The roomba didn’t ignite but everything else worked as intended
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Somebody bought this record I did off of my bandcamp yesterday and it prompted me to give it a re-listen. I liked it listening back.
ed: pride removal
I’m pretty sad about the bandcamp layoffs. My creative I/O has pretty much been BC since the early teens. Anyway, I had some new stuff brewing that I am just gonna put out on the heels of the terrible news. I can’t think of a better thing to do. Ella, and all of you butts in this boat, I wish you the best, and I am here for you, for real, if you need help.
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I was recently listening to LP Zero again. It’s very good, especially “Lost Woods” and “Village Theme.”
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I got offered a show in december but I don’t really have a band rn and I don’t want to do a solo/acoustic set, so I’m currently working on all new synthy sequenced arrangements of some lil sluggers material. tbd if it “works” exactly but engaging w old stuff from a different angle has really helped me understand where I can take that aesthetic and like the situation & workflow that can make that happen absent the social pressure of having band members to keep entertained
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I’ve been in a terrible creative slump for like half a decade now… But I did write this recently and I spent a lot of time putting this track together. It’s done now, I think.
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yo this is great. i put it on and melody (who was faffing around behind me) was like “ohh what is this, that’s cool”
the vocal effects are dank, love the melodic impressions i got from it too
the chord that first appears at 1:01 and comes back around a few times is a really good musical “plateau” i think. or something, a little temporal lull. love the feeling this gives
the instrumental “rising” section starting around 2:16 is really compelling stakes-raising in this tune’s context
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thank you so much for the kind words 
I’m actually very proud of this but I feel like I’ve gotten kind of an ambivalent response from a lot of people that I’ve showed it to so it feels good to get a little validation.
re: the vocal effects, I didn’t realize this but reaper just comes with a stock vocoder plugin and it’s super easy to use. I shouldn’t have waited this long to use one especially with how frustrating it is for me to ever get a half-decent vocal take. ironically I’m very happy with the un-processed vocal takes I got here, I feel like it’s the best I’ve ever done, but boy it was so much less work to only have to nail a third of the vocals and let the vocoder carry the rest. I’m gonna try to do a whole album like this.
it’s funny bc when I wrote this on piano it had this kind of old-timey american songbook vibe to it that I was ambivalent about but taking it into the DAW it really transformed into something different and I love it now. I feel like getting here has taught me a lot about what’s been holding me back, like you can’t ignore your inner critic but you can’t let it stop you either. in the past I would have given up on this song because it felt bland or unsatisfying or I didn’t like some of the lyrics but instead I just gave it a chance and worked with it. I wasn’t even planning to use a vocoder, I just threw it on the scratch vocal when I started composing the instrumental parts because I was tired of listening to my own voice but still needed the melody there for reference, and suddenly it sounded like ELO instead of “a little touch of schmilsson in the night except by someone who can’t sing” and everything else built from there. it really does pay to just be open to trying new things and not take every decision super seriously. just having a sense of curiosity about “what if I tried doing this thing” made the process so much less painful than it usually is.
of course some of what has held me back has been chronic health issues and long covid and life generally being terrible and I’ve been fortunate enough to have some of those problems improve significantly since like september. hopefully that keeps up.
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i feel like this has often been my experience putting out music (honestly since like 2013 or so lol), i’ve always felt like past a certain point people have been just more checked out/listening more ungenerously. maybe things will turn around in the future and we’ll having a flourishing of art on the internet or something again, lol.
a lot of stock Reaper effects are surprisingly really good, and also very CPU-efficient compared to any given fancy schmancy VST. i will always cape for Reaper tho (as part of my anti-Ableton stance), even though an old version of Reason is still my most used thing. but yeah - the vocoder sounds nice!
i was gonna say that i thought it sounded like ELO, so i’m glad i’m not alone in that observation. also has that sort of early 2000’s indie electronica pop kind of vibe to it as well to me. kind of that innocent naive “i’m just figuring out how to shape the technology how i want over this more classical mode of songwriting” kind of feeling to it. your voice also makes me think of Jonathan Donahue from Mercury Rev.
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good to have you back
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that’s honestly what’s going on here, after over a decade of fighting it and wanting to do things “purely”. looking back I don’t know what that ever meant. I think I decide on doing things a certain way and then forget why but rigidly stick to them anyway. trying hard to unlearn that and lean into all the fun things DAWs can do these days. I’ll always find a way to make things harder than they need to be, I may as well lean into whatever conveniences I can get my hands on.
that is very flattering. honestly the more I worked on this the more it felt like a mercury rev kind of thing. but I love ELO, even their super cheesy 80’s output, so it’s definitely not a negative comparison. I’m mostly surprised because you’re the first person to point out the ELO thing – other people have compared it to neil young’s trans (hell yeah) and daft punk (which I don’t hate but like whatever). I guess the vocoder is the throughline in the end though.
also re: reaper – I switched a few years back because of compatibility issues with pro tools and unwillingness to pay to update and then lose all my cracked plugins. but aside from a few small things it’s a superior piece of software in most places that count. The stock EQ is also highly usable and surprisingly musical for a basic parametric EQ. but I don’t have a single EQ plugin that does surgical EQ better than reaper’s. it’s crazy that it’s free. they also have a free and great-sounding auto-tune plugin! I really think people just need a grimy skeuomorphic UI to believe a plugin is doing what it says it is.
is there a reason you stick to using an older version? one very cool new feature they’ve added in the past year or so is the ability to oversample any plugin you want.
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the reason (lol) i use an old version of Reason is i think it might be the last version that was cracked for a long time (it’s Reason 4) and i just got used to it. i used to own a physical commercial copy of Reason 2 bought from the Sam Ash store back in the day but didn’t have the money/willingness to update when i was in college. if i do ever get more money in the future i might buy a newer version of Reason so i can actually record audio and use VSTs and stuff and don’t have to bother with the rewiring nonsense into Reaper, which is what i have to do now. altho i’ve seen several people complain about the newer versions of Reason, so maybe not i dunno.
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oh I misread reason for reaper lol. that is all too relatable thought!
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i had to bp this as someone who stuck with the same version of reason for a long time for similar reasons haha
@toups this is really lovely, i love this woozy vibe and the vocals work really well imo. i love when a happy accident like that takes a track into unexpected places
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ohhh yeah im with meauxdal i really like the buildup that starts at around 2 mins!!
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Remastered my EP from two years ago, added two new tracks, and all sales go to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund until March 14th. I’m really proud of this!
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currently trying to figure out music notation so I can program the bassline from Fiscerspooner’s “Emerge” into LSDJ
Wherein I try to coax interesting sounds from a West Pest and don’t let myself fall back on the cassettes and live sampling workflow that’s been my comfort zone for like 15 years.
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