Way Too Much Of Not Enough Of Anything
So you’ve recorded your tracks and are ready to mix but you’re kind of bummed because everything always sounds so muddy and you know that whatever you try will not help much.
We’ve all been there. A lot. Yet there is one thing we know about but rarely seem to pay very much attention to:
The High Pass.
Continue reading “It’s Pretty Wizard: The Magic Of The High Pass”
At the end of last year I decided to post about the books I’d read in 2022. In that post I said: “… for 2023, I plan to read even more.”
Six months in and I’ve already surpassed last years count, so why not do two entries for 2023?
As a fun aside our family did the Book Advent Calendar again this year but I bag I chose, for some damn reason, was Popular Thrillers. I first book I unwrapped was The Davinci Code, which I hadn’t read as I’d been led to believe that it was shitty and not worth my time. Undaunted I decided to give it a go…
… only to find that it was shitty and not worth my time. I put it down after three chapters. It’s just so eye-rollingly bad in every way a book can be bad.
The rest of the books that came out of the Popular Thriller Advent Calendar were more of the same: Tom Clancy, John Grisham, and a couple more Pat Browns. I read only one of them and donated the rest.
Anyway, here we go…
Well, shit. It’s been three whole months. So much for trying to keep up on this here blog on a regular basis.
Remember this? Well, let’s see how it going.
(Note, I’m not going to comment on each specific topic in that NY post, just some of them with added colour commentary.)
“I plan to start moving again. I’m going to get myself a bike and start using it for all the errands that I currently drive for – like going to the store that’s literally less than 5 Km away”
I bought a bike. A nice, basic fitness/city bike. While I’ve never been the worlds biggest Cannondale fan, this bike checked all the boxes for me:
The test ride in the store parking lot sold me. This bike is limber and, so far, it does what I ask. I haven’t really pushed it yet due to weather and springtime chores but as we move into May, I will be going farther and farther. I haven’t realy biked anywhere in well over 5 years, so I’m going to ease back into it.
Uh-huh. This is not going as well as planned. While I have shed a little weight, I’ve spent more time eating useless, carby, packaged food (and take out!) than I should be. Also, have been drinking a little more than I should be.
I haven’t worked on anything since early March. Musically, the new tune I have is done but only has half its lyrics. I need to get back on this in a big way.
I’ve picked back up on this. FocusWriter is my app of choice (I did try a few other, Open Source writing apps and found them overly complicated) and I set a daily goal of 500 words. I kept this up for about two weeks, then tapered off a bit. Now I try and find some time in the wee hours of the morning. Or I spend time pecking away at this rather than doomscrolling through the news.
This is an edited version of what I originally had here. I felt like i jumped the gun on a few things and was very, very reactionary about the computer bit which is stupid because it’s just computer shit. I’m trying to not be whiny about things like technology. I want to take deep breaths, look at my options and move forward. I don’t want to hit a snag and just stamp my feet and yell.
So I’ll put a little tech/computer update here and shitcan the incessant whining.
And that, as they say, is that.
Since 2015 or so, I’d been trying to get synths working, mostly for live performances, and found myself frustrated with Kontakt, Ableton, and the like. I’m not knocking either of these programs. I know they’re tried, tested, and true. I know a ton of pros live and breath by them. For me, I just couldn’t get them to click. I found the learning curve steep and the cost high. I never made it past the trial stage.
I turned to Apple’s MainStage which made everything easy. Thanks to this app and my trusty 12-Step, I was able to not only record synth parts for Opium Winter, but also play them live.
However, as anyone who happens to read this blog knows, my MacBook Air is on its last legs and I’ve mostly moved away from Apple. I had to start looking at alternatives.
Dropping another new track: “Gods, Prophets, or Slaves”.
The other day I shared Benn Jordan’s latest video regarding Spotify and mentioned that I’d post some thoughts. When I started to write this, I went back and re-read two pieces that I keep on hand:
Both of those articles opened a can of worms, especially when you think of them as older companion pieces to the video.
While a lot of people thought (and still think) the music industry was/is evil, no one was really prepared for Big Tech.
Continue reading “Music, Labels, The Internet, And Streaming Services”
I’ll add some thoughts in the coming days. For now, this is an important watch/listen.
Almost half a year into the Great Linux Experiment and I’m still here.
The last time I tired running Linux as a desktop OS was back around 2001. It went so horribly sideways that I lasted maybe two days. Then again this was 2001 and while I could get Linux (Mandrake) installed, couldn’t get the damned thing online. So it was essentially a weekend of yelling and screaming to myself because I had no Internet to yell and scream into.
Now I can scream all I want, anytime I want. Here are a few things I’ve discovered:
To start 2023, I decided to move everything back to where it began. I registered nicholastoone.com well over a decade ago, so that’s where everything is going to be. The Low Budget Lifer domain will not be renewed and will fall by they wayside sometime in late April. No more clever URL’s. No more content creating on whatever the big platform of the day is. No more playing with SEO or whatnot. Just me in my little corner of the Internet.
I was going to post a big, blathering piece about 2022 but I couldn’t find the right tone. Everything I wrote sounded overly bitchy, or overly elitist, or overly preachy. In the end, I’ve settled on a short list of what could be called resolutions.
I read more in 2022 than I have in recent years. I was a voracious reader in my teens and early twenties but tech got its hooks into me over the years and reading books just fell by the wayside. I’ve been working on changing this and for 2023, I plan to read even more.
I’m not what you’d call a fast reader. My rate is a little more than a book a month; a “book” being +/- 400 pages. I have a habit where I will re-read sentences or paragraphs that I find particularly excellent. I also spent too much time on my damn phone and not enough time with my nose buried in books.
So without further ado…