blankvirtue

[blankvirtue]

May 18, 2021

It's tough having such negative intrusive thoughts about myself. Lately, I've become more aware of them. Especially now that I'm trying to take my music career more serious. It's starting to seem like positivity and self help quotes are the only effective ways to combat them as of now. The most prominent one is that sometimes I think that I'm not good enough, or that I'm worthless. That I can't possibly contribute anything to music because I suck. This has been keeping me back from releasing my music and starting my career. Hell its even kept me from dating.

But Im starting to see that everything that I want is on the other side of fear. I have nothing to fear though, because my voice has something to contribute. There are so many people, someone out there will resonate with my frequency and will fuck with me.

Today I learned about i_o's death and I felt kinda afraid that I might share the same fate. It makes me want to quit smoking, keep up my mental health, and develop healthy habits for my heart. At the very least, I can say that his death is inspiring something positive in me.

Tomorrow is another day...

[blankvirtue]

May 14, 2021

~3:47am~

This time i can say that i am not writing here out of sadness or desperation. Definitely just a good day. Nothing really special. I woke up worked my 3rd day with VXI / Hertz, it seems okay so far. It’s only a 2 week training, but oh whale. $14.50 an hour is really good! Afterwards i had to meet with this person to confirm my identity with VXI at a starbucks, it took a minute but she bought me a coffee. She had a big ol fat ass o _ o. Afterwards i went to dads to drop off the documents to renew my plates, helped him setup somethings with his TV. Drove back home and chilled with Xavi and Edward for a bit, then played Rise of Rain 2 until about 3am unlocking like 3 new characters. I felt just like genuinely good! Today really wasn’t anything special, but i felt really good. Eating healthy and exercising i think has a big part in my mental health. It is my weapon against anxiety, adhd, and bi polar disorder. Something I would change about today is how much i smoked, definitely going to smoke less tomorrow, if not at all. In other news, doge jumped back up after its dip from SNL due to Coinbase stating that it would be sold on there platform in a couple weeks! This and also elon is working with the devs of doge to improve it’s transaction efficiency. Doge is looking more and more promising! Other than that, i look forward to tomorrow since its Friday. I need to also sleep earlier if im going to also keep my heart healthy. anyways goodnight

[blankvirtue]

May 4, 2021

~12:20am~ it's always in troubled times that i find myself writing here, otherwise i'm not inspired to do it. when everything is going good, I just want to experience it. I get caught up with whats next. when things go wrong, I want to reflect. writing definitely helps... its not a good feeling knowing what inspired me to write again is the same problem I was facing 15 days ago. again, lately I lack motivation to hardly do anything worthwhile. filling my time with distractions, but in solitude, facing my thoughts, i realize just how empty i feel. playing games and getting plastered helps me escape these thoughts, but it's delaying the inevitable. i always arrive at the point where i feel the need to get off my ass and do something about all my faults and issues. eventually something motivates me to push shit forward. its definitely become apparent that this system doesn't work very well and that things need to change if i'm going to get where I want to go. when I reflect on events, something i've noticed about myself when playing games or interacting with others is that I'm motivated by my peers near me. very recently i was talked into having a music making hangout between me, rene, and JT. I felt really excited about making music then. I had the hangout and JT was making suggestions, I tried to vibe with things. I ended up working on the beat alone cause JT was being JT, but i definitely had this drive and excitement that I dont have when the idea of making music alone comes to mind. I demonstrated the same kind of behavior and thoughts when I made music with guero. its also true when I play games with xavier and edward. nothing wrong with being motivated by others, but I want to be more self-sufficient and self motivated. If only things were that simple though. todays lesson is that motivation isn't reliable, in the words of james scholz, its too volatile. today's lesson is that in order to achieve what I want, I have to be more than motivated. I have to be driven. drive doesn't care about the rain, how i feel, or whats going on in the world. drive is knowing that nothing else can get in the way of what I want, no matter what. I'm going to explore what being driven means to me and how I can adopt and integrate this ideology into my choices. hopefully this will help me get past some barriers with motivation and other issues I run into later. tomorrow is my first test. I'm going to start off small and build up consistency off of that. i definitely feel better now then when i started writing, but this is all talk until I get to work and show some results.

[blankvirtue]

November 16, 2020

- 1:22am -

Sitting here in my studio desk with my semi-acoustically treated room, I am still puzzled with things. I don’t really know how to find my sound. I think that might be something I could find just by making more songs I guess. The sounds I lean towards in most of them would accumulate as being part of my “sound”. At least, thats the way I’ve conceptualized it. Perhaps, there’s something I’m missing within that idea. After showing Lost In the Night87 to Rene, he didn’t seem really interested in it. He told me he liked a different style. After that I just didn’t really like it anymore. I didn’t write for awhile because of that. It must have had an effect on me mentally. I started writing different styles of music, kinda exploring things I liked. I wrote some chiptune stuff, runescape ost, slow rnb, etc. Which in the end worked out, I did write some songs I might release under my other alias. Looking back it now though, I did like the style of music I’m writing with nightblood. If there’s something wrong with an individual song, I need to just see what I don’t like about it and change it. I am going to do hard bass music, because I really enjoy it. Even if Rene doesn’t, or anybody else for that matter. Not really sure why I reacted the way I did... I guess I’m just really sensitive to things. I don’t really get it. All i know is that I need to strengthen my resolve and commitment to my craft. Because right now, I’m acting like a god damn dumbass. I’m anxious because im not writing, and do nothing about it. An endless loop. Now that I’m writing again, and now that I have a game plan I feel like I am going towards a direction again. I can’t be feeling lost when someone disagrees with my music. I’ve talked about this kind of thing in the past, and it is a lot easy said than done /:

[blankvirtue]

October 26, 2020

- 6:23 am -

Yet another rather unproductive day spent watching TV shows and smoking. Unkept and crumby asf in all my procrastinating glory. It’s been pretty unproductive for no good reason this whole last month. Should I call myself a music producer? I haven’t been feeling like one, not with how I’m behaving. I just need to get back into my groove. It’s know it’s not gonna be hard to do though. I think that this is stemming from anxiety of believing that it’s not going to be good enough. But I’m remembering that I wrote an entry about this awhile ago, I need to re-read that and see what I was trying to talk about. It’s all coming back to me already... Something that I’ve finally ordered tonight was a 55′’ desk, monitor stands, soundproofing tiles, and a small comfy office chair. The whole studio setup! Which is really exciting since it’s something that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time now. I did drop about $250 into everything which felt like a lot to be honest. But I’ve managed to spend way more on software than that this year lol, so that makes me feel better. Tonight I even began researching how to place my studio monitors appropriately in a room. Took the necessary measurements in my room that I’ve finally rented out. Made a good concept already of where everything is be generally placed. I’ll test those placements along with some others after setting up, and see how it differs. I don’t have a ton of different options in terms of placement. This is due to my bed taking up more space than I like which definitely makes it a bedroom. I’ll work with it and do what what I can to make it like a home studio though. I’ve just moved into my room and just placed everything temporarily as of right now. Once I get all my equipment shipped in come the first of November, I’ll be moving everything catered towards being as acoustically enhanced as possible. I’ve decided to take the time to really think and conceptualize this through. It’s something that I’ve been really wanting to do for such a long time, as I said earlier. I wanted to try and come down to the basics of music production and really make sure I have a good setup appropriate to make accurate decisions with. My mix down will end up confusing me consistently time and time again if my equipment is not setup correctly and my room is not acoustically treated. I am confident that an accumulation of all the items I bought and the theory behind their placements will enhance my listening experience by a nice margin.  I’ve never had the chance to do this before, so I don’t know how monitors sound in a space that is catered towards them. I’m excited to hear how everything will sound. This pretty much sums up what I’ve managed to do tonight.One of the most productive things I’ve managed to do for my music career in the past month besides rent out the space of course. Anxiety holding me back from doing what needs to be done and procrastinating. Sighh. Good thing I have like 5 days to work on stuff :) Probably not going to be uninterrupted, but I’m going to get as much as I can in there. The idea of buying a new studio desk and the idea of revisiting the basics again recently inspired by advice given from Gordan Ramsey got me thinking about monitor placement. It’s something that I’ve no real choice but to neglect due to uncontrollable circumstances. They were never my rooms ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  This has caused me to be bamboozled by mix downs time and time again. Weird how life works huh. At least I got to learn how things shouldn’t be setup or even sound like though. Makes me feel like I should probably revisit and sharpen up other basics that I could. Whatever feels like will help of course. Well until then . . .

[blankvirtue]

September 6, 2020

- 3:58 am -

A rather unproductive day, full of minor frustrations and self doubt. Nothing unreasonable, I just wasn’t in a good headspace today. Probably a mixture of an imbalance of dopamine/serotonin, lack of exercise and unhealthy eating. All I really did today was judge the two tracks that I have and EP’s concept. I still don’t really know the whole direction of the EP and it’s tricky trying to conceptualize it into something that I deem solid and original. I understand that its part of the journey to be unsure, and being unsure make’s the creative process fun and freeing. However, I’m aware that once the creative process has come to a halt and decisions are being made that it’s important to be critical of your work with brutal honesty. I’m aware that it’s valuable and necessary for the sake of growth. I think I got the album’s main concept down. It’s about leaving an old life behind and the journey towards reinventing yourself. That sums it up really nicely. I’m just nitpicking all the small details to shape this into something that will get my message across while being compelling. I’ve been feelin really frustrated with the limitations that my current PC is forcing into my entire process. I’ve come to learn that music production software is highly dependent upon single core processing. This old PC really can’t handle too much of it, I can’t even run Repro5′s default presets with 8 voices without being scared that it’s gonna crash. So at this point, I’m being forced to render out audio once my CPU’s maxed, which is very often. I’m being forced to run lower CPU heavy synths, or run them at it’s most basic quality or even lowered voices. Restrictions that I’ve never really been used to having when working with other synths and tools. Even though it’s been frustrating, I gotta say that this new practice has it’s pros and cons. I like that it has lead me to reprocess sounds which is something I would never do before. Sounds that have layers of processing really does reinvent them from the original. With that said, I can’t really go back and edit them as freely as I am used to. Once a sound has been rendered, I am stuck not being able to edit it from it’s former version without having to re-render it after applying the desired changes. It’s annoying, but that’s what I’m being forced to adapt to in order to make this work. I’m now always saving version after version of the song to ensure that I can go back and edit what I want if need be. It’s just really tedious and halts my creativity to a degree. If I need to go back to and make a new melody I have to re-render and reprocess sounds exactly the way I did to make sure it’s reflective of the processing in the most updated version of the track. Which has been problematic when working on Lost In The Night because I haven’t exactly saved the mixer buses of all the different processing layers. Which has forced me to take different creative directions. Even though, I’m complaining about this a lot, I’m aware that limitations breeds creativity, and when looking at everything it’s be true thus far. I’m not sure what these songs would sound like if I wasn’t being forced to process my sounds in this manner. Also, it’s really the first time I’m exploring this process and now that I know better, I can better prepare. I can label song versions, directing to me the project that has the processing I need. I can save mixer presets that has the processing I need ready at a moments notice If I do need to re-edit. I think that would simply things. With all of this in mind, I think I know what needs to be done to move forward from this point in order to make this whole process more enjoyable and effective. I will embrace these limitations to their very threshold, that’s all I could really do. Make the best of it.

[blankvirtue]

August 23, 2020

- 3:20AM -

I felt the urge to write on this blog again suddenly remembering it after being forgotten for over 2 months now. Yet after reading my last entry I find myself facing the same problems funny enough. A writer’s block from hell tagged along with the thought of needing to be accepted by the music community. Coincidence? I think not. The advice I took from Ed Sheeran’s analogy with water coming from the facuet feels like it can be applied as quick way to mentally trick yourself into writing music, but you don’t really address the root of the issue. Which is an artists dependency on acceptance from their audience to write music.A problem I’ve seen surface among famous artists, a feeling I have when writing myself. The pressure of it all can weigh down on someone, I know I feel that all the time. I’ve been feeling that a lot lately actually. A lot of self pressure saying that I’m not doing enough, or what I’m doing is not good enough. Reflecting more on my thought, I guess I just feel like I have a lot of pressure since this is my debut EP. I want it to be good of course, and first impressions really count. It’s challenging to write a full on EP with a concept. Logic quit making music and cried out of relief on stream the day he quit because he can finally escape the limelight and the criticism. The fact that I could write music and that I am able to create something makes it my music. Who is say what is music and what is not. Who is the judge of all music that declares what music is. It’s all subjective at the end of the day. Eye of the beholder, or ear in this case. If I love it, then it is just right. Period. If you’re really fucking good at what you do people will recognize you for it. Plain and simple. After watching an interview compilation of David Grohl today, my eyes have been opened to this great perspective. Writing music for yourself is the only way to write music. It’s authentic, and it’s only way to stay sane. Otherwise you’ll cloud your judgement with all the negativity and critiques of random people and apply it to please them. Thus affecting your outlook when working future productions, when in the end you don’t please anyone at all. You might as well be selfish, you won’t have any regrets that way, hopefully. Right now I’m arranging this Justice sounding track that I’ve made. The bassline gave me a Justice vibe right away. After listening to their music from what felt like awhile ago and making a comparison, It sounded similar yet my arrangement was unique in its own way. I think I’m trying too hard to be someone I am not. I am not Justice, or anyone else. I am me! Something I should take to heart. A thought that’ll help me just write without overthinking things. The idea is that it’ll keep me from wasting time asking myself whether people will like this or not. I just ask myself if I fuck with this or not? Straight up. It’s natural to seek acceptance from other humans, to belong. It’s natural to question if one is enough to achieve greatness. It’s how we solve and face these natural inclinations. With boldness and confidence in oneself and one’s beliefs. With self love and honesty so brutal that no one will stop you from making music you love. I think that’s what it means to be a genuine artist. Pretty moving stuff to be honest. I am was really blown away by this video a fan put together of interview clips. David Grohl is a true legend. Today I also managed to listen to the Cross album by Justice again among other music for the first time in a bit. I found some cool songs by SebastAin that I really liked. Listening to all of this music made realize what kind of genre this is labeled under and lead me to similar sounding songs of course. A genre where a lot of my favorite artists fall under. Daft Punk, Justice, SebastAin, Madeon, Oliver. Future Funk/Nu-Disco/French House Crazy right? I have this natural attraction to this sound. I’ve come to realize it today after really looking at all of my favorite music that I’ve listened to over the years. They all have similarities. It was really cool to discover that today. The sound I really enjoy has labels that I wasn’t aware of all this time. With everything that I’ve come to learn today in mind, I won’t try to mimic someone or fit into a genre. I will just make a song that I find great. Knowning this I’m not convinced it’ll as simple to apply this realistically in the moment. Tomorrow I’m gonna give that a go. Until next time . . .

[blankvirtue]

June 20, 2020

- 1:23am  -

So not long ago I got a hold of 8GB of RAM, fresh from amazon, and installed them . Everything works and all. but it still didn’t perform like I hoped it would. This was how I started June off btw. Either way, all that RAM is no good if I don’t have a good processor to help keep my CPU usage steady. So why buy an old processor and upgrade an old PC? My money is better invested in building a new one, and thats exactly what im gonna start doing in the upcoming months. I’m very excited to see that come to fruition. I’m not sure if should buy speakers before that or after. Hmm. . .

Lately, I’ve been investing a lot of money into this. I’m kinda shocked that Ive spent about over $1000 on software and samples already, and that’s because I want more still smh. After I bought ProQ3, I’ve just kinda gone on a software shopping spree. Now I am a proud owner of FL Studio 20, ValhallaRoom & Delay, Shaperbox2, Serum, ProQ3 and TRacks5. Not to mention about 1000 new splice samples I’ve gotten. Along side with everything that I’ve come to learn in these past 6 months, these have been game changers. Besides dropping all that money and installing RAM, I started off the month trying to apply my new knowledge to old projects. Most notably, Oddessy is looking good. I managed to really improve it from its older project versions as of now, but that that’s the only older track I worked on really. I didn’t take too much time doing that because I got caught up setting up the new PC for usage and producing. It took awhile, but I’ve settled into it pretty snug for now, at least until I upgrade. But after that, I got really in my head and into a writer’s block for a couple of days. It really sucked xc Eventually I got the idea to do a 2 Day 2 Song Challenge to help me overcome it. This was on June 11th - June 12th by the way. Despite not ending up with two fire ass beats, this challenge got me to write one good one. I loved it so much that it’s gonna be on the EP. It’s safe to say that it’s the best track as of now too. It’s not like anything I’ve written either. Its got this like dark glitch trap feel, but at 120 with these deep vocals. After I wrote, it’s given me a sense of direction to take the EP with. I was kinda confused which direction to take with this EP for awhile, that was until I wrote this song. It felt like looking at a blank canvas versus looking at a drawing on a canvas. Here’s what I can take from this: after you’ve got an idea on the paper, you have a point of reference that can be used as a source of inspiration versus looking at nothing. I think that’s what makes writer’s block such a self-induced phenomenon. I decided to take today to sharpen up my mind and do some more studying on FL & production .In hindsight, I’m kinda glad I did. It gave me time to write this and recollect everything. Plus, im pretty tired today. That being said, I think this is a good use of my low energy self. Here’s what I managed to learn today: - Learned how to separate mid & stereo from each other using Fruity Stereo Shaper. I finally can make sounds strictly mono/stereo or even split them now! - Learned about newtone’s capability to pitch correct, pitch bend, and waveform shape vocals. I see that’s it’s mostly good for pitch correction. - Learned about monophonic voice manipulation through Billboard’s stream. Plugins such a Manipulator and Little Astroboy use this to harmonize and customize vocals to greater extents than Newtone. - Learned about sidechaining using Fruity Balance, which is better on my CPU usage and it’s easier than setting up Shaperbox. - Today I also learned that Fruity EQ2 doesn’t display any stereo frequencies. I knew that it didn’t EQ them, but I didn’t know it doesn’t display them. Wow Out of everything I learned today, I think the stereo shaping tip is gonna make the biggest difference in the longrun. It was weird mixing the stereo and mono signals together in one channel. Now that I’m able to separate them, I’ll be able to work on refining my stereo image in greater detail. A close runner up is the use of fruity balance to sidechain. By setting the volume to 0% it allows the initial transients of the drums to ONLY be heard as the ducked instrument creeps up right behind it. This gives the drums a perfect customized pocket to slam into, giving them more presence in the mix. Seeing things from an external point of view, I find myself overthinking things too much, that’s whats hurting me the most. I just gotta be bold with the ideas that I truly vibe with. I can’t get caught up with trying to guess how I will be perceived by others and with thoughts of not being good enough, or being afraid of working on a bad beat. In the words of Ed Sheeran, making music is like opening an outdoors faucet, you’re gonna get some murky water in the beginning. But if you keep going, eventually you’ll get some clean water. Every once in a while, some murky water will come out again, but most of the time it’s gonna be clean. In lesser words, keep on writing. Eventually you’ll get something good. Until tomorrow. . .

[blankvirtue]

May 30, 2020

- 4:13am -

I wouldn’t say this weekend has been extremely productive. I didn’t experiment with any basses like I wanted to. I still very much intend on going back and messing with that. However, when I was cleaning up my old smoke this projects, and coming off fresh off of trying to quick master my slowed & reverb aquatic ambience remix, I noticed areas I lacked in. Even though, I’ve acknowledged my growth the previous entry, this weekend was a humbling reminder of everything I have to learn. It’s exciting because I feel like I have so much more to explore, but it’s vastness kinda scares me a bit. When working on all the music I have made, I’ve always had trouble with loudness and mixing fundamentally. I’ve had way louder songs and cleaner mixes this year than I ever have, but it’s still not quite where everyone else is at. I have come to learn a lot about mixing mostly using different techniques, effects and plugins over these past months. Hell I’ve even learned about LUFS and the Loudness Meter and other basic things for mastering, but still I couldn’t get my music to be as loud as everyone else’s.So I started asking, how does everyone get their music to be so loud?  After wasting tons of time on youtube watching tutorials and explanations I stumbled upon watching a stream from the likes of Virtual Riot and Seamless live stream music sessions. After seeing their workflow and musical prowess, they got me asking more questions. Why does my music sound so different? How do i truly use compressor correctly? What kind of effects chain should I use on my master to get that loudness? What kind of techniques are people using to compress their instruments? Of course, they offered some insight on other topics that I never thought about during their live streams. If anything I learned that their super musically inept, because of the instruments they play. This made me wanna learn how to play piano more. This also showed me that livestreams are not the best place to find specific answers to your questions, even though I did learn VST settings, workflow shortcuts, among other things. Seamless just squashes everything on the master bus/drum bass with overdone compression using Maximus accordingly with his track. Virtual Riot is a legend with Serum, and has an insane knack for bass music. But I still didn’t really get the answer that I was looking for. Looking back now, I only saw hints of the answer I was looking for. I pretty much spent all day yesterday just researching and didn’t really land much of anywhere. Today though, I learned about soft clipping. A crazy technique, that will smoothen out and compress the transients softly to be closer to the quieter sounds in the track.  I do it with a software that I cracked a long time ago from Tracks, with their very own soft clipper. It’s crazy that it will compress the track, maintain it’s volume, and still give me even more headroom than I had before. It’s fucking crazy. I’m hella tired, so Im gonna go to sleep now and learn some more later.

[blankvirtue]

May 28, 2020

- 1:06am -

I went and slowed down aquatic ambience. Really liking the way it sounds, and thinking things through I realized just how much better it could sound theoretically. I realized that since I have all the individual instruments, and if I were to render them out, slow them down, I could mix them separately while they’re being slowed. Something I’ve never thought about doing, inspired my slowed ramen project. Of course, the song came out better being mixed seperately then together and the song is dreamlike. I just don’t really know if I should release one or the other, or both lol. I’m just not gonna listen to both for awhile and then reconsider things, briefly though. I can’t overthink it. After I stopped working on aquatic ambience mixes as of yesterday, I began to review some of my other tracks. It just hit me that before early April, I did not mix utilizing mid/side eqing, reverb sidechaining, the new samples I have from splice, the new reverbs & delays I have, detailed reverb & filtering automation, and everything else I’ve come to learn ever since I started taking this more seriously. Blows my mind how much hidden potential I have yet to explore. Tonight is my Friday, and I just woke up from a nap, smoked a bowl. I’m feeling very energized and inspired! I’m ready to work on some new bass patches for the first time in a long time! I’ll be opening up some of my projects and messing with old patches. I want to integrate everything I’ve come to learn and have another spin at those patches to see what I can come up with. I mixed down some of those old patches kinda nicely for what I knew, and I’m about to find out just how much has changed since I originally made them.

[blankvirtue]

May 23, 2020

- 11:09am -

After all that time spent studying, I managed to do a remix for aquatic ambience and complete it in less than a month. The whole sha-bang, composition, mixing and mastering. I’m really glad I took the time to learn some of the fundamentals over the course of last month and took a break from making music for a little. Once I applied everything that I learned the results were very apparent, at least in comparison to the last songs I made in overall quality. After over 50 different versions of my lofi remix, im sick of it already. I haven’t even released it lol, but I shouldn’t let that take away from what it is. People really liked the old version, which is a lot worse imo. So i hope they like this one too. Im just over it already lol, maybe ill be enjoy it later. But right now, it’s just been too overplayed for me after mixing it. It’s so much work making music! Ultimately it’s cool to see what you can do with your mind, discipline, and creativity. I announced that I’m making lofi remixes for games to my facebook friends. So I feel compelled to make more of that right now. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t also attempt to make something different, and I intend to do just that. My new project is not going to be even remotely in the lofi hip hop realm, probably ever. I will be making several if not, any after this point. It’s fun to remake some of my favorite osts into something rebuilt with my lofi spin on it. I want to primarily focus on finding my sound and putting out original well thought out and executed works. But i gotta clock in right meow, later.

- 10:37pm -

I’m having a hard time still deciding how I’m gonna go about this. The lofi remixes aren’t really going to promote what I want to do with nightblood. I’ve always acknowledged that these were just stepping stones and all, but I just don’t know where to draw the line and start my own work. Just now, I ordered some more RAM for my PC. 4 sticks of 2gb each for my fossil of a motherboard running DDR2.      Once I get my additional RAM and install it properly, that will be where I draw the line. According to Amazon, that will be until June 1st, but will more than likely be delayed ofc. It just makes sense, I settled for lofi because it’s a lot easier to create and it’s simpler. Therefore, I won’t be using a lot of instruments and I, in theory, won’t be maximizing my RAM usage. However, that was not the case. I think I had maybe 4 - 5 synths with nearly loaded fx buses playing at once with some wav files of the bells, drums, fx, etc. I resorted to muting one of the instruments since FL would overload when attempting to hear the song live. When I wanted to hear the track, I would have to render it out, listen, write down my corrections, open up the project, correct it, repeat until i got it right, and then mastered it. This really slowed down my efficiency, and dragged this whole project out longer than it should have gone. Point is, for such a simple song, I hit my PC’s limit before I thought I would. This will be probably my last lofi remix for now, 2 isnt bad. Who know I might return to it someday, what’s stopping me?       Here’s the real questions though, what’s my primary project really gonna be like? Conceptually speaking. How am I going to integrate this brand/idea/persona into my music, or vice-versa? I know I have a very vague idea of it’s concept. Like I wrote earlier, I still need to find my sound. For now I guess that’s what I should focus on, grinding out one last ost remix and finding my sound during my off time. Well time’s ticking, so Im gonna get to work.

[blankvirtue]

April 28, 2020

- 3:26am -

The theme lately has been steering away from making music a bit to just learn a whole lot of different things. I’ve come to study a bit of areas I lacked in. From learning sound design on serum, to dynamics and mastering, messing with the piano a bit yesterday for a little sesh, studying synthwave music theory and chords and many other things listed in the previous entries, I’ve come a long way. But damn I have so much to learn and decide on, but ultimately that’s all part of the journey. I’ve been so tired lately after work, I’m mentally drained without any will to do anything. I raised my spirits today by watching a cyber punk youtube documentary and even a akira documentary. Both touched on some really cool concepts and facts that I’m more aware of now. These two things are big inspirations for my music conceptually in their own way afterall. I gotta say that it’s sort of changed the way I see it now. I now see beyond it’s aesthetics to say the least. Very inspiring, I was definitely itching to make music after that. A good hack for inspiration is watching other artists doing their thing. Duely noted, Im gonna sleep now so I can slave away and stack up all the paper I could and be able to buy what I need for my music! 

[blankvirtue]

April 24, 2020

- 4:43am - 

Serum is such a crazy ass vst. I’m currently just sitting down and learning how to create a bunch of different sounds. As i learned in the past, watching tutorials is a great way to learn a vst. Serum is a game changer! I really want to learn much more about it, and I’m starting off with easy sounds to make that I really enjoy. I feel like it’s really teaching me sound design as well because it has all the basic wavetables any analog synthesizer has. It’s great, by far better than harmless. I can’t say it’s better than harmor because that thing is a beast as well with it’s resampling tool. I just learned how to make this dark cinematic pulsating sub bass sound, it reminds me of the call of duty main menu lol. It’s really cool though, I will have that now in my soundbank. I also made this 80′s synthwave roland bell, very funky. I see that it’s kinda CPU intensive which is what kinda led me astray from using it all of this time. But now that I have my new RAM sticks coming in I’m gearing up to use it more. Either way I should still utilize sampling if necessary since it would really give me a CPU edge. But Im gonna nap some and come back to learn more :)

- 6:12am -

Serum has me wanting to learn more about general synthesis. Just like in previous VSTs that I've used in the past, most of the sounds from synthwave derive from saw/sine wavetables. They're mostly high in unison, slighly detuned, tagged along with chorus, reverb and delay fx for stereo width. I'm very interested in making a unique sound like this that is similar to a billboard/oliver/kavinsky type of synth. I'm sure Serum will give me some interesting results if I continue to fiddle with it. For now I'm gonna continue to learn new things about through building a soundbank.

- 7:56am -

I just made this HOME Styled synth, it was the first recent tutorials I watched that got me wanting to try Serum again. It isn't really a sound design tutorial though, its a how to sound like HOME video. He glosses over how HOME like to use ninth chords in his music, and something else that he does is switch between minor and major chords interchangeabley. Which really makes things interesting! Sound design can only do so much, the midis draw also make a huge difference. Music theory really helps with all of that, and I'm glad I'm finally learning more about this.

[blankvirtue]

April 23, 2020

- 4:50am -

     Something I’ve been meaning to mention that’s pretty big is that I’ve purchased 300 samples from Splice for $13.95. Splice offers this platform of samples that I can select and use commercially. Not just any samples either, top of the line stuff. Sample packs from likes of Oliver Power Tools, and many many others. I just got them a couple of days ago. Man do they sound crispy. They sound a HELL of a lot better than the samples I had. Now the true challenge, is to make something original out of them.      During my work shift I was watching some youtube videos about the differences between Valhalla Reverb plugins vs Fruity Reverb 2, among other commercially sold reverb plugins. Of course, obviously paid reverbs drastically offer more quality and options overall. So I will definitely be investing in that.      Something else that I watched during my shift was a video offering several free organ and piano vsts. Which was oddly fun to watch, the youtuber made it fun and got me to download some of the vsts, they’re pretty damn good too. When downloading the vsts, the links in the description of the video redirected me to www.vst4free.com to download some vsts. There I started to browse the sight scoping out all the vsts I could gather. After searching for like half an hour I gathered a few and got them added onto FL. Started messing with them a bit, they’re pretty neat for being free, I wasn’t exactly enticed to try and spend too much time on them all right away though.       I kinda abandoned them heh and went back to a different vst that I previously downloaded for free that is good. After messing with Tyrell for awhile I landed on one of its presets that gave me this lofi like sound to it. Gathered some lofi drums, added some reverb using all my new techniques, and attempted to make a short snippet of lofi, testing out a sample from the splice sample. It turned out good really quickly, without too much effort. Fun idea inspired by listening to Hm Surf. I should have more of those to be honest.       I also abandoned this as well and eventually the urge to learn serum sprung in mind again. So after watching some serum tutorials and learning to make a “synthwavey” synth and stealing his chords lol, then using some drum loops from Oliver’s Power Tools, and much tweaking. I managed to muster out something, again, very quickly and very good. The chords I’m using and the drums make it sound very much like Billboard. I’ve been pretty blown away by Serum after this, the sounds that come out of it are just very full and the amount of modulation and automation you could do just make it feel limitless. Not to mention with all the new reverb techniques and fresh samples, it has made a giant different in terms of the quality, not to mention the speed in which I made the project under. I can tell that things are different now, and I’m very excited to see where this leads me.I plan on working on this project more tomorrow, with the intention to make it much more original, instead of being identical to the sample.

[blankvirtue]

April 22, 2020

- 2:15am -

For ten days, Im not proud of the progress made, I know I could have done a lot more. I may have burned myself out or something. I’m gonna try to set a sleeping schedule to get me on track. Plus, I spent a lot of time dicking around or doing other things. I will back to that later though. Anyways, experimentation with the new techniques learned have been conducted. Again, I wouldn’t say that I’ve done a lot of experimenting these 10 days. I believe I did 2 different sessions attempting to master tracks using compression/EQ (49.3.flp & Cuco songs), a bunch of different small sessions with experimenting with reverb compression for slowed tracks (Cuco songs, Mac DeMarco, old SlowedRamen tracks), 1 session heavily utilizing my sample pack (49.flp).

So here’s what I learned from these sessions:

✧ Mastering is fucking hard! I’m still nowhere near where I want to be with this yet. I didn’t really do much these last couple of days, soooo there’s that...

✧ Layering compressors while applying tonal balance helps!

✧ Adjusting the ASDR settings to be equivalent across all compressors, for the most part, makes the song sound coherent and in the same space. The same can be said about reverb settings. That being said, if used intelligently, applying different settings doesn’t hurt.

✧ USE YOUR EARS, NOT YOUR EYES. It sounds obvious, but when I’m mixing applying this new tonal balance tech it could be easy to mix with my eyes now. So more than ever I need to be aware of this!

✧ Song Creation Process Version 1:

Song Arrangement/Instrument Arrangement > Mixing & Dynamic/Tonal Balancing > Mastering > Reference Track Check > Adjustments > Final Version. (It’s hard to not deviate from this process, which theoretically makes a lot of sense. I just have to see how I can apply it during my process) ✧ In the words of Billboard “I don’t believe in writer’s block, how could you not get inspired by the sounds and instruments” “ they’re very inspiring”. This has mentally helped me want to sit down and work on stuff. When you vibe with the sounds it’s inspiring. ✧ I spend too much time overthinking EVERYTHING! I work best under pressure, because I’m forced to come up with something. I’ve tried working with leisure, and it’s always lead to overthinking everything while being very detail oriented which can be mentally exhausting.  ✧ All the dance tracks I’ve examined on SPAN do not match the metrics that are the standard for streaming platforms. I think that it’s due to the fact that the mastering engineers or even artists know how to break the rules to make it sound louder while still being crunched by the streaming platform’s compression algorithm.  ✧ Apparently initially mixing in mono is the best thing you can do. The theory is that if you could make it sound as best as possible in mono, then during the final mixing phases when you apply stereo effects it will be that much better. I want to say this has been proved, but Im gonna do more research on this. ✧ Make the music that I love! Not what sells to the masses. Be authentic, sometimes I find myself thinking “I don’t know if people are going to like this” “I don’t know if people would buy this” This being said, I have to make sure that I am genuinely addicted to listening to it before releasing it. ✧ The reverb compression has completely changed the game for the Slowed Ramen channel. All the songs I previously have applied reverb to do not sound nearly as good as it does with the new reverb techniques applied. Marvelous

[blankvirtue]

April 12, 2020

- 4:03pm -

     I did manage to do something yesterday, even if it didn’t manage to get it written on yesterday’s entry lol. Mostly a lot of studying really, which I will be doing a lot more of. I see now just how much I don’t know, and knowledge is power.      After learning about creating a stereo send bus and reverb sidechaining, I began watching some youtube videos that I got clickbaited into with a video called something along the lines of “Top 5 Mixing Tips” or whatever. Anyways, it glossed over the idea of gainstaging and dynamics, which made me want to research the topic further. I digged up some good info and tools ultimately. Here’s what I learned.       Dynamics is not what I expected it to be. I’ve been using the wrong unit of measurement to determine how loud my song is this whole time. I’ve been measuring my songs loudness by RMS, or rather what the db Meters show on FL. Which is not how loudness is measured.       Loudness is measured by a unit called LUFS (Loudness Meter Full Scale), a unit of measurement that was heavily implemented from 2010 - 2015 when the loudness war was in full throttle.       Now a days artists aim for -14 to -9 LUFS when mixing due to the music streaming platforms demand to keep music at the same volume. -14 is the standard among other regulations that are put into place to keep it a leveled dynamic playing field.      I learned about tonal balance, the distribution of your frequencies for the duration of your song. When you balance your frequencies you're essentially shaping the waveform. My first time seeing this was watching old school Evoke youtube videos of him explaining some of his process. I saw him constantly checking the waveform of the sound he was working on and making changes to it to make it a balanced waveform. After he made changes and noticed that if the waveform would spike anywhere he would EQ/Compress to manipulate the frequencies, ensuring it was balanced across the spectrum.      To sum things up, overall I’ve been learning a lot about mastering, dynamics, and how much I’ve neglected to consider in all of my previous work at this point. As always though, I HAVE to put this stuff into practice and apply this new knowledge to see any results.      I have a lot of experimentation to do with compressors and saturators! So I can begin to analyze and understand what the effects that these tools have with different instruments. I'm particularly interested in experimenting with compressing drums with reverb effects along side mild saturation and distortion to create glitchy drum effects. That ought to be a fun start.

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April 11, 2020

- 5:23am -

     I’ve been so damn tired lately -.- it’s weird being under quarantine and not being able to leave the house and go out. I’ve been unproductive these last couple of days :/      Not completely though! After doing some research I’ve come to learn about mid/side EQing and reverb side chaining and it’s effects on your sounds. It’s really neat and something I’ve always struggled with figuring out. But I think I’m really starting to get a grasp on this stuff.      If I were to create a SEND channel, add a reverb, adjust the settings to make it only a wet signal, I’ve managed to create 2 signals now. One dry signal coming from it’s main bus and the send bus is outputting a wet signal. That’s what I’ve always had trouble understanding is how to separate the two signals so I can manipulate the stereo however I wanted. The reverb would make my mixes muddy. Now I can EQ all of the lower frequencies and then side chain the reverb. Sidechaining the reverb and EQing really shapes the stereo signal in such a different way. It’s crazy how much of a difference it makes.       I made this track out of some of the samples I’ve been gathering to see just how much of a difference it makes productivity wise to get something going. I gotta say it really speedens up the creativity process having everything so organized. It helps that to have good samples available, it heightens the quality of the songs as well.With all these techniques, good samples, and tools I only see my quality of sound going up. I just have to apply everything that I’ve learned correctly.       I’m having a hard time apply it to this new track I made. But I think I’m really figuring it out after experimenting with a slowed & reverb ‘Dreamin’ by Mac Demarco song I was messing with. I noticed the reverb without the EQing and without the sidechain. Makes me feel just how wrong I’ve been using reverb this whole time holy shit lol. Well im off to learn more shit!