Author: Arend
-
How I Use Obsidian to Pair Lyrics and Melodies
Obsidian is a note-taking app that I fell in love with a couple years ago for its ability to connect notes with wiki-style links. In my songwriting practice, I like to use the Dataview plugin for Obsidian to help me link lyrics to tunes and combine lyric fragments. I do this by way of tagging…
-
AI Music Cannot Replace the Joy of Making Music
Mikey Shulman, CEO of AI music generation startup Suno, actually thinks people don’t enjoy making music anymore. “It’s not really enjoyable to make music now,” according to him. “It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece…
-
Write About Three Good Things Everyday
On Mastodon, there’s a popular hashtag #3threegood things, which people use to create a gratitude list. I’ve been in the habit over doing a daily gratitude list of 10 items, as recommended by a 12 Step program I started several years ago, so I was excited to connect with others about good things in our…
-
My 2024 Recording Highlights
2024 was a slow year for me in terms of output. Dealing with fibromyalgia/long COVID greatly limited my ability not just to record, but perform music at all. All this has caused me to reflect on the gift of music and life in general. Recording is documenting life after all, and documentation is great for…
-
Lessons on the Importance of Trying to Share Each Good Idea
I don’t believe like some do that ideas are out there floating in the ether—that if you don’t use an idea that comes to you, someone else will. Sure, multiple discovery is a thing, but it seems to be a rare phenomenon. That being said, I have had ideas that I slept on, and songs…
-
The Best YouTube Comment I’ve Ever Seen
This comment may be the funniest “found humor” I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure I have ever felt so much desperation as one Anthony Rotella. User anthonyrotella8791 on YouTube writes, regarding a chiptune remix, “Beautiful…please add another like…it is at 666 likes.” Beneath the comment is the downward-pointing arrow and the text “1 reply,” beckoning…
-
Imperfection Makes Radical Creativity
Imperfection makes radical creativity. It takes the creativity and makes it radical. The world of “good taste” is riddled with classism. Stodgy vocal pedagogues, early detractors from recorded popular and folk music would say (and still do), “You shouldn’t sing like that. You can’t.” They would rather people learn the “right” way to make music.…
-
Random MIDI Mutes and Semi-Generative Drums
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…
-
Just Keep Rolling
Always keep rolling, even if it’s a dissatisfying take! I’m in that habit when it comes to tracking others, but not always for myself (oops). I can’t tell you how many gold nuggets of one single phrase that I lost because I hastily deleted, thinking the whole take was garbage. Then I’ll go back and…
-
Each Engineer Has a Touch with a Mic
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…