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<3

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Constant Companions Closeup #11: MACHINE LOVE

(also on bandcamp and spotify!)

Welcome back to the Constant Companions Closeups - a series of in-depth dives into the songs off of my latest album, Constant Companions! Yesterday was the title track, My Darling, My Companion, which means today is the final track on the album - a song about the truths that lay in hiding within artifice, and a computer falling in love - Machine Love!

Before we get started on this particularly long closeup - I'll be doing a follow-up post after this one, answering various miscellaneous questions I've gotten over the course of writing these! If you've got anything you wanna hear more from me about, album-related or otherwise, feel free to reply to this post or send me an ask! It may very well end up part of the bonus closeup :~)

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Let's circle back to the very first track, Dyad.

In that track's closeup, I mentioned the main sonic touchstones of this release relative to my previous ones being guitars and vocal synths. The whole guitar rock thing I think I've gone into detail enough about, what with all the inspirations I've rattled off in other posts, but there likely is still a burning question for some long-time listeners.

Why vocal synths? Why am I not singing on like half of this album? I thought you were a singer, Jamie Paige, so what is this Hatsune Miku robot Vocaloid crap?

Truth be told, the Vocaloid scene and community has always been a massive source of inspiration for me. So much of my favorite music ever, music that inspires me or touches my heart or makes me go apeshit, has been sung by synthesized vocalists in a language I don't even speak. I grew up with it, and it's grown up with me - music just as intricate, mind-boggling, twisted, fun, and ridiculously creative is being put out every single day by vocal synth producers, and nowadays it's coming from English speaking musicians in droves!

Before this year began, I'd made at least one major contribution to the culture, but in spite of my genuine adoration of everything vocal synth related, I felt like I was just looking in from the other side. Caught between worlds, existing outside of any communities, simply gesturing vaguely towards what I wanted to do.

But I wanted more! I wanted to make the same kinds of things that stirred my heart and made me want to write! I wanted to sing with those same voices! I wanted it to be true - to be like you!

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I won't lie to you and tell you Kasane Teto has always been my favorite vocal synth. That title used to go to GUMI, and in general, I wasn't particularly attached to any UTAU voicebanks as a younger vocal synth fan. (Nowadays, I genuinely open up OpenUTAU just as much as SynthV because I've fallen deeply in love with Adachi Rei, but that's a story for my next album.) Obviously, I knew of Teto, and found her presence in things like Triple Baka delightful, but for the most part, she was mostly something of an oddity, a wayward piece of vocal synth history that had her Fans like any other.

However, there was one Teto song I've been inexplicably attached to since the moment I first heard it - Song of the Eared Robot, by nwp8861. I was introduced via this particular cover, which I love, but I quickly gravitated to the original. Something about the warbly, childish nature of her very first voicebank, the ambitiously orchestrated and unabashedly digital instrumental, the lyrics referencing fundamental frequencies and Markov chains and compiling code all just spoke to me!

That song stuck with me, laying in a part of my heart that had been collecting dust, all the way to April of 2023.

Now, yes, Teto wasn't always my favorite, and I had other vocal synths I was attached to, but I don't live under a rock, and I still understood how monumental the announcement of Kasane Teto's Synth V voicebank was - to the point that I interrupted a call full of FFXIV-playing friends who knew barely anything about vocal synths and gave them an impromptu TED talk because I was so excited.

(An excerpt of a summary of that night's events, written the morning after. i was up my own ass a little bit but in my defense Kasane Teto had just been announced for Synthesizer V)

I was watching, in real time, a dream made manifest. It's literally one of the Bits with Teto! That she'd be a Vocaloid one day too! And here she was, on the fan favorite engine, sounding genuinely fucking incredible. Especially in hindsight, it's such a beautiful and perfect twist of fate for her.

I saw myself in her. A weird little outcast, explosively reborn and thrust straight into a community's open arms with love. I wanted it to be true - To be like that, too.

It didn't fully hit until later, hearing another cover of a song I'd almost forgotten.

Machine Love, my love letter to the entire world of unbridled creativity and artistry surrounding vocal synths filtered through one sentimental little song, was fully written by the start of May, maybe 4 days after I had gotten my hands on Teto SV and long before a certain compilation album was even a glint in my eye.

If you haven't heard DAEMON/DOLL yet, you really, really, really should go listen to it - yes, I mastered this album, many of my friends and collaborators are featured, and I have two entire songs on it, but I genuinely mean it when I say I believe it's some of the best fucking music that's come out this year in general. In many respects, it also feels like a companion (hah) to Constant Companions.

I had finished writing Machine Love by this point, but it was working on this album in its entirety - discovering artists like Anh Duy, Eggtan, and beat_shobon through it, and hearing everyone in top form making this twin-drilled chimera fucker sing her heart out - that not only made me confident in my decision to go down this artistic path, but that made me fall completely in love with Kasane Teto. And honestly, how could I not? She feels like a microcosm of everything that makes vocal synths so special, this community of creatives all leaving their marks and touchstones along the trail of a great big shared folk mythos. Yeah, maybe the folk hero we're all collectively mythologizing is an anime girl, but yknow maybe Odysseus could take some branding cues from hatsune miku idfk

Basically, even if he says he wants to kill me, I owe fucking everything to rice for inviting me to work on DAEMON/DOLL.

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On that note, my vision for Machine Love's MV was pretty clear from the beginning.

the actual factual setup for the above shot, which was done entirely in-camera with my laptop, a tv, and two video files manually synced using VLC

The fundamental idea was always there - live-action shots of animation playing back on various screens, edited together to feel somewhat seamless. However, I really struggled with what exactly was going to be on said screens for a while; Big commissions were very far out of my budget, but I knew this song needed something grandiose.

Ultimately, what I arrived at was exactly the kind of scrappy, DIY bullshit it was always meant to be.

I asked my Twitter mutuals for help. And spent a couple months in Final Cut Pro and Apple Motion hell turning all the Teto art I got into a bunch of tiny little mini MVs, some of them parodying real vocal synth MVs, some of simply just evocative of vocal synth MVs, all of them painstakingly edited by yours truly and filmed with the help of some friends over the next couple months across two states and many more cities just to be painstakingly edited and synced up again by yours truly.

THE NEXT MV I DO WILL BE SMALLER IN SCOPE

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And with that, I believe that's the album!

There's a reason it ends with Machine Love, and not with the title track. I do think that in some respects My Darling, My Companion would have made a better closer, but that song only really resolves one of the thematic strands running through the album.

There isn't really a definitive answer to the specific question "Baby, do you know what you wanna hear?", but it evokes a theme running through the entire album - wanting something, knowing that you want something, and simply needing to find the courage to do it or say it or be it. My Darling, My Companion is in many ways a declaration of intent, an acceptance of what needs to happen, but Machine Love, to me, is that action being done. The words being said!

And now, if I may give this a somewhat selfish tint - with the explosive response my works from this album have gotten, my contributions to things like DAEMON/DOLL and Flavor Foley, the collaborations I've done and that I still have in the pipeline, the friends I've made and the community I've found a spot for myself in, and the newfound voices that I can lay my heart bare with -

Well, shit, I know what I wanna hear, and I've gotten to hear it. I'm a vocaloP. It's real!

Thank you all so goddamn much for reading and listening. I'll see you back here either tomorrow or Monday for the bonus AMA post thing!! Make art and be gay, motherfuckers.

❤️💚

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Suletta Mercury + text posts part 2

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as is tradition, happy pride from everyone's favorite transgender video game couple!!!

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Подписывайтесь на мою телегу, ну чтож вы как не родные🤫

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Painted my first kit, the HG Lfrith Thorn! I certainly learned a few lessons about thinning my paints but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out overall (+ it being small next to my other WFM kits (except the OG Aerial since it hangs out on top of my tower))

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what kinda stuff was hg on when they designed degenbrecher dude

"oh yeah she'll do more damage than the other swordmasters AND have better crowd control AND have more targets on skill (let's be real it's rare to have six targets grouped and in range when irene s3 is ready) AND hit aerial enemies AND be untargetable while her s3 is active AND have auto recovery on her main skill. surely this is balanced"

just directly powercreeps ch'en in every regard, except offensive/defensive sp support but let's be honest you don't raise ch'en just so she can sit around and give your operators sp. warfarin and saria (especially with their modules) provide more value outside of their secondary roles of sp supply

is ch'en still usable? yes

is irene still usable? yes

are we going to see indirect nerfs to the two as a result of them functioning similarly to degenbrecher and her being so strong? possibly, it's happened before

i just wish that they would have tuned down the damage a little bit. the debuff that degen applies is already strong, and if she didn't do more damage than the other two and didn't have i-frames then each of them could have had their niche: ch'en for sp support and bursting down bosses while being untargetable, irene for aerial targeting and more damage than ch'en but reliance on enemies being light for the full levitate duration, and degen for more targets on skill and disabling normal attacks

to be clear i like degen as a character a lot, but man. i love irene and ch'en as well and wish that they could be brought up to degen's level so that there was an argument to use either of them over degen in challenging content

i may be proven wrong, ebenholz was clowned on at release and public opinion of him has improved notably, but this is just what's going through my head at the moment

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skadi and her emotional support blåhaj

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also reuploading this mudrock doodle i did on my new ipad (more of hand-me-down) hehe

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hello. maria in polish folk costume

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re: wanting an analysis on the music of g-witch: insert “fine, I’ll do it myself” meme here

it’s probably going to end up as more than just a breakdown of the music and it will Definitely take a Long Time to do but one day. one day it shall be done

depending on how it goes i might make Baby’s First Video Essay but honestly that depends on if i’ve done voice training by then because aint no way i’m listening to myself as is

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dump of most my AC6 art so far below the cut 👇 most of it is fem621 and iguazu

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The Aerial is very tired. She is eepy. The Aerial has had a very long day of winning duels and wants to take just a smol sleeb. She eeby and neebies to sleeby. Aerial sleepy and need bed-bye time. The Aerial is currently experiencing critical levels of being a sleevjy little gal and needs to go to bedb. She is ver tired and needs to slep. Just a little sleejing time as a treat. Aerrial needs to slek, ver twired gorl, just a lil gal. Aeriaiille needs her beaty sleeb. Look at her go! She yawn big cause she skeejy, needs to falafel asleep. Nini time! Goodnight, miss the Aerial.

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Has anyone else had trouble with the weapon collector achievement on steam in AC6?

It seems like all the conversations I can find online involve people not having found the wave cannon or coral shield & missiles, but nothing for when you do actually have everything and have tried selling and re-buying everything and steam just refuses to give you the achievement

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I wonder if there’s anyone out there that’s done an analysis on the gwitch soundtrack. I’ve been listening to it recently and I’ve noticed a few things (motifs for certain characters and how basically every piece that plays when a gundam is involved has voice as an instrument, for example) but I’m sure there’s a lot more I’m missing out on

Either way Takashi Ohmama cooked hard this soundtrack rips dude

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Now that she’s playable I have a humble request for fic writers and artists regarding Viviana

She is a moose.

Moose are fucking massive.

Please picture with me the humor of Viviana seeming average sized until you get close and suddenly she’s towering

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incredibly hyped about everything revealed in the 4.5 anniversary stream (huffing copium that ash will be available again with the second r6s event since i joined just after the original ended) but i’m particularly happy about the bagpipe skin

i was never a big fan of her cc skin so this is a huge win for me in particular

love basically everything about it. the black and red. the collar and tie(?). the jacket. the gunlance. chef’s kiss. however bags girlie i know those standard issue military thigh highs (winter edition) be chafin you should talk to your superiors about maybe getting a more practical bottom half