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Trying to be bored more

I liked this video from Jon Makes Beats. The TL;DR of the video is that boredom is the key to creativity, but most of us these days don’t experience much boredom because of the constant entertainment and stimulation provided by the overexcess of media, such as social media, Spotify, Netflix, etc. So if we want to get more creativity in our lives, we need to allow for more boredom–less stimulation from all the media that’s available to us every second of the day. One thing Jon mentions at the beginning of the video that really resonated with me is that […]

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Working on the next album!

The main thing I’ve been working on lately–probably more than I should be–is creating new music for another album. (Or maybe I’ll just release singles, I haven’t decided yet.) I’m eager to keep developing my sound as a musician, composer, producer, and audio engineer. I’m honestly already shocked by how different-sounding my current ideas are from the sound of my recent album Regretfulnot. My sound is now much more instrumental and strings-focused than electronic (at least, the initial ideas I’m getting down). My new/upcoming sound is somewhere in the folktronica/jamtronica/jazztronica realm, I guess. Part of that is how and why

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Lovin’ Loopy Pro

Discovering Loopy Pro has been a game-changer for my workflow, at least for brainstorming musical ideas. I’ve wanted to learn looping, which is when you record short clips of audio over other short clips of audio you just previously recorded. But I have had so much else to learn and still do. I love how Loopy Pro encourages getting into a flow state, boosting my creativity (or at least capturing my creativity). But I also aspire to do live looping—performing with loops in front of an audience, which is an art form all its own (and so even more to

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This celtic-y idea gives me a huge buzz

Actually, the random name generator in the Polyend Play+, which is playing drums in this clip, gave me the name Huge Buzz. That’s I named this little idea on my sweet-playing Eastman Warren Ellis tenor guitar (which is tuned in fifths the same as an octave mandolin or tenor banjo). If it sounds rather celtic-y, yeah, it’s one of the genre influences that seems to just come out of me. These days, I probably can only play two actual celtic tunes (though I once could play several others). But I’ve listened to a lot of Irish, Scottish, and Cape Breton

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Building my recording engineering chops

Over the past six weeks, I had a blast learning from audio engineers Mike and Sam at Hall of Justice Recording Studio in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. For the final session, a classmate and I got to do the full setup and recording of a band. It turned out pretty well based on this quick mix, which you can hear below. Best of all, I actually feel ready to engineer my own studio session now.

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Who got hearing aids this week?

This guy. Hearing loss and treatment are not discussed enough in the audio and music industries. It took me too long to see if hearing aids could help me. (They can, though I couldn’t stand the previous ones I tried last month.) I’ve had hearing loss since I was a kid. I don’t know when the technology became helpful for my hearing. But it was definitely sooner than now. That’s a lot of time hearing sounds too quietly and missing out on frequencies over 1000Hz (in my right ear). What about you? Do you use hearing aids? Could they maybe

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My favorite track on Regretfulnot

So, which is my favorite track on my album, Regretfulnot? It’s Lost Found Lost. It’s the fourth track, if you listen to the album in order, which you should because the tracks represent sequentially the feelings and types of experiences I felt discovering, living in, and leaving Halifax, Nova Scotia. Lost Found Lost tells a story about community: needing it, not having it, finding it, losing it, and building it again. It’s an experience I’ve had over again in my life. I’m pretty good at connecting with people once I can meet them. But it can take me a while

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Developing a forgotten idea into a possible track

Recently, I have been going through mandolin (and octave mandolin) recordings I made while living in Halifax between July 2023 and July 2024. At this point, I’ve forgotten all of the ideas in those recordings–no idea if there’s some gold in there or just coal. These recordings happened in two ways. The first was quick, ad hoc recordings I did when I had an extra moment, and I picked up one of my instruments. The idea being that if I’m going to noodle on the mandolin, I might as well record it because it might wind up being a useful

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Stopping the hostile takeover

Are you a United States federal employee? Were you one? Were you recently terminated? This looping session is for you. What Trump and Musk are doing to so many federal employees and the service they provide is not just concerning; it’s cruel. I composed this session around samples I took from a talk by Everett Kelley during the recent Federal Unionist Network “Save Our Service” mass call. It was an inspiring call. Kelley’s words are incredibly motivating. His words apply generally too: We can resist the takeover of the country and government by billionaires and oligarchs if we organize and

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The field recordings I used in The Merry Times

I composed the track The Merry Times, which is on the album Regretfulnot, to convey the joy I felt getting to know the maritime culture and geography of Nova Scotia, Canada, as well as the love I developed for the region and residents, which I still feel today after moving back to Seattle. The track The Merry Times includes five field recordings I took in Lunenburg and Halifax, Nova Scotia. This collection includes all of the original field recordings taken by me and any processed versions used in the track. Two recordings were used without processing other than trimming (i.e.,

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Doing music full-time can feel weird

I’ll be honest: I can feel a bit weird about deciding to do music and art full-time at this point in my life, especially when my social media network knows me from academia and disaster management or maybe podcasting. Posting about music feels out of place when I know these folks connected with me for completely different reasons. Music has always been part of me, though. When I was choosing a college major, I had three directions: civil engineering (that’s what my dad did), psychology (maybe I had an inkling I was neurodivergent and bipolar), and music (it’s what I

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The Merry Times is a track inspired by The Maritimes

The Merry Times is a techno-inspired track that expresses the joyful significance I felt while experiencing Nova Scotia’s maritime culture, first vacationing there and then living there. I took the field recordings on the shores of Lunenburg, Halifax, and Laurencetown, Nova Scotia. I highly recommended a visit to all three places. (Lunenburg’s a UNESCO World Heritage Centre.) I recorded the mandolin, which is the source of the track’s looping hook and granular, glitchy ear candy, on the field recorder in my living room. I never thought I’d use the field recordings or the mandolin noodles in a track on a

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Stand out. Someone has to.

This live loop, well, isn’t live because I forgot to press record. So I recorded a live mix, which is apparently almost as challenging for my brain to keep track of as when I’m playing an instrument at the same time. This idea was based on a sample from John Lithgow’s reading of Timothy Snyder’s twenty lessons on fighting tyranny. Those lessons are from Snyder’s 2017 book; each chapter expands on the twenty lessons. I read the book back in 2021. Studying nationalism, fascism, and terrorism (particularly US-based domestic) has been a thing for me for many years, both because

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Live Looping: The Fight is the Trap

I’m pretty sure I’ll be making a habit of posting my live looping experiments as I hopefully get good enough to do them live in front of folks (online or in person). At the very least, I hope this approach to creating is a fruitful way of generating ideas and engaging folks in the creation process. It’s a challenge for me to keep track of everything for sure. It’s also a challenge for me to develop ideas on the spot quickly. It certainly results in lots of flubs–fingers getting out of position, forgetting what key/mode I was playing in etc.

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My first attempt at live looping

Here’s a video I put together of my first attempt at live looping. I’m curious to learn live looping both as a way of creating ideas and as a way of performing live (in person or online). It was really fun. But the process is also intimidating for me because of being “put on the spot” to improvise and the manage the array of gear. Obviously both things will get easier with practice, which I’m looking forward to doing! Obviously I’ll post those videos as I make them. Hopefully soon I’ll figure out a way of performing live looping, um,

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