I say on my "Miscellaneous Pages" directory that it's for pages that aren't parts of series. Well, I just put up a second "Game Music 101" page, didn't I? It used to be only about GoldenEye 64, but now it seems I've written about Super NES sound processing. If I can come up with another subject to make a page out of, I'll give that its own section. Anyway, the Super NES sound processing article was inspired by a video that Woody Piano Shack did lately about a groovebox that was designed to imitate the sound of the Sega Mega Drive; I decided, "hey, I've got a website, don't I? Let's write about the competition!" That was a few days ago that I started writing it; the thing I kept getting hung up on was how to make the samples into a soundfont. I've used Polyphone to test quite a lot of SF2 files at this stage, but until last night, I had never actually attempted to make my own soundfont before. It turns out that feature of Polyphone is really easy to use; everything is clearly labelled, nothing is left open to interpretation, I had a prototype Super NES-style instrument preset made, tested, and saved in under 5 minutes. Of course, I was only working with one sample, so it took less time than it would otherwise with a typical 5-10 sample instrument. But, like I said, it was really, really easy to make. To give it a proper test, I went back to it earlier this evening and made a complete soundfont out of the DigiDesign SampleCell factory library string orchestra (you know, the Super Mario 64 castle strings). And it worked! I'm so accustomed to computerised customisation tools not working, because I spent so much time running down blind alleys trying to mod The Sims (any of them, take your pick) with any but the most basic tools. My failures were far greater than my successes there. So, naturally, something as killer as making your own computerised musical instrument must be prohibitively difficult and require top-of-the-line equipment to achieve, right? Fortunately, Polyphone is everything you need it to be: free, easy to use, and hard to mess up. So, yes, I can make soundfonts now. Once I get the pizzicato technique into my soundfont, that'll be it, and I can release it someplace. Musical-artifacts seems to be gone, unfortunately, and you have to create an account to download anything from Polyphone's own SF2 database, so that's a non-starter. I don't really want to put a soundfont I made out of someone else's samples onto Pianobook, so I'm sort of running out of options here. Oh well, maybe I'll just put it on the Internet Archive along with the rest of them.
I found my old plans for redesigning my studio earlier today. By "old", I mean 2021. Is that old? I lost my sense of what "old" was when I turned 21. Anyway, it represents about $13,500 of expense (at least it did in 2021, it's probably more like $21,000 now) mostly in electronics and soundproofing. Of course, I was still a voice actor back then, so I had a condenser mic and dedicated desk-mounted stand for it in the list. Since I quit doing that, I could save $750. Anyway, the list also had various VSTi plugins I figured on wanting, including the super-deluxe edition of BBC Symphony Orchestra and Native Instruments' Stradivarius library. In the intervening time, I've discovered that I don't actually need those, so there's $1400 I wouldn't need to spend either. I'd also planned on my own customised pens and coffee cups, mostly to give away to clients. That's still an interesting idea, but no one's bought any of my production music in about 4 years. I only sold 1 commercial license for Newsbreak, which immediately went to car repair. Hopefully this new queer community group I'm going to will know someone who needs commercial music and I can sell another license. They're the cost of the record ($5.47 now, $15 back then) plus $1000. Why so much? It's royalty-free. As in, I'm not going to demand you pay me again every time you want to use my music; so, I need to be assured of making some money, and it's still way less than APM and all those people want for theirs. The last I checked, APM wanted $250 for a CD and $10,000 for the license. Comes from all the session musicians and orchestras they hire, I guess. Anyway, the list had an iMac and Logic Pro on it, which would supplant FL Studio on Windows 7; a workstation desk with a raised platform for the computer, a retractable shelf for the keyboard and mouse, and adequate space for a 76-key MIDI controller; headphones, naturally; studio monitors; and several various '80s and '90s synthesiser VSTi's on Roland Cloud. It was an interesting look back at my headspace back in 2021; back when I had hope for the future. Not much hope, of course, but at that time, Trump was gone, people were still masking, and it looked like I could go back to work at the job I coronaquit the previous year. Now it's 2024 and the only thing that's changed is I had to quit voice acting.
Fortunately, I discovered the joy of datahoarding last year. It started out with me downloading cartoons from a pirate streaming site (which ones and from where I'll leave to your imagination), and it led me into making backups of all my DVDs and a few I've gotten from the library. Mostly, my datahoard consists of webpages I've downloaded with SingleFile, Wikipedia articles I've made PDFs of, videogames for all the consoles (except the current-gen ones), certain musical albums, TV programmes, and films; all organised into collections like my own private Internet Archive. I've also been keeping a datahoard of Israeli war crimes and as many Tumblr posts as I could find at the time that related to Matt's TERF patrol unpersoning Rita @predstrogen. My very first datahoard was an archive of pictures and screengrabs of Tumblr posts relating to the Black Lives Matter movement back when they were under the FBI's orders to clear that data from their servers. New posts would get added, I'd screenshot them, and then they'd be gone in a matter of hours. My own posts relating to that subject I put under #ytkuxlgf, which is "ferguson" in a key-transposition cipher, so I could find them later. My datahoarding endeavour is no less subversive now, even though I'm prioritising entertainment over current events. Of course, this is because of the corporate feudal state establishing a hundred different streaming services, charging increasing monthly fees for each one, and batch-deleting entire series of programmes when their stock price dips 0.1%. The stuff I have in my hoard right now, without even involving the public library, represents about $1,700 worth of streaming subscriptions. It's not a significant dent in their quarterly profits, but it does mean that neither I nor anyone I know ever has to log into a website to watch this stuff ever again, if it can be found anywhere in the first place. Just think of the damage it would cause if 1,000 people were doing exactly the same thing, copying their video hoards onto flashdrives and anonymously giving those to 30 people as holiday gifts!
--15 March 2024--