STANCE Beginnings
Recordings from last weekend’s Pride concert!
STANCE was a huge success
Oh man I am so overjoyed with how our choir shows went! Holy fuck, joining this choir was probably the best decision I’ve made in a long time. Every show we’ve done has been wonderful and the people are so great and I love spending time with everyone. It’s great being surrounded by fellow ADHD transgender/nonbinary weirdos who all have music in common but so many disparate experiences and ideas and just like, oh god so much talent from everyone.
We’re between seasons now and it’ll feel weird not having rehearsals every Wednesday evening for the next couple months, but there’s a lot of talk about doing plenty of social gatherings in the interim and I’m very much looking forward to that.
STANCE’s Pride show!
Hey y'all, the choir I’m in is ramping up for our big Pride show in June. I hope that if you’re able to attend you will do so!
The shows are:
- Friday, June 16 at 7 PM
- Saturday, June 17 at 4 PM
Bandcamp Friday, May 2023
For the next 23.5 hours, Bandcamp is waiving their cut of music purchases made on their platform, which makes it an amazing time to buy independent music there.
As always, I have plenty of stuff you can get there (including a recently-released 80-minute meditation album and an hour-long musical journey inspired by a variety of coffee grinders), and you can get a pretty decent discount on my music if you just buy it all at once as a discography.
I also like to keep a checklist of albums to buy on this day, and this month the two albums I bought are a recent release by my friend Sam and the discography of ratwyfe mostly because I heard someone do a cover of his song cryptid and I knew right away that I’d totally dig all of his music.
Anyway. Support independent musicians, both by buying the music that you like, but also spreading the word of mouth of the music that you like, too. You might not think you have much of a voice but every little bit helps way more than you think; every flood begins with a handful of raindrops.
Miscellaneous updates
I haven’t felt like blogging lately, but here’s some updates.
Upcoming talent show!
Hey friends, I forget if I’ve mentioned it here but on Friday my choir is having a talent show and a silent auction! If you’re in Seattle it’d be great if you could attend in person, and we’ll also be streaming the show on YouTube and you can get a ticket for access to that stream as well. And the silent auction has a lot of amazing goods and services available and will be run online.
Please consider getting a ticket to the show (or making a donation to the choir) and registering for the silent auction.
Ship Full of Jerks
My friend Mark has also started a podcast with his friend Ryan, and which I did the music for. It’s called Ship Full of Jerks, their first episode is a review and commentary on the start of season 3 of Star Trek: Picard.
Plans and Execution
Once upon a time I used to be hyperproductive. I’d spend 8 or more hours a day writing code, then I’d go home and draw comics for hours, and then on the weekends I’d write and record music. I’d have pain symptoms as part of it but that just felt like a badge of honor, and that it’d all be worth it someday.
Now I can’t hold down a job at all, I can barely focus on any of those things, and even holding a pencil to start drawing just feels like too much. I have so many ideas in my head and so much shit I want to be doing with my time, but every time I start to work on anything it just hurts too much.
Anyway, I figured I’d talk about a bunch of the stuff I wish I could be working on right now.
It sure would be nice to not be in pain all the time
There are so many things I’d like to be doing with my time, except every time I start on any of them I get a major pain flareup. And that makes it really hard to get into what I’m doing, and then the moment I have any minor setback (such as a problem with the tool I’m using) that just makes the pain explode even further and then all I can focus on is how much I’m hurting.
I’d love to be making 3D models for VRChat or drawing comics or making music, but all of those things just feel so inaccessible to me right now. And even playing games hurts, and even hanging out in VRChat can be pretty painful too because even standing up for an hour at a time is awful (and doing VRChat while sitting down has its own share of issues).
I’m grateful that I don’t have to worry about money so much, but gosh, there’s more to being productive than making a living. Quality of life is important and that feels just so lacking right now.
I just feel like so much stuff is locked inside my head and screaming to get out, and I sure wish I could just like. Not be like that.
Native Instruments Intel/Silicon Update
Previously I’d posted about an update to Native Instruments' Komplete Kontrol plugin wrapper that made it no longer work with Intel plugins on Apple Silicon machines. After I’d posted that, Jeremy from Native Instruments posted a link to download Komplete Kontrol 2.7.2 which can be used as a temporary workaround to fix the issue, with a warning that it’d be better to update KK and then run Logic under Rosetta instead.
I failed to notice this update from them since NI’s forum never manages to actually send me notification emails for some reason, but in any case, this is a nice solution to keep things working until Reaktor and Battery get updated for M1 (hopefully in just a month or two).
Anyway, hopefully this is helpful for folks who need it.