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Towards Effortless Composing

Yesterday, the biggest issue I faced was getting tense while working on music—literally clenching my jaw while playing. I’m taking this too seriously. I’m currently working on an instrumental song I’ve randomly called “Tasty Message.” I’ve reached that exciting point where I know it has enough interesting ideas and material to become a full arrangement, so I’ve mentally moved it to the “arrange” stage in my project management system. But now I’m finding it challenging to connect these good ideas. Too much good material? Ha! In trying to compose transitions and through-compose from the good ideas to find workable variations, […]

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Since leaving social media…

So, how have things been since I decided to leave social media? The most important aspect is that the benefits I anticipated are clear. I don’t miss 99% of it. The 1% I do miss is mostly the memes that my wife shared with me on Instagram. While I could easily find funny cat videos elsewhere, having those moments to laugh together is something special. However, I truly don’t miss much else. Instead, I subscribe to newsletters from artists, organizations, venues, and even restaurants that interest me. I’ve even started using an RSS feed for their Instagram accounts. I would

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Creative Rhythms

The last time I journaled was June 25th. The last time I sent out a newsletter was July 8th. The last time I posted on my blog was July 9th. That’s at least five weeks away from what I define as work—my regular practices for creating. (Do I regret that? No. I feel blessed to have a new home, moving into a dream house with my dream family, and having gotten to a place–mentally and environmentally–of being settled.) If you’ve read my past newsletters or my blog, you’ve probably noticed that a theme in my life is always having to

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Taking lessons from Nazi resistors

I recently read an opinion piece in The Guardian titled “I Study the Resistance Against the Nazis.” It resonated with me for a couple of reasons, as I try to figure out my role and routine in the world nowadays. Part of my now-years-long transition away from being a full-time academic to full-time…um…artist?! The author, Luke Berryman, uses his analysis of stories of little known people who resisted the Nazis to provide some insight into how people in the US can resist far-right authoritarianism and fascism. He describes how the resistance hasn’t worked well so far, proven by the fact

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I deleted my social media accounts …mostly

So I deleted my Instagram account. And my Facebook account. And my Threads account. Oh, and even my Bluesky account. (And I do want to delete my WhatsApp account.) So, how am I going to share myself and my work now? I mean, it’s not like we have to share the intimate details of ourselves, even though our surveillance capitalistic world does push that message. But as an artist and entrepreneur (yeah, I want to come up with ways to earn a living with my art and my artistic process and experience), I do need to share to provide examples,

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A new digital home… and a real one

June has been a bit all over the place for me, work-wise. On the home front, I’m excited that my wife and I bought a new home in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle (where we live now and where we met). Among the many reasons I’m excited about our new home is that I’ll have a dedicated room for working; I’ll be able to move out of my office. My office situation is great–it’s been a godsend for my productivity and focus–but it’s also not ideal because I can’t make much noise. Most of the office clients are therapists–both massage

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Creative resistance and finding the right path

Today, I’m feeling some resistance about moving on to the arranging stage of the composition process of my album. I think I am a bit overwhelmed by the number of ideas I created. The transition from Loopy Pro to Studio One has required more effort than I was hoping, which has taken me out of the flow (but probably giving me some good separation, too). And I’m starting to give the process more weight and meaning than I should. Jamming and developing ideas was easy to maintain detachment from the outcome. But now I’m thinking, “is this good enough to

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Gotta be creative? Get back to bass-ics.

When I started working on my second album, I thought I had a sound and a process fairly figured out. My first album, Regretfulnot, was the result of a year-long crash course in electronic music-making—MIDI controllers, virtual instruments, drum programming, sample selection, patch building, and layers of electronic effects processing. Though, crash course makes it seem more intentional and systematic than it was. More like a hodge podge of online courses, following YouTube tutorials, rabbit holes, and working for a short time with an unhelpful mentor and a long time (still!) with a helpful one. I am pretty proud of

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Principles to be an impervious creative

Today I watched this video from Venus Theory: He cited a new book by music creator Liina Turtonen titled “Creative Confidence and Music Production.” The book and recently losing a freelance gig made Cameron — Venus Theory — think of seven principles to help creatives become more impervious (his words) to the ups and downs of our calling. They are: His points really resonate with me. I don’t think any of them are super new to me, perhaps “act in your nature” is the most new. But they are all ones that are important to me, that I do work

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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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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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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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“Regretfulnot” is about simultaneously regretting and not regretting

My debut album as Big Stitch is a six-track EP titled “Regretfulnot.” The album is tightly thematic. It explores my experience of (re)discovering, living in, falling in love with, and leaving Nova Scotia, Canada. That experience led to a peculiar emotional state of joyful disappointment. (Or disappointing joy?) Making the album was an existential reflection centered on the idea of regret. It’s about processing regret when I don’t believe in regret (or at least its validity). In other words, the album simultaneously represents regret and the absence of regret—the paradox of both being equally true. My spiritual center is Buddhism.

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Genre makes me anxious

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t insecure about my prospects for success doing music and audio professional full-time. There’s a lot in that sentence to unpack, which I will do down the road. But writing the post about what Big Stitch’s genre is (or genres are?) got me reflecting on genre (yet again). Simply put, thinking about genre makes me think I won’t be able to find an audience and will not be able to build a community and connect with individuals who enjoy my music or my music-making process. Why? Well, as is my nature, I’ve done

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What is Big Stitch’s genre?

So what is Big Stitch? Well, it’s me and exploring musical ideas, audio processing methods, sound sources, and social messages/meanings that I’m curious about right now. Specifically, I’m interested in combining acoustic music/instruments with electronic music, as well as field recordings and found sound (typically spoken word) focused both relatively timely issues of the day and universal themes across those issues. Of course, people and algorithms want tidy genre labels. There are four ways I can answer that. The first is what genre tag I chose when I submitted my upcoming album (it’s done! …more on that below) for distribution.

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Big Stitch is a go!

I am kicking off my music project, Big Stitch. This kick-off is for me more than you. I need to uncork this thing so I can start sharing & leaning into Big Stitch. The website is enough: it’s live. If you go there, you’ll see my first album is done too! https://scottmiles.studio

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