A Video I'll Never Make (Patreon)

Hi everyone,

Year's almost over. I did a "end of year" video last year that did well and I wanted to make one this year too. I had a script and everything. But then I realized that if I didn't have a video that did ok on my channel I was going to get pushed down yet another rung algorithmically, and I couldn't stomach that. Videos with my face don't perform like I would expect them, so instead I'm doing an OP-1 video for the last video.

That said, I wanted to share with you my script for the last video. This is a bitter farewell to the year and everything I wanted anything to be. It's spiteful, hurt, and everything negative I was feeling all year. I still feel those feelings. I just couldn't bring myself to make a video nobody watched to express them.

I mean what I say about your support. This isn't possible without you, and I'm grateful for that. 

I'll have the OP-1 video done in a few days, and I'll post it here early. Until then, here's what could have been: 

BEGIN SCRIPT

Hello,

[Standing in a field]

My name is Jeremy, this is Red Means Recording, and today will be the last time I speak to you.

[Standing in the kitchen]

That was called a narrative hook. It’s meant to get you immediately invested in the video so that you’ll spend at least 30 seconds watching, which will count as a view.

[Standing on the sports court]

I’m changing perspectives because that will also keep you engaged.

[Showing Echo]

This is a dog. She’s a good dog, isn’t she? I only need you a little bit longer.

[Standing in a field]

There it is. That’s all I need. You don’t matter anymore and neither do I.

[Scrolling Youtube]

I hate this. I hate having to come up with tricks to get you to watch.

I hate having to make thumbnails to get you to click

I hate having to constantly frame my dwindling creativity in a way that captures a diminishing attention span that I have no control over.

I hate so much about this platform, and this job, but at the same time, I don’t have anything else. Not yet.

[In Studio]

By the end of next year, that may change, but for now, we’re stuck with each other.

[Close Up]

Or are we?

[In Field]

We’re not. That was another narrative hook.

[Close Up]

It’s not going to be resolved.

[Dead tree footage]

I first thought about starting this video out with an analogy about dead trees. We’ve had a bunch of dead trees we’ve had to deal with here over 2023. Both times we had no idea the trees were dead and still standing.

The first batch was pointed out by someone who knew what to look for. We hired people to come out and take those out. They spent a day bringing them down and cutting most of the remains into firewood.

The second time we had dead trees to deal with was after a particularly nasty series of rainy days. It was unexpected, at first, but then as we cut the trees into manageable pieces we could see how rotted they were on the inside, how little they had left to support themselves, and how they should have come down years ago.

[Show Analytics]

I was going to tell you that this channel is those trees. Dying, emptying out from the inside as the view counts become a smaller and smaller percentage of the subscriber count. I was going to tell you that anyone who could see that happening would be a fool to let that tree stand. Better to cut it down before it falls and took out a power line or a roof.

[Field]

Then I realized it isn’t just the channel that’s a dying tree. It’s me.

[You Took Away My Gun Footage]

2023 has been the most challenging and emotionally devastating year that I’ve experienced in a long, long time. I’ve thought about putting a gun in my mouth multiple times. I started going to therapy for myself and for me and my partner. I’ve alienated peers, alienated my audience, and lashed out against people who had no real reason to deserve it, even though at the time I was sure they did.

[Analytics and YouTube scrolling]

I’ve thought about what it means to die. Not just as a physical being, but as an idea. As something that matters. As a creative, as a spark, as a fire, as a mind and body that has nothing left to say about the world. As a soul.

[Discord Memes]

But at the same time, I’ve had support. My partner, even though he didn’t understand at first. From my community and from my peers. I still feel like I’m on the precipice of an enormous and catastrophic failure that my entire life has built to, without much input from me, but I also realize that there are people who seem to genuinely care about me and my well-being.

[Zoom call footage]

It took me a year of therapy to understand that I had at least enough agency to make a change for myself that might lead to a better place. And that’s what I’m going to do in 2024.

[Sitting next to woodpile]

This will also be the last year that I try. If I feel the same way about things at the end of this next year, I am going to have to admit that this channel is a dying tree and move on, as painful as that might feel, and I’m going to find another thing to do with my life. I don’t want to, but I don’t want to hurt like this anymore.

[Studio]

So what do you want to hear about first? Do you want to hear about the decimated view counts?

[Kitchen]

Do you want to hear about the alienation I feel from my peers and the platform?

[Sports Court]

Do you want to hear about the enshitification of YouTube and how I despise creators who accept and exploit that?

[Under shooting targets]

Or do you want to hear about how music technology consumers don’t give a shit about human rights as long as they get a cheap synthesizer or plugin?

[All Together]

Fuck it, let’s just get right to the good stuff:

[Modular performance footage]

In 2024, there will be little to no modular synthesizer content on this platform. It will all be on my second channel, red means recording modular. The link is in the description.

I love modular synthesizers, but it’s an inherently gate-kept niche. It’s expensive as fuck to make the most basic sounds, and the views on the videos reflect that.

[Video Analytics]

Did you know that when a video performs poorly, YouTube starts to show your other videos to people less? So when a video on an expensive niche form of music making that everyone who codes for a living spent all their pandemic money on comes out in 2023, a year when everyone has been squeezed back into conformity and no longer has time or energy to pursue their niche hobby, it does poorly.

[Scrolling through my published videos]

And then YouTube, the platform with absolutely zero sense of nuance, sees that, it thinks, “hey Red Means Recording is no longer making stuff people want to see, let’s show their videos to less people.” I’ve seen it happen throughout this entire year, and it sucks.

[Modular footage]

I LOVE MODULAR. So much. But it poisoned this channel. And so it’s going onto the second channel where it can flourish like the beautiful baby deer that it is.

[In Studio]

Modular makers: I still want to hear from you. Let’s talk.

[Under shooting targets]

So, alienation from the platform and peers.

[Making a very “youtube” thumbnail starting with photographs]

Youtube has been fucking around a LOT in 2023, and it’s making people crazy. It’s getting harder and harder to get your videos in front of people, and there’s a desperate reek in the air. People are willing to dehumanize themselves more and more, to the point where they’re just taking 5 pictures of themselves and rotating them through their thumbnails. They’re debasing themselves, dressing up their videos in more and more red arrows and clickbait titles until there is nothing of any substance left.

[Show related content]

This would be fine if it were Minecraft videos or Friday night Funken pregnancy fetish content, but it’s not. It’s music and music technology. Things I care DEEPLY about.

[Make a new thumbnail for a shitty video]

Music technology YouTube has started to adopt all the worst aspects of the platform to get you to click. They’re creating more and more useless noise just to get you to waste more and more of your time instead of making music or practicing an instrument. I see this sickness seeping into my students when I talk to them about their music-making goals, and it makes me want to fucking scream.

[In studio]

Therapy has helped me realize I displace internal feelings of inadequacy in such a way that will lead me to create antagonists of people who haven’t done anything to me. It feels real, the personal injury felt when I see someone reusing the same 5 thumbnail faces over and over.

[Show thumbnail]

Or using empathy bait to trick you into clicking their sponsored video by saying they “can’t go on anymore” or “it has to stop”.

[Show thumbnail]

Or promising “10 easy ways to make your mix pop” and it turns out to be a sponsored video for a shitty plugin-of-the-week ad campaign.

[In kitchen]

Even saying this stuff out loud now makes my blood boil. That’s how much I hate what this has all become. But I can’t change that. I can’t change all the people who decide to participate in that. I can only change myself.

[Studio]

In 2024 I will be focusing my content into two distinct types, and only those types. One will be a return to the OP-1 style videos. I may even use the OP-1 again. The other will be a “musical roulette” style video where I have a series of musical obligations selected for me by chance. Then I’ll document executing that obligation.

*EDITORS NOTE I DO NOT KNOW IF I WILL BE DOING THIS

I want three things from this constraint in content:

1. I want to return to a form of video where making a finished track is the goal
2. I want to recede as a “personality” in my physical form and let it come through in other ways
3. I don’t want to talk to you anymore

[Show video content]

I’ve tried too many crazy things on this channel in 2023. I tried animating physical modeling software killing Moog with a gun. I tried talking to the moon about fucking werewolves to demo an extremely niche Eurorack module. I made music about zapping my testicles to sell you a Eurorack module. The maker of the module hated that so much I’ll never talk to them again.

I tried documenting a transphobic rot in the music tech community which led to… I don’t know. I honestly have no idea what the actual consequences of the Spitfire video were. I still see bigots and stupid chuds dominating the online discourse in forums and Reddit.

*EDITORS NOTE: CHRISTIAN HENSON HAS A NEW COMPANY CALLED THE CROW HILL COMPANY. PLEASE DO NOT BUY FROM THEM AND DO NOT RECOMMEND THEM TO PEOPLE. SPREAD THE WORD.

I do know I made a video in a Super Mario costume where the subplot was Bowser was fucking my wife and I also wanted to fuck Bowser. Oh and that the Make Noise Strega was a tool of the devil. Those were fun.

All of these were an attempt to see what part of me you wanted to see. What Jeremy would make you happy? What Jeremy would you click on?

What I found was that you didn’t want that. You didn’t click the videos where my face was in the thumbnail which is what YouTube says you should always do. It made me feel small and useless, it made me feel like I was a failure.

So I’m receding. I’m taking myself out of the equation as much as possible. I have to protect myself, emotionally, and I’m no longer willing to put myself out there like I have been.

Finally, in 2024, won’t be doing any videos on new gear, not on the main channel. What I have today is what I’ll be using for all of next year. No more launch day videos, no more sponsored content on gear that turns out to be fucked up or just plain shit. No more consumer-feeding frenzy. No more “get your politics out of my consumer fantasy” bullshit.

I have more than enough things to make music with, and I’m tired of pretending to care about the endless stream of things made by companies that need to stay afloat more than make anything interesting. I'm tired of the bickering and the speculating. I'm tired of the endless treadmill of product and consumer.

I make a living from your support on Patreon and from teaching music production lessons. The former is always appreciated and the latter I’ll still be doing in 2024. If you or someone you know is looking for guidance on making electronic music, hit me up. I’m happy to help.

If you’re a music technology professional watching this, and you’re looking for someone to help build products, make presets, make demo tracks of your product, and generally contribute to successful music hardware and software, I would love to hear from you. By the end of 2024, you’ll be my last chance for a career in a field I care about.

For those of you who’ve made it this far, I appreciate it. This was a self-indulgent video, but I needed to say it. I often hear from people regarding the stressors of this profession and platform: “You chose this, you have to deal with it”. I didn’t have a choice to end up here, not like you think. I want to make the best of it, but I refuse to participate in an abusive relationship.

For everyone who has supported Red Means Recording with likes and comments, with patreon subscriptions, music downloads, and all the rest: thank you. You’ve helped me feel like a real honest-to-god music professional; I’m eternally grateful for that.

Here’s to you in 2024. Let’s make it a good one, ok?

[End Card]