what is going on in your musical life

i recorded an actual song for the first time in 3 years

https://soundcloud.com/matthewmathieu/indifference-curves

hey LL, i missed your set last night (my laptop was taken over for a zoom interaction with B's family) but i'm watching the saved video on twitch now! i love the lighting setup, of course! :)

i'd share the link but you wanted to keep it anonymous right?

it's on youtube too now -- if you go to the site above and scroll down, it should be there! no need to post it here :)
i would change a few things if i did it again/had the chance to do it again but i think it went well! i didn't know how long i was playing because i forgot to unplug the thing i was going to use as a timer and had to just estimate. but acc to the youtube it was exactly 25 min. very satisfying!

AND it brought me great personal delight to play two songs with my collab buddies (ilxors!) even though they weren't in the room! i was using my phone to stream and also used my phone to record my drum parts for one of the songs like 4 years ago. the whole series is a bright spot in an otherwise unspeakably gloomy landscape. i feel a little tiny bit better!

also thank you for watching Karl <3

Cool track, m bison! Sounds a bit Roxy Music-ish. Maybe a bit too much treble? Could be my headphones...

no its v possible, im terrible at mixing

also my hearing is probably not the best to be the person responsible for mixing

but thank you!

nice one m bison! did it feel good to get back to writing?

(or at least recording, i guess)

Very much so. I make songs all the time but they usually remain as unfinished loops to be rescued by some more prodigious composer. I struggle with writing lyrics and recording vocals but it’s very easy for me to tap out something interesting in four, eight, or 16 bar phrases. or somethin more unorthodoxically numbered if i’m feeling saucy

and you know you wanna get saucy

don’t tempt me or i’ll try to write lyrics to the song in 7/8 time!!!

i'm having a good coronavirus musical life! i've had a few songs i've wanted to share for a while. i got an electric guitar + amp + some pedals last Fall, 2019, so they're way more guitar-oriented than anything i've written in a while. i wrote them with with the idea of playing live in mind, and i think that simplified my playing in a good way. i've been trying to record them with some old bandmates that are semi-long distance, but it's been frustrating to try to arrange it, and it's taking forever. this coronavirus has kind of settled me on that, realizing i don't want to kick the can down the road much longer on that. i'll probably just post one on my bandcamp, only i have to come up with a new name because i don't like the one i was meaning to use the last 2 years while working on all this

xp https://i.imgur.com/iTcte1l.jpg

If you ever want to collaborate long-distance, I'd love to pitch in!

Nice video, LL!

Started doing a daily four bars of tabletop percussion on instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-PPQOcjzkI/

Also been doing a lot of collabs and remixes, it's clearly the time for it. Everyone's around, and it's less taxing than starting from scratch.

yeah -- my first drum project ever started because of isolation/remote collaboration and i continue to invite anyone who would like to collaborate to hmu!! this is sort of my "thing"!

i will say that i enjoyed moving out of that realm A LOT and am not thrilled to be in quarantine but it's a familiar place for me. we'll get out eventually and we can play music together in the same room and it will be exhilarating on that day!

Just catching up with stuff posted, really love LL's live show and am very into the squiggly acid feel of DJI's 'Cavern'. Listening to Salt Horse now, sounds good!

most of what i do these days is run my organ through a bunch of effects pedals and zone out on drones or dubby soundscapes. it's fun but it doesn't really feel the same as writing a song. it feels more self-indulgent. i'm not playing much guitar and if i do it's for 5-10 minutes unplugged. i've gotten rusty on playing guitar and really rusty on songwriting. mostly the part of getting over that hump of existential angst about the difficulty and pointlessness of writing a song and actually doing it. so it's all organ drones for now.

NA - Please record something and send it to me!! I’ll convince you it’s not self indulgent later :)

Thank you for listening emil.y <3

https://imgur.com/a/avTljEb

terrible photo of my current setup

i just recorded something but it already has organ percussion on it. i don't know if you want to play over that.

https://imgur.com/a/avTljEb

curious about which pedals you have!

my gear is set up in the corner of my daughter's bedroom and one of our cats is always sleeping in my chair

on the board - mini tube screamer, zvex mastotron, big muff op art, garage tone delay, earthquaker ghost echo, ehx canyon delay. i've got a few other things in a bin.

that was my guitar board when i was playing in a dumb band last year and i haven't swapped any of them out

Business mostly wiped out? Check. No space in the apartment? Check. Time to buy monitor speakers and a digital piano? Obviously.

I just finished arranging a really gorgeous record for a really fantastic artist. Excited to make use of solitary-time in tracking the whole thing at home.

Other than that I’m figuring out how to get music videos made remotely by similarly quarantined individuals lol

actually you know what i like this organ stuff i've been doing and i shouldn't diminish it. i'll put it up somewhere soon.

That’s right!!!
Send me the next thing you record please I’ve been listening to lots of dub :)

(sorry to x-post with my gif thread)

alright, finally updated my bandcamp shit!

https://zs25zs.bandcamp.com/track/twelve-tone-era

LL i might also upload the one where i recorded the drums at your house, too!

the song is kind of gloomy but the bass part is bouncy motorik, so it might be a hit with small children (i assume small children love bouncy motorik?)

I am (in a very profound way) not contributing to any ilx comp cus some Canadian fuck destroyed my acoustic guitar (MY MAIN EXCUSE) also "my piano crouched in the corner of my room with all its teeth bared" also SOCIAL ISOLATION: my Ragdoll Physicist buddy can't come round and teach me how to work these machines that I own that go beep and sometimes boop and I totally had some lyrics on the go, it went "patent-trollimg the concept of isolation/ cus I took it to new levels, I deserve some compesation", there that's going for free, I'm RETIRING to my bed for the next year, til someone comes round and works these machines for me me or at least explains how to export what I made on the Korg Nintendo Switch bisnes. Cos that shit BANGS, no way to show it to the world tho...

phone video of Korg Switch!

for the children

https://support.korguser.net/hc/en-us/articles/360000676863-Can-I-export-songs-?page=2

I have Gadget for iOS if you want help, but sounds like the easiest way is to just hook the headphone jack up to a sound card input.

the two organ things i recorded this week:
the "dub" (not really dub but lots of bass and delay) track - https://soundcloud.com/user-378919876-468565288/wg1
drone track - https://soundcloud.com/user-378919876-468565288/wg2

wow na, i love these.

thanks! i think i'll try and do a couple more things in this vein and then throw it all up on bandcamp

yeah, you should! love the little thunderstorm breakdown at around 3:00 in the dub track

Pretty cool stuff. The first one sounds like FSOL a bit.

ok so sitting at my desk all day is a bit much: but on the plus side, now, along with listening to NA's organ stuff I have listened to Karl's bouncy ditty- not my thing but I do really like the painting! - and watched ll's drum thing on youtube (at least I think I did, as I don't actually know anyone here irl- but how many solo female drum things could there be in the Quarantine concerts?)- it was cool. Liked when the other instruments came in (virtually? or recorded?) and it got kind of Neu-ey. Had it on in the background while I worked, occasionally flipping to youtube to have a watch.

that was me! the other instruments were early recordings i made (with n/a and ilxor tarfumes) remotely and so i thought it was appropriate to play them for a quarantine/isolation themed series. i haven't been playing that long (7 years in June) and this was my first time ever playing for a camera/webcast type situation. (also my first time ever being broadcast doing anything, now that i think about it) i got over the fear of cameras by only having like 18 hours to prepare for this thing.

thank you for listening!

xp thanks for taking the time all the same, Tib! it's kinda funny because it's typically not really my own thing either. i feel like i listen to 99% ambient and weird instrumental jams, yet when i hit record i often end up trying to write a Beths song (the other 1% of my music listening, i guess).

creative outlets often act like emotional converters or funnels, i think, by which i mean they can focus the creators attention on emotions or moods that don't otherwise seem to be prominent. i feel like i'm often pretty lighthearted or silly irl, for example, but whenever try to sit down and invest time in writing (prose or narratively, i mean), suddenly i'm just like "the only thing i can write about is death and how to prepare for death", or whatever. the joy of life goes out the window. that's kind of a weird example, but i think a similar thing can apply to other emotions and mediums, in surprising ways. i feel so morose when i try to seriously write, and when i paint (in brief experience) i find myself feeling strangely calm and accepting. not in a new age way, but in a "i will just paint this corner of a house with shingles. i will just focus the little shadow shingles. it's enough to do just that" way, which is not at ALL how i go through my normal daily life. and with music i guess it's often a nervousness that feels more true to my inner self.

not sure where i was going with all that, but curious how others draw connections between their music and their emotions, particularly wrt different genres (e.g., when i'm focusing on writing instrumental music to accompany a video or animation i made, it comes out sounding very differently, and I *feel* very different as i'm making it, like i'm a different musician with a contradictory perspective)

You know, I always wrote lyrics on personal topics, but decided in the last several years or so that I didn't want to anymore. I actually wrote a couple of sets of lyrics that were fictional, just based on some historical things that were of interest to me. And I was happy with them. More recently, I've been able to finish some things with more impressionistic lyrics. I had tried that before, but never succeeded.

i think of my musical voice as a voice i can use to express whatever i want -- it changes but whatever comes out of me is "my voice"
i don't feel pressure to have it match my irl personality at all
that is part of what i love about making music? that sort of freedom to say whatever i want. i have yet to use words to do this but maybe someday.

this has definitely been a big obstacle keeping me from writing any song songs anymore. i used to be ok with shutting off that concern and writing lyrics that were abstract or about something small or dumb but now i'm immediately like "WHAT do i need to SAY about the WORLD" and so my solution has been not writing songs at all any more

which is dumb because i've never been someone who writes personal songs (only rarely) or creates art to process my feelings. making art of any kind has always been more of an intellectual exercise or a way to zone out and not think, combined with the satisfaction of producing something concrete. so i don't know why i feel this pressure now. probably some combination of getting older and being more in touch with my feelings and the world feeling more desperate and the scarcity of my musical production making it feel like what i do produce has to be particularly meaningful

i think of my musical voice as a voice i can use to express whatever i want -- it changes but whatever comes out of me is "my voice"
i don't feel pressure to have it match my irl personality at all

oh me, neither! what i meant to express was that i think it's interesting how sometimes creative process kind of automatically self-selects for certain aspects of a personality, depending the medium or the project. that may be just a subjective or personal thing, but i was just curious if others felt like that too. if anything, i think i especially enjoy working on projects that let me explore aspects of my personality or emotions that i don't normally get to use in every day life.

i used to be ok with shutting off that concern and writing lyrics that were abstract or about something small or dumb but now i'm immediately like "WHAT do i need to SAY about the WORLD" and so my solution has been not writing songs at all any more

yeah, i stopped writing with lyrics (or at least produced much, much less) for several years (late 20s to a couple years ago) for a similar concern. i suddenly felt so bad and embarrassed, like anything i could possibly say is terrible and irrelevant. plus you have incidents like when turrican listened to an ilxors song lyrics and made fun of them, which is like the amateur songwriter's worst nightmare. in my mind, every listener was turrican, just waiting to pounce on something and criticize. but i guess where it's different is that you're saying more broadly that anything you could say about the world wouldn't be meaningful to others (which is not right! just gotta throw that in there!), whereas i was hung up on feeling incapable of producing something that would be meaningful to others.

it is all very weird, and perhaps in a couple years i'll feel ashamed that i shared my new songs with lyrics. but i hope not, because when other people share something that is revealing, i always think more of them, never less, even when i don't like the music much! i'm just kind of like "i appreciate that you care about this." dunno, it's hard to explain. i go back and forth between shame and sharing, but i generally feel better when i'm sharing.

oh me, neither!
oh, me neither!

i meant the latter!