such a sick track

ahhhh Paavoharju are amazing

if you like that kind of out there, lofi, alien folk type stuff, you should check out Daisuke Tobari. one of my favs.

his first record from 1999 called Guitar is really weird. it's kinda noisy, hazy, and experimental, but inviting in a really interesting way. all the songs are untitled too.

[02.24] is one of my favorites.

his second record called Drum that he put out a decade later in 2009 is amazing. much less noisy, and it's stripped back to nothing but classical guitar and vocals, but it's got some absolutely beautiful songs and really incredible guitar playing.

the whole album is worth diving deep into, but tracks 2, 4, 6, and 9 are my favorites.

FREE.99 continue to make the illest and most mindblowing stuff imaginable.

This one's probably what I'm most proud of, at least out of stuff that's released.

One of the longest and most detailed tracks I've made, but I think I really succeeded in making it flow and tell a story. Lots of different instruments, genres, and moods touched on.

If the sound is weak to start with, turning up the bass and treble or making it louder is kinda just polishing a turd, to a degree.

I'm gonna say you should definitely experiment with layering. Try it with other gunshot sounds underneath, or even just some other generic foley/impacts that have the power you're looking for.

I'm finding more and more that my favorite songs that I make rarely start with a musical idea, but instead some sort of sound. I usually start by chopping up samples, whether it's of existing music or stuff I make/record/sound design myself, then I write the music around that. It could be drums, textures, or something melodic, but I always like having some sort of foundation to then put guitars or keyboards on top of, instead of starting completely from scratch.

I've dealt with garbage computers for as long as I've been making music. Started out with a decent but outdated desktop PC as a kid, then bought myself a horrible 2009 Macbook that I somehow made work for aaaaaages. "Upgraded" to a 2012 Macbook Pro in like 2018, and "upgraded" to a 2013 iMac in 2021.

As the years have gone on and the music I make is becoming more complex, I'm running into more and more issues. RAM usage, samples cutting out, and of course, all the usual Apple bullshit. Macs pretty much always have a ten year lifespan before they start really breaking down, and whaddaya know, 2023 hit and my 2013 iMac has been running pretty rough. I think it's time to actually upgrade instead of just buying these crappy $200 used Macs that I burn through in a matter of years.

So what's the move? Is it time for me make the switch from Apple back to Windows?

I quit PC gaming as a teenager, and since then, I've kinda stopped caring about computer specs. While I've been shopping online for computers I've been looking at anything with at least a terabyte of storage (on an SSD, i'm thinking my audio issues now are bc i'm on an HDD) and 16 gigs of RAM - any other specs that I should be aware for smooth music production and video editing?

Yeah it's true, they hired a lot of the best Nashville session musicians to be on it, including The Jordanaires to sing backup on I'm Holding You, who worked with Elvis a whole lot.

I've never heard the anecdote about some of them wanting to be removed from the credits - iirc a lot of them really enjoyed working on it - but I wouldn't be surprised, considering it's a bunch of older conservative dudes on an album with Piss Up A Rope and Mister Richard Smoker, lol

For years my go-to piano was the Spitfire Labs Soft Piano, which is a great sounding (and free!) piano, but between the head of Spitfire being outed as a transphobe and the massive oversaturation of that sample library across all sorts of music, I think it's time to switch things up.

So, what are y'all's favorites? Free stuff is always nice, but if it's really, really good, I'm tempted to break my rule of always finding free alternatives for paid plugins.

Right now I'm having a lot of fun with the demo of Pianoteq. I can't afford the full version at the moment, but I'm incredibly tempted. It's physically modeled, not samples of a real piano, based on super complex synthesis of the physics and acoustics of a piano. Because of that it's maybe not as immediately attractive sounding as something from Spitfire or Kontakt, but it makes up for it in playability. If you just punch stuff in the piano roll (which is awesome!), that might not be super important to you, but as a piano player myself, goddamn it's like home sweet home. Just makes me wish I had the space and money for a real upright piano even more.

holy shit yes! me and my homie spikeyguy777 actually made a whole 33 track Ween cover album earlier this year! we both sang and i played all the instruments. we covered some of the classics of course, but also some major deep cuts including two(!) Z-Rock Hawaii tracks.

Skeen and Jean Ween, The Lost Ween Brothers Present: The Lost Ween Brothers' Lost Ween Covers (a Collection Of Lost Ween Covers by Skeen and Jean Ween, the Lost Ween Brothers)