u/county_jail_alumni

Just a heads up, when I use voice to text I have a hard time just stopping. I always go way too long but this is a deep explanation.

I had struggled with substance abuse for a long time, I was really into making music when I was younger, playing a lot of shows, partying a lot, and that all eventually just got worse and worse and when I decided to make a geographical change hoping that would help, I moved out of state by myself to a city I'd never been into a sober living house. I relapsed after three weeks and was kicked out.

I didn't want to call my parents because they just put me through treatment, so I didn't call them and I ended up being homeless. I was homeless for around three years, literally on the sidewalk, somewhere I hadn't even really made any friends yet. This time of my life changed me a lot. In good and bad ways.

Some of the good ways, I'm a much more compassionate person, I don't just see homeless people as homeless people, I see them as people with stories and skills and some of the most creative people I've ever met are the ones who live out in the streets. I don't take things for granted anymore. And all of this change the course of my career and now I'm doing something that fulfills me.

In a lot of way that changes were bad too, mostly physical problems, my teeth got really bad while I was out there, luckily they're all fixed now. I still have this very conscious awareness of my surroundings and it's hard for me to feel comfortable especially at night. I definitely have some trauma from being robbed at gunpoint a few times, the thing that's scary about it is justice doesn't really extend out so far beyond the homes in the city. What I mean is, I knew that if anything happened to me out there while I was out there, there wouldn't be an investigation. Not only that I know that but everybody out there knows that and there's a lot of violence that happens that doesn't get reported. I've witnessed it, still to this day I carry a weapon. And my criminal record. I started shoplifting while I was out there to get my needs met and wrapped up a pretty extensive record over the years but that's actually how I got out of it, so I can't complain too much.

I learned what my strengths are and my weaknesses. I learned that survival isn't always about being the biggest and strongest because I never have been, but being able to adapt to your surroundings and environment easily is a huge skill. I also learned how to trust my gut no matter what. My mind always wants to tell me that things are going to be OK, but anytime I had a gut feeling about something out there, I always ended up being right and I probably wouldn't be here hadn't I followed my gut feelings so many times. I was willing to sacrifice anything if I had a gut feeling that I needed to go. Whether it be money, my belongings, literally anything, if I had a bad feeling about something I was out no matter what. It took a few times of that happening for me to realize that gut feelings are actually real, there's something else going on in our bodies that can tell when something is off, our instincts are real and I follow mine now no matter what, as long as they're real. You can tell the difference between real gut feelings and when your mind is trying to trick you into thinking you're having one. You literally have to feel it in your stomach, and your gut, a physical feeling. That's when it's time to go.

When I finally made it out, I had lost all sense of Self. I had no idea who I was anymore. Anything I was interested in before this happening, I was no longer interested in. I went years of feeling like that, still doing the right thing, going to work etc. but I still never really felt like I was myself. This is when I decided to try to get back into making music. I forgot how to do it, and I couldn't use the same gear I was using before because that was triggering, this is when I picked up my first SP404. I was starting from scratch, and that's why this album is so important to me. Although my mixing skills were bad, I'm a much better musician now, this is still the album I most proud of and always will be. I released it four years ago and just made a new version of it where I tried to go in and mix everything again but I didn't have the stems, but I tried. And then I made videos for each song sort of, and then I added a bonus track at the end which is just basically a song where I re-sampled one of my old songs from the album and made a new version of it. Called it a bonus track.

If you actually read through all of this wow you are a trooper. When I use voice to text, I do not stop talking and that's how things end up this long.

The video I made sort of represents the irony of the concept of tomorrow. I don't have anything to show for tomorrow, only have things to show from yesterday/yesterweek/yesteryear. Even more ironically, a couple of the subjects in the video will most certainly not be around tomorrow. The song is about something entirely different, but I remixed and created the video with a different perspective on my own art and made something new. Fancy that!

Sorry for the double post! I use voice-to-text and my last one was a grammatical mess, so I had to pull it and start over.

I’ve really been enjoying making music videos lately—something I only started doing recently—and l feel like diving a bit deeper into video production. I’m planning a series of short, experience-driven videos for the OP-XY. I’m hesitant to call them "tutorials" because they’re really more about workflow tips, finding inspiration, and creative workarounds I’ve discovered.

When I first got the XY, I spent the entire return window learning it inside and out. I’ve kept that intensity up, and now I feel like I have a solid handle on both the technical specs and the "real-world" creative shortcuts. I’d love to share these, but I’m a bit stuck on the logistics.

Right now, I’m using the Instagram editor, but it’s definitely not enough for what I have in mind. I want to keep these videos under two minutes, which I imagine is going to take a lot of editing considering how dense I want them to be.

Does anyone have recommendations for:

• Editing Apps: something a bit more robust than Instagram edits but still easy enough to work with quickly. I have Final Cut Pro on my iPad but I've never used it, never even opened it so I don't know if that's really intense it might be overkill for what I'm doing.

• Gear: Any "cheap" cameras that handle close-up screen shots well? (Right now I just have an iPhone and an iPad, although I'm in talks with a guy who is selling a Zoom similar to the audio recorder but it has a camera on it, white angle lens, that should be good right?

• Setup: Any tips on a general "overhead" or desktop layout?

The process is feeling a lot more complicated than I expected. I’d much rather hear from people with actual experience than try to sift through articles that are mostly just ads online anyway. Thanks in advance!

Ever since updating from 1.10 to 1.14 (I missed a couple in between) the stability and lack of bugs has gotten so much worse. It was near perfect at 1.10, but I’m finding myself multiple times a day having to shut it off and turn it back on because of some crazy thing that’s happening that shouldn’t be happening. There’s a lot of examples, most recent one was just trying to record a note on the Tape track and it extending all the way through the entire pattern no matter what, no matter how long I hold it down for. A bug that I’ve noticed multiple times now, at least 10 times where I’ve had to do the same, shut it off turn it back on, has been trying to input or takeoff individual notes from a sequence. Usually the problem occurs when I’m trying to isolate a single drum sound and either add or remove a step from the sequencer the manual way (where you hold down that individual key, tap record and then you can edit just that individual sound on the sequence as long as long as that key is still held). after tapping in or removing just a couple of the steps on that individual sound, it completely stops working. Either the lights don’t light up at all, and the step isn’t applied, or the steps stay lit up, and they don’t get removed, until I turn the device off and start it up again. That has not worked way more times than it has worked since I updated it. And there were several other things too that were just as annoying that we’re only able to be fixed by turning it off and turning it back on. I’ve never had to do that so many times since getting this thing. I’m just wondering if anyone else is having the same issues, if not then maybe it’s just my device and I need to reinstall or something. That would be cool, I don’t see anyone else talking about it though which is why I’m asking. Thanks ahead of time for your input..