Taking a short break from music because I'm inspired to work on an mmo concept from last year again. I scoped the idea down a ton though, I realize that I just want a blank open-source thing to build onto over the years as I (and others) get inspired.

The goal right now is to take the cross-platform CMake build process, Windows toolchain, and SDL2 networking/rendering examples that I put together last time (and burned myself out while doing) and make a simple ECS-based client/server. The client will be able to connect to the server, get assigned a color, and wasd-around as a box on a blank white screen with other people.

I'll probably tag the project at that point so other people can fork it if they get inspired to make a simple mmo. It'll have the basic bones of all the hard stuff out of the way--cross-platform build processes, networking, rendering, and system design. They'll have to be expanded on as their projects get bigger, but the bones will be there at least.

My own project will continue on into an eventual simple social mmo. The next thing to add would probably be text chat, followed by a system for the background and walls and stuff. If some artsy people come along, I'm fine with them building a style guide and starting to draw assets. I typically try to do everything myself in my side projects, but this time I really just want to facilitate other people making cool shit that we all can enjoy.

Having a virtual place to hang out that isn't trying to bleed my wallet dry would also be nice. Building a small community of cool people would be amazing.

I'm so fucking close to being practiced enough to record this song. When I try to force myself to practice though, I start hating everything about it. I'm good at putting the hours in and forcing myself to grind on a skill, but I've instead been having to try to live normally and leave a little time for practice every night. It's very frustrating to not be able to counter a lack of progress with just working harder.

In the mean time, I've been playing some tangential stuff. I learned the intro to Roundabout, and have been figuring out by ear some interesting parts that I hear in emo songs. It isn't directly getting me anywhere, but at least I'm enjoying it and it's keeping me practicing something.

Also, I shaved my head. I'd been growing it out for like a year and a half, but it began to take too much of my attention. I didn't like how I would constantly be thinking about fixing it. Cutting it all off feels much better. I no longer have to put energy into something that I don't care about.

Edit: Also just realized I've been working on this song for 2 months. Fuck this creative stuff, why does it have to feel so bad. Engineering is way less frustrating.

Stayed home from work cause I feel like I'm catching a cold, gives me more chance to work on this song. It's ~7.5mins about a suicidal girl I met on 4chan.

It's been hard to work on--even when I try to play it to just practice technique, it still depresses me and kills any inspiration that I had to work. It's shaping up though, I'm doing some more tone shaping on the last section, then it'll be ready for final practice and recording.

I never really mess around with instruments unless they're completely new to me and I'm trying to understand what sounds they can make. If I sit down to play something, I generally have a specific idea that I'm developing, and I just need to pick which instruments can make the sounds in my head.

Two weeks ago, I was unable to keep working on the next song in line for my eventual album because I needed a new guitar. While waiting for it to arrive, I decided to be productive with the downtime and start exploring something that makes sounds that I'll likely need in the near future.

I have the Arturia mega-pack that includes a billion synths, and it's been extremely useful so far (I used the Jupiter 8 and Solina on Cardboard Cutouts). The Jupiter-8 VST was my first time touching a synth (outside of the 2 weeks of messing around with Ableton synths that convinced me I needed such an expensive pack). I'm really satisfied with the sounds that I was able to get out of it, but it took a lot of wrangling to get them there. Meaty legato synth tones were an issue, because the phasing of the unison would cause huge amplitude swings over the course of the held note (up to 12db from peak to valley). Atmospheric sub-bass tones were also an issue for the same reason--they would peak in and out of the mix at non-rhythmic times.

I've gone through initial pre-planning for all of the songs that I'm planning to put on this album, and there's one in particular that I'll need similar big synth sounds for. Due to the issues I've had with the Jupiter-8, I decided that the most beneficial synth to learn would be one that could get similar tones, but with more control. So, I decided on the beautiful Arp 2600. A week later, having gone through the manual, the included tutorial patches, and a few tutorial videos, I was finally up to speed.

The Arp has had a different effect on me than other synths, though--I actually see a reason for having it in hardware and am starting to GAS for one. This video (timestamped to an awesome example) showed me the power of being able to plug a mic or guitar into the 2600 preamp and have it as a sound source. Do I have any need for that in my current batch of songs? No. But it's so goddamn cool! I want to be able to do that so fucking bad.

Behringer is developing a copy that I'm keeping a close eye on. It doesn't have the sequencer or keyboard modules, but I can work around that. The main thing that it has over the plugins is an accessible preamp to plug into*. Will it be the synth that gets me to move away from software? I don't know. The VST does have a big advantage in that you can pull any amount of traces from an output instead of having the restriction of needing to run a signal through the multiplier to get multiple taps. Maybe the expressive benefits of having a shit ton of sliders in front of me will outweigh that constraint, though. We'll have to wait and see.


* I asked Arturia about it and apparently V2 of the 2600 plugin had both a midi and audio version, but they discontinued the audio version in V3 and I don't have a license for V2.

New site is live.

Last Sunday, I was inspired to start working on this site redesign--specifically the front page animation. I've been using my music log page regularly, so I figured I had proven the value enough to put more effort into it.

After sperging out on it for a week, I'm happy with where the front page is at.

TODO:
    1. Add a hidden hitbox above the gif that will reveal navigation boxes.
    2. Add some minimal animation to the content pages.

Initial post.