July 24, 2025

Since the last time I mentioned my audio interface, there's been a new development that has made things far more usable. I got some of those quarter-inch to 3.5-millimeter adapter jacks! I had known that they would be useful from the moment I got the interface, but seeing my friend LAHBAN send me an image of his own Scarlett that featured one in frame reminded me to get on with it and grab some.

I'm writing this while sitting on my bed, with my laptop on my odd little shelf-desk, and my audio interface sitting on the shelf above it at about eye-level. My interface has the adapter plugged into the headphone out where it should be, and plugged into that is a typical aux cable leading to my headphones. The cable droops down between the two high points of where the out is and where my head is, so I've got it draped over the corner of my bed's headboard to keep it out of my way.

Aside from the atmosphere of it all just being very pleasant, this is truly a game-changer. I've been frantically relistening to different MP3s I have lying around and visiting different Neocities that have music players on them, all for the purpose of just really reveling in this moment. I finally have a way to listen to my laptop with headphones on for the first time in years.

The years-long gap of time where I wasn't using this laptop means that I don't recall when it became a problem, but at some point something seriously degraded the operation of its in-built headphone jack. Trying to plug anything into it nets a mono signal annoyingly panned to only one ear and an equally annoying high-frequency whine from electrical interference somewhere within the wiring. That's already pretty repulsive for casual usage, but it's even more impossible to try to make use of that for doing detailed audio work like I've been wanting to.

It's a wonderful breath of fresh air to finally hear audio come out of this computer that matches what my beloved headphones are actually capable of. I can only imagine this is like the audio equivalent of needing glasses and finally getting to see through them. This just solved the last great hurdle I still had standing in the way of recording songs, as well as composing them. There's nothing left preventing me from getting projects done, or at least nothing external. It's now all on me to keep the initiative up and carry my ideas to completion.

Speaking of which, while the very emotional ballad I'm trying to write on my bass is all well and good, I need something a little less theoretically intensive for the time being if I want to get any sizable amount of music done as soon as I'm wanting. Luckily, I remembered a great idea for exactly that kind of endeavor. I'm gonna work on some short and minimal tracks, each designed around displaying a different patch I've made on my synth.

I'm gonna draw on Home as a big inspiration here, since Home tracks are similarly based around very simple melodic ideas, built and iterated on through resourceful use of adding and removing layers, and primarily focus on demonstrating the texture of a given palette of synth sounds. Home is a big inspiration of mine.

(I've been wanting to write a page for this site just talking about the music that inspires me. I should honestly just dedicate a whole subsection of the site just for talking about music.)

(Other side note, I'm listening to Home's We're Finally Landing on my laptop right now. Pure euphoria.)

Well, rest assured that when I've got something I'm ready to share, you'll be the first to know. And then I can write commentary about it. I LOVE writing and reading artist commentary. The other night I was listening to the Risk of Rain 2 OST commentary at long last, it was awesome.

July 25, 2025

Writing this bit a night later to cap off this post before I put it up, cause there are some thoughts I've had after I had previously wrapped up last night:

Firstly, something I was fiddling with after I stopped writing but before I took my headphones off was that I opened up a DAW to go play with the metronome function. All of my thinking about music recording got me excited about composing in odd meters again. Being able to just set a metronome to run in a time signature I want to jam on and then just being able to compose with my hands more than my mind is an amazing opportunity to have (quite literally) at my fingertips. I'll be busy with something else tomorrow but I'm gunning straight for recording in that exact manner as soon as I can.

Secondly, being as comfortable in my room as I was last night made me realize and look back on how I've just felt a lot more at home in my room in general as of recent. I've been overall feeling far more at peace with existing alone in my room than I had been even just a good few months ago.

I had previously regarded my room as feeling empty and not having anything worth seeking out besides my bed. That, and my desktop, back when that was still up here prior to last August. Combined with a hatred of feeling left out, I tended to favor the living room consistently unless I needed to sleep or confine the chatter of some noisy activity to one room like during voice calls with friends. I didn't even use my desktop that much unless there wasn't something else I could be doing elsewhere.

Part of that emotional emptiness has probably been due in part to a quite awful choice of wall paint on my younger self's part, which I would presently describe as a rather depressing "moon-rock" grey and a deep blue that could easily have been saved from being a "home-improvement show" blue were it to have been paired with quite possibly any color else than the aforementioned impersonal grey.

My younger self's complete lack of whimsy aside, I think another big problem was that for a long while, I was quite the electronic hermit. I wasn't entirely holed up in my room or anything, I'd leave my door open to not feel alone, but my point is that all of my big hobbies and endeavors were confined pretty routinely to the realm of my computer. I haven't really realized it until just now, but that's something I can be very thankful for in regards to picking up music so fervently, that and this laptop as well.

Point is, I think I simply didn't look up enough from my computer to really ever make a solid attempt to surround myself with things that I feel at home amongst. Needless to say, it changes that to have a bookshelf of books I like having nearby now waiting at my side every time I wake up. As does my corner, always in-sight, where my amp sits on the floor beneath my beloved bass hanging from the wall next to my hardware synth on the desk beside. As does sitting on my bed typing on a Linux-revitalized laptop that I can finally use to frictionlessly translate my thoughts into music.

Y'know, I was considering cutting all this talk and putting it in its own post with how substantial it's become, but I've actually come full circle here. Back around to that feeling I was illustrating through my words last night. This is all completely on-theme, ultimately. Awesome.