#lexx...gives good advice?

[lexosaurus]

LEX! Oh vaguely benevolent overlord of the Phandom! I beseech thee! Lend thine divine aid to the American Dragon Jake Long fandom! Please? Like for real here the Phandom has bee Ouroboros-ing ourselves for upwards of a decade, we have plenty of creative energy to spare and with how visible the fandom is what better way to give our friends a boost? Also it's a good show. Also the crossover potential. Also he's a dragon like come on. Anyway, organize a Jake long thing? We have so little content.

I have never seen any of that show, nor am I particularly emotionally invested in getting involved, but may I offer you some advice in these trying times?

1. Make the content, and make it consistently. Even if you think you’re bad at it or you think no one will see it, make it and post it anyways. You literally never know what will gain notes when. 

2. Memes are your friend. While I do put a lot of effort into writing and music production, memes gain significant more traction to my blog than anything else. So if you wanna build a community, humor is a great way to do it. In the beginnings of my blog, I used to make memes with other people on the dp discord back when there was just a handful of us. It was a fun bonding activity! 

3. Tag all your posts, and tag the content that you reblog. So many people never tag anything, but then complain when their stuff never gets discovered. Like, I browse the danny phantom tag all the time. If you draw something or make a meme, but don’t tag it, how tf am I or anyone else supposed to find it?

4. In terms of community events, start with small week long ones! Get a good tag for it, and then just try it! Sure, maybe the first time you throw an event, only a few people will participate. But then maybe the next event will have a few more people, and their followers will see it, and maybe some of those guys will wanna join, and then the next event is even bigger, etc. 

5. Keep the drama off your blog. I mean, this goes without saying, but discourse is no fun for anyone. And although you may think you’re doing a great thing by trying to play mediator or whatnot, just don’t bother. Don’t engage, don’t give it life. If you treat it like it’s something so boring that you can’t even be bothered to look in its direction, then others will follow.

And that’s my wisdom for the day. The Phandom is so successful because we’ve built a community around this show, but the key thing here is the community aspect. Once upon a time that was angst for us, and now it’s memes. So find the thing that pulls people to your fandom (I personally have had success with memes), and then hit them with that sweet sweet art and fanfiction combo. Get a discord going, get a good mod team to help build it, and be careful not to devolve into a clique-y mess. Realize that people are gonna come and go, that’s normal and fine, just make sure they know that the door’s open if they ever wanna come back!

Good luck! 

[lexosaurus]

Honestly one of the most important things I’ve forced myself to learn in going back to Grad school is managing burnout.

Cuz idk if I’ve said it here, but I hit burnout HARD in undergrad. I kept trying and trying to push through it and it only caused my physical health, mental health, and GPA to crash and burn hard in the end.

Now I’ve been teaching myself to become aware of these burnout symptoms, take a step back, and kinda “negotiate” with myself to see what I can do about it to prevent it from becoming a problem.

The past few weeks have been filled with projects, papers, and midterms, so today I took the five hours in between my morning/night classes to go outside. Just fucking went outside. Took my dog on an adventure in the woods, I went for a run, and then I took my laptop just outside my front door, sat in a beach chair, and watched mindless Youtube videos till my battery ran out. And you know what? I’m so glad I did, cuz when night classes came I felt so refreshed. I was attentive, took good notes, and filled my paper with questions I’m going to bother my professor about tomorrow in office hours.

I wish I had done things like purposeful breaks in undergrad instead of just stressing about the work that I had to do that I wasn’t doing until oh no it’s been 3 hours later and I haven’t started my assignment and even though I wasn’t doing anything productive, it still wasn’t really a break because I just had anxiety the whole day. You know?

So there’s my wisdom to anyone who’s currently struggling with burnout. Stop trying to push through it. Step back, evaluate the issue, see if you can negotiate a solution. And for the love of god, go take a walk outside or something.

i noticed my burnout comic was making rounds but the full comic is no longer available after the collegehumor website went offline…. so here it is!!!

i wrote/drew this back in 2018 when i was struggling w hella burnout and depression. i hope everyone is taking care of themselves :3

[thehoundwrites]

Hi

I hope you're doing well. Anyway, can I request Sevika And Grayson with a reader who has anger issues headcanons please?

Yesss I hope you don't mind if I add characters, I wanted to try writing Mel.

Characters: Sevika Grayson Ambessa Mel

minors DNI :)

Tagging: @nora-xox @colourfulkidglitter @midnightsk13s @witxhy-lexx @dumbdoll-420 @biphrogg @thebleccbird @lucky13les @petitepersephone

Sevika:

Sevika doesn't understand how you can get angry so easily, and honestly your aggression stresses her out And even the she is used to hot heads she normally didn't feel the need to protect the idiots who couldn't control themselves. She's probably gonna be a bit of a dick later too "seeee, it really wasn't that bad". She wouldn't do it when your angry because in that moment the only thing she wants is for you to calm the fuck down.

Sevika isn't the type to really need to control herself often. She understands life fucking sucks, that there's so much to be angry about. That's why she does what she does. Outbursts don't solve shit, so why be angry, why be sad, it won't get better unless you change it. She's not very in tune with her emotions (if that wasn't obvious) She will try to talk you down offer you a drink, or a cigarette or whatever helps you. She'd give you whatever she could and help you however you can.

"It's not that big of a deal doll"

"Not to you!!"

"Don't yell at me I'm trying to help you"

"I didn't ask for your help! You don't have to be in control all the time. It's okay just take a fucking step back"

"God why do you have to be so difficult"

"Why are you still here then???"

"Because I love you, you moron. I'll be outside I'm not taking the brunt of this"

She'll smoke nearly half of her pack before you come sit with her. Sevika will ask you if you want to talk about what happened, but she wouldn't push it on you. She probably wouldn't want to talk about it either. She'd offer you a drag of the cigarette she had if not she'll hold your hand either way, much gentler than usual. She'd graze the skin of your knuckles with her calloused fingers she'd give you a kiss on you forehead if you let her.

Grayson:

Grayson can be very stubborn, and honestly a bit loud, however it probably takes a while to get her to yell. But she gets being so overwhelmed with no outlet. A part of the reason she became an enforcer is to let it out. She thought she could fix them from the inside out. She couldn't. And all that anger over time has turned to bitterness, then sadness, then acceptance. Shes an old woman she doesn't want to waste anymore time on grudges or resentments.

But seeing you worked up often gets her worked up. It ends up with you two bickering like well, and old married couple. Grayson and you tend to complement eachother well, because despite your anger she gives amazing advice. She tends to know what to say to you, you don't know how she does it, she's so empathetic even if what you're angry about is ridiculous she'll understand why you're angry about it. Because she really gets it, her core was bubbling with the wrath of Zaun for so long, sometimes you'll even get that old match kicking and the two of you end up doing something productive thats good for the both of you.

"That's ridiculous dear"

"I KNOW!"

"Baby please don't yell"

"Im sorry I just"

"No no I get it, that's outrageous. But don't get so worked up why don't we just fix it"

"HOW I don't see any magic fucking miracles babe"

"We always find a way don't we my dove"

She'll coo at you and before you know it that arm is snaked around your hip and you're pressed to her. No time to be angry if such a beautiful women is going to help you fix it.

"Grayson, c'mon be serious"

Her fingers trace up your arms.

"I'm so serious, we're gonna make this all better together aren't we"

"that's not the point I-"

"don't you want me to help"

"yes but Gr-"

"Then it can wait another minute while a spoil my peach until she stops yelling at me"

"oh"

"I'm sorry, I wasnt trying to yell at you"

"I know, why do you think I'm still here beautiful?"

Ambessa:

Ambessa has (had) kids, she knows what a tantrum is but she can honestly just set you over the edge sometimes. She'll use that motherly tone at you when she decides you're feelings aren't reasonable. Well yea sometimes they don't make sense to you but they're valid.

Shes known to call your outbursts, fits or tantrums which really pisses you off.

"Calm down, you're overreacting"

"No, don't tell me to calm down Bess."

"You're throwing a fit, calm down and we can discuss this like adults"

"Im not throwing a fit I have every right to be angry!"

"As do I! We all do, yet only children run around and scream about it. Are you a child?"

"What the fuck, why can't you just take a minute to think about someone else."

"I put my life on the line everyday, I have sent my daughter away so she could remain safe despite the brutality of our home country. I think about others every day. And I will not have you questioning me or yelling at me over something as little as this."

"Bess, don't be like that I'm not angry at you"

"I know"

Ambessa will have you questioning yourself. Especially how to control yourself. She compared you to a kid. You'd have to initiate any conversation over your feelings about what she says.

Mel:

Mel is probably right there with you, she often can control herself in the public. Albeit her council meetings, parties or events. She even stayed behind to finish work, or fix some loose ends or irregularities that happened so often in her line of work. She can get angry at the littlest of things, when there's so much on her back. The two of you can often get tense, but she'll rarely yell at you. She does nag you though. Mel tends to start arguments sometimes but will walk away. You think she's trying to get you more pissed in the moment, but you realize all the two of you need is a little space and a lot of love.

Bickering doesn happen often though, she ends up mostly just validating whatever your angry at and the two of you will talk shit about it, and end up laughing or joking. Especially if it's a person, it ends up just being ridiculous. Mel can make you smile through your anger either with the power and connection she has to make whatever angered you stop.

"This guy at work keeps fucking talking to me"

"Ew, tell him to go away"

"No it's really getting fucking annoying"

"Show me"

"What?"

"Sweetheart, show me what he looks like. Did you forget who I am?"

"Whatever"

You pull up a picture on your phone. And show her, her eyes widened and she let out the biggest dorkiest laugh.

"Oh my god, he does not think he has a chance with you."

Shes still laughing. But shoves your phone away.

"What do you mean!?"

"Oh sweetheart ask him how his mom is and tell the boss, what a creep"

"Not his mom!? Mel???"

"I'm sure of it look at him, he's like a wet looking dog"

"I'll have his shift changed immediately, darling no need to sweat. That boy is doing enough of that already."

[ginnyzero]

Dad Advice, Originality, and Writing

About a year or so after I left college, I went to work for my father at his small parts machine shop “part time.” (That never happened.) I worked on the floor running a mill power, a drill and milling machine that could be programed with a computer (to make your life that much easier and faster.) Every job that came out of the office came with a job sheet and the job was broken down into where the job went on the floor. You were to use this sheet to mark down the day you worked on the job, your initials and how long it took. (This was supposedly to price the job.)

If the part was a part that the shop had done one hundred times before, the side of the sheet had an estimated amount of time that was based on the time that other employees before you had taken to do the job. Now, I was new. I’d never done any of this before. And so I remember asking my dad about those times and saying I knew that I couldn’t be that fast!

He told me: “Worry about what you’re doing. Don’t worry about what other people are doing.”

That advice came in really handy as I worked in the shop. I spent two years on the floor mostly running the mill power and focused on what I was doing and doing it to the best of my ability and not worrying about how fast I was or if I became the best mill power machinist ever. (Now, this did irritate some people for different reasons. Other people didn’t care. All I cared about is if my father, my boss, thought I was doing a good enough job. Period. Then I took over the office and I didn’t give a shit about how long it took them to complete jobs as long as the jobs were completed before they were due! Not an easy task given the way things were ordered.)

Now, I apply that advice to other areas of my life adding it to my lifetime perspective in writing and in general. Worry about what you’re doing. Don’t worry about what other people are doing.

Because, I can’t control other people. I can control me and I can control my reactions. That’s it.

Boundaries.

At this time since I had a job and a steady income I was buying a lot of traditionally published books and trying to find new authors to read. And I kept slamming up against kitchen sink urban fantasy with protags that actually weren’t what they said on the tin and had no shit clue what they were doing with all the archetypes and tropes that come from being a kitchen sink urban fantasy. The few that had original concepts, like Weather Wardens or Death’s Daughter, were grossly lacking in the good plot department. (Just my opinion.)

I, um, got fed up. I mean. I’d been fed up with kitchen sink urban fantasies for a while. At the same time, none of the high fantasy stuff was really catching my interest and the science fiction that wasn’t the “lone soldier fighting a war on an alien world” was really hard to find and as far as I know, still is. (And what I found was very plot focused and dry.) But I still liked werewolves. I still like vampires. I still like space operas. I still love high fantasy with elves and magic and bad fairytales.

After binge watching the first few seasons of the Sons of Anarchy and having watched the Expendables 2, I finally got an idea that had been a tiny spark in my brain from my college days about biker werewolves. But I wanted to be different. I wanted some “originality.” I wanted to have that Post-Apocalyptic Mad Max, Dredd mixed with Minority Report type of feel. But I still wanted it to be urban fantasy without it being “kitchen sink” with every vampire, fae, werewolf and other fantasy race in existence. And my love of Vampires and my love of Werewolves had a fight and a piece of advice from a college professor of “No Vampires” and that tiny spark of an idea of biker werewolves really blossomed into an idea.

Reading all that, it’s still not really original. Werewolves. Mad Max. Sons of Anarchy. The Expendables. Where is the originality in that? (Heathens may not expressly be the best example for this to be honest, but bear with me.)

But who would want to read yet another werewolf story? How is yet another book about werewolves even remotely original? I mean, I just typed it, it’s Expendables and Sons of Anarchy drawing from Dredd and Mad Max and Minority Report and there’s bits of Star Wars Wraith Squadron and Ratchet and Clank and Starship Troopers in there too actually and I mean, that sounds like a tangled mess of inspiration. All of this shit has been done before, who’s going to read that?

I didn’t really think about this when I started compiling ideas and really digging into research about werewolves and biker gangs and planning my post War World 3 setting. Because, I wasn’t worried about that. Other people could be worried about that, but I wasn’t worried about that. I knew I was genre mixing in an out of the box way that wasn’t on bookshelves in that combination even if the concepts themselves, the building blocks weren’t original.

Because, I’d already proved that people would want to read something like that through my own actions! I was the one going “I like kitchen sink urban fantasy,” and picking up the first three books of every series I could find that remotely interested me (and supporting those authors) in hopes of finding a new author to read that was entertaining as the authors I already had on my shelves.

It wasn’t the author’s fault that my tastes weren’t precisely lined up with what they were writing. They had a story they wanted to tell and if the blurbs of their story didn’t actually reflect what was in the pages or if the books had things that I didn’t like. I was free to stop buying them. These books are huge series, some have hit the double digits! People like them. They’re getting sales. Just because it’s not to my taste doesn’t mean they aren’t decent books.

I mean, look at licensed books such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Forgotten Realms and so on. These books are huge parts of the expanded universe franchises of those stories. People buy them. (I bought almost all the old EU of Star Wars.) People collect them. People saw the Star Wars movies and wanted more Star Wars and then bought books and comics and other merchandise for that franchise because they liked that thing. Science Fiction fans are likely to watch Star Trek, Star Wars, Battle Star Galactica, Star Gate, FarScape, Lexx, Firefly, KillJoys, Dark Matter, The 100 and anything they can get their hands on that’s space opera related because they like that sort of thing even if it’s the same type of thing in different trappings. Look at how many series Star Trek has and it’s all the same universe! SeaQuest and SeaQuest DSV was space opera IN THE OCEAN.

Maybe I was being out of the box in Joss Whedon does a Western in Space type of way, but it wasn’t wholly unoriginal.

My third perspective on this came from being in fandom. There is nothing quite being in fandom where fanfiction and fanart are encouraged and there are tons of people with tons of ideas and yet somehow there are 50 Coffeeshop AUs, or 100 Highschool AUs or good lord, the MERMAID AUS, “let’s write this missing section of canon” stories and “let’s get so and so together” stories and “this is what happened after this scene” stories. And lots of them, if not all of them, get views and likes and comments and kudos and so on and so forth. And sure, they have the same premise, but they aren’t all exactly the same. They have different styles. Different POVs, different events. They started out with the same building blocks and came up with different plots and ideas! (Now, whether they were any good is a matter of opinion, just like any sort of book writing.)

You see, people crave certain types of stories. Those are the stories they like. They’re comfy. They’re familiar. They’re old friends. They sit down with a certain type of story they know to an extent what is going to happen and no matter what type of story it is, they’ll more than likely enjoy it because it’s familiar and comfortable.

People don’t like the unfamiliar. They don’t like being uncomfortable. When someone sits down to read they’re sick, bored or lonely. They want to have the warmth of an old friend. They don’t care about originality. They just want to escape. They’re risk adverse.

Originality doesn’t appeal to the risk adverse.

Firefly was risky. Western in space. Cowboys Vs. Aliens is risky for the same reason, a science fiction western. Aliens in the old west! People aren’t always prepared to take that next step out of the box of genre conventions despite the masses and masses of amounts of different types of speculative fiction stories. You start adding things they don’t expect (like Western to Sci Fi) no matter how much Dark Tower they’ve read or Vampire Hunter D, they are likely to back up and go “I’m not ready for this!”

Not that originality is easy to find. I’m sure someone out there wrote the first “IN SPACE” story. Our stories are made from building blocks of old stories, myths, legends, fairy tales, stories we’ve read and the stories that go on around us in the world at the moment. (Truth being stranger than fiction.) Originality is a very difficult beast to come by.

The fourth perspective of this came from Fashion Design classes and Project Runway. If you give ten people the same inspiration, those same ten people are going to come up with ten different things because they’re bringing in their voice, their aesthetic and their experiences and style to the design. I don’t care if you have ten different “hard vs soft” designers. They are all going to “hard vs. soft” in a different way! Sadly, in my classes we never really experimented with this overtly! (One girl and I did have a similar inspiration for a design class once, Thailand. We were very different people and did very different things.)

Project Runway sometimes does this by giving the designers the same types of materials or the exact same brief. And it’s interesting to see how each of them actually run with it and what they turn out in the end for good or bad. (The more limiting the brief the more interesting to see how this plays out actually, often in unconventional challenges, but not always.)

This is the same with writing. Your kitchen sink urban fantasy isn’t going to be Jim Butcher’s or Patricia Briggs’ or Kim Harrison’s or at least another half dozen writers I have forgotten the names of. Your voice, your rules, your world building, the setting, the characters are all going to be a point of difference between your story and their story. The point of difference is your voice. Your writing style and your voice are your brand of writing.

So what if you’re writing another kitchen sink urban fantasy? There are lots of people out there that love kitchen sink urban fantasies. As long as you’re writing the best and most polished kitchen sink urban fantasy you can in your own style and voice, then don’t worry about the other people writing kitchen sink urban fantasies and not being original or that your writing is inferior.

You know what readers see, “MORE KITCHEN SINK URBAN FANTASY. MINE!”

It's the Two Cakes thing:

https://helpfulwritingstuff.tumblr.com/post/175643753023/lbibliophile-salt-of-the-ao3-pervocracy

Look, stealing from one person is plagiarism. (And I do mean word for word, idea for idea here.) Stealing from many people is research. And if you’re compared to someone else and it doesn’t matter for good or for ill, that’s great! That means there is an audience for your writing! So what if they don’t think you’re as good as the other author? Or maybe they think you’re better than that other author? Why does it matter? As long as you’re putting out the best possible work you can put out in your voice. You aren’t that other author! Don’t worry about them. Worry about you! You’ve got to move on to the next book and the next set of characters and the next idea.

You can’t control what readers (including editors) think about you or how they compare you to other authors. You control your reactions. Sure. Go ahead. Get emotional. Let the emotion run its course. Come back and see if you can learn anything from that critique. Or, you can accept that readers are critiquing for other readers and not you. They all have opinions. Everyone has opinions, it doesn’t mean they’re good or even applicable opinions! You have to find people to put around you that you trust know your vision and what you’re trying to convey to an audience and find that editor that pushes you to improve the way you write or the way you pitch. Worry about what you’re doing.

Don’t worry about what the readers are doing outside of reading. You can’t control it.

And honestly, if they don’t like what you’re writing. They have fan fiction.

You, as a writer, don’t exist in a vacuum. You can bar yourself away from social media and society and write the most original concept you can think of writing and submit only to find out that someone else had the same type of concept even though you’ve never met and never read each other’s works. Why? There are a lot of ideas out there floating around. No one owns them. No one owns how they get to be combined. But your concept and their concept will be different in execution. The building blocks may be the same and maybe they built a fairy tale castle and you built a brooding manor house.

This is the universal consciousness of mankind. People all over the world coming up with permutations of the same building blocks over and over again and creating wonderful things that reflect their experiences and share their voice!

And if you let that get to you, that someone out there might have the same idea as you do. Then you’re going to be paralyzed and not write anything at all for fear of “not being original.”

Being original doesn’t matter. Execution matters. Your voice matters. Once you get past that originality is Queen then you can focus on you and your story. Worry about your voice and your execution and creating the best book possible for your audience, the people who want more of your type of comforting stories.

So, as daddy says, “Don’t worry about what others are doing. Worry about what you’re doing.” Because, that’s all you can control, you and your reactions.

As for me, I have my post-apocalyptic urban science fantasy adventure werewolf stories, my broken fairy tales, my sometime in the future kitchen sink urban fantasy bakery adventures, a urban fantasy magical horse game, and a straight out science fantasy space opera adventure thing to write. So many ideas, possibly none of them original all ripped out of building blocks of other things, but you know what, they have my voice and I don’t care. People who like that sort of thing will like those sorts of things.

Happy writing!

[lexosaurus]

Oh idk who this is for but you know when artists sing these wicked long phrases/notes in music and you’re listening like “wow that’s amazing breath control that they can hold out this note/phrase without breathing for so long”?

Yeah most of the time that’s fake.

Producers legit split lines up into multiple takes and glue them together in a way so the listener can’t tell that the audio isn’t all sung in one breath. Yes, we can even do this in the middle of words.

That, or if it’s a really really long held out note, we might just take the best take, chop it, and extend it out. That’s a bit harder to do well if the vocalist doesn’t really have any instruments backing them, but in the right context it’s stupidly easy to get away with.

Anyways, point is please don’t compare yourselves to singers you hear on the radio. I promise they can’t even replicate their performances that perfectly. A single vocal line could be a combo of like 4 different takes. It doesn’t make them bad singers (because “autotune” aka Melodyne doesn’t work the way you think it does), they’re actually really great singers! But they’re human, they’re not perfect. No one is. 

[lexosaurus]

Wait should labs be turned on on tumblr I have them off

I kind of went over this in another post but it’s important enough for its own post so I’ll go over it again.

Tumblr Labs are mainly filled with fun like #aesthetic things that aren’t necessarily useful but can be fun. But there is one VERY useful tool in there that I’m surprised is hidden away in labs.

It’s called the tag crawler and basically it allows you to see all the tags in the notes of any tumblr post on your dash. So if you’re like me and really love seeing people’s hidden reactions to your content but hate having to individually click on everyone’s reblog, this is a nice tool to have enabled. 

(Keep it mind it only works on desktop.)

Here’s how you do it:

1) Click on that lil person icon and then go to settings

2) Click on labs

3) Click to enable Tumblr labs.

Keep in mind that this WILL NOT allow Tumblr to add things to your settings without your consent. This will just give you the option of adding additional settings that Tumblr’s developers have made for fun or whatnot onto your desktop mode.

4) Scroll down and enable Tag Crawler. 

You can take a peak at the others if you want but tbh in my personal opinion I think this is like the only Actually Useful setting in Labs.

5) Now find a post of yours or anyone else’s and click to open the notes. You’ll notice a lil hashtag (#) option in the top left hand corner of your notes. That’s the tag crawler. Click on it.

6) CONGRATS here are all the notes! You can scroll through them at your heart’s content!

Have fun!

[lexosaurus]

lexx. you got any. music advice? working on an ost and im kinda curious what programs you use :0 ☝️

Ooo feel free to DM! I’d love to hear!

I use Logic Pro X now and I love it, though it is very complex. Started with Musescore though!

I’ll give two pieces of advice that are common and both things that I personally have worked on in my music:

I think a rookie mistake people (me included) make is with chords. Chords are really really important. If you’re trying to make a rock song but you’re missing the 5th of the chord, you’re not gonna make a rock song. If you’re tryna make a jazz song, but your chords are all 1, 3, 5 majors, then you’re not gonna end up with a jazz song.

Chords really make or break songs, and they’re something a lot of people don’t really understand. Whatever genre you’re making music in, I highly recommend looking for video tutorials of example chords in that genre. It’s something I still do regularly, because as you progress through genres the chords get more and more complex and situational, and also chords are hard lol.

Here’s an example of something I made with good chords, and here’s an example of something I made with bad chords.

The other piece of advice I have is that less is more. A common thing people starting out do is they try to fill every instrument with something. They’ll have like 3 basses doing different things, a melody, and like 2 counter melodies, one of them probably in the same octave as the melody, everything’s panned center, and it’s just a goddamn mess of sounds. 

So look at your instruments, and divide it up into low, mids, highs. Who’s doing what in each range of sound? Do you have a melody and a counter melody both playing in the same octave? If that’s the case, delete one of them. Is your counter melody as complex as the melody? Delete it. Do you have instruments that were just given parts just cuz with no real thought involved as to why? Delete it.

You don’t NEED so much happening at once. I often will double parts on different instruments, but I make sure that they serve a purpose. 

Here’s an example of something I made with good sound placement, and here’s an example of something I made with bad sound placement.

So those are my top 2 pieces of advice; pay attention to your chords, and don’t over-saturate your songs with random instruments or melodies that don’t add to the overall sound.

Now I’m into this so I’ll give some random tips down below:

Doubling octaves in the bass is 👌

If you’re making an electronic synth bass, and need to beef it up, harmonics are a great lifehack

Pan your instruments. If everything’s in the center of the speaker, it’s going to sound muddled. Pan stuff around to the left and right, with bass and melody staying in the center. Listen to songs with headphones to learn this one.

Dissonant chords (in many but not all contexts) are great.

Double up instruments, panning them hard left and right, and offsetting one just a tinyyyy bit from the beat (if you’re on a DAW) is an awesome way to beef up sounds.

Music is like painting. Make the foreground stuff prominent, but make sure to send the less important sounds to the background. Not everything needs to be so obvious. Use the mixer to help level your sounds to achieve this.

If you’re on a DAW, white noise is amazing.

If you’re struggling to find a melody or counter melody, just play what you have and start singing or humming over it.

Don’t be intimidated by percussion. I’m working on this rn too, but have fun with it! Percussion can be a great way to add color.

Ok I hope this was helpful! I’m gonna go eat lunch now haha.

[lexosaurus]

lexx i want a girlfriend give me advice on that

pfftttt asexuals getting into successful healthy relationships???? HAHA GOOD JOKE