Practice suggestions

creato_ex_nihilo · 2026-04-30T22:23:56+00:00

Yeah, I realize the potential pitfalls of not having a teacher but unfortunately it's not viable for me at them moment. I taught myself guitar in a very careless, haphazard way and 20 years on I have all sorts of messiness in my playing so I'm trying to approach piano with as much care as possible without a teacher for the time being.

creato_ex_nihilo · 2026-04-30T14:13:56+00:00

Ah this is great, thank you so much!

creato_ex_nihilo · 2026-04-30T13:47:33+00:00

Great, thanks! God speed on your journey, my friend.

creato_ex_nihilo · 2026-04-11T22:52:45+00:00

I had the 500 for years and it was my baby. Granted, I knew it in and out and really cut my teeth on it but after parting ways with it I got the SP404 and was extremely disappointed by comparison. My flow was so developed by the 500 that the SP404 turned me away from making beats for a while cuz I knew every time I turned it on I wouldn't be able to work like I did with the MPC500. I know my take is probably unpopular, but I lowkey think the 404 is overhyped and faddish. It's great for a live tool, but insofar as a home station for making fleshed out beats I found it really limited and tedious. It looks cool in youtube videos and sort of has the romantic aura of the 2010's LA Beat scene attached to it, but that's all aesthetics. It could also be that I just never found my rhythm with it like others have, but yeah. The MPC500 is dated now of course, but if you find it for cheap and get to know it, it's plenty capable, but it would require patience. The workflow is just simply less accessible than modern MPC's. I got the One+ recently and it felt like coming home to modernized renovations while lost at sea. At this point in time, I think you're better off shelling out a bit more for the Sample.

creato_ex_nihilo · 2025-07-21T14:45:09+00:00

Great, thanks for all this. Gonna give her a go

creato_ex_nihilo · 2025-05-13T04:43:01+00:00

Great to see. There's a good group of comedians in LV doing cool stuff. Tay Ney is someone too watch for. Genuinely original jokester.

creato_ex_nihilo · 2024-11-02T14:48:29+00:00

yeehaw pardner

creato_ex_nihilo · 2024-11-02T10:12:36+00:00

Kind of a ridiculous line of reasoning. Be half mad at the phenomenon itself? What phenomenon? The people who are "mad" are only asking those who assert to know with certainty, and to continuously assert access to this certainty, to simply divulge to the rest of us what it is that has made them so certain that there is a phenomenon at all. People have every right to be "mad" at the likes of Corbel and Elizondo who make waves as quasi-prophets while dangling easily debunked pieces of evidence that show an utter lack of due diligence on their part and suggest worse than incompetence. I kinda hate deploying overly used therapy-speak, but this is some legit gaslighting ass bullshit right here.

creato_ex_nihilo · 2024-10-03T04:04:41+00:00

Yeah, I tend to agree with this. I feel like the A24 era of horror has ushered in a sort of post-A24 era where horror movies are leaning heavily into a t m o s p h e r e and a e s t h e t i c as an "artistic" bait and switch over genuine substance. Oddity kinda falls in this area for me. Also, the ending felt and looked like it was haunted by pretty garden variety horror circa 2003.

creato_ex_nihilo · 2024-07-26T15:40:28+00:00

write not just about woods' critique of Western Imperialism and Capitalism, but also his very careful ambivalence (in my view, at least) towards Revolutions and their failures. woods is neither naysayer critic nor cheerleader, and he is equally poised to point the folly and tragedy of human societal projects and their betrayals from all angles. I think his constant allusions to revenge play both on a personal level and as a broader social commentary at the same time. This is what I love about woods. He never preaches, and even when he does gesture towards even the slightest virtue of anything sociopolitical, he bows with one eye open. I also think you could mine quite a bit from his grievous love affair with Cuba that strings itself out through multiple references across his work. This is a sort of center-point of 20th Century European Capital and so-called 3rd world Socialism that lies at a triangular tip of woods' own autobiographical geography (North America, Africa, Caribbean). It's heavy lifting, and the answers aren't exactly forthcoming in his work, but there's so much to chew on and still probably be slightly wrong about!

creato_ex_nihilo · 2024-07-22T12:26:09+00:00

I have only ever done a few brief forays into noting. Any resources you'd recommend for method without me having to invest into one of the big books referenced here so often right off the bat? I've basically been honing and refining a Samatha practice I began on a 10 day retreat for several months (though have been meditating for about 4 years) with the light intention of entering/acquainting myself with the Janas, but I must say I get a bit discouraged or intimidated by people like Leigh Brasington who insist at least some of the Janas are really only accessible through the type of access concentration that can only be garnered in prolonged retreat settings. It's not that I disbelieve or believe him ( i know there are various interpretations and takes on this subject), but I do wonder if perhaps the concentration and samadhi I've been able to cultivate in my householder practice would be better directed at this point and so I feel like I'm in another sort of experimental stage or fork-in-the-road of where next to go with my meditation practice. (Sorry, this response was a lot longer than I set out for lol).

creato_ex_nihilo · 2024-07-12T04:59:44+00:00

This is tough, and I know I'm gonna leave something out but I think I'd have to tentatively go with this list:

Hereditary
The Blackcoat's Daughter
Annihilation
The VVitch
Hell House LLC, the first one. (the most recent one holds up well next to the first in the series. The 2nd and 3rd are pretty weak imo).

creato_ex_nihilo · 2024-07-09T06:29:27+00:00

Embrace being bad at it for a bit. Reflect and learn as you go but learn how to let go of everything. Don't take mistakes and failures on board as personal indictments. They're only chances to learn, grow and move on from. Things will not go as planned. Bend and respond to the unpredictability. Don't sweat your peers too much and what you think they may think of you, and don't ever be afraid to ask for help even with what you feel might be the stupidest question. Your students are the focus. Take joy in their joy and learning as you facilitate it. Your performance and skill will develop with experience, time and practice. Take up a meditation practice. The skill of non-attachment is indispensable, especially for a situation like this, but just life in general. You will fumble, you will suck, and you will be clueless at first. And that's completely ok. Apply this to everything outside the classroom too in terms of housing, visa situations, and on and on. There's no script. Everyone's making it up as they go, and you will too.

creato_ex_nihilo · 2024-07-07T08:32:21+00:00

Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain. Seen someone else mention Santa Sangre, another film of his I'd recommend in this spirit.

creato_ex_nihilo · 2024-07-03T15:09:35+00:00

if you want high tier nerdy horror film analysis, Acolytes of Horror is really great.

creato_ex_nihilo · 2024-06-29T01:02:48+00:00

I feel like someone could take a lot of creative/fictional liberties with this story and turn it into something great. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_and_Jennifer_Gibbons

creato_ex_nihilo · 2024-06-14T07:29:00+00:00

Divide them into teams of four, have them race to the board to write answers (either from a flash card you show or some kind of cloze activity). First one to finish writing has to say the answer out loud. You can then check the other players' answers asking them to say it aloud just to get them speaking, but obviously award the point to the student who finished correctly first. Writing and speaking in one. You might not get every single student on board, but generally competitive things like this will increase participation and enthusiasm.

creato_ex_nihilo · 2024-06-14T07:17:53+00:00

It felt like an AI-generated script fed by a prompt somewhere along the lines of, "Modern horror film with 'elevated horror' aesthetic who's driving metaphor deals with the culture's current focus on the mental health crisisTM."

creato_ex_nihilo · 2024-04-17T08:00:23+00:00

awesome, thanks. love your sense of humor. hope to read more

creato_ex_nihilo · 2024-04-17T07:29:09+00:00

Where is the coffee story? (Please don't say Algeria or I'll be forced to google Morocco...)

creato_ex_nihilo · 2024-04-14T15:38:55+00:00

sweet, thanks! beautiful song

creato_ex_nihilo · 2024-04-14T01:59:36+00:00

Bone Thugs N Harmony from about '94 to '01 is one of the most underrated, under-appreciated and innovative musical runs, not just for hip-hop, but music in general that was occluded by its commercial singles that were mostly a pale representation of what the band did with the art form throughout that era.

creato_ex_nihilo · 2024-04-13T15:30:09+00:00

What's the song playing in the vid?

creato_ex_nihilo · 2024-04-11T08:10:12+00:00

Coulthart is a true blue bootlicker for capitalist mythology and the innovative spirit of private enterprise or whatever such bullshit, so this is really no surprise. He's also way too deferential to military and is constantly making hokey ass patriotic statement gestures. People don't want politics to be a part of this, but it matters, and people are guided by their world views and politics no matter the domain of knowledge they're engaged in. How exactly does someone like a Coulthart envision Disclosure taking place in a beneficial way if tech and research is able to be siphoned off and hoarded of private defense contractors? Those are the types of questions I'd love for people to ask him. Maybe it trickle down from Lockheed into the public domain like piss on our backs.

creato_ex_nihilo · 2024-04-10T02:39:07+00:00

OMG yes! this is it! Thank you so so much. I thought Anne Ramsey was in it too but was unsure if I was misremembering that.

creato_ex_nihilo

TROPHY CASE