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ceponatia

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22 hours ago, ceponatia said:

Today's my day at work and it looks like we'll be getting remote access to our desktops so I'll be able to actually work from home next week. Just in time, I think. Pretty extreme chest pain today and much more coughing than usual. I'm alone on my floor so not in danger of getting anyone sick if I am actually infected. We'll see what happens! I'm not just assuming I have the virus like I have in the past but I definitely feel like something is wrong. The regular flu is going around but I was vaccinated then there's also allergies. Just too hard to know at this point in time. No headache or fever so that's a good sign. Hopefully I do have it and this is the extent of how bad it'll get. Lol. Would be great to be immune so I could go back to normal life.

Take care of yourself! 🙂 In a weird way I hope too you have it and it won't get worse than this. I guess that'd be the best of the worst case scenarios

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Pretty surreal few days. Not that anything out of the ordinary happened, just in that time is passing very... strangely. My sleep schedule is all out of whack and I'm having a great deal of trouble sticking to my lesson plans both in college and in the extra-curricular classes I signed up for. Fell way behind in the Andrew Huang production class but I'm catching up. Switched to Ableton Live instead of Studio One... it's just vastly better in every way and right now there's a free 90 day trial of the complete $700 suite so no better time to learn it.

Working a lot from home to try to regain some sort of normalcy. Soul crushing to read all of the unemployment emails though. We get about 100 emails a day and I'd say 80 of them are about people losing their jobs and no longer able to pay child support. It's a given that some of those are liars but the majority probably are not.

Health-wise I'm not doing well at all. I'm not sick but I'm not taking care of myself like I should. I have no motivation to work out and have been eating like crap. My house is just not a great environment for productivity. It's strange, my mother has gone totally nuts and is convinced the virus is crawling all over every surface so she bleaches the whole house every day... but at the same time it's still technically just as dirty as it's always been. Every flat surface is just a place for her and my brother to pile trash and food, like I said before. My room is like a fortress against entropy right now, lol. I have some clean laundry in a basket sitting in my corner and it is driving me crazy so I'm about to put that away. That's the extent of how dirty I get.

I'm still working one day a week and working from home besides that, which helps. It appears as though the lockdown is starting to work so hopefully this won't carry on much longer, but our view in the government, despite being optimistic and positive in the news, is that once spring really kicks in people are going to totally ignore social distancing and it'll come right back stronger than before. Time will tell but I lost faith in the good of humanity a long time ago. Lol

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1 hour ago, ceponatia said:

Pretty surreal few days. Not that anything out of the ordinary happened, just in that time is passing very... strangely. My sleep schedule is all out of whack and I'm having a great deal of trouble sticking to my lesson plans both in college and in the extra-curricular classes I signed up for. Fell way behind in the Andrew Huang production class but I'm catching up. Switched to Ableton Live instead of Studio One... it's just vastly better in every way and right now there's a free 90 day trial of the complete $700 suite so no better time to learn it.

Working a lot from home to try to regain some sort of normalcy. Soul crushing to read all of the unemployment emails though. We get about 100 emails a day and I'd say 80 of them are about people losing their jobs and no longer able to pay child support. It's a given that some of those are liars but the majority probably are not.

Health-wise I'm not doing well at all. I'm not sick but I'm not taking care of myself like I should. I have no motivation to work out and have been eating like crap. My house is just not a great environment for productivity. It's strange, my mother has gone totally nuts and is convinced the virus is crawling all over every surface so she bleaches the whole house every day... but at the same time it's still technically just as dirty as it's always been. Every flat surface is just a place for her and my brother to pile trash and food, like I said before. My room is like a fortress against entropy right now, lol. I have some clean laundry in a basket sitting in my corner and it is driving me crazy so I'm about to put that away. That's the extent of how dirty I get.

I'm still working one day a week and working from home besides that, which helps. It appears as though the lockdown is starting to work so hopefully this won't carry on much longer, but our view in the government, despite being optimistic and positive in the news, is that once spring really kicks in people are going to totally ignore social distancing and it'll come right back stronger than before. Time will tell but I lost faith in the good of humanity a long time ago. Lol

Man you need your own apartment. Living at home made me want to commit suicide. I really appreciate the independence. I know times are tough and your situation is different. I'd just say, and I think you know this, the longterm goal should be your own place after you finish college etc. 

Until then just do your best to get back on track. Maybe count your calories and just go for walks or something. Vent anger through pushups? Idk. I wish you the best. At least the hobby is starting to blossom with you. 

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Feeling decent today. Getting out has helped a little bit. Motivated me to finish cleaning up and getting a ton of school work done yesterday. I'm behind on my music class... my whole first project is pretty much a wash because of a mixture of procrastination and technical difficulties. It's just something I'm doing on my own, not for a grade or anything, so it's not the end of the world but I'm a little bummed. Still, there are two more projects and I plan on going strong on the second one. I'm still going to TRY to get something done for project 1 but it's really not realistic time-wise. I still learned a lot.

 

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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.

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I like the script. Some of the verbiages are eloquent yet playful. And I get the feeling from it that you're passionate about it, especially that bit about hanging albums on the wall and connecting them with red strings XD I've always had a soft spot for people who are passionate about something and therefor just do with it what they want because of how they feel. I hope you get your new mic soon!

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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.

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21 hours ago, ceponatia said:

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.

I guess your former addictions got in the way. Or your career, or getting a degree, and so on... Life sometimes gets in the way but only if you let it. The fact that you enjoy it so much makes me happy and I think in a way it's a reward for you for putting in the effort of trying to make a better life for yourself.

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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. 🙂

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1 hour ago, ceponatia said:

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 had the same thing, but there's podcast rules out there that state you can play a certain amount of seconds free from any song. There's also the fact that everyone has a podcast. The likelihood of someone listening to your podcast right away is next to nothing unless you tell someone to listen to it. I'm not saying this to be an asshole, but it's real. Not many average people get a ton of attention immediately for their first podcast. Anyone will tell you that. So I think I'd just get the idea off the ground if I were you. That way you have a physical product and then you can slowly tweak it over time until you feel it's good. Then you can advertise it more and even delete older episodes if you're worried about legal ramifications. 

Good luck with it.

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3 hours ago, BooksandTrees said:

I had the same thing, but there's podcast rules out there that state you can play a certain amount of seconds free from any song. There's also the fact that everyone has a podcast. The likelihood of someone listening to your podcast right away is next to nothing unless you tell someone to listen to it. I'm not saying this to be an asshole, but it's real. Not many average people get a ton of attention immediately for their first podcast. Anyone will tell you that. So I think I'd just get the idea off the ground if I were you. That way you have a physical product and then you can slowly tweak it over time until you feel it's good. Then you can advertise it more and even delete older episodes if you're worried about legal ramifications. 

Good luck with it.

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.

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On 4/11/2020 at 5:12 PM, ceponatia said:

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 had a similar problem with the audio theater experience I made. Because of the music and legal issues. We ended up making a pilot episode in private and pitched it to a local radio station. Because of them being enthousiastic and me making cool content for them, they agreed to broadcast it, thus using their productional capacities and their license! So if you can find a local radio to publish it for you, you can maybe leverage that delivering content for them into you using their license to broadcast the underground and cool music you like.

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1 hour ago, Phoenixking said:

I had a similar problem with the audio theater experience I made. Because of the music and legal issues. We ended up making a pilot episode in private and pitched it to a local radio station. Because of them being enthousiastic and me making cool content for them, they agreed to broadcast it, thus using their productional capacities and their license! So if you can find a local radio to publish it for you, you can maybe leverage that delivering content for them into you using their license to broadcast the underground and cool music you like.

That's actually a great idea. Every town in the United States has their own closed captioning TV and Radio capabilities so you have options. I think that might be a fun idea.

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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!

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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. 😕

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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.

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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.

Edited by ceponatia
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1 hour ago, ceponatia said:

 

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.

Screenshot_1.png

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.

That's awesome. Glad you're digging into this hobby more and enjoying it.

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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.

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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 😅

 

 

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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. 😅

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