I think the most effective method is to do some sort of organized boycott. We all know well enough how sheisty these companies are. Time to start encouraging each other to quit them en masse.
Another cross-post from my blog.
There is much ado about fancy mics among musicians and engineers, just as there is much ado about fancy guitars among guitarists. And don’t get me wrong, these instruments can certainly sound inspiring. However, any guitarist worth trusting will tell you that so long as the instrument isn’t unplayable, you can make great music with it (and some have written and even recorded with beater guitars).
It’s not so much about the mic as it is the engineer. Having been through a handful of mics so far, I have not been rid of my “touch” with a microphone. It always sounds like me, whether I like it or not. I’m choosing to let myself like it.
I once heard Tina Weymouth share at a Q&A, “If you have ears, you can make anything sound good, if you’re enjoying it.”
Cross-posting this from my blog. You can hear an audio demo of the technique there.
I've been thinking a lot about the importance of silence in music, and I dreamed up this technique, using a sequencer to more-or-less randomly mute a signal. The idea was to program a beat but then have the sequence be periodically interrupted by silence. I was partly inspired by this tai hirose track.
Now you could just as well make cuts by hand, in post, with the mouse. But where's the fun in that? As the title suggests, I wanted something more generative.
In Reaper, we can use Gerraint Luff's MIDI Gate plugin to trigger mutes or gates. Insert it on a track, feed it some MIDI, and depending on the mode, it will mute the channel whenever it receives MIDI information (or whenever it doesn't, if it's in gate mode).
To set this up, I followed Reaper Blog's MIDI Gate tutorial. In short, I programmed a kick drum part, then sent the audio only (not MIDI, which is important) to a receive track, and muted the former track's master output. On the receive track, I inserted a sequencer plugin and the MIDI Gate, one after the other. I made a simple MIDI sequence to trigger the gate. Since my original kick drum pattern was in 4/4, and since I wanted a semi-random sound, my gate trigger sequence was a 3/4 loop, which resulted in polymetric mutes. (Next time I experiment with this, I plan to use a truly random sequencer from Cardinal or something.)
The result is a groovy kick drum part that doesn't finish its sentence sometimes. I did the same on the tops percussion part, experimenting with MIDI Gate in mute mode or gate mode to see which I liked better. For added polish, because I noticed that sometimes MIDI Gate would let just the tiny blip of the first transient through, I inserted a plain old gate plugin next in the chain to cut out any tiny blips below a certain volume threshold. I then added a hi hat loop and played some nylon guitar over it so the track would feel a little more tethered to 4/4.
The neat thing about this semi-generative approach is the element of chance. Sometimes the kick plays where I programmed it to, sometimes not. The trouble with making music in the DAW is having too much control. But the joy is when you can find ways to forfeit that control in ways that are unique to the DAW workflow. Electronic musician Jlin says in an interview, "Not having control and not knowing what I'm going to create is the beauty of how the track is made. Not only the beauty of it, but the, also is the necessity of how, and why it gets made, because I don't have control."
I think your analysis in pretty on point. In my circles, we call this problem "gender essentialism." I see that it stems from neoplatonic thought as derived from Christian puritanism, and it desperately attempts to reconcile a kind of cherry-picked modernism with traditionalism. And it fuckin' sucks.
Transfemme enby here. I hear what you two mean, but I wanna make sure we also resist medicalizing gender nonconformity. While many trans folks undergo bottom surgery to alleviate dysphoria or to simply be "safe" from the scrutiny of the cis gaze, surgery is not what qualifies a trans woman as a woman. The issue isn't about genitalia, it's about transmisogyny.
TERFs have so deeply internalized the misogyny that it's all they know, woman TERFs and man TERFs alike, cis or not ('cause Caitlyn Jenner is still a TERF).
Sure! Maybe we can be called Survivors of Poking the Campist Hive lmao.
First it was fun watching the argument unfold. Now it's annoying lol. Thank you, kind stranger.
My fibro symptoms have been very manageable thanks to better-regulated sleep.
With my therapist, I worked through some self-hate feelings regarding my singing voice (and obliquely related to gender).
A doctor called me back to talk with me about HRT. My sweet partner has been really supportive as I consider if this is something I'd want atm for my transition.
Lately, I'm feeling more creative like I haven't felt since my 3rd year of high school.
There are promising signs of justice and liberation in the news this last week.
Defund and divest, baby. Money for health and education, not for war and occupation.
It's necessary to do more than just put in bike lanes to make for a bike-friendly city.
Classic. Though my entry to the series was via Need for Pede III: Hot Pursuit Lotsa Foots.
Looking through some of these comments and their downvotes and thinking: some need to go back to the "punk" origin of solarpunk, js.
Looking through these comments and their downvotes and thinking: some of you need to go back to the "punk" origin of "solarpunk." Js.
"Wandering Boy" by Randy Newman does something like what you're describing.
This may be the most Dutch thing I've ever heard. (I'm Dutch.)
I did not say money is capitalism. But I will say creating a new currency without first abolishing capitalism will just lead to more ways to do capitalism.
Both things can be true: cash is a scam and so is crypto. The reason I despise crypto is because they just reinvented capitalism, when the old one was working just fine (in the sense that capitalism is not a broken system: it is functioning just as designed, benefiting the ruling class). So now we've got two ways they're scamming us.
Hey y'all, transfemby here. I've yet to start HRT (not sure I want to rn), but I really wish I had thicker hips. Today was a shitty dysphoria day about it, and it made me realize how bad I want this. Do you have any recommendations on how to achieve wider hips (and/or hourglass shape) without HRT?
I totally hear that now that you mention it! Similar textures.
Again giving some love to this emerging genre botanica. This record is such a cozy, hopeful vibe.
"Warm organic arrangements shatter icy electronic chatter to form clear sonic artworks."
"The US two-party system functions like a ratchet, with the Republican Party steadily pulling public policy and permissible discourse to the right while Democrats, in seeking to acquire power by chasing the political center, serve as a mechanism that prevents policy and discourse from shifting back."
Best description of the Dems' role in the shifting of the Overton window.
The cyclist, who suffered a broken nose, was initially treated at the scene by the ambulance driver.
The cyclist, who suffered a broken nose, was initially treated at the scene by the ambulance driver.
Excerpt from the album notes:
In an era of rampant, man-made climate chaos, “solastalgia” (the longing and distress experienced by individuals as a response to environmental change/degradation) has emerged as a useful, semi-viral concept — a catch-all term for the pervasive sense that the world as we know it is far from well, and only growing less so. But, for many of us, a problem, a trap, an ineffable hollowness, exists at the very crux of this concept/premise: how can we mourn (or even sense the loss of) that which we have never known? Especially for lifelong urbanites estranged from nature, who nevertheless grasp the severity and complexity of the problem—how might they remember? How might they mourn? Perhaps indirectly—that is to say, in an exploratory and non-dogmatic fashion—Green-House, a project birthed by Olive Ardizoni and now officially a duo project featuring long-time collaborator and confidant, Michael Flanagan, seeks to address this gap in understanding.
https://green-house.bandcamp.com/album/a-host-for-all-kinds-of-life
This emerging genre called botanica/petalcore feels very solarpunk to me.
https://phritz.bandcamp.com/album/-