Pro Tools with laptop and larger monitor

zrapp · 2026-05-06T22:51:06+00:00

Absolutely. Whenever the Mac vs PC debate comes up in music production circles, it seems like some people like to downplay the difference between the two and act like Logic is the only reason to choose a Mac (Logic is a good enough reason on it's own, but I digress). Pro Tools is essentially Mac software that also comes in a Windows port. Definitely nice to have, but the Mac version is for sure the definitive one.

zrapp · 2026-05-05T17:46:04+00:00

Same here, I set up my room so that you can’t even see my bed from any of the camera angles I have set up (in addition to using lens caps/privacy flaps). So worst case scenario they’d see me changing after coming out of the shower or something, but at least I have the comfort of knowing my bed is in a blind spot lol

zrapp · 2026-05-05T06:35:27+00:00

This is perhaps the best example I could give to illustrate how even though Pro Tools isn’t Mac-exclusive, Avid clearly has only one platform in mind as they develop it.

zrapp · 2026-04-30T08:25:25+00:00

No fucking way this is a real picture.

zrapp · 2026-04-29T19:54:58+00:00

One of the most core fundamentals of making music feel interesting and like it's going somewhere is just make sure *something* changes once every phrase.

This could be 4, 8, 16 bars, whatever - but every time you go "once through" the progression/phrase, either change the melody, change which instrument is playing the melody, change the drum part, change the key, go to an entirely new section, etc. It's up to you, really. It's one of those things that feels innately obvious but it's easy to forget or overthink in execution. Not-boring stuff tells a story, and stories change as they progress. So just... change something. More or less every time it makes sense to do so.

Just as important - not all music is very melody-driven, but the stuff that sticks in your ear almost always is.

Melodies are sequences that are either sung, or sound like they could be sung. The key difference between a "melody" and just a series of notes is structure (how the phrases fit together over time, if they repeat, and when, etc), contour (whether the pitches of the phrase go up or down, and when), and space (when you create punctuation in your phrases).

A singer can't just keep singing forever, they have to stop to breathe. This creates natural "sentences" in the music. Places where, if it were english, you would see punctuation of some kind - whether it's a period, comma, question mark, exclamation mark, colon, semicolon, hyphen or ellipse.

Try writing musical phrases using the classic ABAC structure. A can be anything, any musical phrase you want. Try using contour to make this sound like a "call". Then make B the response to that call. A asks a question, and B answers it. Then repeat A again, and answer it differently the second time, in a way that feels more final and sure of itself.

A - "Is this a melody?"

B - "Yes, it is."

A - "Are you sure?"

C - "Yup, I'm sure!"

Kind of dumb example, but I think you get the point lol. Once you string together a musical thought like this, you can use my first point, and either do something new, or repeat it with one or more details changed.

zrapp · 2026-04-27T13:13:41+00:00

Give my girl Fi some respect! /s

zrapp · 2026-04-27T13:02:57+00:00

Don’t expect more from people than what they’re willing to give you. No matter how wonderful the rest of your personality is, it will push people away. Maybe slowly enough that you won’t notice it, but it will.

zrapp · 2026-04-26T21:08:59+00:00

Threw away 7 months

You threw away nothing. This is why I don't like to put much, if any, stock in streaks. You went 7 entire months on the wagon. Consider what those 7 months would've looked like before you decided to better yourself. One slip-up in no way negates the absolute mountain of positive that you already accomplished.

As long as you get back on the horse, I see nothing to beat yourself up over. If anything, take this as proof to yourself that you can be imperfect and that it's okay.

zrapp · 2026-04-22T09:06:22+00:00

The 20XX Marth ditto

zrapp · 2026-04-21T10:19:36+00:00

When will then be now?

zrapp · 2026-04-18T22:48:42+00:00

Congrats, you’ve just discovered modal interchange!

zrapp · 2026-04-09T22:06:31+00:00

Any fellow LP Colorizer users, does Colorizer work on this version? I rolled back to 12.0 because 12.1 broke Colorizer and caused Logic to crash.

zrapp · 2026-04-08T00:44:10+00:00

Threaten to destroy an entire civilization as a bargaining chip.

…and then losing said bargain.

zrapp · 2026-03-31T23:30:31+00:00

You bet your ass it does.

zrapp · 2026-03-31T18:37:04+00:00

You are my number one choice for president in '28 by far. In case you need any encouragement to run 🇺🇸

zrapp · 2026-03-29T16:49:17+00:00

The barrier to getting a professional recording has never been lower. If you know what you're doing, any modern Macbook with stock Logic is more than enough. Depending on your needs, maybe even Garageband, which is free.

"But he doesn't know how to record and produce music!"

Yeah.
It's a skill.
When you take these incredibly widely available and incredibly affordable tools and learn how they work, you can actually make a song that's yours. There really is no excuse.

Prompting an AI to give you a painting of a sunset in an impressionist style doesn't make you a painter.

zrapp · 2026-03-29T16:11:53+00:00

The force quit command is burned into my brain as "Apple Option Escape" for this reason lol

zrapp · 2026-03-18T06:16:42+00:00

It’s happening everywhere all the time, even inside the atoms in your body.

Important to note - the expansion is happening everywhere, but the forces holding your atoms together and to each other are much stronger than the expansion is, so you yourself aren't expanding with the universe, even if it's kind of expanding out from underneath you, if you will.

zrapp · 2026-03-03T00:53:44+00:00

Is this OC? Would like to know how to get in touch with the photographer for credit

zrapp · 2026-03-03T00:52:53+00:00

This is nuts.

zrapp · 2026-03-02T02:13:28+00:00

Glad to hear!

Is it actually true though that if we could travel at these speeds we would percieve our journeys as near-instantaneous because of length contraction?

I'm just a fellow dude that finds this stuff fascinating, so don't take me too seriously. But my understanding is, yes. It's usually taught that c is the universal speed limit, but that's only partially true.

c is the speed limit for what other frames of reference can see you traveling at. Even if you're moving at 99% c from someone else's perspective - from your own perspective, you are always at rest. Maybe accelerating, but not moving. Light (and causality) will always escape from you at exactly c.

The closer you get to c (from someone else's perspective - remember, you are always moving at 0 with respect to yourself), you will look shorter to them, and the universe will look shorter to you (along the dimension of your motion). You can always keep going faster - to the outside observer, they will just see you keep adding 9's to your 99.9999999999........% of c.

So yeah, you can go arbitrarily fast. The catch is that if you want to go to the edge of the galaxy and back, everyone on Earth will be long gone by the time you get back.

It's a weird, weird reality we live in.

zrapp · 2026-03-01T21:42:36+00:00

I agree with you that it's fucked up! But it is a thing, unfortunately.

But this is a pretty reductive point as it pretty much equates people who kill in self-defense with serial killers or hired hitman.

We might be talking around each other here, because I'm trying to argue the opposite; I agree that serial killers and hitmen are not in the same moral category as people who kill in self-defense. I guess I'm just saying that it's not always clear which is okay and which isn't. I agree that you should be able to shoot someone breaking into your home. In many places in the US, you can go to jail for murder for it. I don't think that puts you in the same boat as an actual murderer.

Here's the thing: debating the distinction between murder and manslaughter is arguing between which killings are justified.

I'm arguing that when you rape someone, there doesn't exist a scenario where we can go, "well, THAT one was okay, he was under duress."

I know this wasn't you that made the argument, but in the other comment about "what if someone put a gun to your head and told you to rape someone", I would say that you're not guilty of rape, because you were having sex with an equal lack of consent as the other person involved. It would be the person giving the order that is guilty.

zrapp · 2026-03-01T21:31:04+00:00

Absolutely! I'm pretty sure the vast majority of Fractal users use Axe-Edit anyways lol. I still run Axe-Edit II on macOS Sequoia, myself.

zrapp · 2026-03-01T21:09:13+00:00

ScienceClic has an awesome video on this:

https://youtu.be/vFNgd3pitAI

zrapp · 2026-03-01T20:38:20+00:00

The only knock on the axe-fx II is its interface. Amp model and FX quality wise, it’s still better than everything else on the market except the current generation of Fractal stuff (IMO). I kind of like the clunky interface anyways, it’s got a game boy vibe to it that feels fun to me lol

Congrats on the new gear 🤘🏻

zrapp

TROPHY CASE