Almost five months into the new location, and I’m still trying to sort
out how I want things and where things should go. After being at my
previous place for around five years, I had forgotten how long it took
to get into normal habits and patterns at my place. I haven’t made any
major changes or modifications yet because I want to live here longer
before I decide to make changes. If I’m not sure how I want things five
months in, I don’t want to make a change that I’m going to want to
change in another five months!
My Playing, Reading, and Learning sections
didn’t make a ton of progress through Summer, but I have lopped some
things of the list and added some others. I have picked my 日本語
studies back up again. Its only duolingo, but I’m doing it regularly
enough that I think I’ll get back into the habit, then switch to more
traditional study methods - Heisig
Kanji study method, Genki workbooks, and the
Jorden
and Noda spoken and written language books. I have considered
looking for language share groups or more traditional classes, but
haven’t invested a ton of time into it yet. I’m not going to plan too
far ahead until I really get back into the swing of things.
Today is the 75% mark for WeeklyBeats. Having never released
music before, I’m shocked that I’ve been able to keep up and release a
new track for 39 weeks in a row. I said it before… there are definitely
some duds in the bunch, but the fact that I still made new songs, mixed,
and released them is really cool to me. Hoping nothing prevents me from
completing all 52 weeks! I listed some of my favorite tracks in previous
posts, so I’ll add some of my favories since my last post (6/14):
TERURA -
This may have been my most popular track so far. A bit of a sci-fi
horror track, utilizing deep choral vocals and buzzing synths to make a
bit of a 3TEETH meets SyFy B-movie vibe. I really liked it, but I
definitely could have worked on the musical qualities of the buzzing
synths a bit more.
SORCO - One
of my favorite tracks from the whole project, this was another attempt
at a magical, sci-fi track. I pulled quotes from the CCRU
writings to build on the sci-fi aspect, and redered the vocals using an
old vocal synthesys program called Festival. I
think the GLaDOS-esq
monotone vocals mixed with the topic of the lyrics to make a really cool
track.
SCIAS -
Originally I did not like this track at all, and felt like it was a bit
too plain/basic. Over time, its grown on me and the topic mixed with the
soft electronic synths fit with the vibe of the music I was listening to
the week I wrote it (Porter
Robinson - SMILE! :D).
BOBENO
TRI - The third Spool themed track, and its chiptune again! There’s
a funny easter egg at the end that you can see if you look through the
post; I embeded an image of Spool in the audio. While it doesn’t
musically add anything to the track, I thought it was funny to
include.
MINACI -
Might only be posting this one because its on my mind, but this is my
latest track. I went back to using Festival for
vocals, but this time put together some quotes from the Philip K. Dick
book Ubik. I
think the overall vibe of this track was pretty cool, and the lyrics
worked well with the backing beat. This type of track is driving me to
look into vocal synthesis a bit more, and I want to see what else I can
do with computer generated voices.
I have been using my M8
Model:02, since I got it a few months back, and it is LEAGUES better
than the Model:01. While the software was great on the original (its the
same as Model:02), the hardware improvements add major workflow and
usage improvements. Just to name the biggest - there’s a built in mic
for quick sampling, a larger screen, and larger battery. The larger
battery is honestly the best improvement; I feel like I never have to
charge it anymore. I still plan to write a post about how I use my M8
and some of the undocumented (or not officially documented) features and
behaviors of the device.
Summer was busy but fun, looking forward to the Fall and Winter!