Feral (Transcript) (Patreon)

From this video: https://youtu.be/ZP3K5RN1Zps

Hello, yes, hi! It’s been a while. I can explain, I promise. For those who are new to this style of video, we make the basis of a song with the Teenage Engineering OP-1. I’ll explain what I’m doing and make you some music. In exchange, you listen to my problems and subscribe to my Patreon.

In this video, I’m going to tell you about my year while we make a super generic drum and bass track. Right now, I’m getting these chords from NI’s Playbox edited for recording. We’ll record one chord every four bars for about three minutes. You can hear the massive new Mother reverb on the OP-1f. It sounds amazing, but it won’t fix my depression.

This is the new dimension synth in the OP-1f, and I’m running it through the same reverb, using an arpeggiator. Did you know that ARP is the name of my fursona? Check out this sweet ref sheet I got. Red means recording. I’ll perform this arp for the entire song, which means note changes and filter automation. This is an easy way to get a coherent performance.

I had a big end-of-year video all scripted up, but couldn’t do it. It was too personal, too "real", while also being too pretentious. I feel like I’ve given almost all of myself to this channel in a while. I need to recede a little bit for my mental health. There’s this idea in capitalism that infinite growth is intrinsic, that the line should and can always go up. That philosophy has infected everything we do now.

Programming these drum beats into the "finger" sequencer, I’ll do three patterns for this main drum beat and perform them in a 1, 2, 1, 3 sequence to the tape. But first, I’m going to make an intro percussion layer. So, anyway, back to the horrors of capitalism. The "line go up" mentality has ruined YouTube for me. I do not feel like I can compete to stay relevant in this environment. I feel like I’m fading away, and I don’t know what to do.

I don’t even feel like I can just go get a "real job" anymore. This is the new terminal effect, which is a bit crusher. It also will reduce the sample rate, which gives a nice crunch. We’ll use this as a colorful texture layer behind the main beat. Creatives are some of the most undervalued employees, and in a while, everyone has a boner for AI to make that worse. Stuck between not wanting the pain of this but being terrified of the other, and my lack of agency in all this is a source of ideation.

This will eventually be our bass, but not yet. I’m preparing the bass for a later pass. Haha, ass. I would give up YouTube today if there was a gig where I was respected as an experienced creative and as a human being, but I’m convinced that in this decade, that’s a fantasy. This is the root of why I got into the furry stuff years ago. Human beings are a terrible design choice, cursed with self-awareness and trapped in a monolithic system of coercion and exploitation for our entire lives. Of course, I would rather be an animal.

Oh look, it’s another arpeggiated line. Let’s record a pass of this. Just have to find the right octave and chord shape. Now I just have to stretch my stupid fingers everywhere. Red means recording. I’ll perform the filter on this line, too. I can’t believe it’s only a while minutes in and I’ve already talked about capitalism and fursonas. That will be the thumbnail frame for the video. I hope this video does well because it’s a huge Hail Mary. These are the videos that made my channel what it is. I’m hoping that by doing one a month in a while, I can resurrect the channel some and keep this going.

If you know a tree is dying, you have it taken down. If you don’t, and it falls on your hot tub, that’s on you; you killed your hot tub. This channel is the tree, and I am the hot tub. Feed me chlorine and tell me I’m a good boy. I’m trying to design some large chords, by the way, so I guess we got that going for us. Searching, searching, searching. Oh no, that’s far too Disasterpeace. Red means recording. Every synth engine in the OP-1f sounds better, including the Karplus-Strong string engine.

We’ll shape this to be a sort of lead, eventually. This will work a lot better if I play it by hand. I’ll figure that out eventually. Editor, zoom in. Red means recording. Programming 16th note hat, recording 16th note hat. I forgot that the OP-1 has a pretty great output drive. Turning that up just a bit. Programming quarter note splash, recording quarter note splash. Okay, we’re going to perform the bass for the entire song now.

I’m going to take this opportunity to tell you about my year. Let’s get started, okay?

The first video of the year was on the Groove Synthesis 3rd wave, the nicest synthesizer I've ever touched. Then, I did a video on the Polyend AD because I didn't wait for a firmware update, which sucked. I did a video asking music technology brands to value creators fairly, which made a bunch of people angry.

A video on a reverb VST did better than almost everything else all year. I don't know why. This is Jeremiah Samsonite; he loves gold and sponsored content. A video on acoustics and sound treatment did poorly, but that's okay because we got Echo that day too. I love her with everything I have.

I did a video on Christian Henson, the co-founder of Spitfire Audio, and transphobia. Christian has started a new company called the Crow Hill Company. He's never made any amends to the trans community. I do not believe there is any room for the kind of hate people like Rowling and Glinner perpetuate anywhere.

If you think this is a political statement and you think politics don't belong in music or music technology, you're wrong. This video about zaps had a lot of songs about electrostim and balls, and Winter Modular didn't like that I made it. I tried doing an artistic video on the way the topography of nature relates to the shapes of voltage we use to patch.

I did a video on the Krell patch, a historically relevant type of modular patching. It was fun to make. I got a green screen. Berlin in May for Superbooth; this was the high point of the year, and I cherished it dearly. I started writing an album in Berlin that became the drum and bass album "Heartsing" on the Dirtywave M8.

The album released with a video on the history of drum and bass that was well received. I did a video on the massive positive influence trans makers have had on the music tech scene. People didn't like it because it wasn't a video on music gear.

So here's a gear video where the Make Noise Strega is put on trial for being a carrier wave of an evil alien intelligence. Here's a gear video where I dressed up as Mario and sang about wanting to make love to Bowser. Here's a gear video where I dressed up as a wizard and tried to convince the moon not to make werewolves all the time.

I went to KnobCon and met some very nice people and got COVID and met a penguin. I released a video I had been sitting on for a year about when I told my partner I had been thinking of suicide. I made a cartoon about different piano synthesizers fighting, and Pianoteq shooting Moog with a gun.

I released my 4th batch of 10 tracks for the YouTube Audio Library. The video did so poorly I deleted it and reuploaded it. The Synthstrom Deluge got a community firmware that kicks butt, and I did a video on that.

Finally, doot doot doot, doo wow.

Looking back over the year, I made a lot of things I’m proud of and did things that brought me happiness. So why do I still feel so empty? Red means recording. Part of it is that nothing I’ve done leads to any lasting impact. A small success today doesn’t mean I have to work less tomorrow, and tomorrow will continue whether I like it or not. Red means recording.

I want for myself and everyone I know a form of peace. A peace that comes knowing that you will be fed and clothed, that when illness comes, it will be healed, and that you will always have a place to call home. The most intrinsic, basic things human beings need, not paywalled or hidden behind a lottery or algorithm.

Because if all the things humans have discovered and designed can’t make our lives secure, happy, and healthy, we might as well go fucking feral. Red means recording. Oh, cool, I have a stuck key all of a sudden, and I can’t seem to figure out how to unstick it. Cool, cool, cool. Nice, nice, nice. Red means recording. That’s all the OP stuff for this video. Now I take this into Ableton and destroy it. I’ll play you the final track now. Patrons get the tracks and the stems for these. I’ll see you soon. Kisses. Bye-bye.