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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.
Mixtapes. They remain my favorite way to discover new artists and I still haven't seen a better way.
Something about having another person curate the track selection outperforms any algorithm-based method for musical discovery. Using themes and telling stories rather than just having a selection of tracks in a playlist is what sets them apart. I got into this when I stumbled into the summer mix series back in '09 - I've got just over 400 of the mixtapes from that place archived and submitted a mix there most of the years it was running, even came in top3 a couple times. The creator is here on Tildes, @yewknee - sometime when the place is a bit more busy I'd like to see ~music running one yearly.
All of mine are up on mixcloud and 8tracks. Those websites have become the last holdouts still built for tape sharing. I try to do about one a year. If an artist makes it on to one of my tapes it's because I bought the album and would recommend that artist to anyone. I don't go in for the 'radio show' style, just the music. If it isn't something I can listen to for days on repeat, it isn't done.
I'm not quite happy with this year's tape yet. Getting pretty close, but I think it can be better. I keep toying with the idea of bringing 80s and 90s sounds into it - they are 'vintage' now. As I harvest the crop of albums for 2020 I'll keep tinkering and share it in ~music when it's done and uploaded to the mixtape sites.
I'm enjoying these. Thanks! You really have a talent.
October, the most drawingest time of the year! I'll be starting an October draw challenge today. I'll be trying to do a drawing every 2-3 days, and spending that time on each drawing. Idk how to feel about it this year, I'm nervous because I'm bad at drawing scenes and scenery and imma try my best but uuuuuh it'll probably be hella ugly. I completed Inktober last year and was like huh so now what? It was very... Underwhelming I guess? But fun? So now I'm focusing on trying new things and also having fun. We'll see if I cry this time.
Thank you!! When I'm finished I'll likely share a gallery of them!
Oh snap, I should do "ink"tober too (probably actually MS Paint-tober)!
There's a whole lotta cool prompts for October (maybe it should just be called promptober hmm...). There are several witch, spooky, gore themes or more mundane, easier themes or prompt lists to follow. Or even your own! If you do any, you should share them if you're comfortable with that!
I am 1000% on board for promptober! I love it too bc it lets people be creative however they're most comfortable
Some nice sounds but it lacks a bit of structure in my opinion. I debated buying some hardware synths this summer but I already get frustrated by the limitations in VCV rack, so I'm not sure it's a good idea. I don't have the space too.
I was thinking maybe something like the Moog Grandmother, I've been in electronic music forever but never owned a hardware synth.
A youtuber made a good point about that : if your workflow centers around a DAW you should get an analog synth with a unique sound, because it will bring something different from your plugins, but that can also be digitally controlled so it can integrated in your workflow.
An album I co-produced and played drums on is being released tomorrow! It's a mix of ambient solo piano and small-group jazz. All the songs were originally composed as scoring for the public radio show and podcast This American Life. It's my first producer credit. Very excited!
Okay, I'm gonna need a link to that. Sounds cool!
OK, since we're just a couple of hours away from Bandcamp Friday, here it is:
Allison Leyton-Brown - How I Roll
Happy listening!
I have been trying - with not a great deal of success so far - to design a table. I've never made a full-size piece of furniture before. There are some requirements and some constraints. It needs to be small, maybe 350mm square or round and around 450mm high. It needs to be able to be moved easily, either by sliding or lifting. Ideally it's supports would mean the table surface could be placed partially over a seat. Most of all it needs to look nice because it is a laptop table for my front room.
So far so good. There's a tonne of things I could do which would satisfy these requirements. What's stumping me and taking up a shedload of scribbled-out pages in my sketchpad is that it has to be made on a budget of as close to zero as possible, which means scrap/spares from my workshop. I have a top, some nice cabinet-grade birch ply which is about the right size. I have a couple of heavy bits I could use as a base. I have various bits of wood and metal and pipe and rod and stuff from which I can theoretically make supports or even legs, but I'm struggling to come up with something which feels right. It'll come though. What I probably need to do is forget about it for a couple of days.
Haiku (operating system) is having a contest for system sounds which I was made aware of via this ongoing project I occasionally contribute to, the Disquiet Junto.
Anyway, decided to give it a go and here's what I came up with.
I've challenged myself to start releasing music every month, and I put my first "entry" out today! It's the second lullaby I've recorded for my daughter, although the first wasn't released publicly. I may re-do it some day and upload it for another month's submission. It's just a piece of solo piano playing, and I'm quite pleased with how it's turned out. I've never recorded piano before, so the learning curve was quite steep, and I was frantically trying to master it last night to get it out in time for Bandcamp Friday. Have a listen if you've a moment :)
https://bill-odwyer.bandcamp.com/track/maias-lullaby-ii
I posted a track I was working on and wasn't very happy with a while ago. I used it as a basis for of collab with a vocalist and I like it better now, it's astonishing how pasting some vocals on a instrumental change the way you perceive a track : https://soundcloud.com/bouzeux/guitar/s-b5l3yTVTs6r
Not really a whole lot I can think of to say other than, "that was really good, and it kinda makes me think of something I would expect to hear on a roleplaying game soundtrack." 👍
Thanks :)
So I am working on this radioshow - a metahorror thing that I plan to suggest to a local radio station here in Sweden. There is a good-to-fair chance that they wont accept it, but will record it anyway is the plan.
Just need to find a few voice actors among friends here which is gonna be tricky but still fun.