February; Jobless
which, as some of you know, is how i like it
Shifting my priorities a little
“It is important to point out how much the sense of vocation is at odds with the prevailing contemporary logic. A vocation is not about fulfilling your desires or wants, the way modern economics expect us to do. A vocation is not about the pursuit of happiness, if by ‘happiness’ you mean being in a good mood, having pleasant experiences, or avoiding struggle and pain.”
The quote is from The Road to Character by David Brooks, a book I am struggling through so far - not sure about it - and don’t actually recommend. But it did spark off a nice insight for me that I don’t have to become an accomplished or… ok, famous… musician. I have, of course, had this thought before, but the reminder is helpful.
Thinking of myself as a musician was an initial reason for writing this journal; to kind of think of music as my work. And so, while I intend to keep making music and also intend to keep writing this occasional journal, I welcome a shift in my priorities and a bit of refocusing. Music isn’t really my job or vocation in life.
I have been playing and studying music for a long time, though, so any beginners to music-making, especially with computers, please read on and… here’s the point… listen!
Why is it so hard to make music on a computer?
I ask myself this or some formulation of this question all the time and come up with different answers. Maybe I’m not so much a useless musician as a useless composer. One thing I certainly find is that, being on Ableton Live or any DAW, I’m so focused on technical matters - where is that button? how do you do this? - while a drum loop plays away somewhere in my subconscious, that musical composition is quite far from really being in my head.
That’s just my latest theory. I like asking the question and coming up with different ideas of what actually might work while still being in moderate awe of those who have a natural affinity for this sort of thing (making music with computers, or just being musical). That is a good talent to be blessed with, and I am happier for the listening.
New Year’s Rez
My most recent post on here was all about plugins. Eventually I got sick of all the emails from Plugin Boutique, Waves Audio and even MusicRadar. My sudden epiphany of late December 2023 was that I don’t need any more plugins or computer software or hardware. I have the tools here to make and record music. Of course I have. So I unsubscribed from a lot of music software companies and have pretty much stuck to the resolution.
I was reading on Reddit’s r/ableton forum yesterday how Ableton includes a lot of devices and effects that are fully effective and competent but just lack the sexy GUI of other plugins. I have put in a pre-release order for the Ableton update to Live 12 but that’s it. It makes sense to learn some of the many programs I already have. Later in this article I’ll mention a select few free music programs that are worth exploring.
PC Crash
After two, three maybe, years of music-making on a working Windows OS (I’m still kind of amazed… this was unheard of in the bad old days of home computing!) it went down. I was on the Linux side of my dual-boot system and in a partition manager and, thinking I was wiping a USB stick, deleted my Drive: D\. Oh dear. So I broke my computer to be fair. It still showed up for a while and I managed to rescue quite a lot of stuff. For a while it was a disaster zone. The BIOS completely disappeared and I lacked any response on the monitors. I was into the innards of the machine, flicking away at that little CMOS battery thing etc. Mysteriously the machine returned to life and it has been kind of fun, if a lot of work, putting a fresh system together.
My days of dual-booting Windows and Linux are done (Microsoft have managed to make that trickier than it used to be). Ableton Live, my key DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), doesn’t run on Linux systems so I have installed Windows 10 on this desktop PC. I have two internal drives in my computer - a 512GB SSD and a 1TB HDD - so I have gone with setting up C: drive for running programs and basically D: drive (or external drives) for my files and some of the bulky libraries that come with programs like Live. With Microsoft OneDrive switched off, Windows for the most part keeps out of my way on D: drive which is nice and the way I like it.
I lost quite a lot of plugin functionality which, given my New Year’s Rez, was no bad thing. Live 11 and Push 2 were smooth to reinstall with my user codes backed up. It’s all working out fine now.
Ukulele
I have joined a local ukulele beginners group. This has been great. Expert tuition with really focused, clear and comprehensive, even online resources. Joining the group has done wonders for my (long lapsed) ukulele playing. I’m finding strumming easier… maybe they are simpler rhythms we’re playing. And I’ve been to a local singing lesson which I was a bit lost with to be honest but it was fun.
Building A Second Brain
Or, to give it its full title, Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organise Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential. This book was recommended to me by Justin Guitar. After my computer disaster, I thought this might help. I didn’t like the book and I didn’t learn much but I think, on reflection, the author Tiago Forte was preaching to the converted in the case of this reader. I have my files pretty well organised. My digital life is organised. My creative potential is un…
Oh, this book was just a bit silly. I thought that 200 pages on how to file things would be right up my street but, as with the file administrator role they invented for me at Comet HQ many years ago, I was very bored.
Recommended Free Music Software Packages
I’m not sure if these packages qualify as plugins quite but they are three good collections of software instruments (so we are talking synths and samples). A quick search of ‘free music software’ on Google points me initially to DAWs which I’m not talking about here (On Windows, I recommend REAPER. And if you do opt for REAPER, to begin with you will be lost for a lack of samples and possibly synths so downloading these packages would be all the more helpful).
Native Instruments Komplete Start
A pretty big collection of working synths and some great effects devices. Downloading Komplete Start requires you to download Native Access first. In Native Access I suggest you have a look at Preferences → File Management to set up your preferred VST Plugin folders and your Content Location. I have set my Content Location to an external drive E: because this takes the bulk of the package (the audio samples, basically) that take up a lot of storage space.
LABS is a bit funky. Some people are big fans. I’ve not really taken to it yet but it has an eclectic range of instruments. Check out Spitfire Audio’s BBC Symphony Orchestra too. Again I’ve set my external drive E: as the Default Content Path in Settings but I have had issues with that. Another thing to note with LABS is the instruments are strangely quiet. This isn’t an error. For some reason they are set to a lower decibel level than most plugins while LABS comes with its own little volume bar (top right) that goes up to 400%. Strange. A big respected company in turning out huge sample packages for music and film professionals.
Analog Lab Play has some pretty cool instruments with a selection of tweakable parameters. A little limited in scope but great for some go-to readymade, quality sounds. Installs easily and, like NI and many companies, via an installation package, in this instance Arturia Software Centre.
Music Distribution
For releasing music to the major streaming platforms I was using SoundCloud Pro but my yearly renewal came and went without me renewing the service. It is confusing, hasn’t improved in a year, and integrates badly with the main SoundCloud site so I decided not to renew and have signed up instead to Distrokid at a much cheaper rate.
And my music…
I haven’t released any music this year. I’ve rendered a few versions of one project but I’m not very keen. Here’s how my table looks today.
It doesn’t change much but that’s a new magazine since last time I posted. Yes, Live 12 is coming soon… Nick Modulations has a video on it. I’ll probably make and release some new music fairly soon.