Back in the Art Biz

In order to generate capital, and get back in practice, I'm offering to sell Omaha™ commissioned drawings once again! That's right, I'm drawing again. And you can place orders via PayPal from my STORE PAGE, which you see on the sidebar.

Temporary home?

I'm still new at this blog thing, and it's altogether possible that I may stop updating this and instead, reactivate my homepage at Winternet. We'll see how i feel.

Do you Yahoo?

Believe it or not, I had no idea that there was an Omaha yahoo group ... to wit, "Cat-Dancing-with-OMAHA@yahoogroups.com". Well, now I've joined it so I can keep track of what's going on, not to mention supplying current information on what's happening.

Message board added

I thought, it wouldnt be very interesting to just yammer away, if nobody had any chance to get back at me. So I looked for a message board to add. There are a lot of them out there, and I signed up for one, who said they'd send me an email with my instructions ... and it never came. Okay, I signed up for another, and after I got it installed, I got a page telling me, woops! they'd just crashed and lost everything, I'll have to recreate my account, sorry for the inconvenience. Strike two. The board I finally selected looks stable and powerful, let's hope nothing goes wrong with it. I set up an Omaha message board a couple years ago, and it went down, taking all content with it.

Nellie goes to Germany

Last Saturday afternoon Dec. 6, Maximilian Schönherr of DeutschFunk radio interviewed me about Nellie and the Drummers and played some of their music for the German public radio fans. It was fun to get some pointed questions asked and have a chance to get Nellie some international airplay.

Among other things, Max asked me if I was familiar with Kraftwerk, and did I consider it an upset of Nellie's purpose, that the state of the art in voice synthesis had advanced since these recordings were made. I told Max that I liked Kraftwerk, and that they were still listenable and enjoyable music even though they were no longer revolutionary like they were 35 years ago.

Basically, this is the real purpose of Nellie and the Drummers -- to have a new medium for creating entertaining music, not just for novelty value but for the fun of doing it a new way, and trying to use the (as yet) novel medium to make music that will be enjoyable in time to come, not just while it's revolutionary.

Old Codger Starts Blog

Yes, I'm a living antique. Yes, I date from the days when "blog" was something you drank at a party if you were foolhardy enough. (Blog was a "punch" composed usually of equal parts KoolAid, bay rum, and Everclear. If Everclear was not available in your area, lighter fluid could be substituted.)

Nonetheless, here I am, actually participating in the online information age, after fiddling around in the background for a number of years. First, as a website designer, then as a 3D animation hobbyist, then as a producer of computer-generated music.

Those of you who remember "Omaha the Cat Dancer," the unintentionally-influential adult comic that aroused the ire (among other things) of censors in every English speaking country in the world during the 80's and early 90's, yes, I'm that RWaller.

I'm also the RWaller who produces and programs Nellie and the Drummers, the only genuine all-computer pop band in existence. Yes, there are other bands produced by computer, even bands with virtual band members, but none of the others meet all the criteria:

1. Produced with no assistance from live recordings. (no post processed recorded live vocals, no re-sampled live music performances.
2. Actual vocal music, that is, real songs with lyrics, sung by a voice synthesizer, not just a synthesizer chorus going "ooo".
3. Have an actual discography of playable music.
4. Are original, and live on the Web, not in some anime production house.
5. Quality songs written by a real songwriter.

While I'm not busy with the Nellie music, and trying to find time and resources to finish some more Nellie animation, I work for the New Richland Star, my hometown weekly newspaper, and watch movies.