I would love to be able to play arpeggios all up and down the keyboard. I can imagine how it would sound (“audiate”), but my hands can’t do it gracefully, and I certainly couldn’t read it! After doing the Morning Noodle I wrote some of it out in Finale. When I had written it by hand, the notes on ledger lines looked horrifying, like Terra Incognito. But when written neatly via Finale it looked less intimidating.
I can’t remember, when I was in elementary school did have trouble reading my own handwriting?
I played some modified arpeggios based on inversions of A minor. The pattern is: top note of the arpeggio, approach second note from underneath, third note of arpeggio, then bottom note and up one.
The chords I used are Fma7 (FACE) Dm6 (FABD), Asus2 (EABD) and Am in the 2nd inversion (EACE).
This could be over a bassline of F, G, A — the ol’ flat 6, flat 7, 1 of a minor scale.
That means that FABD is, like, a G9 with the G missing
Ending on an Am in the second inversion means it’s a cadence but not a perfect cadence, I forget what they are called. Imperfect?
I just remembered, there is a nice chord progression based on FACE FABD
We are making good progress on getting my new rig together. The motherboard arrived, and the graphics card is on the way. I still have to make some decisions about RAM, storage, and fans. (Budget? Go all out? Should I get shiny ones with rainbow LEDs?) I’m getting more excited about jumping into Unreal 5 and trying things out — just putting objects together and adding sound to it. For example, you walk up to a sphere and as you get closer the sound is louder. Or the sound changes.
Here’s Thor Hall encouraging beginners like me to give it a try. Someone called him the Mister Rogers of game design and that seems so fitting.
Another thing I’m looking forward to with the new rig is downloading some music software. I’m especially looking forward to this plugin, called “Noctua”. Cameron had the idea to put together a collection of samples, including ones he recorded using a microphone that can “hear” electromagnetic fields (called an EMF microphone). With help from folks at UVI and after a year of work, this collection of samples became an actual software instrument, with ways to modify the sounds and layer them. Cameron’s project is free, and the plugin from UVI required to play it (called UVI Workstation) is free also.
Lately I have been trying to set up my daily schedule so that I do very specific things at specific times, so that the habit gets locked in. For example one new habit is the Sunset Chicken Visit. Every day close to sunset my husband takes the dog for a walk. I use that as my cue to drop whatever I’m doing and head out to the chicken coop to deliver their food, water and snacks. This has been working really well because it’s a small enough task that I can jump up and take care of it. We’re not talking clean the entire coop — just a quick delivery!
I was trying to think of a similar habit to encourage making music every day. I really enjoy sitting at the piano while having my morning coffee (being very careful not to get coffee on the piano!!!); I enjoy playing random melodies and figuring out chords to accompany them. But since my music notation skills are still weak, when I scratch stuff down, it’s by spelling the chords out. On one sheet of notebook paper there’s the melody, the chord symbols, the chord voicing spelled out, and maybe some noteheads to indicate a rhythm. It’s hard to read.
What would be pleasant to write on? Easier to read?
When I was in elementary school, I always liked using the giant paper that had room for a drawing at the top and writing at the bottom.
So I got myself some fancy graph paper. The sheets are huge (11 x 17) and are bound to a stiff cardboard backing. The paper is blank on the back, and is solid enough that it stands up to lots of erasing. It sits beautifully on the piano’s music ledge. I also got some 3-ring binders that are 11 x 17 and open sideways (landscape orientation).
I’m not going to be taping my art to the refrigerator, so I thought this might be a good way to make a ritual out of it. Look, look! Another sheet in the special binder!
My goal is to fill a page with ideas every morning. Noodling. Remember I write really big, like a second grader, so “filling a page” is not a lot. Yesterday’s page took two hours and today’s took an hour and 15 minutes.
I remember reading Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way; she talks about making a habit of morning writing
Morning Pages are three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning. *There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages*–they are not high art. They are not even “writing.” They are about anything and everything that crosses your mind– and they are for your eyes only. Morning Pages provoke, clarify, comfort, cajole, prioritize and synchronize the day at hand. Do not over-think Morning Pages: just put three pages of anything on the page…and then do three more pages tomorrow.
I love this video where David Bennett talks about recreating “I am the Walrus”. He used dozens? of virtual instruments in his DAW and was very thankful to have a new computer that could stand up to the load.
This weekend I spent several hours watching videos about how to put together a PC for different purposes. In my case I want to do music production, video editing, and game design using Unreal 5.
This particular build was specifically for gaming
Here’s a guy who specializes in video editing. I thought his metaphors (CPU is like engine, motherboard is like chassis) were very helpful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4twTZpRn_k
He described how he has 3 hard drives (not disk drives, but the new NVMe solid state drives). One is for the operating system and his software; one (called D) is for data, and the 3rd one (called V) is for just video. He also has external storage, what I have always called an external disk drive, but he referred to as NAS (Network Attached Storage). He uses that for video that he is not actively working on, and also for backup.
He mentions the following site to help you figure out what power supply you’ll need for all the parts
Here is Venus Theory, who makes electronic music (using lots of plugins), creates sophisticated videos, and is also a gamer. He posted this 2 years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyGLaqN4nDo
Here’s another video about building a PC specifically for music production. At the end of the video he puts it to the test by loading something like 60 instruments at the same time. He also talks about a new type of music plugin that takes advantage of your graphics card instead of doing all the work on the CPU.
Here Microcenter builds a PC for editing their in-house videos
This talks about how different parts of the PC are responsible for what part of the process
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2O7P7Bmvg8
When I made videos before, I used Movavi and I’m trying to figure out what to try next. I really don’t want to get into Adobe’s subscription model. I had heard about free software called Davinci Resolve and didn’t understand how it could be free! After watching this video I understand better. I guess the business model is comparable to that of Unreal 5 (free until you make X amount of money with it; then they get a percentage of your earnings). In the case of Resolve the base version is free, but the pro version is a one-time cost of $ 300-some. The free version means that you can learn their system, then if you feel you need more features you will probably turn to them instead of somebody else. Also it eliminates a lot of piracy?
Finally, here is a video giving suggestions for motherboards that fit the particular type of CPU we have already purchased.
At this point my brain is a blur of acronyms and I still haven’t decided what kind of motherboard or graphics card to get. But I have gotten excited about the whole process instead of feeling overwhelmed by it.
You can learn anything you want to. Anything. The idea that you are too old to learn is insane to me. You can learn anything dude. So learn some shit and stop worrying about “Oh man is it too late for me?” No. No! Stop putting invisible barriers in front of yourself as an excuse for not just sitting there and learning some new shit. Don’t give yourself an excuse. Just go do it. You could go onto Youtube right now and learn any goddam thing you want to. There’s a video for that. There’s a tutorial for that; you have access to all of it.
Thor is one of my newer discoveries — I found him because he popped up on Youtube shorts. Apparently these are snippets from his gaming streams? He is talking to younger folks; a lot of them are asking him “how did you get to where you are”. He has some encouraging words for them. Little does he know, he’s also encouraging this old lady.
You don’t need to be an amazing programmer, chat. Do you know why? Because Undertale exists. Undertale is one of the worst programmed things I have ever seen. It is horrible. There are rooms that have hundreds of if statements in a row checking the same value and then it sets the value to zero and then it checks it again. All of the dialogue in all of Undertale is in a single switch case statement thousands of cases long. For the whole game. But you’d never know that. And it doesn’t matter. Because the player doesn’t care. And the player would never know. That’s it! Go make games.
I’m applying this advice to myself as a musician. According to this vid, I am indeed part of the intended audience:
