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KoRMaK posted:do you want these thoughts wile youre music-ing? gently caress no i want music to brainless and anxiety-less. no thoughts no sadness head empty just beep boop but my brain doesn’t shut up with “but how do you really do this” “what the gently caress do you do next?” “what are you missing?” “do you have any idea what you’re doing?” “does this even sound any good?” so it’s like, i’m no good at it so why do it quote:if not, they sound like typical intrustive thoughts. do you have a strategy already for dealing with intrusive thoughts. god no i don’t quote:staying in the moment can be difficult but its where the zone is, so keeping myself in the present is essential imo i don’t think i’ve ever been “in the zone”. i’m broken 
Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 17:13 on May 7, 2024 |
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May 7, 2024 17:11
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do you ever jam, pollyanna? i suck really bad but i'm always noodling around making nothing of import but having a gay old time doing it. maybe try that? just don't press record imo and then maybe one day you can press record if you want, idk. but try leaning into the coltrane, cause the teo marcero method doesnt seem to work for ya fwiw the teo marcero thing doesn't really work for me either, i'll spend two hours messing with minutae instead of actually doing anything. so just stop, throw down an ephemeral beat that won't last beyond this session, and push the buttons that feel good
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May 7, 2024 17:47
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agreed and i wouldn't categorize yourself as broken Pollyanna. those questions you are asking yourself can be helpful at times im the right context but it doesn't mean they need answered now, or ever really
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May 7, 2024 17:57
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on the topic of my own personal struggles with overcoming creators-block i noticed that about an hour of moderate exercise helps get out the xieties and get my mind and body in the present, and thrn musical lines will just kind of starting blooming in my mind. i guess they have a lot of the same impetus as unwanted thoughts but these are charming thoughts. weed too. a lil smoke and a bike ride along the trail under the sun is worth a months worth of sessions with a therapist
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May 7, 2024 18:13
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Achmed Jones posted:do you ever jam, pollyanna? idk how to jam quote:i suck really bad but i'm always noodling around making nothing of import but having a gay old time doing it. maybe try that? just don't press record imo yeah that’s been my experience with making music. putzing around for a few hours and not actually making anything that sounds good composition or sound-wise and that amounted to noodling without much direction. i never felt like i was either accomplishing or learning anything quote:so just stop, throw down an ephemeral beat that won't last beyond this session, and push the buttons that feel good i usually freeze up and don’t really know what buttons to push, or if pushing a button even feels good i guess lotta self doubt. KoRMaK posted:agreed and i wouldn't categorize yourself as broken Pollyanna. yeah. maybe i end up in my own head too much i have that item on my to do list to get a therapist. should probably do that
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May 7, 2024 18:15
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oh if you've never done it try to find someone or someones local to you to jam with. find people that are comfortable with you at the level you are at. jamming is a really great experience. it let's you the room to play support to someone else which can take a lot of pressure off a common experience is jamming with buddies in middle school and highschool ages. as an adult I've had some success with using Craigslist to expand my jam network and going to open mic nights at dive bars and basically networking. ymmv and you have to be careful to a degree with who you meat off the Internet but it can be helpful. there may also be structured events like this is your area, where bands are randomly put together https://lottery-league.com/about
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May 7, 2024 18:23
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p-p-p-p-people?????? the guitar teacher i used to go to tried jamming with me a few times. i sort of froze up and didn’t know what to do
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May 7, 2024 18:48
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yea that happens. are you looking for advice? the more opportunities you give yourself the more chances you get to work through that stage fright, seizing up in a jam with people and in environments you aren't comfortable with is natural. my advice would be to push through it and find strategies that help _you_ specifically to get comfortable there's a vst that allows for virtual collaboration and live jamming (https://jamtaba-music-web-site.appspot.com/), and discord servers that also foster a digital jamming community, so if irl is intimidating there's remote options
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May 8, 2024 01:53
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if you wanna come visit you can jam with little jones, he's a good helper in that regard be warned that whatever you're playing, there's a good chance that he'll want to play it. even if you're already letting him use the good keyboard.
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May 8, 2024 05:39
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theres parts of this song that strike me as a roadmap for after last-call jams https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aygY5OqMuKE Achmed Jones posted:if you wanna come visit you can jam with little jones, he's a good helper in that regard
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May 8, 2024 06:02
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So, i've been following, and just kind of absorbing, and i wanted to post in both support and critique it's ok to make something that you think other people might think is 'bad' or low effort. Story time! A friend of mine was getting into production and made this absolutely awful goth dance beat and was all "jonny you're so good at dnb! wanna remix my track?" I immediately said yes, because that's a huge compliment to me. Well, this track was pretty objectively awful. Monotonous, poorly mixed, no good phrasing, simultaneously too long and too short. I got to work and ignored ALL of that. A good collaborator looks for diamonds in the dirt. I ended up picking out a few bits that had potential and we worked together to massage those into something, and it turned out to be a pretty good song in the end. They were absolutely delighted and proud, and so was I. this is all to meander towards the point of: have you thought about a collaborative, async loop jam type project? Think working on an OSS project on github, but instead of PRs for code changes, you're submitting PRs for changing the synth line. It has potential to be good fun, but it's important to put self-doubt and nervousness aside and truly collab and see when somebody's right, and your bassline is poo poo and that new one they propose is better. This removes a lot of the live performance anxiety of jam sessions. Story time! back in the day i got into blues and showed up with a Yamaha shred guitar to a session my buddy invited me to. At the center of the trailer we were setting up in was an old guy named Saint Thomas. That's right, not Thomas. Every time he played he'd put his guitar case on the ground, open it, pull the .38 out of his boot and set it in the middle of the case after he pulled his ES-335 out. You didn't gently caress with Saint Thomas. That old bastard could crank. Seriously if he was around in the days of Chess Records or w/e he would have been a millionaire. I was playing the worst poo poo, just the most basic blues scales through my metal guitar and Peavey amp, and they were LOVING IT! They couldn't pass me the whiskey bottle enough, and I learned so much about playing, but for the first 3-4 weeks, I was SO NERVOUS and barely played a note. But sometimes you can't break through that point, and that's okay! We have such good tools to collab and build music asynchronously and sort of anonymously. Think about what might work best for you, and then see if a few other people are into it. I believe in you, and you're so excited about this that i'm convinced we can find you a way to have fun with music and set some of this imposter syndrome behind you. A lot of my tracks are poo poo. SHIIIIT. Dog poo poo. absolute formulaic preset trash. But i'm still proud of them, because they're part of a story of growth, and the early chapters in the novel are still important. music is Work. but it's also play.
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May 8, 2024 06:12
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Jonny 290 posted:A lot of my tracks are [...] absolute formulaic preset trash [...] SHIIIIT. Dog poo poo.
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May 8, 2024 07:22
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Pollyanna posted:p-p-p-p-people?????? I had my first jam with real people in about a year on Monday and even though they were lovely it's still frightening. This is 100% normal and can feel like you are all talking different languages at each other. Case in point, I thought I was playing misfits, one guitarist thought we were playing nofx and the other one was playing and singing operation ivy over the top but it worked absolutely fine and sounded good (no mom, punk is NOT all the same... ) Not to add to GAS but I took a bass this time, rented an amp and had a blast. So much less pressure than guitar. I have the cheapest squire possible, you can find them in pawn shops for gently caress all if you don't have one. It's such a zen instrument, if you can shred, absolutely fine, if you can play one note every bar, that's fine too. When I get the all too frequent musical headmist I will play bass as you can play along to anything with it in some capacity, and you will incidentally learn loads as you go that will apply to your synths, your guitar and anything else Make the most basic beat imaginable on then go for a bass meander. NonzeroCircle fucked around with this message at 18:02 on May 8, 2024 |
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May 8, 2024 17:59
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yea i agree, I've come to discover bass is like the most influential instrument to prototype with. I've been a guitar player for decades but now that I've been playing keyboard and using the looper the guitar is like the 4th instrument i layer in, usually its bass or a percussion line that comes first. it also helps me figure out what the core music theory context is for the piece and the rest of the instruments kinda bloom from there with more textured chords
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May 8, 2024 19:41
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Jonny 290 posted:this is all to meander towards the point of: have you thought about a collaborative, async loop jam type project? Think working on an OSS project on github, but instead of PRs for code changes, you're submitting PRs for changing the synth line. It has potential to be good fun, but it's important to put self-doubt and nervousness aside and truly collab and see when somebody's right, and your bassline is poo poo and that new one they propose is better. i've done this a few times with overseas pals and came up with some really good poo poo, including one track that is one of my most favorite things i've done, and it all came from trading 8-16 bar wav files back and forth and everyone adding their own bits and then sitting down to arrange/sequence it all
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May 8, 2024 20:13
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maybe i really just need to learn from other people more??? there’s only so much i can figure out on my own  the problem with creative endeavors is that there’s no, like… answer key or formulas and that fucks me up and isn’t what i’m good at figuring out by myself.KoRMaK posted:yea that happens. are you looking for advice? the more opportunities you give yourself the more chances you get to work through that social anxiety and RSD (thanks adhd!) makes that tough but yes i do want to get over my…neuroses quote:stage fright, seizing up in a jam with people and in environments you aren't comfortable with is natural. my advice would be to push through it and find strategies that help _you_ specifically to get comfortable my usual strategy for environments and situations i’m not familiar or comfortable with is to like, understand what i’m trying to accomplish and take some time to figure out the solution or at least have a best-effort modus operandi when it comes to music and jamming however it’s so freeform that i do not know what there is to even do… quote:there's a vst that allows for virtual collaboration and live jamming (https://jamtaba-music-web-site.appspot.com/), and discord servers that also foster a digital jamming community, so if irl is intimidating there's remote options might investigate! Jonny 290 posted:this is all to meander towards the point of: have you thought about a collaborative, async loop jam type project? Think working on an OSS project on github, but instead of PRs for code changes, you're submitting PRs for changing the synth line. It has potential to be good fun, but it's important to put self-doubt and nervousness aside and truly collab and see when somebody's right, and your bassline is poo poo and that new one they propose is better. that…could work? would help with the “learn from others” thing. it’s anxiety as gently caress but i don’t really mind being told that what i make is poo poo- actually that’s a lie i mind it a lot it makes me feel like i haven’t and can’t grow or learn  maybe i’d be less hard on myself if i was younger but i’m almost 34 for chrissakes i should be competent not still useless after all these yearsprobably for the best that i let go of my hangups over being subpar though. maybe i’ll just loving start one of these projects, shanghai some people into oss-ing my garbage phrases and tiny ideas cause that’s what adults do hell yeahhhh quote:This removes a lot of the live performance anxiety of jam sessions. Story time! back in the day i got into blues and showed up with a Yamaha shred guitar to a session my buddy invited me to. At the center of the trailer we were setting up in was an old guy named Saint Thomas. That's right, not Thomas. Every time he played he'd put his guitar case on the ground, open it, pull the .38 out of his boot and set it in the middle of the case after he pulled his ES-335 out. You didn't gently caress with Saint Thomas. That old bastard could crank. Seriously if he was around in the days of Chess Records or w/e he would have been a millionaire.  quote:I was playing the worst poo poo, just the most basic blues scales through my metal guitar and Peavey amp, and they were LOVING IT! eh i mean that’s ok to do tho, it’s really about how you use and accompany the scale. scales on their own don’t mean much it’s like saying “i like red paintings” or some poo poo quote:They couldn't pass me the whiskey bottle enough, and I learned so much about playing, but for the first 3-4 weeks, I was SO NERVOUS and barely played a note. normalize quietude and observation imo there is a time to speak, and there is a time to listen quote:But sometimes you can't break through that point, and that's okay! We have such good tools to collab and build music asynchronously and sort of anonymously. Think about what might work best for you, and then see if a few other people are into it. I believe in you, and you're so excited about this that i'm convinced we can find you a way to have fun with music and set some of this imposter syndrome behind you. i hope i feel that way about my own stuff someday  NonzeroCircle posted:Not to add to GAS but I took a bass this time, rented an amp and had a blast. So much less pressure than guitar. I have the cheapest squire possible, you can find them in pawn shops for gently caress all if you don't have one.  buy a bass, got iti HAVE heard that bass is actually very important and fundamental, and i think i neglect the hell out of it. i’ve honestly never thought about it much but i can see it being fun. could plonk around in the company music room today KoRMaK posted:yea i agree, I've come to discover bass is like the most influential instrument to prototype with. I've been a guitar player for decades but now that I've been playing keyboard and using the looper the guitar is like the 4th instrument i layer in, usually its bass or a percussion line that comes first. it also helps me figure out what the core music theory context is for the piece and the rest of the instruments kinda bloom from there with more textured chords goooooood to know. hm. tbqh thinking about higher level concepts has led me down some insane loving rabbit holes and killed my confidence/satisfaction in my work because it’s like gently caress dude i do NOT know what i’m doing and that completely colors what i feel when i listen to my own stuff (“holy poo poo this is bad i am clueless and dumb”) but hey bass cool killhamster posted:i've done this a few times with overseas pals and came up with some really good poo poo, including one track that is one of my most favorite things i've done, and it all came from trading 8-16 bar wav files back and forth and everyone adding their own bits and then sitting down to arrange/sequence it all :woa: maybe…maybe i’ll find something
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May 9, 2024 16:18
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also how the gently caress do singular persons end up with like 67-track long soundtracks what in the blazes
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May 9, 2024 16:19
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also doesn’t help that my taste in music is off the loving wall e.g. i am currently jamming out to the void stranger soundtrack
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May 9, 2024 17:08
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What's off the wall about listening to a critically acclaimed, widely beloved score to a major intellectual property? 
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May 9, 2024 18:33
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lol, lmao even im an obscure vgm ost binging shitlord who barely has any familiarity with a large chunk of musical Big Names people bring up
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May 9, 2024 18:37
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Pollyanna posted:also doesn’t help that my taste in music is off the loving wall e.g. i am currently jamming out to the void stranger soundtrack I have an old car from the early 2010s that I inherited that has a CD player. I burned my all time favorite album on CD and put it in the player, where it has been for like two months now. Just the same album looping over and over and over and over and over... yet I don't feel the need to change it, since it's a good album. It's this: https://archive.org/details/lf074mp3
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May 10, 2024 01:29
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Also, here's another volca/bass/minibrute 2 jam with a video of gross, filthy lake water. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyUNHQZDaGA
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May 10, 2024 04:53
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im_sorry posted:I have an old car from the early 2010s that I inherited that has a CD player. I burned my all time favorite album on CD and put it in the player, where it has been for like two months now. Just the same album looping over and over and over and over and over... yet I don't feel the need to change it, since it's a good album. pro behavior
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May 13, 2024 18:59
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Pollyanna posted:pro behavior I should burn a CD of my own music and put it in there. Not exactly https://jawkdna.com/blog/?p=13 , but it's a thing I can do now that I couldn't do ten years ago. Yay progress! So there's this 5 string electric mandolin that's been in the pawn shop like forever, priced at $500 (new it's about $850), that I kinda wanted, but not enough to pay $500 for. Today, I go in there, and it's marked down to $400. And there's a 25% off sale today. With tax, it came to $315. Finding a case for this thing is going to be a problem... I tried to find one at the music store, but the closest sizes were tenor ukulele and baritone ukulele, and I need something with the length of the tenor case and the width of the baritone one.
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May 17, 2024 22:22
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holy poo poo i actually made some small thing after like 6 months of no activity https://on.soundcloud.com/58NygAMavinTGyWY6 some minimally processed chill stuff using stock ableton instruments. it's alright imo, also not the kinda music i usually make but it's nice to do something other than insane industrial sample chopping or supersynth heavy poo poo and no i still don't know how to end something
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May 19, 2024 18:30
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I HAVE DECIDED!!!!! that my music might just be fine as it is. reason being: i don't sell this poo poo this stuff has nothing to become, no place to go, nothing to achieve or reach. i don't use it in any projects, i don't do this professionally, and my livelihood/career/social standing does not depend on my skill here. so it can just exist
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May 19, 2024 18:30
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right on
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May 19, 2024 18:39
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that's the spirit!
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May 19, 2024 18:40
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yeahhh!!!! i ain’t no indie game dev (that poo poo is insane) so getting down on myself for lack of creativity or ideas or competency or whatever accomplishes nothing, cuz it literally doesn’t matter. it’s only worth doing that over my fucken day job and official career cuz that’s how i make money or whatever.
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May 19, 2024 19:43
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the conditions simply are not in place for what i think i’m supposed to be
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May 19, 2024 19:44
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https://youtu.be/lc5H0gtl0h4?si=9i-OnViKeuKb2e2m just samsara things
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May 19, 2024 19:45
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Pollyanna posted:I HAVE DECIDED!!!!! that my music might just be fine as it is. reason being: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP7ASNa2vQE
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May 25, 2024 17:03
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Pollyanna posted:I HAVE DECIDED!!!!! that my music might just be fine as it is. reason being: That's actually the best reason to do it. You make it because you have to. Plus, you never know who's going to hear something you did and it hits them juuuuuuuust right and they love it, even though you thought it was garbage. My music has its own reason to be here - because I accidentally bought a copy of Sonar X3 on a Steam sale and decided to see what would happen if I tried to learn it. That, and making it helps keep me out of the hospital.  I've been working more on what I want a livestream to look like - I've been looking on archive.org for weird old videos for this purpose, as well as flying the lovely drone around the fields near my house. I'll hopefully get the courage to hit the Start Streaming button soon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntb3y7jUKGM
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May 30, 2024 03:52
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Also, pond spirit says hello. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu2bobkqiGc
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May 30, 2024 06:05
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shared this in discord but I was away at an artists retreat for 2 weeks and ended up making an EP’s worth of ambient and found sound stuff so here’s the rough drafts https://soundcloud.com/killhamster/sets/oy-lyder
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May 31, 2024 18:10
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killhamster posted:shared this in discord but I was away at an artists retreat for 2 weeks and ended up making an EP’s worth of ambient and found sound stuff so here’s the rough drafts I'll have to check it out! I've been mostly practicing, so I haven't been listening to other peoples' music that much lately.. which also sucks, because I have a stack of like 20 metal and dungeon synth tapes I got from Rotting Sun Records, Sentient Ruin and Fiadh that I need to work through! I also got a pink "Be kind to animals, listen to black metal" shirt from Fiadh that rules, but I'm too shy to wear it outside!! I actually hit go live last night. Nobody showed up, but who cares. I think I need to adjust the audio levels on the TD3/Minibrute/SR-16 setup, though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKbg9xYMsJw
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May 31, 2024 18:34
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I'm still kinda stuck in a rut
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Jun 1, 2024 03:01
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Silver Alicorn posted:I'm still kinda stuck in a rut I've been stuck in one too, but I've been trying to practice through it. I find that it helps when I can't focus to do something that doesn't require focus instead. 30 minutes this time!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzvFbwArHWQ im_sorry fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Jun 1, 2024 |
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Jun 1, 2024 03:15
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I'm making music and I'm trying to be weird about it
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Jun 2, 2024 18:03
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i saw two bands this week that inspired me to singularly resolve to producing edm funk and music to dance to
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Jun 3, 2024 02:18
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