the most significant change this year, and the reason i'm interested in tracing the year in general, is the habit of daily writing -
however, this didn't start until march
at the start of the year, i was, i think, working on this album somewhat daily:
last year, i finished my 'first' (somewhere around third, or even fourth?) little album, 'how to fall to pieces forever'
i originally intended to have vocals on that one, but i was never quite happy with mine -
so this album was intended as a follow-up, and a place to experiment with vocals -
but 'how to fall to pieces' was made in garageband on a little mac- this was my first big project with linux audio -
i was pretty intent on using qtractor for it's light weight and simple ui, despite the community's warnings (it's not a daw!)
this album isn't one i talk about a lot - it kind of 'finished' in a half-baked state, which i'll explain later on
i like to think this was one of the last gasps of my obsession with computer music pop fame -----
while working on 'slit tell', i found myself doing extended organ outros, just for fun
from there, i started recording them specifically, pushing for longer periods of time-
some of these turned out really wonderfully. it was the first application, too, of a certain philosophy
that came to dominate my work this year: rrrrrrose azerty-style prolificity ----
i began experimenting with drawing around this time -
in my notebook, in the dark, i would trace the lines, blobs, etc. that were apparent in my vision-
i found the results to be interesting -
but it didn't really become more than that until i got a sketchbook, and took it to the battlefield-
i started this ritual, walking with my hand on my heart to a certain spot,
taking care not to look at the ground, and to thank the world when i tripped or stepped in cold water
when i got to my spot, i sat, and put the sketchbook against my chest, facing out -
and i would meditate while tracing what i saw, open or closed eye,
what i could hear around me, the birds, squirrels, and 'creeping things'-
even how it felt against my body was welcome impulse to motion ---
it was the first time i really encountered spirituality outside of organized religion -
during this period, i think, i started to help more with the dolphin composition process--
there was also a lot of work going into this yet-unreleased music video ----
so, thru the year, zach would knock on my door occasionally and get me to record keys parts --
which, i figure, is just as much a part of the year, even if nothing has released of it yet ----
on christmas eve 2021, i bought myself a little tablet for reading -
eventually, i stumbled on the pamphlets of the church of the sub-genius and thought, yeah, i could do that -
one day i opened up vim and wrote one of those, just getting my long-gestating thoughts out -
this, for whatever reason, finally hooked up the satisfaction of having written, with the impulse to sit and write -
i immediately, and without any real resolution, somehow started doing these daily -
eventually they became more journalistic, less pamphlet-y, but still -
the realization i could get more out of less time thru suspension of criticism led me to a future project, but we need to circle around ---
because of the aformentioned video, which required a lot of time, effort, and money,
i became discontent! having some editing under my belt from school, and some familiarity with the linux av ecosystem,
and also a cheap little digital camera from mckays', my resentment towards the Big Video led me towards a Small Video -
i got one or two shots of zach out on a walk, and experimented with applying many filters to the low-res footage --
then added a yet-unreleased dolphin song, (which was eventually scrapped, more or less)
and made my first music video --- this one wasn't fantastic,
but again, the satisfaction of having made it (and watching it over and over again late into the night with a couple glasses of wine)
connected, in my mind, to the drive to sit down and create it - meaning, i started doing it a lot ----
in the music department, however, i was becoming discontent with 'slit tell' -
and for whatever reason, i began having trouble with midi in qtractor -
so, not having access to a keyboard, i started just making several tracks of just kicks -
i found it easier, faster, and more enjoyable on the whole -
i still struggled getting a decent mixdown, but i was able to throw some tracks together over the span of a couple hours each,
and over the period of about a week, i ended up with five tracks i was happy with -
i took some footage i had of me running around the house, and the drawings from the woods,
and made a little visual ep ----- this was the first thing i made that i felt
i could be proud of having made for the rest of my life ------
that's a very nice feeling
the only issue, to zach at least, in the first curtain caller video,
was there being no connection between the audio and visual - at least, not him singing to the camera -
so connor, zach and i went out to the battlefield again to collect some of that footage -
we got plenty more, but when i synced all the footage of zach singing, it started to take shape ---
experimenting more with different compositing options, all the footage really fell together ---
this is still possibly the best thing i've made up to now - one of those projects that almost makes itself -
i think this one might come out eventually, one way or another ---
i was on a little bit of a tear, so to speak, with the video work -
i brought my camera with me often, and on a particular hangout with josh and kenny,
i ended up giving both of them the camera, - josh had it while we were at the sculpture field,
then kenny took it to his workplace, where there was a show -
those pieces, plus some rrrrrose azerty music, ended up making this video -
it's a very sweet, personal little artifact -- one of my favorite things -
which was also probably the start of another philosophy - that of making as many things with my friends as i can coax them to -
following my 'one for you, one for me' pattern
next i wanted to make another dolphin video-
i scraped another track off barrel of dolphin refuse - one of my favorites -
and i started working with a tool i had been curious about for a long time - blender
i knew i wanted shapes and colors, and could get a lot out of just making a sphere move -
i ended up manually keyframing this long animation of orbs flying through space -
just this animation alone, i really loved - but i had another idea in mind for it -
i wanted to get zach's "singing into the camera", and had a couple ideas how to composite it -
but zach's a hard guy to coax, so this sat on the shelf awhile ----
in the meantime, i had another couple tracks sitting on the hard drive,
that i had made sometime after sunk, largely to cope with some weird obsessive episodes ---
i did the kick thing again, but recorded harmonica, guitar, and recorder as well
and even figured out how to get the midi working again (thanks a2jmidi)
since it was just two tracks, i thought to make another blender animation - again, completely manually keyframed ---
at this point, i was still too proud to watch tutorials, so this was painful, but turned out super idiosyncratic ---
while rendering this, i sat outside to read, and four hours in, a raccoon came up to me with a baby in it's mouth (:
i was pretty eager to get this done before tour, which was slowly closing in ----
but i had started experimenting with drum and sfx synthesis with geonkick ---
i had this idea, having written at this point about 50 entries,
to write a program i called an 'index sequencer' - which isn't very clear ---
the idea was that i could search a term, and look thru the paragraphs i had written that contained that term -
from there, i could sequence the paragraphs , and output more organized writing
i got most of this working, actually, in perl
but my insert function had an off-by-one error, which duplicated paragraphs each time
i ended up really liking this, and after maybe 200 arbitrary inserts,
i found i had a little book that was very hard to read
i named it weaving, because that's something that i had been thinking about,
and had written a lot too -
tho i didn't put this out until after tour,
this is another single/ep/just-a-few-tracks-i-was-working-on
i took the sunk/smarties approach, but generated several sounds to use instead of samples i got online -
this ended up super chaotic, and it's one of the noisier things i've put together
and this one hasn't gotten any visual treatment - it's just a little ep!
with that all done, it was time for tour ---
to replace my daily writing habit, given my lack of a computer,
i brought my sketchbook and committed to making a drawing each day -
this turned out ~interesting~ enough, but i realized it wasn't exactly my forte -
i more-or-less developed a style, and had some fun experiments with learning proportion and using a straight-edge
i read a lot about paul klee and tried to incorporate what i learned from his notebooks -
but overall, it ended up being the lesser of the tour projects ---
tho i didn't set out to do this, i did end up doing some writing -
i had dabbled with fiction in the past, so i wrote little one-pagers
also, i thought to develop some characters thru interviews ---
these all came back later --------
i also brought my little sony cybershot on tour, with a couple goals:
footage of every venue -- 30 seconds of every band we play with -- as much else as is appropriate
i ended up with about four and a half hours of footage ----
i'm not sure if i'll post it, or when i might use it, but i have watched it all the way thru
raw footage is interesting. watching raw footage should be more common imo
this period has a lot of projects that didn't quite make it off the ground ---
having written a lot, and starting a new job with an old friend of mine who just graduated college,
we decided day one to start working up a zine ---
i drafted this article three times, before becoming very frustrated with it -
it was an exlpanation (a lot like this one) of the creative process i had come to understand
particularly one that suspends self-criticism by understanding the self as lacking free will -
and how art can improve through repeated, smaller workflows by building fluency and preference -
plus a couple other aspects, like assuming nobody will engage, it'll all be forgotten and lost, etc ---
i think i might still come around to this - my thoughts have developed a lot -
but it centered a certain frustration i was having - that i had made lots of things,
but didn't feel like i had 'done a good job' -
being unable to write this article about not needing to write well (and microdosing) brought me to a particular kernel -
i realized that more than simple habit, i was looking for self-discipline ---
after awhile of trying to get zach to come in and let me finish the video,
i figured i would just test the technique i had in mind myself -
so i hung up a white bedsheet and set up my projector with the animation -
i did a quick take of singing into the camera and dancing a little,
looking at the animation on the bedsheet,
and in editing, i overlayed the animation again - the effect it made was really great -
i ended up finishing it with a couple denoising effects -
i had also been reading samuel delany's "about writing", on recommendation from a dear friend --
and since i had some characters sitting around in my notebooks, i thought to take a stab at writing, following his model of it -
this took up the majority of mid-july thru august: a fifteen chapter novella --
at first, i wrote very quickly and largely ----- but about halfway thru,
i noticed i began to 'tighten up' - my writing took longer, i considered each word more,
i went from finshing a chapter each night to one chapter every two or three nights --
which were often even shorter ---
this wasn't my first longform writing -- (i wrote some slasher scripts in college) ---
but this was a particularly challenging extended effort -
and when i finished, i went thru a weekend or so of misery, feeling it also wasn't very good---
nonetheless, little bits would come back to me thru the day, and it felt good to have said so much of what was on my mind ---
i immediately started working on another ---
i spent awhile putting together a framework for this sequel to april,
which was actually pretty interesting -
it had to do with the fibonacci sequence, and stacking narratives on each other
i wrote, i think, four chapters out of thirty ---
but between wanting to rewrite the first half of april, and a couple other ideas
i tried to put together a sort of planned regimen for my work
one idea i've toyed with a lot for a program
is the 'prompting machine' - basically, i would input the steps of a project
then, during my daytime work, it would spit different steps at me -
that way, i could eventually put together larger projects without having to foreground one or the other,
and hopefully balance out some of my capriciousness -
what i did instead was make a little to-do list,
i named it school, - i just wrote in the steps at the beginning of the day and tried to get around to everything -
most of the time, it would look something like this: journal, chores, writing, music, coding ---
during this time of writing, and being dissatisfied with my job,
i came up with a get-rich-quick scheme - a creepypasta game -
i had a lot of good ideas for it, i think, but a lot relied on procedural generation-
i figured it wouldn't hurt to work on it a little every day and see how far i got -
really, i should've been looking up youtube tutorials -
but all the same, i just worked on it in godot, and i got to where u could run around a map-
overall, i spread myself too thin, and didn't really get anything done ---
during this time, i made a lot of friends
after attending finster fest, which was my first exposure to finster and the paradise gardens,
i was eager to cook something up
by using the follow path and camera tracking constraints on blender,
i was able to put together pretty interesting visuals with minimal effort,
giving me more time to experiment with shaders
also, i had been practicing drum synthesis and kinda spammy loops -
so, i threw some improv'd (and quantized) synths on there,
and found i had discovered a recipe to quick, interesting little animations -
in the nature of finster, i decided just to number them,
and make them indefinitely -
i've learned plenty from making these - more than i have from almost any other individual project -
just by virtue of it being a series of small works which explore the same workflow -
for example, to begin with, i had to render each animations 25 frames at a time
at 50 frames a second, for 2 minutes, this takes a long time --
on accident, for the fifth one, i rendered all 6000 frames without crashing,
but as individual pngs- being able to render without my constant attention was super helpful,
and after that, i found some ffmpeg commands to stitch the frames together -
that, and just spending sustained time with the same tools - ardour, geonkick, zynaddsubfx, calf plugins, blender
has benefitted me much more than the 'school' era --
for their 'six pack of hits' release, ol' eve jean had the idea
to make karaoke-style music videos for each track,
using locations from chattanooga for the backdrops ---
we ran around town one day and got all the footage ---
i really wanted to have some sort of bumper between songs,
like a lot of sing-along dvd's would have -
so, after working several weeks on the videos, using the techniques and familiarities from all the videos and ep's,
the songs turned out pretty well - after multiple passes -
and while i still had to render the blender bumpers painstakingly 25 frames at a time,
by the end of the month, it was all put together ---
i also got ex to help me transfer it to vhs and back, for the fuzz -
i actually stil have the vhs we used - which had school announcements before the video,
in which the students call out birthdays, then tell the teachers to stay tuned for a 'science thing' -
i really like the vhs version - but the colors suffered, only one audio channel was persevered,
and at the end of the day, it's probably best not to distribute footage of minors without explicit consent ---
so we went with the non vhs version --- but i still have the other one, for kicks ---
at this point, i started to really like the idea of art that isn't made to be distributed for everyone ---
having done a decent amount of writing, i came back around to this neocities page
which i had only been using for download links -
i wrote several posts, just outlining my thoughts on a couple different things -
but just like this, it was messy and raw
i took them all down, but i have them saved on my computer
i was intersted in having a personal page, and i suppose i still am -
but if i'm doing web development ----
i started to like the idea of a public access, local archive of live music --
i started trying to collect video and audio from different shows -
the first was the man who fought the sun at sluggo's,
where sam recorded tapes and i sat on the floor with a tiny, low-res digital camcorder,
the next week, sam played, and i used that same camcorder ---
one of my friends hooked me up with a digital 8 track,
so i started capturing some dolphin group practices and live performances,
as well as others ---
recently, i started working with sql to try to put together the archive locally
this has been going slowly- and i work most nights, which keeps me from getting recordings as much as i'd like -
but i also have a friend or two interested in helping out, grabbing more recordings -
the goal is, eventually, to deploy a little website - where people can stream or download local art -
between live performances, demos, videos, little audio-visual trinkets of any sort,
it's a pretty long-term goal, but i have some experience with hosting websites,
and even if i don't end up deploying a website, having the archive itself is valuable ---
i also took to recording myself, somewhat daily,
playing little sets of about 45 minutes - just piano and vocals -
it's nowhere near presentable yet, but it's been good practice -
even if it just makes me realize i need to practice deliberately ----
my most recent project, besides this little post and continuing bup,
is this movie i've been planning -
i realized i had done almost every aspect of filmmaking i would need to make something interesting -
so i started coming up with scene ideas i could make myself, then wrote them on index cards,
and put them in envelopes -
when i had enough, i got sam over to help me put them together to a coherent enough sequence
i've started collecting footage and experimenting with the compositing processes i'll need -
this, supplemented with music journalling, archive work, and bup, is a pretty comfortable place -
this is by no means exhaustive -
there are little things that slipped thru the cracks, tracks i never released,
half baked little projects, plans, and passing fancies -
but starting with daily writing, i've slowly come to a place where the work i want to do is relaxing ---
it doesn't take a lot of effort to make a lot of things -
if u just start with things u can do in an hour, suspend criticism, and allow neuroplasticity to work it's magic -
creative habit isn't too difficult to pick up - and having things to show for time spent on this planet
brings a lot of peace