Haha, damn. I knew I was few days late but didn't realise I'd been pipped to the post.
I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, Johnson's a cunning narcissist who wants to be remembered as some great prime ministerial hero alongside his idol Winston Churchill. He himself backed Truss for PM and he must've known she would flounder spectacularly. For this contest, there's a 100 MP nominations threshold for hopeful leaders and Johnson already has 50. As an aside, Truss only got 88 during her bid, so wouldn't even qualify under these new rules. The depressing fact is that, despite Johnson being horrid, the Tory's don't really have anyone better to replace him as leader. At least from the perspective of being able to win an election*. That's why it took so long for them to oust him in the first place. *As evidenced by a BBC vox pox last night who said they think Johnson should be the next leader because he's a "good character".
The Political Editor for The Times just tweeted that Boris Johnson is expected to stand in the Tory leadership contest...
Yeah, I can't get enough of it. I got to experience it for the first time last weekend at a festival whilst being extremely high (Shazam got me the ID). It was a good time. Here's a vid of the main stage where it played: https://streamable.com/85wum8
Sounds like a good time, enjoy!
Louis Cole is such a beast on the drums, so tight. Can't say I've ever used DistroKid, so no thoughts to share unfortunately.
That Alva Noto track is cool. Reminds me of this. In regards to the bassline, I'd imagine it's sped up or programmed. The two guys in the project are a guitarist and saxophonist, and there's no bassist credited on Bandcamp page. If it's not, I'd have to see it to believe it!
Yeah, people somtimes refer to it pejoratively as 'note salad'. I think what elevates Ichika Nito's piece for me is that he finds a real strong sense of melody. So no matter how complicated his overall playing is at any one moment, there's still a relatively simple musical idea to latch on to.There is a lot of innovative guitar playing coming out of Japan, I don't want to listen to most of it but It's still impressive.
Haha, yeah. I watched that back a few times. Somewhat related, but it reminded me of this amazing dropped stick recovery at 12:09 in this video.
Enjoy your travels, tng. You can get in touch with me for a chat whenever, I'll always have time.
Relevant clip:
Nice. Yeah, it's easy to get gushy over the latest synth and forget that the native plugins can do a lot for you. I really need to explore The Grid in Bitwig once I've got my current project over and done with. And like you, it saves on a lot of processing power too. I have had a few people comment on my chord progressions. My approach has always been a very exploratory one. Sit at the keyboard, find a chord I like, then experiment. What happens if I change bass note? Can I keep the left hand the same and change the right hand? What if I just move all the notes up by one? What if I replace this chord with one from a parallel key? Eventually, the mind's ear senses a shadow of a chord progression in the vague fog of creativity. From there, it's just about finishing the puzzle. Looking forward to hearing what comes out of your learning!
Coincidently, I got cottoned on to DOMi & JD Beck not long before your comment. Great stuff. They have an album coming out soon, which I'm very looking forward to. Any specific production techniques you've been looking into?
I'm glad you enjoy the selections! I do have a penchant for instrumental music. It's so easy to write cheesy lyrics and they always ruin an otherwise a good track for me. Math rock and prog are big offenders. Having said that, some of my favourite music has vocals. Here's some off of the top of my head. Moses Sumney - Doomed R.A.P. Ferreira - Leaving Hell
Thank you! We haven't done any contract talks yet. We're currently each choosing a list of 10 tracks to make up the LP then comparing. Most contracts I've signed before have been pretty standard. The label takes 100% until they recuperate their costs, then a 50/50 split. Though this is a bit more of a serious thing, so maybe they'll be some differences. Once we get there, I will let you know if there's anything interesting.
For sure, I always made sure of the ownership thing in previous contracts. It's only a small label curated by an artist who's been in the scene since its inception. So there's not like there's a load of staff or anything. It's more that they just that they are well respected and know everybody! I believe that they do A+R for a bigger label too. Most of the cost I think will go into the physical releases as they produce vinyls and CDs for the LP projects they release. It's not a label that churns out loads of releases. Instead, they tend to focus on fostering emerging talent with original takes on the genre. So whilst I always be on the look, I don't expect them to do anything to screw me over.
For sure, there are some impressive tools popping up nowadays. One I saw recently that I thought looked great was Scaler 2. I think it comes down to whether you value having that understanding for yourself. I feel it deepened my practice and also my connection with the music I love. But ultimately it doesn't matter if you know theory or not. A cool piece of music is a cool piece of music.
I composed without theory knowledge for a long time. I think there are two types of "banging things together". The first is when you don't have any expectations. You're playing random things and seeing what catches your attention. The second is when you have half an idea already or you want to add a layer. You can hear where you want it to go in your mind's ear, but you're not sure how that translates to actual music. So you end up mindlessly testing things and it can get really frustrating the longer the search for the sound you want goes on. You feel lost. In my experience, learning theory has helped the former by allowing me to add a catalyst to my noodling when absolute freedom isn't fruitful. And it's decreased the latter as I now know how my intuition translates into the craft. From being on /r/musictheory, this seems to be the case for most other composers too. So I reckon bhrgunatha is correct, it's a mixture. That's why it's best to look at music theory as just a collection of frameworks and techniques gleaned from analysing music. In that way, it becomes a toolbox to draw from when needed. If you see it as an actual system for composing, it can become a prison.
I think a nicer way to represent the rating would be for the hubwheel itself to change colour. Then you wouldn't need loads of little 'thermometers' over the interface.
I dig both of these! The first one has a real classic feel to it. I think it must be that saturated Rhodes type sound (like in this track). I look forward to hearing them fleshed out.
New Tigran Hamasyan Amazing drumfunk release by dgoHn ambient/electronic stuff from Steve Hauschildt. I was going to see this guy but the gig got cancelled due to lockdown.
Thanks! I'm glad you dig it. I'd call it a sextuplet groove. Septuplets would be 7, right? The snare ghost notes come from an EQd, stereo delay on the drum buss. And yeah, compression is easy to abuse. Outside of the instances of Neutron and Ozone I slapped on the mix buss for this quick bounce, there's not a single compressor running on that track. I try to get most of the way there with arrangement and fader levels, then use EQ as the icing on the cake. That percussion piece was rad. I never understand how people are sitting motionless watching stuff like that. It makes me move. Were you playing in that vid? I had drum lessons for years as a kid so I know all the weird drum rudiment jargon. And I have heard of Knower! Louis Cole is a very talented musician. I especially enjoy the live versions of Overtime and Time Traveller.
There's still a few things to do on this one but here is the track I have nearest to completion currently: https://clyp.it/djfcuy12?token=eedf8aa88b8b39b135575e46b766ac3f
Yep, it's bad. I hope that I can sway his viewpoint but I don't hold out much hope. He is quick to anger and get defensive. Arguments quickly stray off topic and turn into rants. My skills in arguing and knowledge in the subject aren't currently good enough to pin him down. But I'm learning about both so maybe someday.
I guess by your use of the word 'trudged' that you don't rate Horizon Zero Dawn too highly? It's coming to PC sometime in the future and I was optimistic about it. I enjoyed my time with The Outer Worlds. Good catch with Vicar Max, I hadn't made that link. I think that the companion characters are some of the strongest bits of the game. I especially enjoyed how they interact with each other. But yeah, as you say, the story plods in the middle. Then it's like: psyche! You're actually halfway through the final act. Wait, who exactly is the antagonist? Oh well, here's the final mission. I was also disappointed by how little weight it felt like your decisions had. There's the one big decision you make on the first planet which feels impactful. And there's a cool potential interaction with a companion too during the decision. But after that, nothing felt that important. In a funny twist of fate, the writer for Outer Wilds has now been hired by the creators of The Outer Worlds. Potentially to work on the sequel. Also, if you have a spare 15 minutes, there's a good video of the devs of The Outer Worlds reacting to a 12 minute speed run of their game. Obvious spoiler warning if you haven't completed it yet.
I think you may be talking about the RPG The Outer Worlds. A decent game but not a patch on Outer Wilds for me. Outer Wilds is an adventure/exploration game about a solar system stuck in a time-loop. There is no formal objective. Instead, you search the solar system as you please to learn about an alien race that came before you and their purpose in what is now your home. An easy mixup to make considering their similar names and the fact that they came out in the same year.