Finished Song: Fly By Night

Track one done! And I’m pleased with this. I’ve learnt a lot about how to put the pieces together into a usable workflow.

Don’t begin, Finish by starting

I spent a lot of hours working on this track. Having the timebox and peer commitment really helped with my follow-through. Almost every time I’ve sat down to write without a collaborator the track has died at the ideation stage. Looking back, this is the first 10-20% of the process. And I didn’t see how those first ideas would fit together into a coherent song until I was about half the way through. I played Sophia what I had about half the way through and she said it could work. At that point all I could hear was what was wrong and what needed working on.

It was only at 70-80% through that I started to like what I had again. And those final touches, mixing and mastering made a huge difference. Even though the song as a whole was done and recognisable at that point. One of my review peers started a new song half way through. I was tempted, but I saw this was a trap. They had a song, but it was quite raw after that lost time.

When this is over, I’m going to have to practice this focus without external constraints. I now know that if I don’t like what I have it merely shows that I need to put more hours into it.

On My Process

Almost all the songwriting, sound design and arranging was done on the Synthstrom Deluge. Which was really tactile and hands on. It also limited me to one synth engine and 600MB of samples to choose from. Presets were starting points, but I did tweak things and use the internal effects. This removed a lot of potential distractions. The tools are good enough.

I then bounced things a track at a time into Logic. This ended up with my drums mostly pre-mixed, and some reverb, delay and distortion printed on some tracks. I had to fix volume levels between sections before mixing proper. Printing effects wasn’t ideal, but meant I didn’t spend time redoing the sound design I’d done during writing. I added a tiny bit more percussion, the filter automation in the middle section, as well as the rain samples.

Adding effects was pretty minimal; one track had another delay on it, another distortion. Other than that is was EQ, compression and stereo imaging. I used a couple plugins I had for the master fader, but everything else was bundled with Logic.

Time for games

Despite spending the time songwriting around work, I still found the time to catch-up with friends and family. I found the threshold of enough. By focusing on the craft hard, taking the time to detach was both needed and available. I spent a few evening on group chats this week. They always seem to come in waves. It was a really nice balance to find

Lately we’ve been playing Letter Tycoon on Board Game Arena with family. The patent buying mechanic is like Monopoly without the bad blood or grind. And the word building is like Scrabble without the frustration over the state of the board (but sometimes your hand of all vowels). It’s gone down well. We’ve had a physical copy for ages, so good to see it having a wider audience.

I’ve introduced a couple friends to untap.in and we’ve been playing Magic: the Gathering there. Everything you need is free, but the feature-set is stripped down compared to the MTGO. You need to do everything manually, which is quite a lot like playing on paper. Playing over voice chat works well for complex stuff. No idea what playing with randoms is like.

None of us have played MtG in a while, so it’s been nice to get some casual play in. My friends have started building decks again, so I can see us doing more of this in the future. So far I’ve only used online decks listings, and done draft.

Kitchari

I think I’ve found a new staple food. It’s not quick, but it’s simple. It can go into long rotation of things to make when I don’t have time to make something with lots of hands on time.

Kitchari is a mix of two things, typically rice and lentils or beans. In Ayurvedic health it’s often used as a mono-food for cleansing. I tried it for its simplicity alone. The recipe I followed is based on this one.

• 1 part rice, 2 parts mung beans, 12 parts water
• Coriander and cumin seeds, turmeric, ginger
• Veggies to taste

Wash the rice and beans, add the water and boil. Yes, that’s a lot of water but the beans need it. Simmer until it’s mush. The recipe above says 20 minutes, but it took me a lot longer since I didn’t add enough water at the start. Cook the veggies for an addition 10 minutes.

Separately, fry the spices and stir them in at the end. Serve as-is, or with yoghurt.