#other song of the day is Aphex Twin's 'Come to Daddy' but it just didn't fit the vibe at all

[intheconfessiondial]

12 Months of 12 - November

Song of the day is Rhubarb by Aphex Twin

[hospitalterrorizer]

diary14

9/18-19/2023

so sleepyyyyy.

i've done 3 more songs, not the 5 i would have preferred but i did figure out a way to make everything easier on myself, and i got a few new "guitar" sounds out of today too. so it's been a long day, like yesterday, since about noon i've been at it, i took a longer break today but i didn't cook or eat, i just spent time with my gf, we're always around eachother, or i guess not so much since she's started work/school (same thing for her cuz grad student) but i digress.

so i'm up to 8, but, really, the 5 yesterday will need to be worked on more too. but i think i'm deciding that what i'm going to do is a single pass, and then come back and listen, and figure everything out like that, less obsessive, hopefully by nailing out the process more i'll get stuff that's overall fine, with few shocking or strange bits, and more just issues of levels. getting the drums standardized again is going to go a long way in that i think. when i say again, it's because they already were, but they were sort of sloppy, same sounds, some minor eqing, i handled the drums by letting them clip and eat whatever they needed to eat up to sound right. they were always super fucking loud. now they are less so. so i got compression and eqing on the kick and snare.

and it sounds good. the song i just did with this has a kick that's a bit too loud, there's an extra snare that's sort of not there that i need to bring out, and yeah, it's all coming up a lot better this way. there's a lot of surgical stuff i get stuck on but if i just go about mixing like this maybe that won't have to happen. very exciting stuff.

i know this is taking its toll on me, i'm sad that i'm basically not writing or even listening to music right now, i have now thrown 4 days into what feels like a minor tragedy, but i will at least get some songs that sound nicer i think.

the nicer sound is kind of really gonna go a long way in helping get things feeling right too, i think the kind of associations i'm going for might become more obvious. super-rainbow-puke freakouts, dandyist hardcore, you know, that kind of thing, it is a thing, i think.

right now though i've been so without like, relaxing, i'm listening to a record i haven't listened to in a while, oval - wohnton. people don't talk about this one as often as they should, there's a song here that the alien9 ost stole too, basically, no one talks about that either. the song woisdiestadt? is sampled and looped for a song. i thought for the longest time the person who made the ost was just a genius, but it was actually oval. they're a genius for knowing to steal that though.

i'd listen to this record all the time in my early semesters at college, this and tujiko noriko's make me hard. make me hard has been with me since highschool, it's a really incredible record, it's fucked up how that, orchid, have a nice life, and salem, sort of propelled me into wanting to make music. there's a ton of other stuff too. there really was a lot of post-hardcore. i've been sat here figuring out how to make uncanny and strange synth guitar replicas of the things guitars do in certain kinds of post-hardcore. isn't that fucked up.

a funny thing about oval is he'd draw on cds with sharpie and stuff, get the fucked up glitchy rips and work with those as samples, among other kinds of fuckery/glitch stuff. i got a bunch of really awesome cds from a goodwill once, like real nice stuff to keep in your collection, cocteau twins holv and an aphex twin cd single for come to daddy, as well as the 2nd placebo album, and instead of keeping them i did that. i think at the time i thought about punk rock, and said, fuck it. i don't regret it. i still think punk rock, and say fuck it, at least about some things.

wednesday is errands day again, not looking forward to that + continuing to deal with this mess, but who knows, it could be one of the good ones. i know this is taking some kind of toll cuz in the shower i just closed my eyes and started seeing things, and with my eyes open i saw distant and inexplicable phantoms of silver/blue light, a streetlight gone wrong maybe, hovering. it wasn't a hallucination i think it's just something that happens after looking at eq curves all day and quibbling over .5 db differences in some places.

i did barely eat today, and my stomach kinda hurts. i drank some tea with boba in it, that my gf brought home, it was hers but i steal, because i am cool. actually she let me so didn't steal i'm a good person.

i did try to practice vocals today too, just lightly i guess, because i should stay in practice daily w/ this stuff.

i am terrified, right now, and every day i guess now, that i'm going to hear these new versions, and hate them. but i don't think i will. and if i do, i can fix them again, and it's not so bad. but god the thought scares me so bad. it's so early in a new process, how do i know i'm actually right about this. but you go asking for second opinions, a lot of people just want to say what you've done is good, because it probably is basically, but it maybe sounds wrong to me, i want it to be right. that's nebulous but i want it to be what i want, i think, earnestly, i'm getting there, and maybe at worst, this doubt is a passing anxiety that i'm going to fuck up 23 songs. but fuck it. i put my voice on them, that fucks them up enough.

i don't think they're getting any worse, checking on a couple. like i thought, tiny adjustments can be made, and i'll make them eventually, but it feels reassuring i guess to check, it also feels super obsessive and like i can't stop myself and i have to stop myself, if i want to not go crazy.

i don't wanna go crazy and gosh it's getting so hard to type and my eyes are heavy and stuff but there's more to say maybe.

i got some lyrics out. some short thing, new shouty sccreachy idea. it's funny to add more to my plate but it feels kinda good, i should figure out how to recognize sentences that are good for noisecore outburst things, and just do that. save them, maybe, too, for the future.

and soon i want to start on the album art, i want to get to a place where i feel okay with starting, and i want to get an actually okay picture of me to use on it, that's gonna be a thing where i need to find a place to pose and have a way to have the camera held up high, and good enough lighting conditions, oh my god everything is so difficult and i make everything so hard for myself for no reason but maybe when this is all over i will be so happy that this just adds to the payoff. i hope so.

the bright side is that all these songs that don't have vocals on them yet, this seems like it might make it easier to get all that placed, since i have some headroom and things are like, being mixed instead of left to battle in some hell of clipping and limiting.

say hello to the roses in this photo i took a year ago when i was living with my cousin and aunt in a strange neighborhood of houses that all looked the same and say goodbye to me. i'm gonna to try and relax some more i guess, before getting ready to sleep for another day of supermusichell.