The New Girl
Item! New Addition!
Exciting times are here - our little girl was born on May 21st. It’s been interesting comparing the two different birth events. In some ways, they were eerily similar. In many other ways, they couldn’t have been more opposite. One thing that is certain is that I’m trying to enjoy every second with the little one. She is, quite naturally, perfect. :)
However, I’m Exhausted
Life is certainly busier these days! The 2-year-old is a tiny ball of energy, and doing what two-year-olds do (both good and bad!). Sleep deprivation, going to work, making sure the house doesn’t fall apart and trying to squeeze in some time for hobbies is really taxing. I think the main reason I’m spending the time to type this blog post is for the (hopefully) therapeutic benefits of purging thoughts from my head. Also, this paragraph serves as a warning that this blog post will likely be brief. Hell, it may not even make any sense!
Other Things
I ended up taking 1 day shy of 3 weeks off for the first stint of family leave. The days were still quite busy, but it was nice being away from work. I realized I didn’t miss it a whole lot. I didn’t necessarily think that would be the case in this new role, but perhaps it’s a sign that time taken away from work is good for your health. It’s almost cliché, but you have to recharge the batteries once in a while.
I have been squeezing some time in here and there (sometimes to my own detriment) to work on my electronic music hobby. I’ve been cooking a couple ideas lately, and I hope to share them soon. One idea involves the Digitone, trying to create a more downtempo, ambient tune. The twist with that one is to run the sequencer at 128, but build the beat with a half-time feel to make it seem like 64 bpm. I think I have it right. Using the doubled bpm allows one to effectively double the resolution of the steps in the sequencer. That, then, allows for some neat tricks sneaking in glitchy percussion or melodic elements. I’m aiming to finish this project and record soon, so stay tuned!
The other project is another downtempo, hip-hop inspired jam built on the Octratrack. I wanted to try doing something in the 90-110 bpm range, and settled on 93 bpm. That tempo worked well with a sample I wanted to use to build the foundation of the tune. As usual when working with the Octatrack, the project kinda took on a life of its own, morphing and twisting into something different as I went along. Since I’m still learning the ins and outs of the Octatrack, I treat all of these early projects as playgrounds, testing out techniques, trying different things, practicing. Keeping that mindset means I don’t mind if the project changes (even drastically) along the way. Besides, it’s so much fun, I can’t complain! I’m also really close to a finished product with this project, so I hope to record this soon too. In the meantime, check out the YouTube embed below. This is the hip-hop inspired project about halfway through the process. Most of what’s happening here is me learning how to setup scenes for subtle, and then dramatic, shifts in the pattern. Introducing that variation allows you to squeeze a lot of mileage out of a few patterns – or in this case, one pattern.
Coda
There. Another blog post. This time only a month after the previous one. There’s still hope for achieving one of my goals for 2019 (writing more blog posts).
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