mirror::box::milo @mirrorboxmilo@mstdn.social

Just did my first ever "headline" show yesterday in front of a small audience of friends and friends-of-friends, playing mostly original songs from my upcoming album. It was so lovely, I felt such a wonderful sense of community, seeing different groups collide in beautiful and unexpected ways. In the second half we did a jam/open-mic/karaoke type thing —dumb fun, pop songs sing-alongs, weird bleeps and bloops. Wish that part could have lasted a bit longer! I guess we'll have to put it on again soon 🥰

Update: I got in the band 😁🎉 We had our first rehearsal/writing session yesterday, it was really fun!! Despite some technical teething issues, we actually managed to lay down some vocals and a new section for one of the songs they had been working on. Although I love musicking solo, I feel like this feeds my soul in a totally different and somewhat unexpected way

Was having a chat with my brother yesterday who's a graphic designer whom I also make music with — we were lamenting the lack of a "Blender of music-making". Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of awesome FOSS music-making software out there, but I haven't yet seen anything quite like the versatility, packaging, and richness of Blender.

If there was such a piece of software, what kind of features would it have?

#BlenderFoundation #AskFedi #MusicProducer

Had an audition singing in a rock band yesterday, and it was really fun! It's been a while since I played with a full band and god I've missed the musical chemistry of playing with others. There's nothing like the sensation of bass and drums in my chest and the little surprises that each member brings to the table 👌

Really hope I get in, I could get used to this

I was already planning to switch my main production #DAW after this big project, and potentially make the switch to Linux as well, but now I'm 110% this is what I want.

I was thinking #Bitwig which apparently shares some similarities with Live. Would love something #FOSS but when I'm being creative I just can't deal with being interrupted by technical issues and having to submit bug reports and such like... Haven't found anything stable enough, but I would love to be proven wrong!

Grrr I'm so annoyed, just discovered today that Ableton Live's audio rack crossfade isn't constant power!!! Been using it for dry/wets and effect crossfades all over my album. I was wondering why I kept having to automate the gain to get it to sit consistently in the mix. Luckily I found a solution, but I don't think I can go around and try to fix it everywhere because it could impact the mixes negatively and I'm already so close to being done with the mixes...

https://performodule.com/2018/10/28/the-chain-fade-problem/

My bass line shortcomings were highlighted in a particularly egregious way on this cut because the harmony is very bossa nova/neo soul inspired; pretty unforgiving...

You live and you learn!

Well, if there's one thing I've learned through the making of this album is that I used to be god awful at writing bass lines. For a while I thought the mix was the issue with this one track. It isn't, I just got lazy on the harmony 🙃

The good news is, now that I've actually started learning the bass, my intuition for it is evolving by the day. I'm going through bar by bar and rewriting the problematic bits with an actual physical instrument in my hands. Aaah the benefits of actually embodying the music 🤩

I'd settle for a closed-source app, as long as there are no ads and I don't have to sign up to some shady-ass website

I'm thinking of sharing some written poetry and reading it out loud, which I think would be nicer in terms of accessibility than a picture of my shitty handwriting 😅

Anybody know of a FOSS Android app that lets you easily add audio (e.g. voice recording) to an image? #AskFedi #Android #AndroidApp

If anyone is interested in which plugins I use and how, feel free to DM me and I can go into some more detail about it. I really think music production should be more accessible, there's so much technical jargon I wish I could have been spared when I was just starting out...

To be honest, what it took for me to actually commit to mixing the album myself was hiring a mixing engineer and subsequently realising I actually preferred my own reference mixes 🤦

She's a great engineer, I just think I have a very specific vision in mind that extends into even the minute details of mixing. I guess you can't spend your way out of being a pedantic perfectionist bastard 🙃 I'm still hiring her to consult on the mixes after hand though, bc the main thing I was concerned about originally was getting a second pair of ears to balance out my biases as the composer of the project.

Mixing is normally pretty tedious for me but over the past few months I've just said fuck it and picked up a few plugins that automate the most tedious bits (i.e. levels, EQ, etc.). I also have a bunch of audio effect chain templates that speed up the process *massively*

Now this album that I've been dragging along like a ball and chain for the better part of two years looks like it's close to being done! What's more, I actually like it a lot 😱 Who would have thought???

#AudioProcessing #mixing #singersongwriter

Currently mixing the closing track of my debut album, it's a spooky ambient track inspired by sleep paralysis.

I wrote it a couple years ago as part of a songwriting challenge, and I remember knowing already at the time that it would be the final song of a larger project. At the time though, most of the album's songs didn't exist yet, or at least only in very immature forms. It's always fun when stuff fits thematically in a retroactive way, it really fuels this idea that there's something deeply spiritual and introspective about making art..

These folks are doing good work in Amsterdam fighting gentrification. Sadly, after 3 consecutive evictions, they're saddled with over 3000 euros of legal fees. If you can spare some cash to help them out, here is their gofundme:
https://gofund.me/a2a8e8cf

Money isn't the only way you can help, you can also just boost this post!

#Amsterdam #Anarchism #Praxis #MutualAid