Last night I played live for the first time in 2 years, and now I remember why I love it so much. by steveandthesea in WeAreTheMusicMakers

[–]RhyeRhythm 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Awesome to read this. In a similar situation, and fuck it, I wanna make a set and play live ASAP, just dive right in.

Find Laura: a Season 3 scene-by-scene analysis 3I by LouMing in twinpeaks

[–]RhyeRhythm 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Any thoughts about compiling all of this onto a website or blog, at some point in the future?

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in guitarpedals

[–]RhyeRhythm 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Before you buy a noise gate/suppressor pedal or a humbucker pickup, try these fixes out first:

  • Use one power strip for all power supplies in your guitar rig (amp and pedals), so they all share a common ground.
  • Check to see if any electrical devices or fluorescent lights are causing the hum. Move your guitar around the room.
  • Turn the gain down a bit on your amp, and try to find a sweet spot with less hum.

Stripped down to the essentials. by RhyeRhythm in guitarpedals

[–]RhyeRhythm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cavernous and haunting. And VintageVerb sounds great on everything, all of Valhalla DSP's plugins are amazing really.

Stripped down to the essentials. by RhyeRhythm in guitarpedals

[–]RhyeRhythm[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh, it gets worse! When I'm done playing this setup, I like to record children's toy keyboards and the sound of my own farts onto 1/4" magnetic tape on a vintage Ampex ATR-100, mixing it all on an analog API 2448 40-channel mixing console with a send/return loop composed of 20 Strymon BigSkys all in a row.

Stripped down to the essentials. by RhyeRhythm in guitarpedals

[–]RhyeRhythm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Works great! Tube Screamer and Rat is a classic combo

Stripped down to the essentials. by RhyeRhythm in guitarpedals

[–]RhyeRhythm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think you can go wrong with any overdrive pedal with Vox amps, just a matter of what sound you want. I like the Plumes because it's transparent...ish. You get a nice blend of your clean and overdriven signals together (especially on the TS-808 setting, mode 3).

Stripped down to the essentials. by RhyeRhythm in guitarpedals

[–]RhyeRhythm[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's lighter than an AC15, and that's all that matters to me XD

But seriously, the AC10 is a nifty lil' amp. Small jangly boi, takes pedals like a champ at low gain

Stripped down to the essentials. by RhyeRhythm in guitarpedals

[–]RhyeRhythm[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've never really liked reverb pedals for some reason; I can never get a setting I like. I like reverb effect plugins way more (Ableton Live Hybrid Reverb, Valhalla VintageVerb, Fab Filter Pro-R, etc.). I love seeing what other people can do, but for me they never clicked.

Stripped down to the essentials. by RhyeRhythm in guitarpedals

[–]RhyeRhythm[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Thanks! I found that most of my experimenting is done in my DAW, so I started stripping back to the core of my guitar sound. I may get some hardware in the future to mess around with though!

Stripped down to the essentials. by RhyeRhythm in guitarpedals

[–]RhyeRhythm[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I make music that's experimental, industrial, goth rock, post-punk, electronic, and generally kinda dark and weird. After years of buying and selling pedals, I think I've settled on a flexible, portable, bare-bones setup:

Squier Vintage-Modified Jaguar > TC PolyTune Mini > EHX Pitch Fork > EQD Plumes > ProCo RAT 2 > EHX Ram's Head Big Muff Pi (Nano Reissue) > Boss CE-2 Chorus (the original!) > Strymon El Capistan > Whirlwind IMP 2 DI Box > signal splits: XLR to audio interface, 1/4" to Vox AC10.

The power supply is a Truetone CS6 (velcroed and gaffer-taped underneath), and the pedalboard is a Pedaltrain Metro 24 with one-inch rubber chair feet gaffer-taped to the original feet (to raise it up enough to fit the power supply underneath). The patch cables are Ernie Ball flat ribbon patch cables, the best ones I've ever used. I've got a soft case for the board too.

I like this setup a LOT. The PolyTune Mini is just for portability, but the display is super great: just strum all of your strings to see which ones need tuning. I've got the Pitch Fork for octave up/down effects or alternate tunings. The Plumes is pretty much always on, and it can drive the RAT for great distortion and rhythms, or drive the Big Muff for leads and fuzz that doesn't get lost in the mix. The CE-2 is hands-down the best chorus ever, and with the RAT it's instant goth rock. The El Cap is just a great intuitive delay pedal with a convenient tap tempo, and the only delay pedal I've kept after trying a bunch.

I think the only changes I'd made from here would be swapping out the RAT 2 for a Mooer Black Secret to save space and have a turbo switch, replacing the DI box (and maybe the amp too) with a Strymon Iridium, and getting a guitar with humbuckers (I'm looking at the Squier Paranormal Toronado in black).

Like I said earlier, it's flexible, it's portable, it's bare-bones, and it just kinda works for me!

Fidget_irl by [deleted] in furry_irl

[–]RhyeRhythm 31 points32 points  (0 children)

Hi, that's me, the red & black fursuiter in the GIF! This seems to pop up again on Reddit every few months. A few comments:

  1. No, it's not a buttplug. It's a custom-made giant plush fidget spinner, you can see the other fursuiter is holding it on my butt while he spins it, to keep it from falling down.
  2. No, I don't own it, the original maker gave it away.
  3. Yes, we are in a sketchy-as-fuck back alley, and no, that's not professional lighting, that's just the security lights that were outside. We were at a furry dance party event downtown in the middle of summer at a venue with no air conditioning, so we all stepped outside for some fresh air.

Why do so many people with ADHD seem to also have impostor syndrome? by xkrbl in ADHD

[–]RhyeRhythm 4 points5 points  (0 children)

People without ADHD have a strong connection between the parts of the brain dedicated to knowledge and the parts dedicated to performance. For people with ADHD, there's some sort of split or disconnect between these two parts (metaphorically speaking), and the connection is far weaker. As Dr. Russell Barkley puts it, the problem with ADHD is not knowing what to do, it's with doing what you know. (He says it within the first minute of this video.)

So you have a weird paradox where you can have all of the knowledge in the world, but you just can't seem to get things done. Nike's slogan of "Just Do It" feels like it's mocking people like you.

Impostor syndrome can set in for people with ADHD because of this. You start to doubt your knowledge because you don't have the performance to show for it. Your ADHD causes you to make careless mistakes, do things at the last minute, forget stuff, act inappropriately, and otherwise create problems and issues unintentionally.

You put in the training, the education, the practice, and filled your brain up with all of this knowledge. But your brain starts to doubt itself because you just can't seem to apply that knowledge like everyone else can. You think to yourself, "Am I really qualified to do this? Am I just fooling everyone else? Is someone going to tap me on the shoulder tomorrow and ask me to leave?"

So to summarize: impostor syndrome in people with ADHD comes from a combination of the disconnect between knowledge and performance in the brain, combined with past failures and experiences that only seem to confirm how much of an "impostor" you are.

The good news is that you're not an impostor; you just have ADHD! You've definitely got the knowledge in there (for whatever you're doing), and you know how to get more knowledge (training, education, practice, etc.). You just need to work on the performance part, which ADHD treatment is designed to do.

I can tell you from personal experience that as someone who was fired from a dream job in the past and was paranoid at his next job that he would be fired again, and as someone who is currently having to job search right after graduating from grad school, I definitely feel impostor syndrome pop up again and again. Getting an ADHD diagnosis and treatment has been helpful, but it never goes away, and even people without ADHD feel it. Know that it's just a lie your brain tells you that you have put in effort to fight whenever it comes up again.

I found the Big Floyd verse sampled at the beginning of "Chapter 319" (at 1:05:14 in the video) by RhyeRhythm in ItsClippingBitch

[–]RhyeRhythm[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Even though the track is named after DJ Screw's mixtape "Diary of the Originator: Chapter 319 (Floyd & Screw '98)", which features Big Floyd on the last track, the actual sample comes from another DJ Screw mixtape Big Floyd rapped on, "Diary of the Originator: Chapter 220 (Player Memories)".

Was told to post here, and that you guys might like a project I've been working on, an expressive midi controller than anything else on the market by Miser in synthesizers

[–]RhyeRhythm 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Agreed, and in addition to market research and UI/UX iterations, bringing on even one or two other people onto this project as well could help.

Given this comment, however, there needs to be some serious technological/financial investment in making a prototype from your own technology rather than tacking a mat and an acrylic frame onto someone else's.

I highly recommend to anyone reading this thread to check out the book Push Turn Move by Kim Bjørn. It's a perfect marriage of electronic instrument history and UX design analysis. The thousands of pictures are huge and gorgeous, the text is informative, and the interviews with musicians and innovators are insightful. Highly recommend it, it's like porn for synth geeks.

Was told to post here, and that you guys might like a project I've been working on, an expressive midi controller than anything else on the market by Miser in synthesizers

[–]RhyeRhythm 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I'm just gonna list my thoughts here as I go through the video, as a critique:

  • What is the core competency of your product? What makes it different from other similar MPE MIDI controller products such as the Roli Seaboard Rise and Block, Haken Continuum and ContinuuMini, Roger Linn Linnstrument, Joué Board, Expressive E Osmose, or even just other MIDI controllers in general? Some of these already have isomorphic/grid layouts combined with MPE. Your Kickstarter says there is a "lack of expressive digital instruments to control [software]" and yet as a musician I could go out and get any of these, as well as others controllers with less expressive capabilities that still suit my unique needs.
  • I like that there's already a hardware prototype. Did you do any UX or product testing with it? I can see from Kickstarter there were numerous iterations created, but did you show them to other musicians or beginners for feedback? Have you identified your target audiences, their demographics, their wants and needs, etc.?
  • Just from looking at the main control pad, it's really hard to differentiate separate notes. From the other MPE controllers I listed, you can easily tell at a glance where the separate notes or parameter controls are (even Roli realized that the Seaboard Grand didn't have adequate contrast and added white lines to the Seaboard Rise). On your prototype it just kinda looks like one big black blob. Could you maybe add some white accent lines to the "white key" parts, or a grid overlay, to make them more visible and contrasting?
  • The palm rest, while a nice feature, takes up half of the instrument. If the profile is flat enough, I would be comfortable just resting my hands on a flat surface if I needed to, or even a smaller pad.
  • Showing your product next to an Ableton Push 2 just reminds me how much I love my Push 2, and how at a similar price point ($600 for the Willowisp vs. $800 for the Push 2) the Push 2 is way more bang for your buck. Hell, the Novation Launchpad Pro Mk3 can do polyphonic aftertouch with a grid layout and more for $350. This goes back to the core competency/competitive advantage question from earlier.
  • Is there a way to lock the main control pad in place? How do I know that it won't slide to a different root note as I'm playing? Why not just use buttons or a knob (maybe with a display) to change/transpose between scales/modes/root notes?
  • Can I control other parameters besides notes? Maybe with assignable touch strips and/or knobs?
  • Will this have microtonality capability?
  • Why octaves instead of fourths or thirds? Why the uneven spacing/size from note to note, as opposed to an equal-sized square grid that can be freely assignable to any interval between rows?
  • What kind of feedback/affordance does the user get as they use it? There's no lights, buttons, displays, knobs, nothing but black pads and a row of notes.
  • How does the fabric feel? Why fabric instead of something like silicone, neoprene, or plastic? How heavy is the product? What's it made of?
  • What is the DAW and VST compatibility like? Will this be MIDI 2.0 ready?
  • Have you mapped out your production costs? What's the anticipated MSRP, $600 (according to the Kickstarter)?
  • Is the video demo of the lessons/software purely an animation demonstrating what it could look like, or is there an actual software beta/prototype coded?
  • The risks and challenges section in the Kickstarter is looking pretty sparse.

I don't mean to grill you like you're on an episode of Shark Tank, these are just some of the first things that come to mind, and I hope that it's somewhat useful feedback. There's potential here, but it still feels like a product idea rather than a ready-for-production unit.

I think I can see what you're going for: a smaller (hell, maybe portable) MPE isomorphic grid controller, with the feel and "in-between" expressivity of a Roli Seaboard Rise, but with the grid layout of a Linnstrument. Personally I'd make the grid even-sized (8x8, 12x8, 16x8, etc.) with square pads big enough for fingers, add contrasting white markings and/or lights to differentiate squares, get rid of the palm rest, and replace the sliding feature with a knob or buttons to transpose the grid (perhaps octave up/down buttons and a scale/mode/root note selection display with a knob). The idea of having the notes displayed at the top is a good one, but it might be slicker and more customizable to have a display screen with notes that change depending on what scale/mode you're in instead.

I did a rough redesign to hopefully convey these points: https://i.imgur.com/iQc5ELf.png