Greetings, bearers of sentience. You may have noticed that my posts are more scarce these days. Yet it is not due to lack of self-employment—to the contrary. I am putting more time, effort, and energy into my work than ever. It is, instead, that by the time I have concluded a project in my typically hyperfocused-marathon fashion, I am wholly exhausted of staring at the infernal screen which I unfortunately must use to catalyze said creations, and at that point highly desirous of some technological detoxing. At which point, I typically shut off the screen and do some analog reading of authors either living, or immortalized by their scribery.

By the next day, I am ready to engage the next step of the manifestory blueprint, and spending one or two hours formulating a blog post on the already-finished work usually feels like a snare in the momentary (momentum-ous?) trek. However, if I neglect to do so entirely, no one is even aware of what I am doing (for all they know I am binging on Sour Craft Beers Somewhere in Australia) and they are unable to interface with the process, causing me to feel somewhat unhealthily isolated. I'm always striving towards a better balance in the pursuit of prolifia and groundedly-personable-humanhood both. And I must thank you, dear reader, for helping me with your wonderful input over the months and years in that regard. But, I digress from the main thrust of this article—my fledgling experiments with visualization of audio, and more recently, my re-delving into the monolithic beast that is modern FL Studio 20.

In noting the obstacles stated above in terms of logistics, I determined to combine both of these video experiments into one blog post, though they were separated by about a week and are quite different in many ways.

The first, "Rather Pay Heaven," is a tastefully sloppy vocal/groove "sprout" as I call it (a rough, unfinished idea for possible future extrapolation.) It was created in Garageband in my usual organic/manual fashion—recording all the parts on my Yamaha Montage by hand, employing no type of quantization to correct timings, but using multiple takes until I arrive at the desired result. The vocals were recorded with a Blue Yeti USB microphone.

The visual aspect was created in rather minimal fashion using some iPhone 8+ footage of the woods near the creek in my neighborhood. This footage is layered with its inverted manifestation using Final Cut Pro wizardry, and has some minimal effects added as well. It is, however, presented in basically linear temporal format, though slowed to 89% to match the audio's length.

Overall, I considered this video a fair success, though perhaps a bit random/underwhelming visually. When performing every step of the creative process myself with a priority on generating a somewhat large amount of "completed/published" content, there are significant limitations to how much intensity of detail can go into each aspect of the project. Yes, that is a downside of this style of all-in-one creative approach, but it is I path I feel strongly I must pursue.

The goal is to learn video editing from scratch, through pure experiential rigor. That process, of course, will be empotentized by reading, watching video tutorials, and continually reflecting upon past projects. I am currently about 2 weeks into practicing video editing near-daily. If you want to be in sync with my learning process in real-time, please subscribe to my YouTube channel and click the bell icon so you will receive notifications when I publish new videos. Also, please leave any feedback you feel called to share with me with regards to the relative success or failure you perceive in any given experiment, either on this blog post, or in a YouTube comment, or both.

(An emphatic shout-out to @quillfire for giving some EXCELLENT feedback the other day regarding my semi-related endeavor of making videos to accompany spoken poetry. I haven't forgotten; and I shall respond in full to all remarks. Thank-you's are also due to all of those who leave brief encouraging remarks. I appreciate you all!)

The second video is a radical departure from my current comfort zone of audio creation. Instead of using the minimalistic and ultimately very limited Garageband, I began re-learning the use of powerful FL Studio, now finally available for use on Mac. This is the first DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) program I ever used to create electronic music at the age of 15 years old onward: however, it has changed and upgraded A LOT in the nearly 10 years since I used it consistently. So, it's the re-learning a whole new workflow.

Therefore, I just created something rather "minimal" to dip my toes back in the swimming hole, so to speak. I was learning the basics of the Harmor Additive Synthesis Plugin while making this. All notes were inputted into the Piano Roll by clicking, so I did not lay hands on a musical keyboard. I added no percussion, and turned the piece into a sort of "noise ambience" experiment (which I found to be somewhat of a failure musically, though providing at least a minimum of material for the visual side of things.)

The video was the most technically involved of mine yet, whose visual aspect was created by screen recording the visualization of Harmor synth output, creating an amalgamation of this in the proper aspect ratio, and applying perspective-tiling/kaleidescope processing to create a sort of geometric mandala effect synchronized with the music.

I was relatively happy with the finished product, though there is a certain overbusiness to the visuals (and actually, the music, as well) during the first minute and a half of the piece, until the main melody begins around the 1:30 mark. (Ah, noise-ambience, that little-appreciated genre.)The process used in generating these visuals, however, signifies a MAJOR epiphany for me personally with regards to this long-term experiment of mine, which makes me very excited for things to come.

Both of these videos I would categorize as rather middling overall, if not somewhat below average in quality. What can an amateur expect in any newly embraced creative medium? The important part is that I am highly engaged, absorbing near-overwhelming quantities of data on a daily basis, creating and resting consistently, and maintaining a laser-pointed focus on the longer-term goal: that of becoming a full-time self-sustaining artist capable of interfacing with an ever-expanding network of other conscious creators. I am determined to accomplish this regardless of the inevitable obstacles and despite whatever unlikely odds exist in achieving such a goal. "In the fullness of time" we all eventually actualize the pinnacle of That Which We Truly Are, whose timing directly corresponds to the precise intersection of Universe-inherently-interlinked-microcosmic-entity-unfolding-Serendipity and Egoic-efforting-propitious-devotional-Fruition.

I am well aware of how precious our Time is. Therefore, for those of whom watching a 2-minute video is too much to ask (and for the general viewing pleasure of those who wish to contemplate a few select geometric forms present in "WhatTkUSoLng" with increased contrast and saturation) I will end this blog entry with some still screenshots of that video experiment. Perhaps, they will say more wordlessly, anyway, than if one was to read this post in its verbose-yet-still-lacking-entirety.