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living way too vicariously

all of my songs are 2xLSDJ

you can use a modded 4-player adapter to keep 4 gameboys synced or you can just beatmatch them manually! it's honestly not that hard to hit start on both sets at the same time I swear.

every show I play now is basically a DJ set of my songs, so that means beatmatching! I run 4 gameboys into a 4 channel DJ mixer and monitor the mix using the pre-fader buttons. if you know anything about DJing then keeping 4 gameboys in sync is really not that difficult.

the basic show workflow goes:
1. start song 1
2. while song 1 is playing, load up song 2
3. when I get a chance, hit start on song 2 on time with phrase
4. put on headphones and monitor mix -- if song 2 is too fast, lower BPM a little until synced and vice versa
5. when song 1 is coming to a close (meaning just leads and kick), bring in lead from song 2
6. when song 2's main melody comes in, cut song 1

and then rinse and repeat for every song in the set!

it's a lot of fun and once you're good at it you can pretty much not talk for the entire set if needed

paging wizwars, kool skull, and anyone else who lives in LA

I'll join in!

4th year at UCSD, graduating in June with a BS in Cognitive Science! Gonna use that degree for NOTHING and instead make video games. Or try to, considering companies suck at wanting to hire new talent (or even train them) (DECKTONIC HOOK ME UP PLEASE)

Most of my time these days is spent working on learning how to code and looking for internships I am currently working (i.e. learning) on two rhythm games that I'll be able to actually put time into once I graduate

(I kind of didn't realize how much chipmusic was a thing for me until I started talking about stuff that isn't chipmusic (what is happening to me))

the bpm

they are so many

yeah -- to a certain extent music theory can only help you codify what sounds good in your music. everyone points to music theory because it's a reliable way to explain to someone WHY something sounds good but honestly the best way to do it is to learn the theory and then APPLY it to music you listen to; otherwise, it's just a bunch of letters and numbers that don't mean anything.

so as far as learning how to compose, I would listen to a (ONE (SINGULAR)) song and deconstruct it all the way down to individual components mentally or on paper. just concentrate on tones and rhythm; forget about things like audio effects and such. also concentrate on separating musical lines so that you can follow one pattern all the way through the song (and if you can't do that, just try and separate the melodic lines from the bass). you don't even need to know what the notes are -- just trace a line that represents how high or low the tone sounds TO YOU as it plays out across the song. if there are any parts in a line where you're tracing the same pattern, chances are you just stumbled across the whole bass line for a certain section. try to make it a song that you've listened to a lot: this way you're already familiar with it and you can concentrate on doing the exercise (if the deconstruction is too hard, you probably picked a song that was too difficult).

chances are this is going to be kind of difficult. this is where the music theory helps. once you can separate the melodic/bass lines into tones, you can start talking about them and why an E sounds good after a C or whatever.

but the most important part (and why I wrote that stuff above) is to learn how to LISTEN to other music so that you can deconstruct it and figure out why stuff sounds good. after you are able to do this then you can borrow the concepts, add your own little flair and then GET BONUS:MUSICIAN ACHIEVED. and if it's proving to be really hard: welcome to musicianship 101 (it took a long time for us too)!

this is dangerously close to being schopenhauer-esque

and I'm really excited