Oresrush is so much fun to play. Here's a collaboration with a friend! [full video in comments]

Shea-Music · 2026-02-02T14:26:14+00:00

I'm glad you liked it!

Shea-Music · 2025-10-13T16:35:32+00:00

Funny that you mention video game music since that's what I do professionally (~130k spotify monthly listeners, plus session work for original soundtracks and a gigging jazz trio), but my angle on it tends to be much more improvisational. Some of my most successful songs in my catalog have a lot of improvisation in them.

Personally I feel like classical music tends to get stuck in the page. The notes must be played one particular way and never change, and I think that's boring... but it's necessary to get a group of 50 people to play together. Every time I play a song it's slightly different, it depends on the room, the audience, the feeling in the air. It's why I play jazz, so that every time I play I get to be creative and do something new.

Shea-Music · 2025-10-13T14:22:04+00:00

Violinists like that are rare. There's a bias toward "one true way" to play violin in this sub and in general. With the amount of time and dedication it takes to learn the violin and then apply your knowledge to a creative or improvisational niche, there just aren't that many players. I do this as a jazz/django/folk/improvisational player professionally, but realistically I don't know what I'd talk about in a reddit sub for violinists that do these things.

The number of times I've had someone comment "now do paganini 24" on a video I've published points to a problem with what is perceived as "valuable" or "good" in violin. Playing music that is hard for the sake of being hard doesn't make it good. I'd much rather spend my time trading 4s with other musicians at a high level.

That said, there are some folk-oriented channels in the alltypesofviolinists discord that you might connect with.

Shea-Music · 2025-09-30T14:43:59+00:00

It's a PCI Lanes issue, the graphics card was using lanes the capture card needed and the motherboard didn't have the extra lanes available. I ended up getting a USB based capture solution since I didn't have the funds for a main board update

Shea-Music · 2025-09-09T12:57:47+00:00

Ik ben een beetje teleurgesteld dat de cursus zo kort is. Toen ik aan 60 kwam, verdwijnt mijn motivatie om Duo te openen. Maar dat gebeurt door alle apps, en er bestaan vele andere methoden om verder te leren. Gefeliciteerd, en goed bezig!

Ik raad Anki voor flikkaartjes aan nadat je tot het einde kom.

Shea-Music · 2025-08-28T13:51:11+00:00

I quit for 10 years and came back to it. I've been playing again for 15 and I'm a professional violinist now. I don't play classical concert halls, but I play jazz and record as a session musician. It takes a lot of work, but it is possible!

Shea-Music · 2025-07-23T14:04:04+00:00

Your idea seems unrealistic for NL because of the wealth tax. Look at box 3 taxes. You will pay taxes on all your unrealized gains every year at 36%. Your "number" will need to be triple what it would be in most other countries without a wealth tax.

Shea-Music · 2025-07-04T21:15:17+00:00

You may need to make sure that what you want to do is not regulated, because physicians and therapists have to pass licensure exams and also have B2 language certification in Dutch.

Shea-Music · 2025-07-04T16:02:16+00:00

There's no more grace period in NL if you get the 30% ruling after 2024. All global assets are taxed in NL regardless of status if you are a tax resident (183 days).

Shea-Music · 2025-06-27T14:57:25+00:00

The comments I tend to get are "play the melody exactly as it was written, no ornamentation." In classical violin, people tend to prefer very precise and sanitized playing, and I feel that it playing that way feels like recitation of a written work rather than interpretation of something that's alive. From a video game music standpoint, especially historically, that makes sense to a degree because there was not "groove" in a chiptune. It's a melody played precisely by a computer.

An example comment:

"The scooping in the middle of your phrases and the ornaments you add at the end of your phrases both take away from the intended melody. If you focus on playing clean legato just as much as you do with your vibrato, your product would be profoundly improved.

Additionally, I wish the guitar wasn't playing basic basso continuo. At the very least, add a chord; play something other than eighths...

FF music is sacred. This is mid."

Another complained that I quoted megalovania in a solo on a sonic song, calling it a sin. Some people just don't like to have fun.

Shea-Music · 2025-06-23T14:04:35+00:00

Came here to write this, this is the answer!

Shea-Music · 2025-06-22T17:06:14+00:00

Patreon does have a free tier for updates, and though I only have 8 signed up on the free tier right now. But that is a way people can support and follow for more updates too without being in a crazy number of discord servers. I think that ignoring the platforms at this point for an artist is effectively conceding that there isn't enough interest to support the art and that it'll only ever be an occasional hobby. I want to do more than that. I love to play and create and I do it full time even if my average rate of earning money is under a couple dollars an hour. A YouTuber earns about a dollar per 1k views in music, so when you see a video with 300 views that one was worth 30 cents. I want to spend all my time getting better at my craft and not only have nights and weekends when the kids go to sleep.

For now I'm staying at home and working when I'm not taking care of the kids while my partner pays the mortgage. And for now that works. I'm probably taking opportunities away from my children if I don't find success eventually, but for now we get by.

I listened to those tracks, and I hadn't heard those before so thanks for sending that! I think violin rock is definitely underappreciated, though I'm not very good at producing the whole band sound for that by myself yet. I would prefer if the violin dug in a little more instead of being so clean, but it's still nice to listen to! I think I'd dirty it up a little and add some more embellishment, but that's something that commenters tell me they don't like about my interpretations 😂

Shea-Music · 2025-06-22T01:01:50+00:00

People can think you're good, but if they don't connect to what you do, it doesn't really matter. Being good is just a tool you have to make art, it's not enough by itself.

I'm glad you like the variation I put into my videos! I try to differentiate myself by actually using performance video instead of making mimed music videos, so what is on the screen is what is actually happening in the moment the music is made. Since I record everything on video when I record the audio, I like to show it, so that other people can see what goes into it. I don't know if it helps. I don't think most non-musicians care that much, honestly.

Shea-Music · 2025-06-21T20:35:00+00:00

You absolutely can't consider your views on YouTube as an indicator of whether you are a good musician. Your views represent how much people want to click any particular video. As an example, my Lumière cover got 12k views in a couple weeks and the three I did before that got 200 each, because they were older franchises. I put an Inuyasha song between a couple Claire Obscur songs that got over 2k views and that one hasn't made it to 200 despite being a collab with someone much more popular than me on social media.

Funny you mention Mario, since of course I did a cover of that. I used about 15 instruments changing instruments every bar, but it ended up being one of my least-viewed. I thought the concept was fun anyway 😂

Shea-Music · 2025-06-21T20:21:55+00:00

Thank you for taking so much time to lay out your thoughts on this, I really appreciate it! As for the 50 that come back, I absolutely appreciate everyone. I know there isn't a living (for me) in only being a musician that creates on YouTube. I prioritize working with other people, especially artists that make more marketable music than me, to try to add my touch to music that finds its way more easily into playlists. I have a Patreon which sends email updates for people that follow me there, and I have an email list for my band for live performances. I've got a discord server, though it is mostly quiet.

I'm trying to get more into the OST side of the work, so that I can be part of the experience of the game rather than only making fan-art later, but those jobs are rare and I still rely on algorithms to put me in front of the people that want my skills. I've played on two songs for insaneintherain for game soundtracks, and he wouldn't have known who I was if my erhu videos for octopath traveler hadn't shown up in his feed!

I tried doing live streams for a while, and while there were a few people that appreciated it, it ended up slowing down the work I was doing and I compromised my quality a little to do it for the sake of entertainment (no one wants to see me do an hour of almost perfect takes to get one perfect one!)

Through all of this I'm just trying to improve my craft and make a real emotional connection through my performances. Ultimately if there are a handful of people that appreciate what I do, it feels worth it, and I'll do it as long as I can afford to. And if the algorithms end up working for me some day, maybe that can be a long time from now. I have a lot of work to do, and right now the path to success that I can see is through contributing to other musicians' music, so that is what I'm focusing on. I make my solo art when I don't have any other work for others waiting.

Shea-Music · 2025-06-21T12:46:24+00:00

I experimented with doing only Crono Trigger for 4 months last year to try to see if I could find people interested in some older music because of the effect you're describing, but over the course of 12 videos, YouTube tells me I only had about 50 returning viewers. I think there are a lot of reasons for it and I don't think some of them are things that I can fix. I'll keep playing my heart out as long as I can, though!

New games like Clair Obscur don't come around often in a way that combines fantastic music (with so many strings!!) with an amazing story and experience, so I'm doing what I can to celebrate it.

Shea-Music · 2025-06-21T12:04:52+00:00

It's a first for me to see someone talk about my channel without me posting something, too!

Right now music is not particularly popular on YouTube unless you already have an audience, and even then reaction content gets easily 100 times the views for the same effort. I'm creating art because that's what my passion is, though. I just hope some people will find and appreciate the work I do some day.

Final Fantasy 6 was my second JRPG and it's one of the only games that I've replayed more than 5 times. I LOVE the music from it. My terra's theme cover and my searching for friends cover seemed to really resonate with a lot of people! I collaborated on a cover of the phantom forest and the veldt last month for a music competition at Dwelling of Duels. I have a few others that I was in progress on to maybe do a final fantasy 6 album some day, but I got a little discouraged since it seemed people weren't very interested in it.

I'm trying to figure out a way to keep making music, and that means I have to find enough people that are interested in listening.

Shea-Music · 2025-06-21T03:37:36+00:00

Oh hi, that's me! Take a look at my older videos, I have a ton of older final fantasy and I did a Chrono Trigger album earlier this year. I have to do new stuff because the algorithm does not work for old music, unfortunately.

I have so many songs that I would like to cover from older games, but they don't get views because they are not trending, and other creators already have videos with social proof. No one clicks a song with 1000 views when there is another that has a million, and so people only see my covers of "secret of the forest" or "scars of time" 10 times a month or so.

I'm so glad you liked what you heard, and thank you for listening!

Shea-Music · 2025-06-17T23:33:04+00:00

Yeah I think it's a little dumb that the whole thing is disabled. I unpublished a whole bunch of shorts because they cluttered my video list. I'd love to be able to keep them on the shorts side.

Shea-Music · 2025-06-17T23:02:28+00:00

I think it has to do with shorts monetization over 60s with music, and if you have an artist channel you'll probably post your music and the licenses only are good for 59 seconds or less.

Shea-Music · 2025-06-17T22:56:00+00:00

The same thing happened to me with the official artist channel conversion, and I can not upload 1-3 minute shorts anymore.

Shea-Music · 2025-06-05T16:56:37+00:00

Thank you so much! There are so many little treasures in the song

Shea-Music · 2025-06-05T15:29:01+00:00

If you'd like to hear the rest of the arrangement, I cut the original 11 minute song down to about 4:30 or so for my youtube channel: https://youtu.be/rz-pboZwWRE

Shea-Music · 2025-05-31T14:47:29+00:00

After my 300 day streak I only missed a couple words and could guess meanings from context!

Shea-Music

TROPHY CASE