music stuff
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Lukasz Skotarek
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_notes/Spectral Forge.md
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---
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title: Spectral Forge
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tags: music
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---
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_postmortem_
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Second solo ambient live I ever did.
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May 2023 at https://festiwalswiatla.hs3.pl/
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I took some lessons from [[Stellar Chant]] and had some more time. Biggest change was that I decided to make my own visuals (and it kinda worked, more on that later).
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This time I went with 4 tracks and setup with PC (mainly due to visuals). I still had one point of failure, but had everything backed to iCloud/Dropbox so I could recover if I had at least some time.
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Setup for this year:
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1. Laptop with Ableton Live 11 Suite. I had samples and instruments there. I `bounced` (aka "make this an audio") almost everything I decided not to play and had MIDI clips just in case if anything goes wrong with MIDI keyboard
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2. Arturia Keystep connected to laptop and Ableton to control MIDI. First concept was to change MIDI tracks for different instruments, but was scrapped.
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3. SOMA Lyra-8 connected to Ableton with huge convolution reverb for basically whole 2nd track. I did a photo of Lyra setup so I could replicate it if any knob would be changed.
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4. Focusright Scarlett Solo as an audio interface and output.
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5. MIDI over (50m 🤯) ethernet cable to send MIDI data to change visuals.
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### What went right
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- I managed to learn Blender enough to do 1/4 of the visuals and they were cool
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- My friend helped me with amazing AI-gen visuals for the rest of the show
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- Everything worked perfectly, including MIDI over ethernet
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- I had killer outfit to "transform" into MonoChromancer. This seems silly, but helped me a lot to "play character".
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- Had a proper soundcheck
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- Have better photo/video than last year
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- Actually released Spectral Forge as debut album! (even if it's not mixed as well as I would like, it's still a huge lock out of my head)
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- https://monochromancer.bandcamp.com/album/spectral-forge
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- https://album.link/s/2YVFDSW2w99MUYaijNaytQ
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- A lot of my stickers found new home
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- Discovered I can manipulate volume "kinda as an extra instrument" - small changes in volume for some parts really did enhance the show
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### What went wrong
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- Still, even with soundcheck with folks I was too quiet. Not as bad as last time, but turns out that a lot of people do dampen the sound a lot.
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- I tried rehearsing playing on Arturia before show and it turns out that by far my best take was at home composing. So I decided to ditch whole live playing for 3 tracks out of 4 - so for most part I stayed there trying to look like I'm doing something
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- Out of stress I did turn wrong know on Lyra for a while and had to recover quickly during stress. It made the track bit worse
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Lastly, I think I focused too much on "let's make something that will be playable live" and lost track somewhere along the lines. I kinda got lost in a quest to "make live for a festival" that I made a bit compromised version of music. At least it was eye-opening afterwards to change direction and go back to the "proper path" (aka path that actually is fun for me).
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Overall a huge net positive, especially with release out and a "wake-up call".
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_notes/Stellar Chant.md
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_notes/Stellar Chant.md
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---
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title: Stellar Chant
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tags: music
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---
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_postmortem_
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This was my first ever solo live and first ever ambient live.
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May 2022 at https://festiwalswiatla.hs3.pl/
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### How I prepared
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- I talked a lot with folks and gathered informations and inspirations
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- I was thinking about using Number Stations sample and got nice SkyKing recording link from my friend - decided to go with it, as it was great even without processing
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- Decided to go PC-less, so I took Deluge, Korg NTS-1, looper, singing bowl and drums
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- I decided to split whole thing into 3 parts:
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- first, most `dark ambient` like with the sample
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- second, more energy focused, with live drums
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- third, more `casual generative ambient` to calm down and finish off
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- I still prepared a lot of sounds in my DAW and exported WAV files to Deluge, where I would set them up in a song
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- I got idea for underlying beat for part 2 from listening to clipping.
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- I bounced demos with friends to get early feedback
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- Got in touch with friend to create visuals and control lights
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- Got in touch with other friends to do a fireshow during the second part
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- Printed (in multiple copies) a "cheat sheet" to know when and what to do
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### The setup
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Deluge was the main "brain" of the operation. It had the whole song arranged, so I had to do there is to press play. I had one track with noisy synth to play at the end of part 2. It was connected directly to the mixer.
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I had a contact mic on snare drum, that I played using brushes. This mic went to a looper (so I could do other things) that went into Korg NTS-1. Korg NTS-1 had `ensemble` effect on (to make mono signal stereo again) and heavy reverb with riser delay. I played with delay time and amount to create texture. It went to mixer as well.
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I had a single mic for singing bowl, went straight into the mixer.
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Lastly, there was a floor tom with cymbals (and mic to gather the sound) to play during the second part.
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### What went right
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- I survived
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- Visuals and fireshow added a lot to the live perfomance
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- I did learn a lot during all this time (more on that later)
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- I managed to do it all in under a month
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- I created a set that I actually really liked
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- PC-less setup was actually working great. Deluge may be a small cheat thou, as it's basically a hardware DAW
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### What went wrong
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- I was too quiet. Definitely don't soundcheck without external help.
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- I didn't test how singing bowl sounds on larger scale. Hitting it was really meh and I was to stressed to do proper sound in any other way. Quickly ditched it
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- I heard myself not good enough - to the point where I lost programmed beat and was playing unevenly on drums to it.
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- Fireshow was great, but when it ended and quiet, simple music slowly started to appear, many people thought it was already over.
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- Visuals were on a laptop that died day before the show, so I had quickly made up ones. Lesson - always back up those. And have them with you, so you don't have to rely on external folks
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- I let the momentum go away and didn't finish up live version to release as studio album. And, at this point, I will probably never will - unless I revisit it
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That's it as my memory is bit fuzzy.
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It was great experience, great first barrier broken and I've learned a lot to make [[Spectral Forge]] better.
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@ -7,4 +7,5 @@ title: Categories
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This is a starting point of a `graph`, I list all categories I write about here
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- [[software engineering]]
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- [[music]]
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- [[random]]
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_notes/music.md
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_notes/music.md
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---
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title: Music
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---
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<status>Status: 🌱 </status>
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While there may be some things I will have to share about music making, this category starts as a "journaling" of my music making I may add some more stuff in the future.
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- [[Stellar Chant]]
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- [[Spectral Forge]]
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- [[Hidden Mineral World]]
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