EDIT [9-28-21]: If you've noticed the new banner, it's a recent commission by the talented Garnet-Frost. I'll blog about it soon but I have also commissioned some album art from another artist and when they're both done I'll make a joint front page post about their work. It feels incredibly vain to ask for portrait commissions but I'm so happy with the work that I'm feeling silly about it. Thank you Jackie, I'm in love with this ridiculous thing.

In regards to the blog title, I wanted to focus this specific post on the paradoxical nature of life.

Everything is amazing right now. My life is at a certain point where everything feels perfect. I'm living a creative life off grid with a partner that is supporting this crazy chicken-owning life style. We have a beautiful piece of land in the middle of nowhere, hours away from any meaningful civilization, surrounded by mountains. Despite the amount of love I'm receiving from my fiance, I still woke up the other night with feelings of doubt and anxiety.

Was around four o'clock, after midnight, and I couldn't get back to sleep. I'm in a big bed with a snoring fiance, staring into the glow of my Newgrounds account wondering why I'm not a more successful artist. Fuck me, my life is objectively perfect and I still crave notifications and social confirmation from small, ridiculous communities? Let's sequester several minutes to take stock of a few things...

I am basically finished with a new EP, but I'm putting off releasing it for now. There's always more work you can do to an album but I'm experimenting with a couple of artist commissions. I asked two artists for some vanity drawings, something along the lines of "draw a sexy robot quarl, or just draw a quarl :3 idk" and I told at least one of them that I'm working on an EP that could use art. I'm waiting to see if these two get back to me because I'm excited by the idea of paying someone else to do the art for an album. Fuck my expensive BFA, drawing does not bring me any happiness. This is a decent means to funnel that 2nd place Robot Day money back into the community that helped raise me.

Here's a few failed concept arts for the new album:

yeah, I'm just gonna pay someone else instead.

Today, Tom an I are making use of a skid-steer to cover our cisterns with enough dirt to protect them from frost. We're burying enough gallons to last us 6 months. We've also set up a means to harvest rainfall or snow in an emergency. The system currently in place uses our roof gutters and it recently net us 1,000 gallons in one rainfall. We're putting the finishing touches on the solar array by contracting a couple of carpenters to help build wooden mounting units. Our array has been laying on the grass collecting energy since day one. It's also been killing the grass so I'm stoked to get them up off the ground finally. On a similarly plant related note, our hydroponic vegetables are doing really good. We'll be covered in snow this winter and still manage some home grown salads :D :D

Those same two carpenters I mentioned are helping us close off our porch so we have more square footage this winter. We've ordered a pellet stove for heat, next year we plan on installing a redundant geothermal heat source to take some stress off of the pellet stove/propane tank. The house's power grid can be hooked up to a propane generator, again in case of emergency. HEAT REDUNDANCIES!! WOOHOO!!

So with all this in mind, why am I waking up feeling like an anxious failure? Is it because I told my 2007 highschool graduating class "I'd work for Disney one day" and failed? Is it because I'm not some rock and roll legend that died of drugs or suicide when I was 27? Is it because I never found a better platform to share my work than Newgrounds? My working theory revolves around the fact that I'm only human. Life is so fucking good right now but I guess I'll always have a small place in my heart for feelings of self doubt and anxiety.

Fuck me I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It might be time to start working on a new digital album. Will stop uploading material for a little while whilst improving old RSN files to try and get everything at tip-top quality. All RSN files should eventually be made available for download if anyone is interested in learning how to use Propellerhead's Reason. I've been making my RSN files available lately and the goal is to get more young people composing in a DAW that I love. Everyone cracks FL and I won't advocate anything illegal on my blog but I'm sure there are similar work arounds for Reason. I may have started composing on a cracked version of Reason 4 in college 15 years ago, who knows! In anycase, you can download a trial version of Reason and open my RSN files to start learning. From there, the journey is in your hands. Welcome to Narnia.

RSN files: Sounds Nothing Alike, I Only Shine When Standing In Your Reflection, Punch Drunk

Worth mentioning, I'm dropping out of the Newgrounds Audio Deathmatch. This decision has a lot to do with how embarrassed I felt when they released brackets of round 2 then changed them a week later in regards to an error in their scoring. Furthering my resolve is a debate revolving around a bad rule that the tournament organizers have doubled down on. It sounds like in previous years, a contest entrant under the age of 18 could not receive prizes because of an abusive situation at home. As a result, the NGADM organizers did not allow anyone under the age of 18 to compete this year. I know they make subtle changes to the rules from year to year to try and make the tournament more inclusive, but it seems incredibly counter intuitive to ban eligible teens on the premise that some kids have an abusive situation at home. It also fucked with the brackets when they silently removed all teenagers AFTER the brackets had been made. They then replaced all those former contestants with people from a "back up pool" making a lot of users hella confused.

They defend the "no kids allowed" rule by saying "ya'll should have complained months ago, we released the rules 6 months ago, get fucked." IMO, I don't care how long it takes a community to read a set of rules. We have the right to point out how fucked a specific rule is whenever we want and they can decide whether it gets fixed in subsequent years. A bad rule is a bad rule. Address it reasonably instead of lashing out at community members and making the rest of us feel alienated, embarrassed, and confused.

"Everything by Everyone," or the problems of the future today. I'm 32 now but I know what it's like being a kid here. The older regulars now were once young people too. I remember what Newgrounds felt like in the era after the Columbine school shooting. I remember that 90's energy and the silly dial up noises the modem would make connecting to the internet. I remember making flash cartoons in highschool, 2003-2007. There was so much creative energy, and among that sprawl of young people were a handful of older users and staff. I think it's fair to say that I'm one of those old peeps now.

At a certain point in my life I stopped pursing a career in education. The education minor on my BFA would have cost another year or two in an expensive University. In that small span of time, I learned how much I love teaching young people. If anyone has questions about Reason or if you want a specific song RSN file from me, I will make the time necessary to communicate with you. Newgrounds is first and foremost, for young enthusiasts that otherwise might not have a creative outlet elsewhere. Things have never been perfect here. I've heard some of the older users utter disillusioned statements like "Newgrounds isn't the same" or "Newgrounds has gone downhill" or "Newgrounds is shit now." The truth is, Newgrounds is very much the same as it always has been. It's still a great resource for young people. It isn't really that Newgrounds has changed for the worst. Rather, we kids have grown and we have changed. Newgrounds is still awesome.

Everything by Everyone. It's more than a catchphrase.

[ PATREON HERE]

Been making EDM musics for almost 20 years now. Doesn't make much money but I just created a Patreon account to try and stir up more dollars. I've always offered my catalog for free via newgrounds.com and I probably won't stop doing that. After years of unironically saying "if only I made a dollar every time someone downloaded my music" I've finally decided to join a platform that gives me the ability to make pennies back! Hurrah!

The nature of taking money from people for making noise always unsettled me. Music is a silly thing, frivolous. It seems unfair to charge people for what I think is mostly just noise pornography. Regardless, 20 years is a long time to dedicate to a hobby. For the low cost of $1 per track, you can make me feel like those years weren't spent chasing silly dreams. You could also donate that money to a real cause next time you get asked at the grocery store if you want to support something like finding cures for leukemia or helping stray animals. It's your money, I'd recommend opening a savings account. Build your credit. Buy yourself something nice.

Or sign up as a Patreon and hope I don't write any new music ever again! How awesome would that be if you accidentally registered to become a patreon and I never wrote music ever again? It's a possibility! You can live that possibility!! JOIN PATREON WITHOUT THINKING. SPONSER ME LIKE I'M SOME KIND OF ENDANGERED ANIMAL WITH A WEBPAGE THAT TELLS YOU WHERE I AM AT ALL TIMES. BECOME A PERSON THAT CAN PROVE THEY MAKE AT LEAST A FEW DOLLARS EVERY YEAR, BECAUSE THAT'S ALL I WILL EVER TAKE FROM YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU <3 <3 <3

Bandcamp | Patreon | Newgrounds

Over the years, I've wanted to do a few audio tutorials. Problem log: I'm not a very popular artist, my individual voice only travels so far, and I don't feel like doing youtube videos. This post will attempt to cover a plethora of topics to appeal to as many people as possible. To keep it simple, I'm including an Index:

I. Ethics Of Sampling

II. EDM Drum signaling & cable management inside Reason (includes images and file downloads)

III. My personal life

IV. Projects and Collaborations

V. Fuck you.

VI. Newgrounds Southwest Meet Up??

VII. Conclusion

I. Ethics Of Sampling

This is a loaded topic that I will attempt to explain using approximate words and feelings. Many people have an aversion to the idea of sampling without any knowledgeable input. Some critics accuse EDM artists of being lazy or untalented despite using samples on the regular every time they turn on their Casio keyboard. A quick google search brings up this definition: A sample is a digital representation of an analog signal. Both digital video and digital audio files are created using samples ... For example, a violin sound or a bird chirp may be sampled and then played back from a digital keyboard (or synthesizer).

From Wikipedia: In signal processing, sampling is the reduction of a continuous-time signal to a discrete-time signal.

Put another way, audio samples can be many separate things. Often times they are used in keyboards, electric pianos, and DJ software. Reason's Malstrom synthesizer uses something called granular synthesis which means the sounds it makes are actually composed of thousands of small samples. Another copy/paste: Granular synthesis is a basic sound synthesis method that operates on the microsound time scale. It is based on the same principle as sampling. However, the samples are not played back conventionally, but are instead split into small pieces of around 1 to 50 ms.

So that's probably not what you were expecting when I opened up with "the ethics of sampling." You thought I'd try to justify all those easily identifiable video game samples I use in my own tracks. For that, I cite the hiphop community circa the 1980's. Hiphop artists during that period "repurposed" existing recordings to supplement their lyrical poetry using emerging technology. The idea wasn't to take credit from other people's work. Not everyone can afford a drum kit or a bass guitar. The time required to learn these instruments and the investment to fix broken parts means that most people will never be able to enjoy the world of music from anything other than the perspective of a spectator. Sampling machines allowed those spectators to join a larger community of content creators at the cost of pissing off elitists and critics. In the long run: sampling has become a way of life for many artists.

I'll be honest, sampling isn't always cut and dry ethical. There are many pit falls to be wary of. This is when things start to get a little grey. I will again cite wikipeia for saying it better than I can:

To legally use a sample, an artist must acquire legal permission from the copyright holder, a potentially lengthy and complex process known as clearance. Sampling without permission can breach the copyright of the original sound recording, of the composition and lyrics, and of the performances, such as a rhythm or guitar riff. The moral rights of the original artist may also be breached if they are not credited or object to the sampling. In some cases, sampling is protected under American fair use laws, which grant "limited use of copyrighted material without permission from the rights holder".

Do try to inform your work to the best of your ability. Samples such as the Amen break have a lengthy history. No one will get mad at you for sampling something like that. What about Nintendo SFX? Well, Nintendo has the money to fight anyone over anything but minor samples have been called "de minimus." Essentially, bite sized sound samples have been considered by some courts to be trifling matters not worth the time to litigate. I sample from Wikipedia again:

In 2000, jazz flautist James Newton filed a claim against the Beastie Boys' 1992 single "Pass the Mic", which samples his composition "Choir". The judge found that the sample, comprising six seconds and three notes, was de minimis and did not require clearance. Newton lost appeals in 2003 and 2004. In 2019, the European Court of Justice ruled that producers Moses Pelham and Martin Haas had illegally sampled a drum sequence from the 1977 Kraftwerk track “Metal on Metal" ... The court ruled that permission was required for recognizable samples; modified, unrecognizable samples could still be used without authorisation.

Informal personal opinion, not legal advice: most the time if a sample breaches some kind of legal barrier, you will face zero monetary consequences. A company hosting your work (Youtube or Newgrounds) will become the lightning rod of a ceast and desist. These hosts can avoid problems simply by removing your content from their website. If for some reason you are instead served a cease and desist, I would advise you to comply and modify your work. If you have the money to lawyer up, have fun with that shit.

Newgrounds has a long history with how it enforces sampling. I used to mod audio here in 2008-2009. We each had different styles of going about the work, none of us were paid for it. We volunteered our time to go through thousands of audio files which were flagged for being the first submission a user was uploading. We would interview these people to get an idea of how they created their music. If the work was "stolen" we'd ban that account from uploading audio. Our individual understanding of sampling, legal ethics, and so on was entirely self educated. I burned myself out very quickly with personalized questionnaires for every artist I was interviewing. Some got pissed, others didn't speak English. It was an imperfect system but it was what we were given and it took some responsibility off of Newgrounds. I'm sure everything is different now, modding audio was not easy but that specific practice was going to be spotty and grey based on the nature of sampling itself. Forgive us.

Hopefully, you've learned something from all of this and you are now even more confused about sampling than you were in the first place.

II. EDM Drum Signaling & Cable Management (Reason)

Drum programming can be hella simple or hella complicated. I'm about to get hella complicated because you deserve to know everything you can about how to set up a mixer, drum machine, and fidelity units. Since I use Reason, my entire work flow revolves around two 14:2 Mixers, two ReDrum, and many fidelity units. I'll explain how to hook everything up in detail but do try to emulate my synth stack via these two images: (Front, Back). Wiring it up is explained later but here is that specific rack image too.

You can also download my template RSN drum file via google drive. I'll post this link again towards the bottom of this section for anyone that wants my RSN drum template. I've reproduced this template hundreds of times for myself, I recommend doing or reviewing the dirty work below so you understand everything in the file.

I will now try to explain this stack set up as if we are working from an empty file. Again, it's good to know what everything does. I skip some steps such as minimizing/maximizing specific windows and fidelity units, sorry if that confuses you.

I will start by selecting "new" (or Ctrl+N) from the Reason DDL menu. From here I make the workflow more comfortable to look at by "detaching" the rack window from the sequencer. This DDL option is under "window." Then I stretch the 2 windows out until I have something that fits my laptop monitor. I stagger the rack window and the sequencer so that I can quickly click and switch from one to the other. Everything happens in these two windows, no reason to play with things like on-screen piano keys or spectrum EQ just yet. You can access those windows easily (F4 & F2), memorize your quick keys!

I'm going to start by creating a Mixer 14:2 from the DDL menu. You can also click ADD DEVICE from the bottom of the rack. Ignore the other whatnot already in the rack, we are now composing entirely off of the 14:2 Mixer. If a device such as the mixer is selected in the rack, any instrument you create will automatically wire itself to the selected device. You can also hold down the shift key when you create devices if you prefer wiring things up for yourself. Flip your rack with the Tab key, I want you to hold the shift key down for the next few minutes.

Create the following devices while holding down the shift key:

• Another 14:2 Mixer
• ReDrum drum computers [x2]
• Spider Audio Merger & Spliters [x2]
• MClass Mastering Suits [x2]

The default mastering suit is hidden in the Reason Factory Sound Bank and most the devices in the combinator will be initially set to "bypass." The two combinators will give you fidelity control over your bass drums and snare drums after we wire drum samples into them via the Spider devices. Before wiring anything, minimize Mixer 1 and both ReDrums in the rack and make sure the rack looks like something like this: Front, Back.

I only minimized the drum machines so they'd fit in those images, you can maximize/minimize things as you need to.

Don't forget to right click the two separate ReDrums and select "reset device" so that the machines are empty. Previous versions instead said "initialize patch" as empty is the default redrum patch. You'll notice mine are initialized in the previous images. I also named each unit in the rack to identify things easier.

The next image shows how the stack is getting wired up: cable clutter.

In essence, we are giving the drums their own mixer which is daisy chained to the main mixer. The first mixer will contain all of our synths and instruments but the second mixer is only for drums. I'm only focusing on the drum mixer today but don't forget to connect the two mixers via the rear rack's chaining master. The aux drums are also minimized. I usually put hi hats, rides, cowbells, and various other samples in the Aux ReDrum but today we are only playing with the bass drums (kick) and the snare drums. I wired some of the ReDrum channels into the fidelity units and labeled whether it's a bass drum or snare drum. This will let us fine tune the fidelity of our two drum signals. I'm not including drum samples in the template, that's on you.

At this point, I'm satisfied with my attempt to explain the work flow. Download my RSN drum template and let me know if anything doesn't make sense. The following ittalics are file changes not shown in previous images:

(I added a filter between mixer one and mixer two. This unit can be bypassed but it's what lets me phase drum loops to create that "under water" effect. Play with the freq and res knobs after you make a few drum loops if your confused. Create automation lanes by right clicking knobs, they will appear afterwards in the sequencer. Automation lanes are powerful. Sorry I forgot this step before taking the previous screen shots.)

(Added a spider merger/splitter and routed both the bass drum and snare drum signals into it for a side chain signal. Any instrument you create I would recommend slapping a compressor on it. The drum signals from this Spider unit can be fed into those compressors via the sidechain inputs which will let your drums punch through the mix. You'll need to play with the threshold and ratio knobs to get a desirable sound. Drums are the most important aspect of any EDM genre, side chaining them to the front ensures they are crisp.)

(Added a malstrom to the main mixer as a reminder that mixer is for non percussive instruments.)

Hopefully this section was incredibly confusing. Study my drum template file, become Aphex Twin.

III. My Personal Life

Tom (boyfriend) and I continue to move our lives off grid. Tom over engineered a beastly solar array for about $15,000 by using refurbished solar panels and cutting edge battery cells from china. The array is currently sitting on the grass, we still haven't welded the brackets that they will sit on but they've been charging the batteries to full every morning faithfully for the last month. Our electricity use has not changed since our move. We guzzle electricity but can do so for three full days using only stored battery power. When it snows, that three day battery window will give us some time to wipe snow off of the array.

We rented an excavator to bury cisterns for water. We calculated our water usage in Georgia and bought enough water storage to live off of for six months. Since our winters get harsh, they had to be dug a certain distance to protect from frost. Our water usage has definitely changed since moving out here. On average, a person uses about 80-100 gallons of water per day. We take fewer showers and recycle used water from the laundry machine for things like flushing the toilet or cleaning the bird feeders.

We bought four chicks for producing eggs this winter. Picking up the coop tomorrow. They got big fast :'|

We've built forms for pouring concrete foundations. We need 6-7 forms for a car port. Originally we were going to have additional cisterns above ground in the car port but to save money decided to bury all the cisterns. The car port should help us in the winter if we need to do maintenance on our side by side, or snow mobile. Keeps our vehicles from getting covered in snow :p

We're currently networking on cell signals. Tom works remote cyber security gigs so he does a good job at keeping our home network at buisness speeds. As soon as Space X opens Star Link in our current cell, we're switching to that. Our star link dish is currently with our realtor at the rental property we used as an intermediary between Georgia and Colorado. Since we couldn't move into our house until we built the solar array and plumbling, we rented for a short time in Cortez, CO. The Star Link dish was phenomenal in Cortez, it's a little odd that we don't get service for it an hour north of that cell. It's only a matter of time though.

IV. Projects and collaborations

I'm way over loaded with the day to day non sense of getting our property up to snuff before winter. Was tight but found the time to do the soundtrack for Bleak-Creep's animation Us - Chapter 2. I had the opportunity to compose the soundtrack for Chapter 1 last year and it's an ongoing project that I love to get involved with. Please, go give her work some attention. She has an adorable style of story telling and paid me both times for my part in the project. The cartoons are LGBT themed, hello pride month.

I keep producing junk music files. I got one with some promise but I'm having trouble with the derection. If anyone has the time I'd like to know which version is sounding better: Version 1 with no lead synth, or Version 2 with lead synth? It's a messy work in progress at the moment, ending isn't even there yet. Just curious if anyone had any input :(

I worked with CyberDevil back in December. Time moves so quick, I wanted to shout out this collab sooner but have been super busy/wanted to take the time to include it in a post like this. I almost never work with vocalists or collaborators so this was awesome to hit off. Just wish I was a little more comfortable mixing vocals. He sent a bunch of material I didn't use. I'm not sure what the ethics of collaborating with a lyricist are, felt bad I didn't use every recording he sent me. Cyberdevil is a cool cat regardless, hope he didn't mind the creative editing.

A while back I started searching for collaborators but since no one uses Reason I've had to make due with sample sharing. I'm not as open to collaborating on music at this point but if you feel like you'll be a good match for me: PLEASE SEND ME A PM. Drum and bass is my funk, piano is my forte, and Reason is my canvas.

V. Fuck You

This one is pretty self explanatory. Take the necessary levels of reflexive emotional distraught and contemplate those feelings until you feel appropriately fucked.

VI. Newgrounds Southwest Meet Up??

Covid is almost behind us, a mere memory of a time of hardship. We can start to consider meeting each other in person again. I've been to a few prior newgrounds meet ups, would love to host something similar in the South West. This is only a rallying call for anyone interested in co-organizing something. I'm in the four corners region, would probably try to locate and rent a convention space in an area central to the most people. Major cities I'd consider include Denver, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, etc. Cost of renting out a convention center might prohibit the end location to a smaller town but most hotels have a conference room that can be rented out for a few hundred bucks. I'm an audio peep, would love to find a space that allows the set up of computers, instruments, and a PA system for short jam sessions and idea sharing. A major city would attract a larger crowd, would love to curate an organized creative experience for artists of all mediums. One of my favorite mementos is a sketch pad featuring drawings from various artists that attended the 2017 Pico Day office party. I guess I just want to be surrounded by creative people again, this whole lock down thing has been hugely detrimental to my social life.

Again, if anyone is interested in organizing something with me let's make a forum thread or discord channel to get an idea for possible locations, events, hotels, bars, or anything relevant.

VII. Conclusion

Holy shit, you made it this far! Give yourself a pat on the back. If you skipped everything because tldr, I recommend going back and reading Section V. It's a very short section and it conveys a certain feeling that I think will remain relevant to you despite skipping all the other sections. Thank you my babies and have a wonderful day.

I've had the pleasure to communicate with many young and aspiring artists over the years. There are a lot of fun sounds and ideas that the newgrounds music people invent. I'm not as communal as I would like to be however and regret that there are artists here that I've been bumping shoulders with for decades that I know next to nothing about. Never talked to them or left reviews. Artists here develop small microcosms and cults. You can spend 20 years on the same website and never communicate, take notice, or give feedback. It's mildly depressing.

I've posted that the focus here is music but if you're an artist, animator, coder, or voice actor and have something that you're really proud of then go ahead and post it here. The newgrounds community is always exciting. Though I upload mostly musics, I have a fondness for all the arts and sciences. Really, would just like to know you all a little better. Even if you're one of my regulars that I talk to, share something. Post two things you made that you love :)

This isn't supposed to be an advert, but in case you don't know what I'm all about: here and this. Would love to keep the focus on you people though. Show me some work you're proud of and I'll get back to you shortly :)

After 15 long years, I am finally USER OF THE DAY [1]. I have waited patiently for this grand ordeal, stealing moments and planning my every move. I have been awaiting this privilege since before some of you were even born. With my USER OF THE DAY status I can finally achieve the dominate sweeping reforms necessary to save this sad husk of a website.

My first command as your USER OF THE DAY is that everyone must bow when I enter a room. Children must weep, men and women must toss themselves at my feet. Let it be known that I am a just and loving USER OF THE DAY. I will tell the children not to weep. I will tell the tossed people to rise and live free wholesome lives. My paradoxical commands will wash over the people and you all will accept my beautiful demands. I am your goddess.

Second, I demand that all the furry-amputee-hentai artists collaborate on a fantastic mural immortalizing my splendor. The mural must be one mile long and three miles high. My figure will billow forth from a grand battle modestly clothed in fine linens with light fabrics gingerly accenting twelve pack abs suffocating under quadruple D cup anime titties. Long wonderful brunette hair must flow from my opulent crown. YOUR GODDESS HAS SPOKEN.

Thirdly, I demand that everyone who has ever downloaded a track of mine for free to check out Almost Orgasmic or buy 2Q4U hard copies. I'm thinking of tossing together a new album called Sex Noises but only after the buzz from USER OF THE DAY wears off. I'm too busy politicking right now to have any time for children's games and musics. War must be waged in my name. Blood must be sacrificed.

My fourth and final command is that I shall remain USER OF THE DAY everyday so that no one else may abuse the privilege that comes with my power. My strength is infinite and unrelenting. I demand that the code of this website bend to my will. The world will bask in the glow of my body as power radiates from my perfectly moisturized skin. I will grow in size until my form dwarfs your tallest skyscrapers. Once my dominance has been immortalized I shall physically vanish as quickly as I came. You're ancestors will sing songs of my ruler-ship. The Golden age of the world is now upon us.

Weep, for your terrifyingly powerful yet loving commander has awoken.

In light of recent news and not wanting to feel overshadowed, I have decided to break up myself into two separate organisms.

Good ol' Daft P has been making music for almost 100 years now if you include all the artists they have played in their famous DJ sets. They had a great run and it's always a sad day for fans when a band or act splits up and goes their seperate ways. In fact, it's kind of a cliche. That's why starting today I am going to seperate all of the atoms down the middle of of my body and become two functional chibi versions of myself.

It is something no other artist has attempted intentionally. Creative purists can bask in my originality as my left consciousness continues to make music while my right consciousness starts a family and runs a farm. This was decided to be the best course of action for Quarl moving forwards. It's an open secret that the two halves of Quarl have been having mild disagreements relative to how the singular organism has made decisions in the past. Fans are hopeful that despite the breakup Quarl will continue to feed her cats.

In other news, I am momentarily breaking down my life for a cross country move. I've previously lived in New York, California, Tennessee, and recently Georgia. Colorodo will be the next homestead. For those that pay attention to politics I will be moving from Marjorie Taylor Greene's Georgia district into Lauren Boebert's Colorado district. I'm stoked I've been given the opportunity to vote against both of them.

As usual I will link to my bandcamp page, go give Almost Orgasmic a listen. Still got plenty of 2Q4U hardcopies. I had thrown Among The Stars up on youtube for some odd sub reddit. It is now being included here for no relevant reason.

Just uploaded four audio loops. If anyone uses Reason, hit me up. It's a cold lonely DAW.

The Darkness [LOOP]

Piano Dribbles [LOOP]

Little Ditty [LOOP]

Churry [LOOP]

Part of me regrets getting exclusively into Reason. So many audio producers use FL. Over the years people have asked me to collaborate with them and I've asked others. It usually doesn't go anywhere but there's never any harm in asking, right? I managed a decent cross platform collab in 2010 with Sessilenomad and it worked out splendidly. We were exceptionally lucky, we only sent files back once or twice. Basically I wrote the intro, sent him a sample folder, he wrote that incredibly juicy climax, and I wrote an outro. Finished in two or three days, it was a perfect no hassle collaboration.

I wish everything was as easy as that one was but we are all artists and we all have strange work flows. Some people need to have someone stand on top of them to get off, it's just how we are. I only function in Reason, sue me. If anyone out there wants to try something, let me know if any of the four above loops sound like something you could poke around with and I can organize some sample folders.

Peace and love,

Quarl

I do these every so often to get a check up for some of the cooler things I've been listening to. Enjoy a few new tunes :)

Ok, this Aphex Twin track is an old favorite of mine but it's a cool video.

YokoBono. This doesn't belong here but I laughed at it, so have it.

Throwback track. Is ska classic rock at this point?

and finally 30 minutes of beardy man doing his improv schtick

So, my last track "No Boundaries" got some positive attention and I decided to make available the drums via google drive. Someone asked whether they were a "Reason preset drum kit" or a "custom kit." Technically the drums are a complicated amalgamation of sample layering, signal processing, and fidelity units. Skip straight to the bottom to download a zip file containing a RSN file for Propellerheads Reason version 10 and a drum sample folder. I deleted all the irrelevant instruments from the No Boundries rsn file but kept all the drums unchanged. You people can have these files and do whatever you want with them. Let me know if you use them for something, or plan to. This is meant to be a learning tool for any interested parties but you can create straight off of it because I'm so giving.

The remainder of this post is copy and pasted from my response to Qshunt.

The snare is actually four separate drum samples, two of which are rsn factory and the other two came from a Pendulum sample pack downloaded over ten years ago (it's included in the zip folder at the bottom of the response). The amen break was in that sample pack so technically one layer is just an amen snare. The rsn samples are Sd_Tressor (don't confuse with Sd2_Tressor), and Sd_Brat. The ghost snares are just Sd_Brat but it's signal gets merged with every other snare drum and processed in the same fidelity units. The sequencer lets you pick and choose which drums to solo in MIDI for easy ghost snare rhythms but again, it gets sent through the same fidelity units and is a layered part of the main snare drum too.

To help compartmentalize the project, the drums all get their own 14:2 mixer. Mixers are easily daisy chained so between the main instrument mixers and the drum mixer you can insert a filter. Bypass it or just set the knobs to min/max, you can automate the filter to turn itself on or off for classic jungle drum fills.

Again to clarify, the MIDI sequencer can solo each of the snare drums for texture diversity but the signals all go to the same mastering suite combinator which includes the entire sub folder of MClass fidelity units. That includes an equalizer, a compressor, a stereo imager, and a maximizer. To be honest, some of them are bypassed in this rsn file, I just like having the fidelity units there as an option. If you're not sure what something does, trust your ears.

Before the snare drums go into the fidelity units, the signals all get merged with a Spider merger/splitter. You can then take the merged signal and send it to the other side of the Spider unit which can split the signal to side chain instruments that have a compressor on them. FYI, everything I've said so far is applied to the bass drums as well. Sometimes I only sidechain with the bass drum signal, sometimes I add the snare signal. Depends how I'm feeling that day.

Now the fun stuff, download the RSN file and drum samples here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uwWiQsRN9Xniix8IxS-KnAGPF6VXLB-t/view?usp=sharing

It's google drive, you might need a microsoft account to download the files. The main file was created for Reason 10. Let me know if you have any problems, I can send the zip file via email. Go nuts with the RSN file and free samples. They're yours now, please use them responsibly. Happy holidays you rebel scum.