ceponatia

It's amazing how much that it's changed. I used to think that I couldn't write music simply because I was lazy or something. Aside from obviously gaming and drinking too much, I think a big reason was just that writing music with a mouse and keyboard isn't organic whatsoever. Having an instrument that for the most part people have used for hundreds of years has changed the whole process for me.

There's certainly a lot more time to fill now. I used to walk around the mall or bookstores before when I was bored but I can't do that at the moment. We all need some sort of "checked out" time to just relax. Lots of people read but I've discovered through this whole process that as much as I want to be the kind of person who reads a book every week, I actually hate reading more than almost anything. Lol.

I've found that motivation comes from doing the work, not vice versa. A lot of people wait until they feel motivated before they do something, but that's not how things work. I might dread the first few minutes of studying but once I let go of that and just do it, suddenly an hour passes without me even realizing it.

Alrighty everything finally arrived! Been jamming a lot over the last couple of days but I need to get back into my actual piano lessons because it's been about a week since I really practiced. Messing around in Ableton Live and Reason is fine and everything but it's not really teaching me anything new. So that's what today will be spent doing. Oh and I set up a dual keyboard stand so I look like a 90's techno legend now. 😅

Decided to make my own oscillator using this tutorial! Pretty cheap parts and I have all of the equipment needed, including the drill press thanks to my father who was obsessed with tools. Who knows maybe I can learn to be good enough to make a whole instrument some day.

Just got notification that the microphone shipped so it should be here by the weekend, hopefully (the store is only one state away). Finishing up my first script today in anticipation. I don't know how long it'll take me to edit everything but it shouldn't be too difficult as I'm already quite familiar with audio editing and mastering. I suppose that's one leg-up I have over other "first time" podcasters. I also ordered a new midi keyboard which is designed specifically for Ableton and will make my workflow so much better. It wasn't expensive in the grand scheme of things.. only $200 when a lot of midi controllers easily approach $1000. I'd been debating it for about a month already and I finally got sick of using my old beat up Yamaha (which isn't really even meant to be a controller). Yesterday I did a lot of design on my new website. Still a long way to go, especially considering it's a music site and I don't even have one song done 😅

Yo, doggs. Still no mic. Hasn't even shipped! Store is still waiting on it. Kinda sucks waiting but it's giving me time to do other things. I took an online class on blogging to make mine a bit better and learned a few new things. Still staying on a pretty decent schedule, keeping things organized and clean, incorporating some fitness finally. Not much else to report. Hope you're all well.

My Scarlett 18i8 came yesterday so I spent a lot of time playing with that... it's amazing to finally have a real audio interface. My Maschine Mk3 sort of worked as one but very minimally. This one has 4 mic/instrument inputs and 8 digital inputs and can be expanded further using ADAT connections. I know that's probably alien to a lot of people but it's like going from onboard video to a 2080ti in gaming terms. 😉 Not only does it make recording music way easier but once my microphone arrives (STILL WAITING) I'll be good to go on the podcast. Only problem is these things never come with cables and I didn't even think of that, so I had to use the ones for my Maschine to plug the interface into my speakers and now I can't plug my Maschine in. No biggie I'm not in a rush. Just sucks that you can't just run out to Best Buy right now to grab a pair of 1/4" cables.

Ugh work day today. I'm not unhappy to be here, actually pretty happy to be out of the house, but it looks like nobody did jack squat yesterday and I'm going to be here all day catching up because that's just the kind of person I am. I'll update more later, I have 3 days worth of mail to sort. 😕

Here's what I'm working on this week. Drum kit was made using sounds I recorded with my phone (I am still waiting for my microphone to be delivered). Synths and bassline were done in Reason 11. The chord progression is just a preset run through a noise gate but I designed the bass by hand. I don't like the snare drum but that's the best one I could get out of the sounds I recorded; I'll probably try to get a new one for the actual assignment copy of the mix. I think that one was a can of coke dropped into a bin, lol! Learning a lot in these classes!

Toxicity and gaming really go hand in hand. First off, you're dealing either with children or with adults who never emotionally matured beyond when they were children (it's a side effect of addiction). Secondly, the people who self-identify as gamers are generally dealing with severe depression and social isolation which makes them lash out in an effort to make themselves feel like they have value ("I'm better than you at Pokemon so I deserve to be loved"). Not sad I left that community behind. Brings out a different part of me.

It is certainly an added challenge, being on lockdown, but now is the perfect time to try out some hobbies you've always wanted to! I tripled down on my music studies and take classes pretty much all morning. It's like being in school again but it's something I actually want to learn. Pretty accurate. I am also a recovering alcoholic and what I learned from 2 years of being in that community is that nobody admits they're an alcoholic until they decide to quit. They might know, on some level, but admitting it means you have to make a choice: fix it or give up.

Hey, Philip nice to meet you! I was a musician before gaming too and quitting has made me better than I ever was so I think you'll love that aspect of it. From being here for a little while I can tell you that becoming a better person is why most of us quit and it works.

That's something to really think about. I don't have the ability right now to even picture having a show on a radio station but once I get some work done it might feel more realistic.

I've had that happen with a few things I've learned, getting some skill in a subject really helps you look at it objectively. I wouldn't say that learning photography and music production has lessened my enjoyment of films and music, but I notice more things. Both things that I think are really clever and mistakes. Not long ago, when I listened to a song I'd just take in the whole sound of it as one bite but now I notice chord progressions, harmonic interplay, time signature (but let's be real it's mostly 4/4) and all that. It helps you realize also that the people who make these things are just people and not wizards. Haha

I imagine it's tough right now with the isolation but stay strong!

I so want to get back into Duolingo but I have way too much on my plate right now, which is actually a good thing because I've gone from gaming all day to learning all day and that's not something many humans can say. It's inspiring that you keep it up though! Do you find you're learning the language well? I studied Turkish off and on for about a year through Duo and I'm pretty good at reading and writing and can somewhat understand when I hear a Turkish song or TV show, but I can't speak it for crap!

Oh yeah totally! I also write a blog so I know how long it takes before you even start getting a trickle of attention, that part doesn't worry me. It's also a good point that even with music in it... unless I magically blow up there's only a slim chance the recording industry will find out I've used their songs. Haha. The idea is to eventually blow up though so I don't want to set myself up to where I have to go back and edit 300 episodes of podcasts once that happens, though. I read from a couple sources that the "you can play a song for so many seconds in your podcast" belief is wrong but I will have to do more research on it. Even if it's true, getting 7 seconds of a song I'm reviewing is almost worse than not playing any music at all, haha. It's like teasing them. Someone mentioned the idea of linking a Spotify playlist on my podcast page so people can listen along there, that's a good idea too. Another thing I learned is that if you have ANY music in your podcast, permission or not, indie or not, Spotify won't let you upload it to their platform. That got me thinking maybe I'll do one edit for YouTube (which I am much more likely to get away with playing music on) and a trimmed down edit for Spotify and iTunes. Depends on how much work that'll take and I'm still just spitballing here. Either way I'm pretty excited to get started. I've been working on my first script today in between music and photography lessons. I've decided to do sort of a history of electronic music prior to episodes that dive into individual bands.

Yeah for sure. This was before my alcoholism but definitely I was a gaming addict by then (I don't remember not being one honestly). I'm one of those people who always has an awesome idea in the pipeline but when it comes time to pull the trigger I get scared and make a million excuses for why it won't work. Even with this podcast... I did some research yesterday and discovered there's no legal way I could play any of the songs I'm talking about on my podcast and I felt pretty defeated and thought about giving up but I'm going to push ahead. Even if it's just me talking about music for 30 minutes I think I still have some value to bring. Plus plenty of YouTubers skirt the bounds of legality when it comes to copyrighted music so I'm sure I can figure something out. 🙂

I think that's an awesome opportunity! Writing for a game would be a dream job for me... universe creation and backgrounds of characters are my favorite part of writing. I have like 50 "universes" designed for sci-fi books I'll likely never write, haha. I don't think it's very dangerous, either. I have a number of friends in the video game industry and they spend so much time working on games that the idea of playing one actually makes them dry heave (ok maybe not really). Plus they're incredibly busy, 40 hour workweeks don't apply to the tech industry from what I hear. Good luck. I love the ST universe, that was one of my favorite movies as a teen and I even played a bit of the table top. I've even (unfortunately) seen all of the sequels lol.

I'm not a fan of shopping for similar reasons. Sometimes it's nice to just get out and see other people but for the most part they're not people I want to see. Detroit is a very obese and mentally ill city and it's very taxing on my positivity to be exposed to that regularly, lol. Definitely don't go to Wal-Mart. Good that you got out though and got some food. It's actually been quite difficult to get enough food here; fatmericans are still in hoard mode so there's often no meat. Plenty of veggies of course as Detroiters don't eat those, so I'm a quasi-vegetarian at the moment. 😄

That is frustrating and I will certainly say a prayer for you in the mornings. Stay positive and take care of your diet and sleep, any little thing you can, in the meantime. 🙂

Yeah I've noticed a difference in how I watch YouTube now too. I actually use the "watch later" feature and have a long list of things that genuinely interest me and that could teach me something rather than going down the bottomless rabbit hole of gaming videos.

Thanks, it's one of those things that makes so much sense that I don't know why I've never done something with it. I thought about writing a "music encyclopedia" when I was younger but that was before wikipedia existed lol. Kinda pointless now. This will be much easier and more fun.

Good start today. Got up at 7am because I thought I had to work but I looked at the wrong schedule! So now that I'm up I'm taking the opportunity to get some things done. I've started using Momentum again which is a Chrome plugin that lets you set todo lists and trackers. I've not been able to stick to using a paper journal but would like to explore that again starting today, even just for larger goal tracking. Tomorrow my second project for Andrew Huang's class begins and I plan on attacking it full force... I'm slightly embarrassed that I have nothing to turn in for project 1 but I had a lot of technical and creative issues. Just gotta stay positive and realize that everybody is struggling the same way I am, writing music isn't a science it's an art. There's no "right way" to do it. I've started up a new project which will be a music podcast. I'd like to set up a playlist of old and new underground music while giving commentary and background on the artists. It's what I've always loved the most about music... I'll attach my first draft of my opening first script below, please do let me know what you think I'm open to any changes. I'm sure it'll change anyway once I go to actually record it because, like most of us, I don't talk the same way that I write. "Hey everyone, welcome to The Infinite Playlist. My name is Brian and I'll be your guide through the winding genres and basement clubs of the underground music community whilst providing some background and commentary on the songs I've selected. First, I apologize for the quality of my recording right now. I have a professional microphone on order but it won't arrive for a while due to the strain that COVID has placed on the shipping industry but bear with me for hopefully just this one episode and everything should be set up shortly hereafter. So I'm sure a question on your might is "what is The Infinite Playlist and how is it different from a simple streaming radio show?" Well I certainly could have just edited a string of songs together on my computer and been done there, but part of what I love about music is learning the history of the artists, how they connect to one another, and the nuances in their music. One thing I'm asked quite often by friends who have seen my shall we say "indiscriminate" taste in music is "how do you find all of these artists?" Well therein lies the actual hobby for me. Learning the artists and technical staff behind an album and then connecting them with other projects is what's fun for me. If I was a bit more organized you could picture me having a room with album covers pinned to the wall and red string forming a web between them the way obsessed detectives do in crime dramas. It is my greatest joy to introduce people to new artists that they come to love, from bands who were overlooked in decades past to modern performers who don't get the credit they deserve. I suppose, in a way, my hobby was always leading me to this show. So without further ado, let's begin!" IDK if any other podcasters write scripts, I imagine some have to. I might eventually just need notes and be able to to talk on the fly but that is certainly not where I'm at right now, lol. Even when I streamed games I still needed a lot of talking points.