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The Problem of Loudness
Or, I’m an Artist: How Loud Should my Recording Be? A friend of mine, Jason Sibi Okumu, once told me that if you sing quietly, people will lean in to listen. Lowland Hum used to post with the hashtag #SupportQuietMusic.…
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How I Celebrated Easter This Year
In which I do some liberation theology and critique American Christianity Since my partner is Catholic, we went to Easter Mass. There was a man who sang, played, and looked a little like Richard Thompson. The priest reminded us to…
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One Way to Fear Others Less
Traveling as a gender-nonconforming person is disquieting. But, and this may sound hokey, one thing that legitimately helps me fear strangers less is remembering that everyone is beloved. When I imagine someone deeply loves this stranger before me (who triggers…
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A Bunch of Free Plugin Clones for Reaper and Beyond
Apparently Vlad G of TDR fame has made some clones of popular plugins in JSFX format! What a time to be a Reaper user. And there’s good news for you who use a different DAW. You can read about these…
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Spotify is a Digital Landlord
Spotify, Apple Music, etc. are rent-seekers. A rent-seeker capitalizes on something freely available, that could have been freely given, and charges a premium for it. Spotify et al are digital music landlords over their vassals, big record companies, and the…
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A Dubious Account of the Invention of Poetry
It probably started with some weirdo writing down their thoughts, not using punctuation, but instead organizing thoughts line by line, slightly out of order, indenting some lines, but not others. Oh, and not indenting new paragraphs, because that would make…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…