Arrangements 4: April Aspirations

Hey! I’ve fallen off with my posts, but no worries! I’m coming back full force with another personal endeavor!

In my previous Edible Arrangements post, I talk about working on finding ways to generate revenue through music in the incoming weeks. The third bullet I kept a secret, and the reason being…

I am going to stream myself writing music a small video game music album!

When I am finished, it will be available for purchase in the Unity Asset store and on my website for noncommercial/commercial projects.

My goal was to participate in the 21 days of VGM music, but I realized that would mean I should write every day. Rather than do that, I decided to only write on the days I have scheduled for composition.

So, I’m doing the challenge.

Er.. kind of.

It’s not for 21 consecutive days, but it’s only taking place in April!

Music Packs

I have spent this week working on music that can be pitched to music libraries and sold as non-exclusive audio. I planned on extending that to video games as well, primarily the Unity asset store.

Consistency is key. The goal is to have perspective bespoke projects, but I realize having work that I make once that can generate revenue is definitely a positive. Therefore, I am going to bulk up on music of this caliber when work is dry.

Album Specs

Genre Type: Ambient? I don’t know, peaceful.

Game Type: Casual Puzzle

Inspiration: Music from Nonogram - Master’s Legacy

(I had found the name of the company that composed the audio and deleted the email. womp womp)

Album Specs (similar to Nonogram’s set-up):

Main Theme* (can double as puzzle audio)

Game Theme 1

Game Theme 2

Game Theme 3

Game Theme 4

sfx - move

sfx - select

sfx - puzzle solved

sfx - cancellation

sfx - backwards (menu)

I decided to include sound effects due to some great advice given to me by composer Nathan Cleary.

Purpose - Why Casual

A number (mainly two) reasons:

1. Easy to market

   I feel like puzzles are a genre that is a bit easier to create, in terms of preparing a game and getting it ready to be shipped. I figure many people may have a puzzle game in mind when creating their first game project.

   Also, this particular type of music isn’t just for games! Peaceful, mood stabilizing pieces could transfer over well into other genres! I could definitely hear pieces played in Nonogram featured in documentaries or television shows.

2. Fun to make

My past two projects were a bit draining creatively. Not that they were boring, but they definitely took a lot out of me. I am hoping that this will be a refreshing take. Not having to focus on complexities but allowing myself to rest in simplicity.

The Schedule

17 days

5 tracks

5 sound effects

• 3 days per track (includes mixing!)

• Last two days - sfxs

Where to Watch

Time: M, Tues, Thurs ~ 8:30 - 9:30 (ICT), Sat ~ 12:00 - 5:00 (ICT)

I will be writing for the next 3 - 4 hours. I’ll post the videos on my Youtube channel following the stream:

My Twitch

My Youtube

Hopefully I’ll see some people out there! For those taking part in 21 days of VGM, I’m rooting for you!

Edible Arrangements: New Virus, New Me

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Edible

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Disclaimer: I have fallen off considerably this month. I’m jumping back on the band wagon, though! I’ll have a post this week and a BIG post this coming Tuesday (EST).

Things have ramped up a bit here in Vietnam. An edict has been passed where people can no longer congregate in groups of 10 or more.

Local businesses (primarily street restaurants) are closed! It seems almost eerie. My particular place of refuge is always alive with locals grabbing pho, bun cha, chao, and banh my in the early morning and late afternoons on the sidewalks. This precaution was already being practiced in Hanoi, but the crack down has now reached my town, an hour outside of the main city.

It is now time to mourn the eradication of my co-workers and I meeting up at a restaurant for good conversation and even better meals.

Throw back to when I: 1. ate seafood at a local com rang shop with 2. a couple of great friends (who decided to return back to their home countries):

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Arrangements

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Disclaimer: I have fallen off considerably this month. I’m jumping back on the band wagon, though! I’ll have a post this week and a BIG post this coming Tuesday (EST).

PAST

This has been an odd month! I spent my time rethinking my business approach and while finding ways to initiate viable paths of generating money through music. I can thank Composer Code (more importantly, Steven Melin) for such a deep session of reflection in regards to my business.

That and I spent time finishing up additional work for Gigabuster!

PRESENT

Those viable paths of generating money? I have started putting them into action:

1. Revamp my website to showcase the many skill I can offer.

2. Work on creating audio that can be used/presented in music libraries

3. …

FUTURE

The future is the 3rd viable path. In addition to finishing up the last few pieces of Gigabuster (which are primarily cutscenes), I have decided to use my 3rd viable path and pair it with my warm-up streams!

I’ll talk more about it in my blog post on Tuesday.

RUMINATIONS

Making a life in music isn’t easy. Anyone who takes this path ain’t doin’ it for the money, and I’ll tell you, the recognition ain’t enough, either.

Also, if there is a path you want to tread, don’t wait for someone to clear the brush for you. You have to find ways to do it yourself!

Edible Arrangements: Building Connections and Letting Go

I made this entry around late February and forgot to post it! Apologies!

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Edible

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School has been out for going on one month for me. For other expats here in Vietnam, it’s going on two or even three! Despite the stall in work, I have been finding easy ways to fill my time.

coughmusiccough

One is, of course, spending time with good company.

It had been a while since I spent time with great friends here in my home away from home, so I invited a few to a vegetarian place that I’m certain they had yet to eat at.

We had nothing short of a mini feast.

(left to write, sans bowls) “pork” cutlets, seaweed wrapped tofu, fried potatoes, boiled vegetables, mock “beef” (elephant-eared mushrooms) with pineapples!

Before I decided to go vegetarian fully while in Vietnam, I tried a local dish called Bun Cha.

OH MY LORD.

It is basically a noodle dish that features pork meatballs and this vegetarian restaurant offered a ‘vegan’ alternative!

Was it as good as the real thing? No..

Did it sate me for a while? You bet!

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Arrangements

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ONE DOWN! ONE TO GO!

I had the pleasure of finally releasing my work for Ciel Fledge yesterday. It has been a long time coming! I’ve said it a few times, but I hope everyone who listens (and plays) has as much fun as I did writing and scoring it!

PAST

The past week was me putting the finishing touches on Ciel and making my way through Gigabuster remixes and masters. That and, well, job hunting!

PRESENT

I’ve been coming up with different ways to, not just occupy myself, but make money! I have quite a few composer friends and colleagues that delve into the world of music library music.

I’m not really good with emulating styles I don’t like, so I’m using this time to create music for particular “genres” that are featured that I would enjoy writing for.

This week, I am finishing up a track, putting some touches on the GIGABUSTER OST, and patiently awaiting news on Journey to the Sun’s progress.

Also, job hunting!

FUTURE

Finish GIGABUSTER, prepare for a (couple) future projects, write a track a week, and..

…you guessed it…

JOB HUN-!

RUMINATIONS

I don’t have much for this section. One giant hurdle passed. Now I wait and hope that Ciel gets a lot of love so that I can continue working with Studio Namaapa!

I’ve been pretty fortunate to work with them and Josh over at thebiggestmissleever.

I hope fortune continues to favor me with work from other devs of their caliber!

Edible Arrangements: Corona Virus and Digging Deep

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Edible

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This week has been interesting.!

Classes were canceled as Vietnam works to cull and contain recent Corona virus outbreaks.

I was torn. Stay inside and do my best to preserve my genetic part of humanity or live my life.

LIFE WAS LIVED!

I went to an AMAZING artisan doughnut shop in Hanoi and guess who didn’t take pictures.

…

I plan to go again next week because the doughnuts were SO, GOOD. In the meantime, I’m going to post a throwback!

I’m unsure if I mentioned this before, but Vietnam isn’t exactly big on sweets. Now, there ARE sweets available, but it’s not like back home, in terms of variety and overabundance.

That being said, when it comes to finding a variety of cheap snacks, I have tried to chew on a few local candies. This box has Japanese and Vietnamese on it, but it was made in Vietnam!

It was basically a bunch of small, coconut, laffy taffy candies.

Ain’t it cute?

There are two types of paper wrapping: a primary wrapper, which has the name of the candy, and an edible wrapping, which is made of tapioca.

I was thrown by the green color for all of two seconds.

If you look in the corner, you should see a small army of these candies. There had to be about 30 or 40 in the box and…

…I ate about 25 or so of them, because they were addictive.

I KNOW.

I ended up getting a stomachache, but

SO WHAT?

YOLO.

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Arrangements

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PAST

The past two weeks have been me working to finalize the OST for Ciel Fledge and GIGABUSTER. I went back through and did some mastering tweaks on Ciel Fledge because peaks and evenness were odd. I also did something similar for GIGABUSTER.

I’m nearing the finish line for each!

Aside from that, I have been vigorously (or at least I believe so) job hunting. It has been… eye-opening.

I hadn’t started job hunting to the extent until recently.

I often hear freelancers ask, “How do you find jobs?”, and people will say that there are jobs out there for everyone, you just have to search (and network). I’m starting to believe the true question is, “How do you find jobs that pay?”

PRESENT

GIGABUSTER’s soundtrack is about 90% done. I need to finish up two tracks (ending area themes), and then I will officially be finished with both the extended and original soundtrack! I plan to post a K.S. update previewing one of the tracks that will be present on the extended OST. I’m really hoping fans like what they hear.

FUTURE

An amazing developer friend of mine created a game for a gamejam. I am scoring music for it as a kind of release from the work I have been doing currently (with J2S, GIGABUSTER). It’s easy going, relaxing, and will help me flex some rusty or unused compositional muscles.

Also, one of the studios I have worked with is already getting ready for their next title. I’m SUPER excited for the kind of music I will be creating for them, but also intimidated. I’ve been using my warm-up streams to gain confidence for this style. It’s a new genre of game that will also have me dabbling in music programming. Wish me luck!

RUMINATIONS

I have been thinking of the next phase of my career once these two projects are finished.

I follow a composer named Steven Melin whose career has surprised me in many ways.

He went from someone who, to me, was relatively unknown, and in what seems like a few years, put himself in a position to write full-time.

Granted, I understand there are a plethora of factors that come in to play that I am not sure of that may have expedited his career shift, but all I know is, he started on this journey after me, and achieved the goal I want before me.

One comment he made in a tweet or video of his, was “How can you make $5 today?”.

It was one of the things that made me decide to start my warm-up. $5 a day? Easy. Start trying to find ways to monetize myself via streaming that feels authentic.

Slow but steady, right?

I could go more in depth on how to make it more successful and accessible, but for now, I am focusing on consistency.

Another thing is branching out in terms of who and what I compose for.

Since I will have extended free time in between projects, I am going to practice preparing for an upcoming project while also trying to create a track a week to be submitted to music libraries.

One goal of mine this year is to get an ad/tv/movie placement and earn residual income in some capacity.

I have currently hit a wall in terms of my optimistic outlook on my music progression. I’m starting to wonder if this is for me.

I don’t plan to quit, but I am thinking about if I was meant to succeed in this.

It’s rather contrary since I don’t like the idea of fate and things being predestined. Having no control over my path is an infuriating idea.

I think it primarily stems from seeing other people more talented or successful. I know there is no time limit or expectation. Success can hit at anytime, but it’s difficult not to sustain disbelief in that at times.

I’ll be okay, though! I believe this profession is a marathon and I won’t give up that easily!

Edible Arrangements: Throwbacks and Pep talks

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Edible

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Happy Lunar New Year! I feel lucky, the fact that I get to

celebrate entering the new year not once, but twice!

I had made it my mission to try out some festive foods. In Vietnam, Banh Chung is definitely a popular food during this time of year.

Sadly, it contains pork, so I have to opt out of this treat. Another festive food is com do/xoi gac (red rice). It’s sweet and is originally flavored/coloured with fruit flesh from the gac fruit. THIS I actually had the chance to eat!

Unfortunately, to commemorate this new year, my phone was stolen, so I have no way to prove that I actually bought it and ate it. I’m hoping that tomorrow, there will be a couple of sweet ladies selling some at the market near my apartment.

Quite a few things didn’t pan out for this Lunar New Year, or Tet as they call it in Vietnam. I was supposed to go to a lovely city called Moc Chau, only to find out that the buses weren’t running that day (after traveling to the main city).

I was able to make it back home with just enough time to grab food since basically every food shop and store had closed by 3 in the afternoon, and to thoroughly search my belongings to confidently confirm that, yes, my grab drive canoodled me out of my phone.

Hopefully it brought him some much needed joy.

To brighten my spirits, I hit up a local vendor who seels some comfort food that I eat sparingly, despite being oh so good.

I’m not sure what they are called (xoi chien perhaps?), but they are basically fried dough balls filled with lotus seeds, a sweet paste (mung bean?), and coated with sugar.

It instantly catapults me back to the street fairs of North Carolina.

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Arrangements

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PAST

I have officially finished up and sent out the Journey to the Sun stems! This will be my first time working with a mixing/mastering engineer, and I am insanely excited to experience this relationship and hear the outcome.

I don’t know how often I would make this a reoccurring practice, but I am starting to understand the importance of having a team. Better yet, having professionals in your corner that allow you to focus more time on important practices, i.e. composing and looking for work. Either way, I can’t wait to see the outcome.

Aside from Journey, Giga is entering the mastering phase. I have only one more track left to write before the entire soundtrack (including extended ost) is considered complete!

Ciel Fledge is up on bandcamp. After doing a listening, I decided to go back through and re-master it (due to some vastly uneven levels). It will be ready to go a few days before the game’s release, which is the plan!

I hope that the work I put in doesn’t go unnoticed (in a positive way). So far all of the reviews for Ciel Fledge’s OST have been luke-warm at best. It’s definitely not what I wanted, but in the end, I can at least say that I am proud of the work I’ve done.

PRESENT

Right now, the focus is ironing out a few issues with the masters of Ciel and finishing the master/mix of Gigabuster!

Sheet music is done for Ciel and Gigabuster’s needs a thorough once over.

Aside from that, I have been diving head first into job searching! Here’s to finding more inspiring work to score!

FUTURE

At the moment, I have a couple of new projects, from devs looming on the horizon.

Ultimately, my future goal is to get Ciel Fledge and Gigabuster prepped for Spotify.

When both of those projects are finished, I plan to use the time in-between newer projects to write music and quite possibly get a few pieces taken up by a music library. One of my goals this year is to get a placement of some kind that will result in residual income.

RUMINATIONS

I had the opportunity to partake in a tiny little interview pertaining to one of the projects I am currently on. One of the questions was:

“How long have you been writing music for?”

I answered this question in two ways, but upon thinking back through my career, I was instantly struck with sadness.

I hadn’t realized just how long I’d been writing for, in terms of writing for media. My initial thought was,

“Have I really been trying to make it work for that long, and only gotten this far?”

I know that people progress at different speeds, but I was wrought with this feeling of, "I should be doing X already.”

.. until I caught myself.

If I took a serious, hard look at my career and the amount of effort I put into advancing it, and pinpoint the exact point in time I decided to buckle down and invest in networking, my brand, my image - to put it bluntly, my business- I would have started in…

…2019.

• It was in 2019 that I went to GDC.

• It was in 2019 that I officially registered my business.

• It was in 2019 that I made a conscious effort to invest in my sound and quality.

• It was in 2019 that I started to heavily reach out to other successful composers to see what I am doing right/wrong.

• It was in 2019 that I started investing in books and literature that I felt would help better shape my mindset in order to change how I approach my business.

• It was in 2019 that I brainstormed and executed ways to increase my online visibility.

• It was in 2019 that I started not only networking with people online, but people that I new locally.

I’ve been writing music for media for going on eight years, but I have been approaching it as a business venture for one. I have a long way to go, but I’m taking the correct steps (I hope) to make this a full-time thing.

That being said, I am EXCITED to see where my business goes as the year progresses.

I’m trying to work hard the right way.

Edible Arrangements: Eating Plenty into 2020

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Edible

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Albeit an extremely reflective person, I’m not big on exalting my progress or achieved milestones. Growing up, doing well was expected, and it has definitely poured over into my adulthood.

You got A’s and B’s? Good, you’re doing the bare minimum.

My Mom wasn’t demanding by the way. It was just the precedent in the household - A’s and B’s, or suffer my wrath.

Okay Mom, got it.

That being said, I have seen a ton of growth in myself this past year. More than what I have experienced sans graduating college. I feel like college tends to be the area where people truly grow into themselves. That was not the case for me. My metamorphosis into a more capable adult and a person with a heightened sense of self-awareness definitely took place after graduation.

One thing I can say I have improved on is acknowledging my accomplishments.

If you don’t know, I embarked on a huge personal project, and my reward for hunkering down and getting it done was a week long break/ vacation to Japan (also, a personal trip to Ho Chi Minh).

Near Tokyo Station

Japan was… underwhelming. That’s probably not what most people expect to hear.

I’m not saying it is underwhelming in itself - it was underwhelming because I had particular expectations that weren’t met, because:

1. I didn’t do my research

2. I… didn’t do my research.

I am a strong believer in experiences being what you make of them, so I am owning up to my lack of interest being grounded in, again, my lack of research.

Still, I ate some great ramen, had the chance to go to some arcades, and took a 2 hour train ride into the mountains to enjoy my first public onsen (which was fantastic).

Most importantly, I got meet up with a close friend of mine who I went to college with.

Front of the onsen! Cameras weren’t allowed inside.

I’m not a big picture taker, but here are some eats from the trip…

Dango! Unfortunately, store bought, but not bad!

Rainbow Vegan Ramen from AFURI, a popular ramen shop!

Kukkia - tasty, oreo-ish, Japanese wafer cookies!

I’ve made a lot of strides this year. I have to remind myself that

1. I am more than the things I do.

2. Stop comparing yourself to other people. Beat your best, not someone else’s.

3. I am enough.

(That last one is extremely hard for me.)

Here’s to next year. I have fitness goals and relationship goals that I am itching to set into motion.

Here’s to being healthy and creating lasting relationships, be they numerous or few, platonic or romantic!

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Arrangements

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Albeit an extremely reflective person, I’m not big on exalting my progress or achieved milestones. Growing up, doing well was expected, and it has definitely poured over into my adulthood.

That being said, last year saw me taking very big (calculated?) risks and focusing intensely on improving the quality of my work.

I didn’t have a lot of projects, but I had opportunities that I strongly believe have the potential to put me in a position to write for more projects that resonate with me as a composer.

That’s the goal, anyway.

PAST

I finished up my OST Challenge soundtrack. The initial goal was to create 45 minutes of music. The OST is clocking in at… just a little over 60 minutes!

Quantity - Check

As far as quality, I am VERY happy with majority of the compositions. What I’m not happy with, are the vocal recordings.

Long story short, due to an extremely embarrassing mishap coupled with family coming to visit during poor weather here in Vietnam, I was unable to re-record my audio recordings.

The recordings are a mixture of decent singing in a poor environment and poor singing in a poor environment.

I’m eager to see how my mixing/mastering engineer James Hoffman cleans those bad boys up.

I mentioned doing a post-mortem of sorts on the entire ordeal, so I’ll do that. I’ll basically talk about pitfalls I endured as well as positives that came from the experience.

—-

1. Equipment matters

So, I jumped into the challenge after teetering back and forth on the start date. I knew that I wanted to start the new year off focusing on finding new projects, which meant I wanted to have this personal venture finished and out of my hair. I quickly decided to go ahead with the project. That being said, due to my hasty decision, I didn’t have the opportunity to figure out a more professional recording situation. Granted, it wouldn’t have been as big an issue had I decided to do this in America, but I didn’t let my lack of tech hold me back. Still, I wonder about the quality and how that may effect future viewers.

Also… a good laptop goes a long way. A few of my videos are extremely sluggish and have poor quality. I end up ranting about my laptop quite a bit in my videos..

Trust me, an upgrade will be had in due time.

2. Timezones/Consistency/Timeliness is important.

I wasn’t exactly poignant with my time. If I was going to be late, I tried my best to give an update on how long the delay would be, followed by a tweet stating when exactly I was going online.

That being said, I believe I would have had a lot more viewers had I been back home. I started to get some traction near the end (which was awesome), and I believe that was due to my semi-ish consistent streaming times. It made it easy for people to know when to log on, when to catch a stream, etc.

So, it wasn’t ideal for my American based friends/colleagues, but I was able to garner viewership from other countries!

3. Breaks/Rests

Quite a few times during this challenge, I took impromptu naps.

I have now become a nap person.

I underestimated the toll working and writing consistently with no break would take on me, mentally. I am still surprised at the music I came up with in the end, but I try not to imagine having to do this all the time!

Then again, it makes me wonder if that’s the norm in many cases for composers. Writing to deadlines, and then pouring every inch of our soul into the work.

It’s probably a given..

Anyway, I definitely wish I had the opportunity to truly take a break. I took an impromptu break, from writing AND regular work, because I had reached a mental impasse at one point.

I think, for me, taking a walk and leaving my cove would have been a great way to rejuvenate my mental faculties, but due to time constraints, I didn’t have that opportunity.

Since my trip, I’m practically itching to get back to work and start reaching out for more gigs and new projects to score! I’m giving myself the rest of the week to recuperate, though.

I’m going to jot down what to prepare for in terms of work and composition goals and get ready to jump straight into the list starting on Monday!

—-

That’s about it, to be honest. I think, for me, those were the more glaring realizations from the project.

I’m immensely proud of myself for the work I put in, though! Now I hope that it nets me work or at least interested parties willing to push my music. I plan to continue streaming, too. It will only be twice a week instead of three times, but exposing my work-space has officially become a thing for me.

PRESENT

Nothing is happening for the rest of this week. I’m going to round things off with preparing for the next few months (my game plan for my composing company), relaxing in the morning, and working to set new habits into motion.

FUTURE

I can definitely say that the next few weeks will be.. ironing out things for Gigabuster, preparing for Ciel’s soundtrack release (it will be released before the game), and getting stems for Journey to the Sun reconverted and sent out.

I created stems before my trip, and realized that I did a few things incorrectly. So, I’m doing them all again!

RUMINATIONS

In one of my streams, I went over goals I wanted to achieve or meet in the upcoming year. I’m going to elaborate on those goals and put them here:

1. Get a music placement, be it an ad/t.v. show/movie (residual income)

2. Expand my network of friends/colleagues in the audio/art/movie industry by 1 or 2 people. (lasting connections)

3. Go to at least two gaming events (Bitsummit and one in Indonesia)

4. Earn between 15% - 40% more in music work than I did in 2019.

5. Try pushing a streaming idea I’ve been chewing on to a programmer or investor.

Here’s to putting the ball in motion!

Edible Arrangements: The Light at the End of the Tunnel

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Edible

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This one is going to be a throwback!

Early on, during my first days living alone in Vietnam, I took it upon myself to try and sample as many different fruits as I could.

I narrowed it down to trying two new fruits a week.

It took some time, but I finally had the opportunity to try durian.

This fruit is… something. From personal experience, it’s a fruit that basically gives all the signs of a piece of produce that SHOULD NOT be eaten

1. It’s kind of soft

2. It stinks, HELLO?

3. Yo, it’s MUSHY? It’s MUSHY?!

4. This has got to be bad.

5. checks youtube

6. No, it’s not bad.

7. It tastes like a mixture of honey and ‘Dear god, what is happening?’

Despite my first interaction with eating a durian, I didn’t let it sway me. I thought…

Maybe it wasn’t ripe enough.

Maybe I had a bad batch.

Either way, I vowed to try it again. I felt as though I could power through this bad experience in hopes of it being the exception rather than the rule.

Resilience?

or stupidity?

Tomato, tomahto?

Anyway, I went to Thailand and decided to try it once again, but in a different way.

As a pizza!

The verdict…

… still nah.

Am I going to try durian the fruit again?

Probably not.

Am I going to try durian flavored ice cream, though…?

:)

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Arrangements

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PAST

The past couple of weeks have been me continuing to power through my Journey to the Sun challenge. It has gone from having no viewers to having 1 or 2 every or so stream! My last stream I actually had the opportunity to make acquaintances with a talented hiphop/rap producer!

This is what I wanted. To stream and slowly foster a community. Not only did he make comments about my stream helping him, he even offered tips and tricks to help me while I was writing! It was pretty sweet.

PRESENT

TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS!

Then I’m DONE!

All that will be left is final recordings and bouncing stems! Speaking of, I need to get in contact with a session violinist. I said I wouldn’t invest and..

..well, I lied. There ya go.

FUTURE

After this project, the next thing on my agenda is FINISHING up all of my audio projects and, most importantly, search for work like a wolf left to starve for months on end. I have been putting it off for these past two months, and it’s time to get my head in the game and throw my proverbial hat in the ring.

RUMINATIONS

I did a good job on this project.

I can happily say that I am content with the music that I have created thus far.

Well, I’m definitely at 95% self-approval compositionally.

Go me. :)

Edible Arrangements: Snails and Miscalculations

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Edible

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I’ve spent quite a bit of time this week being social. I told myself to clear my schedule this coming week and I did NOTHING of the sort. Luckily I was able to have a Sunday to myself.

I decided to use that free time to hit up a local eatery in walking distance from my house. Its specialty? Escargo!

The weather was nice. It was warm with a cool breeze filtering through the streets.

Pair that with a table for one and I was having a party.

AN INTROVERT PARTY, YEEEE-

Anyway, you’re given a sauce that contains chilis, fish sauce, and lemongrass. I’m not sure what the vegetables are in the blue and white bowl, but both have a slight sweet taste.

As for the snails, they are steamed in a big pot! The hostess leaves them in a strainer to cool and scoops them out for patrons that order a plate. Once you order, she brings you the three bowls and plate you see above, along with a long, sharp, plastic knife which is used to scoop out the snail meat.

Simple!

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Arrangements

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Past

4 weeks down! I’ve spent majority of my time focusing on my personal project.

I am tired and, as of late, I realize that I am stressed. How do I know? I’m starting to eat poorly and not care.

I am a stress eating, health consciencous person. It’s the only reason I’m not morbidly obese, but the main reason as to why I am practically Oprah Winfrey’s body double when it comes to weight loss and weight retention.

When I’m mentally at ease, I can easily focus on my health. When I am not, I turn to food, and I have been doing that for the past two weeks. I usually have outlets that allow me to circumvent a desire to eat to feel good, but a lot of them don’t give me the relief when I want it.

Yeah, being impatient is having a negative effect on me.

Now, the fact that I can pinpoint this issue is great! Now to not fall for it when my frustrations put on a guise to lead me astray.

Present

So, I realized (today actually) that I have miscalculated the number of tracks I need to complete. For some odd reason I came up with 28 tracks when I should have created 35.

The thing is, though… I’m ahead of the curve.

I have two options.

I can focus on creating 28 tracks and use the extra time to compose further

OR

come up with an additional 8 tracks to focus on.

The goal was to create 48 minutes of music in 7 weeks, but I’m already over 40+ minutes and I still have a little less than 1/4th of the soundtrack left to finish.

So, I have decided that, with the utmost importance being quality while meeting a set quantity, to focus on making the initial 28 seconds as rad as I possibly can (and ready for mixing/shipping).

Essentially the challenge was the amount of music (minute) I made. Now, if I was breaking even at about a minute and twenty seconds, then I definitely would need 35 tracks. Since I’m averaging a little over two minutes a track, 24 would be more than enough, let alone 28!

FUTURE

THREE. MORE. WEEKS.

8. MORE. TRACKS.

Right now, I am hard-focused on finishing this project and then cleaning up any loose ends for Ciel Fledge and Gigabuster which are both slated to release next year.

Ruminations

I’m tiredt.