I imagine most folks who take the time to read these notes know that this "channel" is just a personal journal of almost every session I have had since I got back into music-making during the pandemic. It's just a hobby-- I'm not a musician. My goal is to find something of value in every session, no matter how flawed.
I am primarily interested in process-- and if something interesting results, that's a nice bonus. In the past year I've been spending almost all my time learning to code tools for making music. It's rewarding but means I have even less time to make music and what humble skills I have suffer for lack of practice.
It feels like my goals are not really aligned with those of RU-vid as a platform. I'm not interested subscriber counts, monetization, or spending my time photoshopping myself making Kevin McCallister faces on video thumbnails. My videos are rarely anything that could be considered a performance, unless you consider the musical equivalent of an approaching-middle-aged guy playing with model trains in his garage to be a performance. I'm not knocking any of that type of content, by the way. It's valuable to a lot of folks and takes a tremendous amount of effort to pull off. On second thought, no, I am knocking the Kevin McCallister faces.
It's irritating when the RU-vid algo decides to blast one of my videos out to the masses and I get mean-spirited comments from people who apparently don't understand that they have the option of just clicking the "dislike" button and moving on with their lives. They remind me of the people who feel obligated to answer every Amazon product Q&A with "I DON'T KNOW I BOUGHT THIS FOR MY GRANDSON FOR HIS BIRTHDAY HE IS 10". I would like to assure those folks that I have a realistic view of my musical abilities and am acutely aware of how much I've spent on synthesizers over the years. But they don't strike me as the type of folks to read ponderous video description essays.
Anyway. I've been thinking of a channel rebrand. Or debrand, if that's a thing. Some way of deterring clicks. I have some ideas and you might see the channel name change in the future. Just a heads-up and explanation if that happens.
OK, on the usual stuff: this was a completely cursed and maddening session but I like the video for reasons I'll explain.
I woke up after getting a full night's sleep for the first time in ages and treated myself to a little sound-design session before breakfast. Hit the "generate chords" function on Dreamsequence to get something to work with and started patching.
I recalled seeing an update for the Just Friends nota bene voice (nb_jf) that allows configuring voice allocation on Norns rather than leaving it up to the module. This meant I could play a chord using voices 1-4 and use voice 5 for improvising a bit on Grid. I took the individual notes on JF outs 1-4 and sent them to a sequential switch that was being cycled by Marbles. This resulted in random notes from the chord being sent to Cornflakes and Rings for some accompanying grains and resonation.
All of this took about 15 minutes and I had the start of something really cool sounding, but then everything went off the rails.
I got sidetracked with various issues (I think the "balance" CV input on my Belgrad module works in reverse for some reason??) and before long I had used up all my patch cables and the entire thing was out of control. I started yanking out patch cables trying to get back to a stable state but it was hopeless. It was already lunchtime and I was way over my time budget.
Then I just sort of threw my hands up, cursed under my breath (which my camera mic hilariously picked up), and hit the record button. n.b. turns out this may be a great way to subvert the YT algo: www.theverge.com/2023/3/7/236...
What follows is an epic, low key, battle of man (in bathrobe) vs. machine.
It's a rough take, even by my own low standards. The patch was not ready. I wasn't ready. The camera wasn't ready. I didn't even flip on my token end-of-chain reverb until halfway through the recording which is a crime against Ambient. There are squeals and annoying ringing notes desperately call for EQing. I never even got around to working on the composition.
But, y'all, I've gone back to watch this a few times and I don't think I've ever captured my personal struggle with process so perfectly. It took me about 5 minutes to wrangle something out of this that could match what I hear in my head-- and the exact moment it all came together, I simply hit Stop and sat back in my chair in a state of complete catharsis.
I know it's frustrating to some folks that I don't post finished songs, but recordings like this are infinitely more interesting and satisfying for me to make. It's an honest and flawed account of how I make music. Take it or leave it.
23 апр 2024