I’ve been inspired lately by authors Hank and John Green, who have been making a series of weekly 4-minute videos for the past FIFTEEN YEARS. The videos are in vlog format and are an endearingly random mix of comedy, inspiration and information. I’ll be talking more about them later; but one of the things I especially appreciated was “we gradually got better at this by making a lot of cringey vids and a lot of mistakes”. Here John talks about how therapy (both physical and mental) is a way of re-wiring the brain.
Another inspiration lately has been the music “connections” I have made through Youtube and Twitter. (I’m using scare quotes because the connections are 99 % one-way. ) My favorite content creators don’t interact with me (except for “thankyou to my Patreon subscribers for your support!” and the occasional “like” on Twitter), but I do know a fair amount about them — their challenges, their creative process, which instruments they play, where they went to music school and how that affected them, etc. I enjoy knowing these things and it helps me to feel like I AM part of a music community even though currently I don’t have any interactions with musicians IRL.
A recent Twitter music connection happened when a relatively new Twitter follow of mine posted a fascinating thread on “Perlin noise”.
Lets talk about a single texture that's been a huge game changer in the world of gaming.
And the crazy part? You probably haven't even noticed it. This texture is literally EVERYWHERE. And there's something pretty special about it that's made it so popular.
— Thomas @ Stylized Station (@StylizedStation) May 12, 2023
It’s used in visual textures in video games — an obvious example is the Fog Gates in the Dark Souls series, but it’s also used for hundreds of other things such as rippling grass, reflections on water, and elevations on a map. And music! It can be used to add texture to music. When I searched for “Perlin noise” and “soft synth” I found a link to a softsynth called Vital
https://vital.audio/
and learning more about that, I found a whole series of videos by Venus Theory. Here’s one specifically about Vital
Cameron’s videos are very different from my usual music education content (ex. Adam Neely, 8bit Music Theory, David Bruce Composer). I was curious about his background, which led me to this interview
What he had to say about his work process and his path as a musician was very helpful, like “OK (deep sigh), yeah, I’m ready to come back to making music again”.
