Logging My Journey
It was more than a decade ago that I sold my MPC2500 to focus on other things and since then, although being a huge appreciator of music, I didn't get any closer to making an actual song than occasionally blowing raspberries into a didgeridoo.
What's worse is that in the time since I sold my MPC, I had a hard drive fall off a shelf and break into a million pieces. This was my "backup" drive, and was a mirrored raid array, but a mirrored drive is only useful if you have a working mirror, and when 6TBs of your precious data falls 16ft onto a concrete floor, there's not much of anything left.
That is all to say that I have no record of my previous musical experimentation, so as much as it irked me being hassled to share what I'd made on my new Zynthian, it was actually a blessing in disguise, as not only did it force me to get over my perfectionism in order to have something to share in a timely manner, it also forced me to share and therefor archive it.
I do try to be careful with my archives, and these days I try not to have so many eggs in one basket, but I do still know that accidents happen, credit cards expire, accounts lapse, things get lost, and occasionally a shelf might vibrate itself off the wall and turn all of your virtual property into ugly maracas.
Not only that, but having been so long without an accessible creative outlet I cared anything about, and being overworked and underpaid like the rest of us, I've struggled to find a great deal of satisfaction in anything. Being forced to share forced me to record my creations, and seeing and hearing a "finished" result was actually really satisfying. A pleasant, but at least of late unfamiliar feeling.
Being forced to share was the catalyst for organising sample challenges with my friends, was the reason I created this site in the first place, and was the reason why I have added a music section.
I will warn you tho, these are not masterpieces, but sketches at best. The primary purpose of my publishing them is to have a record of my creations, not to impress anyone else.
Making these videos was fun too, and something I'd been thinking about for a while. Everything was done in Kdenlive, which although not the most intuitive app in the world, is incredibly capable, and with a bit of elbow grease I was able to realise a fairly accurate version of my initial concept.
These are not uploaded to YouTube because Google are absolute fucking scum who are trying to tell me how to operate online by no longer allow you to create multiple accounts. No problems, I'm not going to fight them. I'm using Vimeo for now, tho I'll need to find a better compression algorithm as I have already maxed out the free account limit this week.
If you would like to re-post them on YouTube or elsewhere, please do, just provide credit and link if possible, and drop me a line to let me know.
Posted: 2021-02-26