"Name the Sacraments"

A new Catechism Rock! is available on the latest (May 28, 2005) edition of The Catholic Cast. Be sure to check it out: it attempts to emulate a Robot Sunday School class!

Flying House of Loreto - The Audio File

Here is the .mp3 for "Flying House of Loreto". For those of y'all who've been waiting for it.

"Flying House of Loreto" (192kbps, .mp3 format)

Also, there won't be any new Catechism Rock! on this week's Catholic Cast, but you should still check it out and vote for it.

Oh, and I've replaced the dorky anime Victor on the left with a dorky photograph. Enjoy.

Purgatory

"Puragtory" (mp3 format, 256kbps, 2.3MB)

Okay, so this song I originally wrote and tracked (played and recorded all the music for) back in the Summer of 2003. Right after I did the Farmer Joe cartoon I thought, hey, it'd be great if I could do some Catholic apologetics cartoons using Lost Marble's Moho animation program (with every release it becomes a better deal for anyone wanting to do 2D and almost 3D character animation).

James Preece from "Catholic and Loving It" (who also gave his nihil obstat to the "Purgatory" lyrics) was going to be in on the racket, too. He worked out a test animation with some pirates (I forget what they were going to be talking about, exactly) and I worked out a test animation with two new characters: Augustine J. Hippo and Tommy (whose last name probably would have been some clever play on Aquinas). You can see their first sorry animation tests on the LamToonS homepage.

In the Purgatory video Tommy was going to be all dirty from working in the yard and want to go inside the house and Gus wasn't going to let him, even though he was meant to go in the house, until he was cleaned off. Gus was going to turn the frigid garden hose on him while he sang the "Purgatory" song.

Also joining Gus and Tommy would be a trio of musical monks. SPECIAL EXLUSIVE NEVER BEFORE SEEN QUICKTIME CLIP ALERT! Here is the Musical Monk Trio animation test (QuickTime format). Jackie made the house that's in the background.



Note how they all have different, cool facial hair. Anyway, it would have been cool, but I'd just started a new job and was tired all the time so eventually my animation pursuits all but fell by the wayside. Maybe someday "Catechism Rock!" will become a visual as well as auditory experience, though. You just never know....

Anyway, the vocals I recorded a few weeks ago. The weird accent just came to me as I started recording so I went with it. I guess it worked out.

Flying House of Loreto

"The Flying House of Loreto" is now available as part of the latest Catholic Cast.

Like the house on which it's based, this song has quite a history -- and I wouldn't even say it's finished yet. I started doing the music back in January, 2004, (near as I can remember) and, along with recording most of the music, wrote the first two verses and the first chorus then.

I've always been encouraged by all the things about Catholic tradition that would seem wacky to outsiders like the Santa Casa di Loreto. It was Dr. David Whalen at Hillsdale College who first told us about the flying house of Loreto, during one of the many apologetics sessions he'd have at his house (there is no better setting for instruction in Catholic apologetics than an old Victorian house filled with seven or eight children and lots of love). Anyway, as to the lyric: I also like using seemingly wacky things (such as supermarket cashier robots) as metaphors for human dignity, so that's the theme of this song, too.

This song is also a bit of a rarity these days as I programmed all the drums and percussion myself and didn't use any precanned drum loops (except for a percussion loop on the bridge section).

I made all the music in FruityLoops Studio at the time and finally, this past week, when it came time to finish the song I wrote the last chorus and recorded the vocals in SONAR 3.1. I'll go more into the technical/gear aspects of my studio in a later post.

As for those vocals, I was coming down with a cold, though (which I now have... ker-choo!), so if they sound bad to you, I'm guessing that's why. If I ever publish these in a more permanent format, I'll probably re-record at least some of the vocals or get someone else to. The mix could probably stand some more tweaking, too.

So what is the next Catechism Rock! going to be about? Well, it depends on how quickly I can get my voice back, but I do have some music I wrote last summer without a lyric. If I can get that done this week, there may be something for the next show. Until then, though, it's a mystery.

Welcome to Catechism Rock!

Welcome to Catechism Rock! 'Blog, the blog/diary of my latest musical project: Catechism Rock! If you ever wanted to know what sort of work goes into a project by a hobbiest musician, this 'blog will hopefully tell you more than you ever wanted to know.

Plus there will be audio samples. If you're bored and want to listen to music right now, please check out my AcidPlanet page of music at System193.net or my homepage at www.victorlams.com.

BUT -- if you want the latest in complete Catechism Rock! tracks, you better head over to Jayson's Catholic Cast Radio and listen to one of the brodcasts which contains a Catechism Rock! track. And vote for Jayson's podcast while you're over there.

Please forgive the playne-jayne 'Blogger template. I'm too busy writing music to develop a new template for this page. At least at this particular moment.

It should be a fun ride.