I am so fundamentally (see what I did there) out of practice, but still adore the intricacies of music I thought I’d start this.
This isn’t intended just for great youtube videos, more for what you are working on, why, what is inspiring you, and what are you thinking about sonically.
@PatRx2, @Beanolini, and everyone else is invited.
I rediscovered Arthur Benades Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics. Such a great book. I also need to find my old copy of Harmony. I bought it from a used bookstore, and turned out to be a copy that was owned by one of my professors.
I need to knock the dust off my windows 7 install and fire up FL Studio again. See if I can’t make something again.
E is a producer as well as a trained opera singer, I should probably ask her where she gets her samples one day.
Learning how to write out music in piano rolls I think really did help me be a better player generally. It also was massively helpful in understanding FFTs.
Back in high school, I knew a guy who like producing and he’d just record interesting sounds on his cellphone. He was always looking for something to record.
I didn’t really like samples because they don’t pitch scale well. I only really used samples for percussion and that was it. I was more into programming oscillators and playing with LFO and envelopes.
Oh, and FILTERING. I spent sooooo much time trying to find a filter that was perfect. Until I read some math and found out that you can’t have perfect filters. You’d need infinite RAM.
Dicking around with odd samples and other crap in Ableton at the moment. It’s pretty bad what I’m doing, so no sharesies. 
In theory, I ought to practice regularly. In practice, however, I don’t.
This is why I like them. You got a really tight window if want them to sound anything like they started off, and working with that is where the joy is. Restrictions are a top way of inspiring stuff when your instruments are absolutely anything.
Like, you can take literally any old shite and make music from it, so you need to impose your own order to it. Like all art, it’s all about context.
You know, I really do miss playing an instrument. I was okay at the tuba, but never practiced. I just played it for a lot of consecutive years in school, and nobody really stuck with it like I did. I really squandered my talent there, and I’m not sure I can actually read sheet music anymore.
Trombone was pure fun. I have short arms though, so I played a trombone with a rotary F-valve that made it so that I didn’t really need to throw all the way out to 7th position. Instead it’d be F-valve in a short 2nd position.
My method for making music in the DAW was sort of the opposite. Very ADHD. I just spent hours upon hours dicking around trying to find just the right sound that made me happy. I’m pretty sure I’ve spent over 10,000 hours in FL Studio at least with not much to show for it.
I can post a link to my only album, if you’d like. I was 16 when I decided to scrape all my abortions into a pile and knit it a onsie. Haven’t really made much since.
I’m coming at this from a different way. I’ll never be objectively any good, so I gotta work with that. And it’s only me I’m doing it for, so what the hell. I can be as self-indulgent and as full of pretentious bullshit as I want to be.
Oh, I was just a kid in a candystore. And really all I got out of it was a stomach ache’s worth of music. I had zero discipline and all these knobs to twiddle. Usually without understanding what the knobs were even for.
I disagree with the dripping reverb, but we are both artists :). And it’s the Cars.
Just dropped two new songs- Dave and Red Shirt
Not totally representative of everything I’ve been working on lately, but they sort of go back to my Ramones/Green Day kind of roots. I’ve been doing a lot of more complex and acoustic based stuff and needed a break.
I’m trying to pick up my guitar again for campfire purposes, for my Cub Scouts.
I also picked up an album of children’s music that I listened to as a kid.
My plan is to make my way through that album and to be able to play every song on it.
There’s a particularly difficult (for me) cover of Riders in the Sky on that album (switching between plucking and strumming, hammer-ons, unusual strum patterns, and some very fast strumming). I’m starting with that.
I’m working on the music for a post-apocalyptic country song my sister wrote for this year’s Butt-Numb-A-Thon entry. I don’t have anything to show yet, but we should have a YouTube video in a week or so. I’ll try to remember to post it here.
Lots of works in the pipeline, but between helping my translation partner/protegée with her Masters, and dealing with the after-effects of radiation treatment, I haven’t had a very productive year so far.
Have the following working towards a multi-movement harpsichord sonata (as the last two movements):
I have sketches, less complete than these, for 3-4 more movements (not sure whether to add a gigue-like movement).
Have a sketch for a third Bagatelle (haven’t rendered anything yet) to add to these two:
A sketch for another chorale prelude:
I was setting up a bass for a friend so I put together this little ditty just to test it out. Has it really been four months since I recorded something?
I keep trying to get sit down to write some new songs, but things are really busy right now.
We got it done! Here’s the link to the video (don’t expect anything approaching a professional production):
That’s me on the left, playing an old beat up guitar that’s missing all but two strings.
