Category: Daily Loop 2021

Daily Loop #22

The thing you produce doesn’t have to be fully formed, or ready for prime time. The way you get better is with other people. Be them fans, or collaborators, or just casual friends cheering you on – fill the void with your thing, as often as you can.

The loop above took about 45 minutes to make. Find some sound to sample, work in a beat, make a bass line, figure a small arrangement. Find a good video. Edit together a video for Vimeo and IG stories. Write this post.

That’s energy going out into the world, and energy attracts energy. We saw the power of negative energy a few weeks ago at the US Capitol. That didn’t happen in isolation.

So consider the goodness we could birth in the opposite direction. Happy hoards of weirdo creative people releasing music, making videos, magazines, TV-style game shows distributed around the world.

We can do this.

LIKES

“Start now. Optimize later. An imperfect start can always be improved, but obsessing over a perfect plan will never take you anywhere on its own,” James Clear

“How can a magazine possibly hope to be relevant if it only has staff who can live in NYC on $45K? That salary is just code for “only apply if your parents pay your rent,” @lindsaycrouse

https://twitter.com/youyve/status/1352326254041522180

Video by Ricardo Esquivel from Pexels

Daily Loop #21

Full steam ahead. Lots of work to do.

LIKES

“That ceremony was many things, but it was also a reminder that no one needs a one-hour work Zoom call. They fit in J-Lo, Lady Gaga, Garth Brooks plus all the other stuff in 30 minutes. Keep it tight folks,” @meganmurp

“Amanda Gorman reminding all of us of the power and necessity of art,” @annabrones

Video by Free Creative Stuff from Pexels

Daily Loop #20

Today is the last day of the Trump presidency. It was this day in 2017 when he was sworn into office, and it’s been a nightmare ever since. Good riddance.

LIKES

“Folks, I think that the crushing sadness of half a million people dying from a virus that could have been prevented by better planning is kinda getting to me,” @AGoldmund

Video by Aleksandar Pasaric from Pexels

Daily Loop #18

Today I beat Instagram. Today, on MLK Jr. Day. I scrolled once, twice, and knew the comfort that it brings. I could just crawl back into bed, pull the covers up, and swipe, swipe, swipe.

But I cracked open Abelton Live, plugged in my gear, re-arranged some stuff, and got to it. Maybe saying “got to work” is a bit much, but maybe that’s true, as well.

If you write, you’re a writer.

A friend told me recently she met Victor Wooten, the amazing, other-worldly bassist. She mentioned that she was taking lessons from someone he knew, so he exclaimed, “oh, so you’re a bassist,” to which she replied, “well, umm.. I mean…”

She told me he squared up, looked her in the eyes, and said, “you’re a bassist.”

LIKES

“To our LGBTQIA fans and fellow musicians: we love you. Thank you for being who you are. Metal (and the rest of the world) is stronger because of your voices and power. We are grateful for y’all.” @khemmisdoom

Daily Loop #17

Don’t discount yourself. That’s something I struggle with a lot these days. “Oh, I just ran a mile today,” is something that came out my mouth recently, when just 4-ish years ago I couldn’t run a mile without being in pain for a week afterwards.

I’m tempted to discount this loop today, as there’s so much more that could be done here. Better arrangement, better mix, more vocals, more sizzle, more pop… the list goes on and will never end.

But this baby got out today, and that’s all that matters. This is the public facing audio treat, and that’s final. It’s not the final mix, and frankly no one cares.

LIKES

“blasting shoegaze while driving means turning it down every five seconds to make sure that the weird noises in the song aren’t coming from your car,” @dniellechelosky

“I’m not one for ‘told ya so’s but in 1989 when David Duke won the state House seat in Louisiana, some of us said this was an inflection point in American politics. This wasn’t just the logical result of Reaganesque racial dog whistling. It was something different,” @timjacobwise

“I’m just thinking again about how many lives would have been saved had the US had competent — or even vaguely interested — national leadership when the pandemic hit,” @AstroKatie

Video by Anthony from Pexels

Daily Loop #16

Today’s Daily Loop gets a little raunchy, featuring a vocal sample and a mish-mash of other sounds and debris. Still getting the hang of the APC40 but woo, I love it.

LIKES:

“I love @YouTube and put a music video on there the other day… how can this be happening? I don’t want my fans or anyone to be funding hate or violence,” @selenagomez

https://twitter.com/Ang_Ramm/status/1350308428569337856

Daily Loop #16 Video by C Technical from Pexels

Daily Loop #15

“I’m mentoring a young African photographer that does all his edits on his phone. Does anyone have a laptop they aren’t using?” @aundrelarrow

“The gentlest people I know are full of rage and grief.” @alexanderchee

“Happy to have cut my teeth in an industry that was more about supporting art and adding something beautiful to the world than being an “entrepreneur” and being cool and not understanding what it truly means to invest in something you believe in.” @misslujo

Video by Stef from Pexels

Daily Loop #14

Just beeps and boops, bass-line and loops. Late night jamming, but loving the work. Head down, crank it out. And heck, this isn’t #14, this is like #114 if we’re counting all the files on my computer. This is where it’s at because I’m been messing with Abelton Live since 2017, which is probably the longest I’ve messed with a single piece of software since ScreenFlow.

One poem, one photograph, one beat can change someone’s life. Make your thing and ship it.

Video by Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels

Daily Loop #13

“There’s only so much trauma one single human brain can process, and Twitter is like an always-on trauma machine,” Brown said in an email. “It takes a huge mental toll to consume this content, day in and day out.”

‘Always on trauma machine’: Social media managers grapple with burnout, leaving the industry

My eyeballs are singed by Twitter lately, so tonight I struck back. I scrolled, found the first video I could I find, ripped the audio and chopped it up into a sample, which you can hear in today’s Daily Loop.

Video by Nazim Zafri from Pexels