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What creative projects have you been working on?
This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.
Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.
If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.
I've spent about seven years writing a novel, which was shortlisted in an international writers' contest. The story is about a young woman who, with the help of a close-knit community, builds a free food distribution system to feed the community. A covert agency partially responsible for maintaining the security of the economic system, attempts to foil her plans. She succeeds, but only until the agency directly intervenes. Then chaos. My near-future, hard sci-fi novel interweaves technology, artificial general intelligence, unique high-level offensive strategies, and ultimately pits machine against humanity. (I wrote my own desktop text editor and ConTeXt typesetting integration to help write and typeset the novel.)
Would enjoy feedback from interested alpha readers.
I’ll be an alpha reader if you like. Do you have a timeframe for responses?
It's happening again.
For the last two weeks I haven't at all been satisfied with the quality of my music to the point of only opening my DAW once a couple of days. At this rate I'll probably quit for a year or so again, especially as I got hyperfixated on a new hobby (picked up Yu-Gi-Oh for the bazilionth time, been playing online and watching the anime).
I've been trying to break into making hardstyle music, it's my favorite genre and I want to be able to make a track. However I can't get the melodies to sound right. I spent some time studying other artists' melodies (Headhunterz, D-Block & S-te-Fan and KELTEK's mostly) and trying to figure out what makes theirs work and what is missing from mine but I can't really make the connections.
It doesn't help also that everyone in specialized forums says you should first learn to make your own kicks and heavily discourages using kick samples, which is a total opposite to what the rest of the producer community usually says for other genres. I get that the kick is a major element of a hardstyle track and re-using kicks will make you sound like a copycat or just stale and boring, but learning to make them when I can't write a damn melody seems counter-intuitive. I should be able to make a song sound good with other people's kicks before I can make my own kicks (which is a complicated and technical process, by the way).
I guess I'm just frustrated and that frustration killed my desire to make anything. I could keep making other genres, but it usually turns out to me making hip-hop/lo-fi beats - and while those are cool and I like them, I don't feel fulfilled.
I'll just have to push on, maybe tonight I'll force myself to write melodies over and over for an hour on the clock. I did manage to somehow recreate the lead sound from DBSTF's Believe just by layering some presets and slapping a high-pass EQ and a Valhalla Supermassive on them, and I'm really liking it so maybe something good will come out.
I'm pondering buying a MIDI keyboard so I can jam melodies more easily. Drawing MIDI with the mouse isn't very creative, and playing MIDI on a QWERTY keyboard is awkward at best. I have an AKAi LPK25, but it's just much too small and uncomfortable to use. I was looking at Native Instruments's Maschine series, they have a bundle deal with Komplete Elements so I'd be getting some cool sounds to jam with the keyboard. But my finances aren't amazing right now, maybe in August after I get my performance bonus at work and I pay off some of the (minor, but still annoying) debt I accumulated lately.
Anyway, I'm kinda looking for advice? Not sure exactly, I just wanted to vent and maybe hear other people's thoughts.
Having a way to jam melodies helps. I never needed a midi keyboard using Renoise, but it helps with DAWs where the inputs are more limited.
For hardstyle the kick is ultimately built around something adjacent to an 808 or 909 kick, and the main thing is getting it to sound right. Samples or synthesized doesnt matter as long as it works, tbh. I don't do hardstyle, but thebkick at least always seemed to be the most straightforward part. Getting the mix right around ot os where the challenge is.
I get the genre fall back, I lean on slower synthwave if I fall into something, or slightly more upbeat variations with walking melodies.
Gear helps to a point, like interfaces to music, and software/presets are good for inspiration but you still have to carry it. I've spent thousands on gear the past few years and don't have much to show, for example. I will say you will benefit from keeping a constructive habit. This video helppede balance my music production with when I can va when I'm just stressing myself out, but for me it's largely about constantly creating small things so the Big One can come out eventually.
Currently I'm writing a new... novel? I think it's going to be about as big as a novel, but it's not a linear classic narrative. Last Edited is the story of Morton Powell, a silicon engineer who more or less invented the modern microprocessor, but then fell out with his friend Theo Rose when Theo, founder of their company, patented the technology and acquired what's essentially a monopoly on all digital computing. Powell left and formed his own non-profit, the digital encyclopaedia AlmaNet, who's mission statement is to provide high quality free knowledge to everyone. Shortly before Theo's death, the two reconciled, and Theo promised a no-strings-attached sponsorship from the company. When he passed, his daughter Dinah took over, and while Morton can't prove it, he has a sneaking suspicion that Dinah is trying to destroy AlmaNet and turn it into another corporate propaganda outlet. You, the reader, have access to AlmaNet and get to read the articles about this sci fi world, written by the paid verified expert editors of AlmaNet, and you have to read between the lines to piece together the story of what's happening and the dynamics between the different characters.
It's probably my most ambitious project yet, and the first act is already online at https://almanet.cc/, if you want to read it!
A while back, I got a paper tablet both to do some reading/writing and to work on my ability to draw. Nothing huge, still working on it. I try to do a sketch in the morning, that's what the one of my dog is. The others are ones I decided to do more with because I liked them. The pointing demon is meant to evoke the pointing wojack - I was playing Diablo and imagined a demon seeing his buddy get splatted by my barbarian. The angel was me trying to draw a statuette we have on the back porch (a mom request). The others are second attempts at really old sketches I found in my sketchbook.
Wish I could draw as well as you. Those are really good!
Thank you! That's nice to read in the morning. Fwiw, I read a book (Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards) and after working through it a bit, could follow folks' advice about just being persistent with it. I have a bad habit of being a really harsh critic with stuff I try to do - still am, but when I'm doing the drawing that part needs to be quiet. The book helped me better understand how to do that, by reframing how to think about that inward, critical perspective, turn it into something less troublesome and more easily silenced.
Finished the Love is Blind series!
Took a long time and the large blocks of single colours got very tedious towards the end, so my next project are these tiny things with tons of colours - I plan to use them as gift tags and the recipient can then use it as a bookmark if they so choose 😊
First little gift tag/bookmark
I've been writing short stories to submit to literary magazines when I have time and the mental health. No acceptance letters yet… but I've been shortlisted twice now, once at Clarkesworld, which is one of the biggest speculative fiction magazines out there. So, I know I'm close! Still, I can't help but feel like I'm writing blind, desperately trying to find whatever works without feedback. I want to think I'm getting somewhere with my prose, but I don't really know. My goal right now is to submit and collect as many rejection letters as possible. Rejections damage me a great deal. I need to get into a headspace where submitting doesn't come at the cost of my mental health.