forgotten_aria

Just felt like making a post. Nothing really to report. Taekwondo, CrossFit, Lyra, and Cyr are chugging along at my super slow pace. I make enough progress to know I'm not hopeless, but when I watch a video about cyr that's some person complaining that they almost gave up because it took them 12 whole days to learn waltz, it's my pace of learning does get a bit frustrating (It's been 10 weeks, but I haven't gotten past 4 steps.) I'm also slow to gain the strength I need to advance in lyra and CrossFit, but again, I'm slowly gaining it.

I really want to finish my Nightshroud costume from last year, I want to make a Phantom of the Paradise mask, and I have a greyscale workout costume planned for CrossFit. I've been very unmotivated, however, to get working on any of those. I'll finish Sylvie sometime too, but that's a much harder task.

I'm also really letting my music slip. I was already struggling because I was in that "I'm not good enough people want to play with me, so I don't find motivation to practice, so I don't get better" loop that was being a little bit budged by my yearly gig that stopped because of Covid. I got my handpan out today and it was such bliss to play. I don't know why I don't play music as just part of my routine.

I miss people a lot, but I'm not ready for parties yet and in general not really reaching out for social interactions. I do have some online interactions, which is good. I saw my family for the first time since the pandemic began. We tested before hand and didn't mask in the cottage, but we all masked in stores. No one else on the cape really did, though. It was nice the family was on the same page.

I did a random act of kindness by delivering a harp from the Cape to Waltham. It was kind of fun to have had the van to be able to do that.

I totally love cyr, even though I suck at it. It really is everything I thought it would be. I can't wait to learn the basic moves so I can keep it going. I'm hoping the Sunday Esh classes will come back so I can get some lessons. It's been super nice to have the basement space, even if I sometimes almost crash into things. The flooring I got for the driveway got too soft in the heat. I'm hoping that I'll almost have my waltz about the window where the vinyl on the driveway won't be too hot or too cold. I hope I can get good enough (performance level) to justify buying a street wheel.

Consuming a lot of media. Kitties are still cute, fluffy, and grey.

I got the video done. It's bad. A combination of lipsyncing be hard and just my visuals are too forced. I had fun making it.

Because I don't like the video, I will give you an option to listen to the just the song (even if it really does need some autotune.)

( And if you really want the video... but I warned you! )

I agreed to do Winchester town day again. At least this time I knew it was coming up, but I procrastinated partly through things being busy and partly my own fear. I've started to work on the set, but it's mostly been a battle with working right up to my self-loathing and then having to back away. The war in my head is a lot more detached now, even if I still can't win it all the time. A lot of "what the hell am I thinking? I suck, everyone knows I suck, that's why I don't ever get asked to do music things," vs "maybe if you just practiced!"

It's one of those things that when I was performing music all the time I did actually get better, but I need to be doing it, not just trying and failing at it. I haven't been to School of Honk in ages, but I don't think it was really giving me what I needed anyway.

I will take my TKD training to heart as much as I can, however, and try to push through this. The whole point of the Winchester town gig is that no one cares how much I suck, they mostly don't even listen to me. It is supposed to be a "safe" gig.

I wanted to have a set for an open mic by now, but I realize even if I ever do get to that point, I will have to figure out how to set up my gear quickly, which is an issue in itself.

People ignored my first three songs in my set, which was actually kind of nice, because the mistakes didn't matter at all if I was just background music. Then the band after me came and became a supportive audience and gave me encouragement about my last song. Then I went and did my two horn bits with them and they went "good enough" which is a win, given how variable I was on them.

So all in all, it was better than I could have hoped for, I think. I wrote two songs and actually did get the perfect low pressure environment to try things out in.

I did have the problem that because everyone was talking, I picked it up in one of my looping, so even as the room cleared out, it still sounded like the room was full of people talking, because I had recorded it in my floor mic.

Just to make record:

My shoulder might be finally fixed. ( icky details here. )

I also agreed to do Winchester Town Day again, but I have no clue what I'll play for my set and I'm kind of freaking out, since nothing solo I have is really performance ready. :/

I saw my first live concert in a LONG time (thank you SO much for the invite, you know who you are.)

I think one of the things it has shown me is how much I've changed as a musician (which I am sadly still struggling to call myself that especially now that taiko is actually coming to an end, no really, why are you looking at me like that?) Because it was Tori Amos, it sparked some memories from college. About someone (who also knows who they are) encouraging me to sing, which is still a rare thing. (And voice, control and ear-wise I have come SO FAR since then.) But is was more my memories of how I used to not like live shows because the differences from the album would annoy me unless it was ENOUGH different (like a completely different style or a like.) But now I think I have much more diverse musical pallet such that I loved it when it was a lot different or when it was a little different. I could hear textures that I don't think I could hear before. I was also understanding her stage presences and how she interacted with the audience.

I was also intrigued that she looped herself for the first song, since I want to get more into looping.

As a side note, I don't quite know what I was expecting, but the crowd was different than I had expected. As it was pointed out, most of the differences were that people were just older, but there was this kind of calmness and observantness that I usually don't get, that was until people got IN the theater and had their brains sucked out by their BRIGHT phones and had a bit of standing inappropriately.

I had also hoped for Happy Workers just for the obscurity of it, not that it's that great a song, but it would have amused me just like "Welcome to my Fog" did when I watched the BOBs in concert WAY back in the day.

On Friday my world of warcraft account will lapse for the first time since November 2004, shortly after this post. a little over 12 years of playing the same video game. I had already started to fatigue, only logging into to do the group content, and then my group fell apart. I'm trying to figure out if there's anything I really want to do before my account stops. And really, I might like to poke at the chromie stuff, but I'm just super bored with WoW, which is understandable.

A few years back they sent statues to anyone who had had an account, continuously, since launch, so I'm putting myself out of the running for the 20th anniversary statue. ;)

This is unlikely to give me any more free time to play other things, since Overwatch is already taking up more video game time than I would really like in my life. I've been putting off making music and other things because of various other priorities. I'm hoping I can find a good balance soon.

Due to a personality conflict, I have to pull more out of taiko again. That's also feeling like a good thing. Hopefully when the dust settles I can make an effort to do the "hard" things of making music videos and putting myself out there again.

I also haven't been to School of Honk since January and miss that (and some of the fun gigs, like the Georges island gig.)

So until I found this video and became obsessed with the thing taped to her body, my only Birthmonth gift to myself was a power floor washer/vaccum called a crosswave. If you have a ton of bare floors, it's great! It will vacuum and clean wet or dry messes and leave your floor almost dry. For me it means I don't have to sweep then mop. I can do it all in one pass. I'm waiting to see how it will do on dry cat messes before I post a video to my review channel.

After some research I found out that the thing taped to her body is a boss rc-202 loop station designed for the beat boxer. While I don't identify as a beat boxer, this is by far the easiest and most fun looping pedal I've ever used. I still need to really learn it, because a lot of the features are buried. I also don't have a good understanding what a lot of the filters will do. The ones I do understand, I don't really know how to set the parameters right. I'd like to know how to get octave shifts out of the pitch shifter, for instance. There are some amazing videos of people using this thing. Here are two videos of my first attempts on it.



This one didn't come out as good (it was my first attempt.)



P.S. As a complete side note, I don't see my friends enough.

Been a little busy with the trip to Pittsburgh to help my mom buy a car and then Black Ships.

Taekwondo is doing well. This weekend I test for "high brown" which means just "deputy black" before black. In a lot of ways I'm really glad the master convinced me to not try to black this year. I means I can be more mellow and I'm forced to come to terms with the "maintenance" part of TKD, which is to say, after high brown, the amount you learn per year goes way down and you are expected to learn things with more accuracy and precision. I am such a passion driven person, though, sometimes I have to remind myself that TKD just makes me feel better and it's completely worth doing just for that reason and the other carrots are just crutches. I'm doing something that improves my quality of life and that's enough.

I put myself on a waiting list for a therapist again. They called back today and I have introductory appointment this Friday. I know it's going to be completely different this time, because I'm in a very different place. My depression, while still existent, is much better than it was. I want to work more on my anxiety and paranoia, which I feel I can get advice on and maybe some more tools in my tool kit, which feels more like something that someone else can help with. But we'll see. There are a lot of horrible therapists out there and the ones that take new patients are more likely to be the ones with high turn over.

Taiko is... odd. I definitely have the "you can't go back there" problem. I really don't feel like I belong any more to the group or to the community, but I'm still quite active and doing many of the income producing jobs. I can't say I want to be doing them, but I still can enjoy them when I have to do them. We're struggling to find students, however, and that's stressing me out. I'm currently teaching pro bono just because I was tired of canceling classes and I like my students.

I made another Overwatch themed music video. I've been slow about posting music videos lately, partly because I've been busy enough and partly because since it's not yet an income source, I want to keep it relaxed and fun. My first overwatch video has done much better than anything else I've posted, which is cool, but still just in the noise as far as income goes. I'm also not that happy with this one. The song didn't quite come out the way I was hoping, but the idea is that I need practice making music and videos. ( Video. ) I've also been playing a lot of overwatch.

No new instruments. I am getting another USB controller for Ableton tomorrow.

I haven't been able to hit school of honk much lately and I'm having ear inflamation that I think is caused by earplugs, so I might have to skip again. I got some new ear plugs that are cheap self moulded ear plugs and I hope they'll help some, but we'll see.

Been enjoying the AC comfort of the new house. Reminding myself one of the reasons I moved out of 133.

A few quick thoughts:

Porchfest with School of Honk was amazing. At one point the crowd started dancing and it went from a performance to a party in that moment.

I have a harp gig (unpaid) first weekend of June. This was a friend trying to help me get practice at being a solo performing.

I made myself a patreon account, because why not. No, I'm not posting the link here because I don't want money from my friends, I want money from strangers.

The video game Overwatch launches today. I made an Overwatch remix using one of the character's sounds and got up the courage to post it to their Facebook wall. All this seems to have gotten me is a down vote.
( video )