Just tested positive for the virus. It does mean I have more time to make music though, so hopefully I can finish up the next few songs I’ve been working on for months.

Oh hey look it’s my birthday again. Here’s to another year!

So my next song is done. Father’s Day special and all that. Unfortunately, I can’t upload it right now, and here’s why.

So it’s actually quite simple why I can’t upload it in its current state, and it’s because FL decided that my manual sidechain (manually automating the volume decreases since it would be way too fast otherwise) would be impossible to render correctly SPECIFICALLY with my new song. I have no idea why it’s doing this, but basically, every time there’s a kick drum, the song goes completely silent. I’d love to show you what I mean but NG doesn’t let you have audio clips so I can’t. But basically this completely ruins the song’s drops, and it’s a shame, because I’m quite proud of this one. What’s supposed to happen is that every kick drum, the volume of each instrument decreases and then immediately increases to give the kick more impact.

I have tried exporting it into different formats, reducing the intensity of the sidechain, everything, and it didn’t work. At this point I have a few options:

1. Remove the sidechain from all instruments, leaving me with a very messy song that would have to be completely reworked and take several days more to make decent and it would still never sound as good as the original
2. Change the lead instrument (which I think is the one causing the issues). This would also take a while to find a replacement but I think it is the best option to fix the issue.
3. Scrap the song entirely.
4. Upload the version with the weird audio and fix it later (I really don’t want to do this).
5. Upload the current version now on my SoundCloud for those who are interested, then fix the audio issue, then upload the fixed audio version (of which would involve the first or second options).

The only feasible way for me to accomplish everything I wanted is to go with option 5. It would allow me to still have a Father’s Day special and still keep the standards for my Newgrounds account. However, it comes with a big caveat: you’d all be spoiled and hear the bad version first. I really don’t want you guys to get a bad impression, and so I don’t know what to do at this point. Advice?

Update: I have figured out a solution:

6.Screen record the entire song using Apple’s screen record feature within FL mobile itself to avoid the rendering issue causing the weird audio, convert the video to mp3, and upload that file instead. I tried it with the audio clip, it’s worked perfectly. Thanks everyone for your help!

We are now 42 out of 50 songs through the 50 states series, and the obvious question of what comes next was difficult to answer. Obviously, making around 200 songs for every country in the world is unreasonable, and to be honest, I might never finish that series to begin with. Instead, I’m considering other options, including more abstract options. For example, a song for every letter in the English alphabet, or just continuing without a set series (although I’m already doing that on my soundcloud), or other things like that. I’d like to get some user feedback on this.

One of my biggest goals in music creation was to eventually get frontpaged from the very beginning. Over time, this goal became less important to me, but it’s so cool to finally see that people really do enjoy listening to Nevada, a song that took me nearly a month to make. Thanks for the incredible support, and let’s hope for an amazing final eight tracks!

Technically I created this account on 11/26, but I decided I’d go for December 2nd, the upload date of my first song. Unfortunately I forgot about it until right now, so here it is, the commemorative news post. I wanted to upload a 1 year special but it’s really just not completed yet. It is a change of pace (especially since my views on Wisconsin deteriorated shortly after release) but I think it’s a really good change of pace. I am liking the way it turned out so far; it’s probably around 65% done (keep in mind, the higher the percentage, the faster I get it done (this goes for all things in life for me: the hardest part is starting it)), so stay tuned.

Looks like I’ve found out where I want to go with my music now. Taking inspiration from most of my past 34 songs plus incorporating some easier mixing ideas from more professional musicians, I will attempt to double down on the electronic side of things and just go all in. Obviously that is my favorite genre to produce as it provides by far the most flexibility and variety in my opinion, without having to individually score every note on a computer. I’ve tried discordant jazz and I’ve tried literally making symphonic covers but it hasn’t really amounted to any clear inspiration or direction like I hoped it would. So yeah no more Georgias then.

I try to think as a long term planner, and long term what I was doing is unsustainable because I feel I produce better music if I focus on one thing and make it really really good. Those of you who have been around for at least around 5 months will know what I’m talking about: we’re going back to basics. That’s not to say I gained nothing from the experimenting; in fact, quite the opposite. I’m glad I dabbled in other genres and I might even go to other genres in the future again in case I am in the mood to do so. But I got 2 songs upcoming, and they are likely to be my 2 best. One is almost finished and will be uploaded very soon. I hope this is the beginning of a new era, one with inspiration, direction, and 16 states.

After all these years, I finally recently found out that FL studio for the PC has a free trial version that doesn’t let you open saved tracks. I circumvented that by simply never closing FL. But yeah I’m considering switching to that over the mobile version as it’s far more capable and able to make a greater variety of synths sound nice which I noticed in FL mobile seemed impossible. I’m excited to make my first state in FL, but it is taking some time to learn lol.

UPDATE: After losing all progress on a pretty mediocre song due to lack of ability to save I have now decided to just backtrack and not attempt anything crazy for now.

Currently beginning to work my next BIG project. Those who keep up on my SoundCloud already have a clue as there was a song named Carelya that I just deleted as it would have spoiled this. I’m planning to make a decently long song (for my standards) that truly encapsulates the feelings and emotions of my next state, and who better to remake than a piece from a famous classical composer. My next state is one of my personal favorites and so I thought I’d do something special for it, different than the norm. I have only seen maybe 1-2 modern songs in my time on the internet made in a similar way as my next track (where modern means like past 30 years). It’s not something completely new or original, but rather a callback to a different time in history when music was far more well thought out as a whole and was more drawn out. You can probably guess what I’m doing right now just from that lmao

Today’s my birthday (that’s all lol)