So, tomorrow, when Day 5 takes place, I'm going to challenge myself to complete that day's challenge. On time!!
That was written three days ago. So we can see how well that little challenge of mine went. I can make the usual excuses (work, chores around the house) and the not-so-usual excuses (holiday shopping, holiday parties), which are all true. But I could have found a half-hour here and there to complete - or at least work on - these challenges.
To that end, this morning, while still in my pajamas, I sat down with my coffee in hand, to work on the next challenge. I started working on a solo instrument, got a lick down, and then brought in the rest of the tracks to listen. And... something was off. Investigating what the discordance might be, I realized I'd recorded my lead in a different key. Whoops! Easy enough to fix. Then I took another listen, and while it was better, something was still off.
Turns out I had not one, but two other tracks in the wrong key. What the heck! So I fixed that up, made sure everything was in the right key, listened to my track and... wait. Why is the second note on my pluck bass not playing on the beat? And same with some other notes down the line?
After about 20 minutes or more, I finally realized I had STFU sitting on the Bass Group, which was ducking the pluck enough that it was very noticeable. Once that was removed and placed on the individual Glide Bass and Sub Bass tracks, everything sounded better!
Or did it? Everything sounded like it worked together, but now I didn't like my piano chords. Or my synth lead. Or... well, much of anything at all.
OK, well...
Shit.
At this point, I'd been working on all this for just over an hour. The wife and I had plans, so I went downstairs to get ready for the day. We were going to breakfast, and then a cute little town about 45 minutes away to do some holiday shopping. I told her I wanted to get moving, as I wanted to get back to my challenge (I've been telling her all about this, so she's aware of what I was referring to).
The day itself was cold and gloomy, with rain coming and going. And after breakfast, while we were sitting in the car, we decided we'd rather just stay home. The wife had some things she wanted to do, and, well, I wanted to get back to music.
Once I listened to the tracks again, I realized that I liked the bass line, and the percussion was OK. So I fixed up the pads and the pluck synth to be more inline with the bass. I removed one of the instruments and I think I'm slowly getting back on track. Originally this piece was in a minor key, and the notes I'd come up with worked within that minor key. Once I reworked the key signature, it was in a major key (B-flat major to be specific), but the old notes now didn't sound like the "correct" notes. So those were reconstructed and now the notes along with the rhythms are more upbeat and peppy, and much more keeping in step with the major key.
And now on to Day 6, which in reality, will be a continuation of Day 5. We're doing vocals now. And I don't sing. So thank goodness for the Liina-recommended Emvoice Virtual Singer. And if that doesn't work, I can maybe try to find something within Loopcloud for my vocal needs.
Day four's challenge, the astute among you will notice, is Synths. And I spent a surprisingly long time on trying to get a sound that I was ok with. It didn't have to be perfect, but I wanted it to at least fit in with what I have so far. I'm a bit late in starting this challenge according to Liina's schedule: Step 4 was supposed to happen on the 6th of December, but here it is on the 7th (and, as I write this, about 8pm local time) and I'm just now finishing up. Going to have to be a bit more proactive and carve out time (instead of sitting in front of my iPad playing poker!). On her YouTube channel, Liina (LNA) wraps up this challenge's video with some thoughts about time. We're all given the exact same amount of time; do you want to spend it creating? Or yelling at the screen about why someone would call with only a pair of sixes and then winning when the last card is another six? (I may or may not be guilty of the yelling part). So, tomorrow, when Day 5 takes place, I'm going to challenge myself to complete that day's challenge. On time!!
This is my progress so far. Purple is my synth color, and Will from EDM Tips would say "it's the natural color of Synths in the wild" Not sure about that, but it's my color today. As stated, I spent a lot of the time trying to get a Polymer synth to sound right, and I just wasn't getting it to dial in like I wanted. I was loosely following along with the video tutorial LNA did, but after grouping two Polymers together, fixing each with their own EQ, Reverb, Delay, even some compression (which, honestly, is still a mystery to me), I gave up. Copied the notes to a new track and decided on a different synth. Pigments by Arturia is an all-around beast of a synth, and does wavetables as well. And after about 5 minutes, I was getting a sound much closer to what I had in my head. Sometimes you just have to pick the right tools.
Then it was a matter of picking notes that fit better, adding a few effects - I have a short reverb and a tiny bit of delay - and then messing around with the notes again. It's definitely not anywhere close to good, but you know what? I don't care at this point. It's at least not a complete train wreck and I'm building towards something. As a bonus, I'm getting some ideas of what would be a neat bit here and there when it comes to arranging.
Tomorrow's challenge is leads. I'm thinking an epic saw might do the trick. We'll have to see how it goes!
Last entry ended with me asking for some good vibes to be sent my way, as my audio had completely disappeared. Well, you all (all two of you maybe? Probably my wife and my mom) must've had the good mojo flowing, as once I came back to it, I not only managed to get by audio back, but it appears I now know what to do when I want to record audio from the computer while monitoring on headphones as well. Success! 🎉
While this entry won't have a video to go along with it, hopefully I'll manage to do that before this creativity challenge ends. Speaking of...
Day 3's challenge was chords. None of the sounds I picked resonated with me, so I followed along with Liina and loaded a piano sample to lay down the first attempt. I also used Bitwig's Polymer to load a wavetable to accompany the piano. This was supposed to be strictly chords, and for the piano, that's what I ended up with. The Polymer track turned more into a lead, or maybe something to accompany my plucky bass. Which, I discovered, isn't playing all the notes. Not exactly sure why, but I hope to come back to it. Delay offsetting, or LFO, or phasing, or...
This is the chain I have for the Polymer preset I picked, a pad called "Didgeripad". I mostly left it as is, though I did tweak a few parameters: The cutoff on the on the XP filter was raised a bit, boosted the input on the Compressor, and finally changed the delay from 4 right, 6 left, to 2 right, 6 left, and boosted the mix a bit. I have a feeling I'm going to come back to this and turn it into my lead, as opposed to accompanying chord instrument it originally set out to be. But music and creating is something that grows and flourishes and typically blossoms into more than what that seed of an idea expected to be. That's part of the beauty.
Today was all 'bout that bass (bass, bass, bass, bass), and I ended up with three different instruments filling the role. I have a glide bass utilizing Bitwig'sPhase 4 instrument, a sub using Serum, and a plucky bass with some delay, also using Serum. Nothing too special here. The glide and sub are sharing the same notes, while the pluck is doing some on-and-off beat stabs. It's also sitting an octave higher (sub not shown).
I imagine I'll be working this bass pattern a bit more, but the goal of following along with this challenge is to complete a track. I'll never get anything done if I spend all my creative energy tweaking sounds and trying different patterns. Yes, that's an important part of music, but I tend to get distracted rather easily. So I need to get these ideas down to where they're good enough in an expedient manner. They don't have to be perfect, or even great.
In somewhat related news, I now have no audio coming from my speakers. 🤦♂️
In trying to get my Screenflow software working properly so I could record my process, I somehow managed to bork the whole setup. I'm trying to record my screen along with computer audio, while monitoring the audio on my headphones (which are connected directly to my Mac). It seems I can either get sound through the headphones, but Screenflow doesn't capture the audio in the recording, OR I don't get sound through my headphones but the screen recording DOES have audio. And then, after about an hour of fussing with it (and several reboots), I discovered I have no sound what-so-ever.
At that point I just decided to take a break, write up this blog post and tackle it again in a couple of hours. Please send me some good vibes that I'll get this sorted!
Day 1 of the 12 Days of Creativity starts off with the foundation of pretty much all EDM, drums. As I don't know what sort of piece I'm creating yet, I'm going with a typical four-on-the-floor type of beat, at 128bpm.
One of the (many) challenges I've had when creating is getting lost in the myriad of sounds I've curated over the years. I've yet to really organize my drum hits, and if you were to look in my favorites, I have all of three, and all of them are kicks. So I started there. I auditioned the three kicks (didn't take long!) and then moved on. This is going to be my kick, this is what I'm going to work with, onto the next piece of the kit.
The only real pattern I had in mind, was an off-beat hi-hat. So that went in on the "and" of the "one-e-and-a" when counting. And after the kick and hat, what would you think is typically next? If you said snare, you'd be right! (I would've accepted clap as well 😉)
After the snare, I started filling in the spaces; added a shaker, an open hat, ride cymbal, and three different congas. I don't want to overwhelm myself, and I think it's fairly busy as it is. The thought process behind this is to add bits and pieces of this kit in, one at a time, until eventually they're all a part of the song. The whole composition won't be this busy. Hopefully!
Once I had a pattern that I was OK with, I started trying to give it a bit more life, so to speak. To make it sound less robotic, I've introduced various velocity levels on the congas, shakers, ride, and snare. The kick I left as is. After velocity, I played with the panning a bit, but tried not to go too crazy. Congas are where I spent most of that effort, and the shaker received a bit of the same treatment. I also nudged the midi notes off the grid in places.
And to get a bit weird and goofy, I did one last thing: In my snare effects chain, I have a distortion device. Bitwig (my DAW of choice. For the moment.) has wonderful modulators. I attached a random modulator to the Bell Filter Frequency and have it bouncing around the spectrum and it mixes up the sound quite nicely. Definitely makes it more interesting!
That's about it. I have a nice four-bar loop, and I've completed Day 1. Huzzah! 🎉
I follow many YouTube channels from creative types, mostly in the electronic music space. Easily one of my top five favorites -- LNA Does Audio Stuff -- is holding a "Creativity Challenge" for the month of December. From the Challenge site:
12 Days of creativity is a production challenge, designed to help, guide, and inspire music makers to finish their songs. The intent is to challenge producers and musicians to finish a track in 12 - steps during December. It is based on creative workflows, proven to enhance confidence in the artists' skills and creativity, as well as limit insecurities during and after the process.
I'm going to give this a shot, and I'm going to (attempt to) track my progress here. I have too many DAWs, more VST plugins than I should, and a ton of samples along with a subscription to Loopcloud. For all that, I don't have a single complete song. I have a ton of ideas, four- and eight-bar loops, even a piece that's close to a minute long... but nothing that's actually complete.
I hope to change that with this challenge. I don't expect the finished piece I come up with to be any good. I just want something that actually sounds like a complete song: Intro, buildup, chorus, drop, outro... you get the idea.
So here we go, with fingers crossed (though that makes working the keyboard tricky). First up: Drums!
Yup. I did it again. Switched out my current Content Management System (CMS) for something new.
Or, in this case, old.
I'm back in Grav CMS, having grown tired of having weird issues happening with my domain on Github Pages. Sometimes it would just not load, other times I would get weird errors. I decided I wanted to move it more "in house" as it were.
My original idea behind moving to Jekyll was to have something I could use on my iPad, that was also a flat file system. Based on other bloggers I follow, I chose Jekyll after trying a few others (including Grav). After much swearing, configuring, and experimenting, I finally found something that worked with my iPad.
And then I realized my setup only worked with my iPad. What if I wanted to update from my laptop, or work computer? Sure, I could configure either to push to my Github repo that stored the jekyll files, and it wouldn't have been that difficult even. I don't have any good excuse for not setting those up, other than being lazy.
Plus, while I do consider myself a geek, I consider myself a creative geek; meaning I want more than just a command line or blank text file. I want the dashboard, I want the simplicity of the GUI, I want the pretty buttons.
So, I'm back to Grav CMS, and back to my own hosting provider. That's the plan at least. I've spent the better part of three days moving older posts out of Jekyll (and the Wayback Machine from an old domain I'd forgotten about) into Grav CMS and setting up the blog to look similar to what was already there (added a sidebar on the home page this time around. Gotta have some fancy widgets yanno). So, currently, I'm still only seeing pages served up by my localhost. But I think I'm pretty close to prime time with this new iteration of the blog.
But not tonight. Had to take my ma down to NC so she could get the title to her car in her name only, so she could register the car here in VA. But that'll be a story for another day.
Yeah, it's been awhile. But I have a good reason. A couple actually.
Back in March, my stepdad passed away. He and my mom had been married for 35 years, so he'd been in my life more than out of it. After he died, once a month I would travel the 6 hours to my mom's house and stay with her for a week. It helped her from being too lonely and as I can work remotely, I didn't need to burn vacation. And then my mom decided she wanted to be closer to us.
So that led to the wife and I doing the house-hunting chores. My mom doesn't move around very well, and needs to get up and stand about every two hours. Three car crashes and two fused vertebra will do that. So it was up to us to find a house for her. Eventually we did, a cute 2-bedroom condo for her and her cat. And then the chore of getting her packed became my main focus.
No one likes to move. I get it. It's a pain in the ass. And, to be frank, it was quite the chore getting my mom to decide what to keep, what she was going to sell, what to donate, etc. She was renting the house she was in, and let the company that owned the home know that she was going to be leaving. So she had a deadline of the 18th of August to be out of there.
And then everything caught up to her and she decided that it was too much and wanted to push the move out. Of course she couldn't by then, as she'd received the Notice to Vacate letter (or whatever it was). Oh, and she also hired, and then cancel movers. She cancelled the movers 7 days before the move so she lost the deposit. I ended up scrambling to figure out how we were going to pack and move and get her and her cars (she had her Jeep and my stepdad's Corvette. Oh, anyone wanna buy a Corvette?), and all her stuff up here.
Thankfully I have some very good friends. One — Gina — drove down with me on my last trip there to help pack. And then Mary, Mike, and Meagan came down the Friday before the movers were to be there (We got a U-Haul and then I hired two movers to help load the truck down there, and two movers to help unload the truck up here. Best money I spent, as my mom had a piano, a huge buffet, big dressers, etc.) to help us pack. And I can't forget the wife! She was up here handling stuff in the new condo; getting new toilets in, a new hot water heater put in, getting the dishwasher mounted correctly, etc. Without all of them helping, I don't think we would've made it. But we managed to roll out on a Tuesday, unload on a Wednesday and get her (sorta) settled into her new place, which is a 10-minute drive from my house. Sure beats 6 hours!
Oh, and while this was all going on, I had a huge project at work that had a deadline that was almost the same as my mom's move date. I ended up working all of Fourth of July weekend while down there, along with late nights every week. We barely made it, but we made it.
To say it's been a bit chaotic would be an understatement. But the project is done, the move is done. Mom's still unpacking, but she can take all the time she wants for that. Though when I go over there, I do tend to open boxes and get something done. It makes me twitchy to have all that lying around undone. I have a long weekend in the middle of September planned with my poker boys, where there will be cards and bourbon and BBQ and boating and probably more cards.
I'm going to ignore the state of the world here at the end of 2021 (or maybe it's just 2020, Part 2), and instead focus on my own personal wrap up of the year, akin to what Spotify does with their 2021 Wrapped. It's a fun, more positive way to reflect on the past 12 months, rather than rehashing the news of the past year. So if you're of mind, please feel free to read on and see what I consumed most this year.
Spotify 2021 Wrapped
As I mentioned Spotify, I might as well start with my 2021 Wrapped. According to their nifty little Wrapped presentation, I listened to 47,482 minutes of music. Which, while a lot (more than 92% of the rest of Spotify listeners in the United States) is about half of what I did last year. I attribute this to my turntable. I consciously listened to my LP collection more, if only because it forced me to stand up every 20-30 minutes to flip the record over.
Spotify says I listened to 102 different genres, with my top 5 being:
New Age
Soundtrack
Classic Rock
Electronica
Ambient
I'm sensing a theme. Given I listen to music while trying to fall asleep, this is not a surprise. Nor is the fact that while I might have listened to 1944 different artists, the one I listened to the most this year was Enigma. They (he?) are one of my all time favorites. Along with Engima, the others in my top 5 are:
Enigma
Vangelis
deadmau5
Air
Daft Punk
Goodreads
I also did a lot of reading. I like that Goodreads does a reading challenge each year that I can partipate in. When I first started a few years back I set a goal of 12 books to read for the year. This year I challenged myself to 26 books, and I'm currently at 33. I'm about a third of the way through Peril by Bob Woodward, and I should finish that before the end of the year, bringing my total to 34 books. Perhaps for 2022, I'll strive for 36 books. I have friends that read 100+ books a year, which is amazing. Most of my reading time tends to be before going to bed, so sometimes it's only 15 minutes of reading before my eyes start to droop. Here's Goodreads stats on my year:
33 books read
13,514 total pages
Longest Book: Swan Song (956 pages)
Shortest Book: To Be Taught If Fortunate (176 pages)
Average Book Length: 409 pages
Most Popular: Where The Crawdads Sing (2,625,939 people also shelved)
Least Popular: The Salt Line (9,651 people also shelved)
Highest Rated: A Court of Mist and Fury with 4.71 Stars
And the books I read, in order:
Daisy Jones & the Six Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Bone Season Samantha Shannon
Recursion Blake Crouch
The Collapsing Empire John Scalzi
The Night Circus Erin Morgenstern
Nomadland Jessica Bruder
The Consuming Fire John Scalzi
To be Taught, if Fortunate Becky Chambers
The 5th Wave Rick Yancy
If it Bleeds Stephen King
The Last Emporer John Scalzi
Full Throttle Joe Hill
The Alice Network Kate Quinn
A Memory Called Empire Arkady Martine
The Color of Magic Terry Pratchett
The Ghost Brigades John Scalzi
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue V.E. Schwab
The Glass Hotel Emily St. John Mandel
The Lost Symbol Dan Brown
Utopia Avenue David Mitchell
A Gentleman in Moscow Amor Towles
Swan Song Robert McCammon
The Chosen and the Beautiful Nghi Vo
A Court of Thorn and Roses Sarah J. Maas
Later Stephen King
The Lightest Object in the Universe Kimi Eisele
Project Hail Mary Andy Weir
Redshirts John Scalzi
The Salt Line Holly Goddard Jones
Alas, Babylon Pat Frank
Where the Crawdads Sing Delia Owens
A Court of Mist and Fury Sarah J. Maas
The Midnight Library Matt Haig
I think my top three favorites would be:
Project Hail Mary
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Swan Song
I'm hoping to branch out a bit more next year, in terms of genres. We'll see if that happens. I do love my sci-fi and fantasy!
Reddit
To be frank, I spend way more time on Reddit than is probably healthy. It's probably my main source of news, politics, entertainment, etc. I mod a couple of communities (r/harley, r/loghomes, and r/reason), and spend more time there than any other site. According to reddit, here's my stats for the year:
13 new communities joined: /r/appleswap, /r/talesfromtechsupport, /r/thenandnow, and 10 others reddit isn't showing me apparently
328.7K Bananas Scrolled
8.4k Karma Gained (given the amount of time I have spend on reddit, it's obvious I'm more of a lurker)
/r/todayilearned gave me the most karma
My top post of the year was in /r/natureisfuckinglit 2.4K Karma
Top voted comment had all of 141 upvotes (again, mostly a lurker)
22 awards given (I honestly never noticed)
Spent the most time in /r/harley (23 hours) closed followed by /r/AskReddit (22 hours)
And there you have it. Hopefully 2022 is more about creating than consuming. As that's a vow I usually make, we'll see how well it holds up.
This is the chain I have for the Polymer preset I picked, a pad called "Didgeripad". I mostly left it as is, though I did tweak a few parameters: The cutoff on the on the XP filter was raised a bit, boosted the input on the Compressor, and finally changed the delay from 4 right, 6 left, to 2 right, 6 left, and boosted the mix a bit. I have a feeling I'm going to come back to this and turn it into my lead, as opposed to accompanying chord instrument it originally set out to be. But music and creating is something that grows and flourishes and typically blossoms into more than what that seed of an idea expected to be. That's part of the beauty.
I imagine I'll be working this bass pattern a bit more, but the goal of following along with this challenge is to complete a track. I'll never get anything done if I spend all my creative energy tweaking sounds and trying different patterns. Yes, that's an important part of music, but I tend to get distracted rather easily. So I need to get these ideas down to where they're good enough in an expedient manner. They don't have to be perfect, or even great.
Once I had a pattern that I was OK with, I started trying to give it a bit more life, so to speak. To make it sound less robotic, I've introduced various velocity levels on the congas, shakers, ride, and snare. The kick I left as is. After velocity, I played with the panning a bit, but tried not to go too crazy. Congas are where I spent most of that effort, and the shaker received a bit of the same treatment. I also nudged the midi notes off the grid in places.
That's about it. I have a nice four-bar loop, and I've completed Day 1. Huzzah! 🎉