Music

11 entries. 9,878 words.

September, 2017

• Line 6 Spider V 30 Practice Amp. 2017-09-15 5:30 PM.
  • Music
  • Reviews
  
  I bought a new electric guitar amp! Finally. I haven’t had one since around 2001. It arrived from Amazon yesterday. I settled on the Line 6 Spider V 30 for $200. It’s a little 30 watt practice amp. I wanted something I could simply turn on and go, as opposed to something like RockSmith on Steam which takes about an hour to load and has that dreaded input delay. I was undecided between the Spider and a Fender Champion 40 for the longest time. Historically I’ve stuck with “traditional” brands for musical equipment, but I went out on a limb and got the high-tech newcomer. (To me, brands that entered the music scene after the 90s are still “new.”) My main deciding factor was that the knobs looked cooler. :) Also, the Line 6 has a USB output so you can record direct from it, which will come in very handy for me. 603 words.

December, 2018

• Another Year Over. 2018-12-20 2:00 PM.
  • Music
  • Musings
  • Videos
  
  I’m playing RimWorld in pretty much every spare moment of every day right now. This game is just amazing. If MMORPGs had even a tenth of this much interesting gameplay elements, maybe they wouldn’t be dying out. :) Note: I don’t really think MMORPGs are dying out. They’re just evolving into the game equivalent of Marvel summer blockbusters: Designed by focus groups to appeal to the broadest possible audience, which often doesn’t include MMORPG players of the 90s, who are clearly in the minority of gamer audiences these days. 1,279 words.

January, 2019

• Mini Studio Development. 2019-01-30 7:54 PM.
  • Music
  
  I’m doing that thing again where my posts start piling up in Drafts because I write them on my MacBook Air in the living room, but I only add images on my gaming PC in the computer room, and I spend all of my time with my gaming PC actually gaming instead of adding images to blog posts, so the posts just sit here in Drafts until I force myself to add an image some days or weeks later. I know, I know, blog posts don’t *need* images to post, but I’ve been entirely convinced by years of “expert” advice and examples that nobody will ever click on any Internet content unless there is a colorful, compelling thumbnail picture associated with it. 822 words.

July, 2019

• Salvaging Old Music Projects. 2019-07-20 2:51 PM.
  • Music
  • Musings
  
  Today’s post is an experiment in a different writing position. Due to various aches and pains that I mentioned before, I’m constantly looking for new physical positions to write in. Here are the writing positions that I know cause pain over time: Sitting at desktop PC like I’ve done all my life “Standing desk” in front of living room television Sitting in living room chair with laptop in lap Sitting in living room chair with laptop on a mobile laptop stand shelf thingy Lying in bed with laptop on lap Lying in bed with laptop on a stand thingy I recently bought This time, I’m trying to sit in the living room chair, looking at the television, using a wireless keyboard in my lap that is attached to the media PC. This will keep my head in an elevated position, not hunched over, while keeping my arms relaxed at my sides for typing. 1,506 words.

August, 2019

• Brütal Legend – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 5]. 2019-08-05 1:30 PM.
  • Music
  • Reviews
  • Steam
  • Streaming
  • Videos
  
  For undoubtedly many of the same reasons as the rest of the United States, I wasn’t in a very good mood yesterday, so I called an audible and substituted Brütal Legend instead of the game I *planned* to play. I remember enjoying a demo of Brütal Legend on the PS3 years ago, so when I saw a PC version in a Steam sale for $5 in 2013 I had to get it. 399 words.

September, 2019

• How I Rediscovered Internet Radio. 2019-09-07 3:09 PM.
  • Music
  
  Welp it’s happened. Now that Blaugust is over, there’s nothing to write about anymore. :) I stumbled upon an episode of Spotify - Landmark on YouTube and sat down to watch the whole thing. It reminded me of two things: Tears For Fears is one of my favorite 80s bands, and a band from which I’ve never bought any of their music. Songs From The Big Chair is peak “huge 80s sound” which I miss from an audio engineering perspective, and I have a great appreciation for the simplicity and precision of the production in that album. There’s very little more than 4 instruments playing at any given time yet it still somehow sounds like a massive production. 1,369 words.
• REAPER Mania. 2019-09-11 8:11 PM.
  • Music
  
  The inevitable side effect of rediscovering an easy way to listen to new music is the rediscovery of my love to create new music. I’ve been largely stagnant as a musician since around 2000, for various reasons. It’s an extremely time-consuming hobby, at least the way I approach it. Which reminds me, Bhagpuss made me chuckle recently when he wrote: Hobbies settle people. They make life not just bearable but worth looking forward to. It matters that they don't matter - that's the point. If you don't get that then you may (or may not) count yourself lucky. Many, many people don't have a genuine hobby. They don't want one. They don't need one. They feel fulfilled and satisified by doing the practical, purposeful things they need to do. 1,640 words.
• Half-Hearted September Update. 2019-09-17 3:00 PM.
  • Development
  • MMORPG
  • Music
  
  I’m back in a “I don’t really have anything to say” blogging mood. I’ve played maybe, possibly, two hours of games in the last week. I played a little bit more of Max Payne 3, and I logged into World of Warcraft for about 20 minutes to check something. I logged in to check that a wonderful discovery someone made in Classic is, in fact, right there in Retail as well. The main thing I don’t understand about the Classic Phenomenon is why people can’t find the same chill, relaxing fun with friends in WoW Retail, creating memories and tales of adventure just like they’re doing in WoW Classic. It’s essentially the same game, it’s just that the time sinks are mandatory in Classic instead of voluntary. 1,021 words.

August, 2020

• A Desert Sun Yellow Guitar Lost Along The Way. 2020-08-13 3:25 PM.
  • Music
  • Musings
  
  Now there’s a title that’s sure to wreck some page layouts. Thanks to forgetting about blogging for a day, I’m a day behind now, so I’ll be combining two prompts into one post. This works out well, because I don’t want to respond to one of them anyway. The first prompt from two days ago started with SDWeasel over at Unidentified Signal Source: What is something you have lost along the way that you would love to have back? Can be serious or frivolous. 646 words.

October, 2020

• Presenting Adventure Rank Four. 2020-10-30 12:32 AM.
  • Music
  
  Sometimes I cope with daily stress by staring at hundreds of YouTube video clips of The Chase, stuffing food into my mouth, feeling smugly content that I can answer every question about American Football. Sometimes I cope with daily stress by making a thing. This is the latter. It was an idea that just popped into my head one day, fully formed. What if I export the isolated microphone track from one of my game videos, go through it and clip out any noteworthy words or phrases out of context, and set them to a beat? 134 words.

November, 2020

• Three More Tracks. 2020-11-02 2:42 PM.
  • Music
  
  It’s quite a thrill to find out some random word or phrase or sound you recorded months ago just happens to fit perfectly into a piece of music. Also, it’s a great distraction from the election, which is tomorrow. It feels like all of society here in the U.S. is on hold until we see how it turns out. So it’s a lot of waiting and hand-wringing for us here. Personally I’m tired of the speculating, and I’m ready to rip the band-aid off, to find out which version of Awful we actually end up with. 459 words.