The check in station

Hey everyone! I’ve found that as i’ve been busy with infants and general life stuff for the past few months I have been doing more lurking and less interaction here.

I figured it would be nice if we had a thread just for checking in and saying hi that wasn’t the Introduce yourself channel.

If you wanna post here, feel free to give us whatever updates you like, what you’ve been up to etc.

Even if you’re positing here all the time, if you want to share some random part of your life and day to day thats not really related to other threads, please do :slight_smile:.

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Paging @bfk. Are you alive? This place sure is quiet when you’re on hiatus :smiley:

I think I’ve got a few shitposts in me, though, so I could sub for a little while. Here’s to hoping there are more lurkers here and they haven’t all left us :cry:

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I’ll start, hey everyone. :slight_smile: Hope you have all been well.

I’ve been logging in like every day just to see whats been going on for the past while. I’m just so damn busy day to day getting things ready for the changing season here in the PNW and hanging out with my boys, that having more meaningful interactions is more difficult. I’m still here though, I didn’t go away.

For those that don’t know, my wife and I had our first kids in April of this year, identical boys actually. They’re fucking awesome, but they keep me busy for sure.

I’ve been spending what free time I can muster working on a few different music projects, including one for the boys. Time is less available now, so it’s slow going, but it’s still happening as often as I can get it.

I’ve been missing out on giving a good listen to recent additions to the members releases and listening booth, but i’ve got some good time today to go through and give all of that stuff a listen (I do my best to listen to and comment on every post when i have time, so I have a queue lined up). Looking forward to hearing what you guys have been working on and put out there.

I’m also going to try and go back and give the last two GP releases another good once over and give some reviews on bandcamp. I’ve listened to both already, but I want to give them some special attention today, as they’re both excellent albums.

Anyway, thats all. Hope everyone has been well.
Here’s a few picks of my boys over the past couple months in some of my favorite outfits. (Not comfortable posting their faces anywhere online. We’re sticklers about not having them shared on social media or things like that, hence the stickers.)


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Im alive.

Im ok.

Shitposting is an empty hollow existence…it never was really my goal…in all honestly

I was trying to do what evelon…did…

By eveloning i mean help others get their music chops.

If anything my primary goal was to continue to evelon, after evelon logged off permanently…

Instead of gatekeeping music production knowledge.

But again its the internet…and real life is real life…so…

Do me a favor…someone please continue to do an evelon and help noobs get their music production chops.

:100::grin:

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I don’t think most people* are really interested in designing their own sounds these days, tbh. The ratio is probably higher here than most other places, but a lot of that just ends up becoming dry conversation for nerds (I love that part too, but I think there are only really a few of us in any given community who do).

* =out of the community of people who make electronic music, that is

I’d personally love to see more of the nerdier, nitty-gritty type threads around here. If that means anything

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Great thread and thanks for the updates, all!

I’ve been lurking a bit here and there myself but like @Guy_Wachtel I haven’t had the time to do any meaningful posts.

My daughter is now 18 months old, and if I’m not at work, (like I am now), my time is spent taking care of her. We have been looking for a house to buy in regional areas, so we have spent the last few weeks travelling around and if we’re not travelling, we’re sitting on the couch looking at online listings. I have another big trip planned in three weeks’ time. It’s bloody hard work trying to find a house that’s for sure! Especially with a toddler as you must time all your car trips around naps and meals and what-not, otherwise problems arise.

If I do have any time to myself, it’s spent on GPR release organising. Time for my own music has disappeared. Come November though my family will be leaving me by myself for 3 weeks. Hopefully during this time, I will get back to making music and more development of Glitchpulse.

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I have just been off grid for a few days with my family.

I’m still around.

Last night I had a dream that I met @relic. We embraced like old friends as we greeted. Im not sure what the purpose of the dream was. He had a can of drink called INTHEAM. That’s all i remember.

I’m struggling with music distribution at the moment and considering pulling the plug on it.

They have all these dumb ass rules and regulations that get in the way of what art is supposed to be. Here’s a few notes:

They don’t allow random casing on anything u less you can prove your big enough to “deserve” it. For example: “IDMf” is not acceptable and thus why the retrospectives are listed as “Idmf”. This really bothers me.

You are not allowed to have an artist as a main artist and remixer on the same release.

Various Artists releases just show up in a cess pool of 6 million VA releases and cannot be collated from a label perspective.

And the latest issue which has tipped me over the edge: you cannot have “Tribute” in the title of a track. “Tribute” is only allowed in album titles that are tributes. So here is CD Baby telling artists how to name their tracks.

I told them to go fuck themselves with that bullshit.

I don’t suppose anyone is wondering but if they were, this is the reason Retrospective Vol. 3 is not on streaming services at the moment, because of “Tribute to Adventure Time”.

What’s worse is that I had this release on streaming already, they accepted it the first time, but Toronto Is Broken’s management issued a takedown for his track “Like You” because it didn’t fit his current “brand”. Ok fair enough, i didn’t fight that. So i had to take down the entire release (because you can’t just remove one track, which is another issue I have). Upon resubmission they flagged the Tribute thing.

Im very annoyed because i feel strongly about letting artist be artists, but at the same time his track is old and who know where or what Kris Cadwell is doing these days. Meanwhile, Morpion, who provided a new track for this release, doesn’t get what he is promised.

I think I will just have to remove Tribute to Adventure Time as Im not renaming it.

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Ok so I went to remove the track from the release, but you can’t just delete it and all the information with it.

You must change the number of tracks first. Then shift all of the track’s names up one, to take it’s place, then change all of the track information and audio files to line up with the new place in the track listing.

What a diabolical load of turd that system is.

The only reason I’m still using CD Baby for the Retrospectives is because I have spent a shitload of time loading in everyones artist information and already paid for the releases. After that, they’ll never see a cent from us. Not that they’ll notice.

So anyway, I kept the track on there. It’s now called “Adventure Time”. After all, we spent time re-masteing it. I just can’t stand for this rubbish system.

You can’t even upload 24 Bit/48 kHz WAV files either, you have to convert them to 16 Bit/44.1 kHz. It’s 2024, what the fuck is that about anyway.

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Wow, what a load of garbage. Sounds like a shit system for sure.

I’ve had annoying little issues with Distrokid for my self-released work, but nothing like that…

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Lov this thread, yeh no more distro and sd baby for me too, nothing really happened with any of em. It’s just me and the BCamp train for now on. Whatever happens, happens. Im teaching 2d animation these days and a bit nervous to meet the new class, but thats normal. When we see eachother it will go smooth as usual. Any animators out here?

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Haha, happy to make a cameo in your dream world, especially if I am pimping a brand of drink that uses my house music DJ moniker!

All those services, it seems, do all they can to be a pain in the ass.

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Right in the middle of Term 4 Exams. It’s kinda hard to find time to make music… (Especially when I prefer to play Warframe on the weekends.) But I’m alive, and next Monday I get to enjoy myself a bit.

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If I had to guess, they don’t want to be responsible for any conversions from other formats and want a known bit depth/sample rate going in to do any lossy conversions from.

Like, if you have one ME who insists everything has to be 192k/64-bit or it sounds like shit and another one who masters the same tracks to just redbook spec, you could have a situation where two otherwise exactly identical masters get handled differently in the conversion to AAC/MP3 and other distribution formats and one has true peak overs and the other does not. Then someone from label QC finds out like 2 months later and it’s a whole fucking snafu to pull everything and re-upload/convert it all.

This is why I personally don’t fuck around with high sample rates, I just do 24-bit masters.

So it’s a bit draconian, but I can see the logic in requiring one format because then no one can blame CD Baby if something is wrong at the end.

Also, all those rules about song names, proper caps, artist names/royalties/etc is why I don’t bother with distribution personally anymore. I’m registered ASCAP and I don’t care, Youtube can keep my royalties.

Been there on the label front man, best of luck sifting through it all. I think you made the right move just renaming the Adventure Time track. Sometimes you have to make calls that might not be the artists’ intention for the good of the release as a whole. That’s always a tough situation and never one I took lightly, but at the end of the day you have to represent the whole forums as best you can, and sometimes that means you have to go against some of the artists. Thankfully in my experience it never got too contentious with any forum members. I had one case where the guy was non-forum and we were trying to fold him in, but he was adamant about some track order and naming scheme stuff that just was not going to fly (track 1 #4, track 2 #16, track 3 #1, etc). So I just quit talking to him and let that deal die.

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I’ve been meaning to go through and read this thread and respond before checking in, but i’m awake and honestly it’s either here or the rapist. I don’t feel like getting to detailed but here’s the nutshell:

  • polyp/growth directly on my larynx, affecting me since May this year. been dealing with USA healthcare system on this in that time. pretty much lost my voice completely for a couple of months. it’s been a harrowing experience in my life. surgery on November 12th. it’s not cancer, apparently. should have full recovery. hopefully.
  • lost my job because of the previous issue, been struggling with this lifestyle change, trying to find new career options that don’t require me to use my voice a lot.
  • frustrated with a lot of things about my life in general. have been receiving therapy. shit’s just frustrating. I don’t really feel like being detailed beyond where I have been.
  • I kinda just feel like a fuckin piece of shit.

Overall I am excited about the future and my life and every possibility and option and path I have to take, but I am anxious, and struggling, and some days just trying to get through the day.

I’ll share one frustration: with all the shit I’ve been dealing with, my water heater decided to crap out and the last week has been just dealing with that. Because of my tenaciousness we ended up saving a lot of money installing a new one, me and my father in law, for $600 which is 1/6-1/10 the prices we were quoted by contractors.

What’s more important, making music or having hot water in your house? honestly, you decide. I chose the latter. I just feel like it’s everything at once, I’m stressed about money, and sometimes I just wanna float on a cloud and blow away like a dandelion.

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Idk if you have any Information technology skills but if you do…maybe that???

If you dont its always learnable. :slightly_smiling_face::100:

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ebbs and flows. sometimes i’m frustrated and sometimes i’m loving the excitement. of figuring shit out and pushing myself through a major life change. right now i’m pretty calm, placid about it all. I have confidence in myself. every now and then though I JUST NEED TO DUMP MY FEELINGS ON THE INTERNET

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Well I’m glad to hear that you’re dealing with it like a champion. Feelings are hard, fucking weird as shit, too. (Oh what I’d give to be a computer program with no emotions.) If it really adds anything… I’m listening, and I can feel you on every point.

Once your water heater’s all fixed, it’s all back to normal. Heck, you could even think about ways to prevent a similar issue from occurring…!

I hope you get to enjoy yourself at some point soon, sounds like you need it.

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Thanks Mecha, things are actually going ok for me, I’m just in this transitional life/identity change (career wise) that makes one face their selves (physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually) in the metaphorical, metaphysical, meta – and yeah as I get older, physical – sense. Lots of confrontation with the ego and unraveling traumas. It’s all healthy, I mean it’s ugly sometimes, but it feels like progress. I’ll feel a little more ahead and maybe even evolved when I win a few levels, but sometimes it feels like I’m hopelessly climbing ladders while some mean-ass gorilla at the top is rolling barrels down toward me.

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At least you get that for free, there are people who pay good money for that.

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Im alive…

I have no shitposts
No essays on society
I havent been making music.

I havent been listening to music.

Ive just been meditating a lot.

Being alone with my thoughts and just moving on with other life things.

Edit: yesterday feels like 2 months ago…
I have so much time now that i dont binge watch the crap on streaming.