actor to begin a scene.

Third, the word queue is associated with cue between some languages, and means to wait in line or line up single file. Although it has some association with music (create of set of songs which are played in sequence could be considered a queue of songs), it is more relevant to my career as a Software Developer, where data and data records are queued for processing. The music production work that I do is performed on digital files, so this had some relevance to me.

Thus... cubic + cue + queue = Qubic

For the logo design, I played on the cube idea from cubic. Playing with 3D cubes of different sizes and orientation produced a very interesting 3D optical illusion of cubes.

Is the center cube in or out? If you stare at it long enough, you'll drive yourself batty.