2022-06-13
on april 26, 2020 i was playing some web game on itch.io and ncase's adventures with anxiety came up as a related game..
=> https://ncase.itch.io/anxiety | https://ncase.me/anxiety/
i played it, then looked at the resources link it gave. in the "Habits to protect your 'becoming a better person' needs:" section, it linked beepbox as a way to make music. so with some bare knowledge from decathlon, i started to. each took a substantial time to make... my loops are kinda meh sometimes bang (for me). apparently what people do to improve is look at tutorials but i did not. also, transcribing songs and doing covers from existing scores but i get too discouraged from bad attempts at the first (should practice) and don't do the second since i dont have any instruments and the songs i do want to cover electronically arent transcribed already.
in fall 2020 i took a music 101 class online from a local community college (my last one, i stopped doing those when my brain and work ethic died). it wasn't useful in the knowledge sense but it did accelerate my motivation to make music and reread the decathlon music theory guide. then, one of my friends shared their fl studio account with me and that kinda signaled the end of this era, but i barely made anything in that daw. then i got ableton ;) and also barely made anything.
recently been thinking about how i used to make beepbox content, and i archived them sometimes, so i'm checking out what i came up with for the first time in a long while. just criticizing them from my perspective as their creator, excluded some demos
=> 2020-04-26
my first creation. channel 1 is very awkward and discordant, im just placing down notes randomly until i find something good. also the percussion is very low.
=> 2020-05-06
not sure if i didn't make anything or if i didn't archive the links to the songs i made in between this and the previous loop. just testing how visual arrangements sound. the bass sounds nice standalone but not together and the 4th bar melody is very pretty.
thought 'what if i made :3 but in music'. the rest is expanding on the melodical quality of that :3 and testing out dyads and chords. pleasant
=> 2020-05-07
experimenting with ups and downs. also pleasant, traditional chinese song vibes, but percussion is weird
=> 2020-05-07
experimenting with lead-ins to chords, ups and downs, trying out note envelopes. what a prolific day for music!
=> 2020-05-08
trying to make the vocals to lemon demon - ode to crayola but im really bad at pitch recognition and this could even be in the wrong key. (i never learn pitch recognition throughout this whole saga btw)
=> 2020-05-08
this fucking sucks
=> 2020-07-28 the terminal beach demo
either i stopped archiving or stopped making tunes due to focusing on decathlon. original version of my terminal beach tune, soon after or during reading the story. i made this because it was a drag to read the terminal beach in silence, so i thought to make a fitting semi-ambient tune.
=> 2020-07-28
contour experimenting again
=> 2020-07-29
this also sucks but i love the wacky drum slide at the end. cartoonish
=> 2020-07-30
lemon demon vibes. testing natural minor and major scales of c. sounds basic.
=> 2020-07-30
witch's hut vibes. kinda good. testing harmonic and melodic minor scales of c.
=> 2020-07-30
checked wikipedia for scales. this is a hexatonic blues scale, didn't bother to change the loop length. kinda groove
=> 2020-07-31
meh. i have not learned how to program drums at all
=> 2020-07-31
contour with tested variations.. meh
=> 2020-07-31
strange chord progression, think i was testing inverted chords or something. 1.5/5. banger day for bad music
=> 2020-07-31
another chord progression. like the vibrato, boring though
=> 2020-07-31
made the chords which are kinda nice.. arranged this as a helpful reference for my teammates
=> 2020-09-17
another unknown time gap... this is supposed to be halloween-ish spooky-ish and i couldn't get the right timbre for door knocks so it sounds like an unusual basketball bouncing, but less than my first version. the breathing isn't comical at least
=> 2020-09-17
also sounds like chinese traditional, but i was trying to recreate/make something similar to the album transition between the scary jokes - emotional vagrant and the start of sleepyhead. decent
=> 2020-09-17
very very short. guess i liked the sudden octave switch
=> 2020-09-17
tried to make an ascension melody to act as an ornament to the sleepyhead loop but it didn't fit but i appreciated it standalone. it's nice and bubbly
=> 2020-09-20
battle theme loop vibes. kinda goes.
=> 2020-09-20
many layers aren't legible enough. i do not know mixing. interesting ascension though
=> 2020-09-23 the terminal beach
someone online was complaining about the terminal beach being boring, someone else mentioned listening to erik satie - gymnopédie no. 1 to make the story go hard. i thought back to my demo and made it calmer to be less distracting if reading, but didn't share it with those people.
=> 2020-09-30
i originally labeled this "a lil strange". it's interesting and clashing. i love the visual sliding of the bassline. also semi-enjoy the idea of a pseudo-bassline that is just one repeating note.
=> 2020-09-30
generic motivational dyads which takes away a point. love the yowie instrument. kinda enjoy slow=>fast drums
=> 2020-10-03
boring.
=> 2020-10-05
i loved a certain active section of a song from [obscure dark-atmospheric-cute animator/musician that removed all their music from spotify]. they said that album was made for their introductory music theory class. the song was chill then speedy and the melody was really pleasant. knowing it was from a semi-beginner gave me hope to make a good progressive melody at that speed, but now, i wouldn't listen to this willfully.
=> 2020-10-05
boring. feel like some of these are just for the sake of making something at all, no other purpose, and don't accidentally become good.
=> 2020-10-05
same comment as the previous except this has a better appeal. although it turns out sickly sweet
=> 2020-10-17
i like the strikingness of the melody but it sucks otherwise especially because i was trying to make a genre song without knowing how to at all. too shameful
=> 2020-11-07
one of my longer songs. i originally scored this in musescore but didnt like the instrument sounds there and moved it here. the bass clef doesnt really fit with the main melody. at first i thought this was my recreation of one of bokonon's calypsos but i looked for my musescore sheet and im a lyrical genius.
the 2nd channel is supposed to be a vocal melody that goes with:
so, you thought that we were cool
but how does that translate to
you taking my children and wife
you, i will now end your li-i-fe
i was trying to create any comprehensible lyrics and this appeared. when making the melody, i was just experimenting with versions by singing it out. i don't know how to recognize pitch so i just sung into a tuner to tell me what note it was closest to. the melody seems familiar, as if i subconsciously took from another song, but i have no idea where it could be from.
=> 2020-11-28
this is out of left field from everything previously and i appreciate this just for that. also melody 6 is v nice. otherwise i don't find it interesting.
=> 2020-12-26
beachy. different layers don't fit together
=> 2020-12-27
the 1 semitone higher dyad sounds bad. clap sound is also unfitting. but the 1 pitch bassline goes off.
=> 2020-12-30
wow i fixed everything i hated.. this is such a nice surprise. actually like the drums.
=> 2020-12-30
trying to implement some main melody harmony... it's nice but everything else sounds empty in comparison
=> 2020-12-30
another of my longer works. this is pretty good, tense, very simple stuff. chord changes could be slower. god i love yowie
=> 2020-12-31
the melody and bass are awful together
=> 2020-01-03
not interesting
another longish song. abrupt start. this is what i mistook the 2020-11-07 song for, although they sound very different. i probably just thought i only had 2 vocal beepbox songs and forgot about 2020-11-07. also both were originally made in musescore.
from the book:
I wanted all things
To seem to make some sense,
So we all could be happy, yes,
Instead of tense.
And I made up lies
So that they all fit nice,
And I made this sad world
A par-a-dise.
this was made the month before regional competition for decathlon, so i was studying and cat's cradle, which counted for 50% of the literature test, was on my mind. i learned that calypso is a style of music, not just a poem that can be sung as the book cat's cradle implies. i decided to turn one into a song. don't think i intended it to follow the form of a real calypso though.
=> 2021-01-16 fuck [friend name]
i wanted to turn this quote an online friend wrote into a song:
hey [friend name] it's really amazing you look up the words "fuck" and "[friend name]" on youtube.com (i can link it if you want) and remember those two words? ("fuck" and "[friend name]") you put them in the search bar OF youtube.com and then there will be a big button that says SEARCH when you hover over it. Next you have to CLICK that button and then you will be sent to a new page. In that page u will then click the first result which will be titled [artist] - [title that disparages friend name] and then when you click on that video only THEN will it say "[title]" I know that was a lot to take in for you my baby but we'll get through it together
context: my friend sent that video, [friend name] asked "how do you find this shit" and my friend was typing for a very long time, then this block of text was sent. just love how pattonizing it is and the tone shift at the end of the quote
tried my best to make the notes of [redacted title] match the way it's sung in [redacted artist]'s song but bad at pitch recognition so it probably isn't.
=> 2021-02-07
some elements of this sound sentimental and island-like, kinda like kinda dont. at least for individual channels, i got whole tone keys to sound nice
=> 2022-03-27
just had to make music it was really bothering me that i couldn't do anything in supercollider yet. but i can now woo
=> 2022-06-12
made it today before writing because i was curious about how the vocal instruments on beepbox sounded, since they're generated not sampled, and i noticed the general pad synth i want to create includes a vocal element, but didn't want to use buffers in the synth. i like this. slidy. just goes to show how OK transposing the same 1 idea can sound.
in conclusion. watch music tutorials. hope i can relearn or reuse some composition through this.
listening to: these
update 2022-07-11 renamed
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