New Year 2023

It is that time of the year again. Won’t be making resolutions. I make plans. Plan for 2022 was make home studion which could stay as it is going forward. That almost happened. One midi keyboard and one guitar pedal not being available when I wanted and new eurorack case prevented that to be finished by the end of the year but it will happen early this year. Trigon 6 module might find its way to studio when it is available but everything else should be finished early this year.

New eurorack case has turned out to be quite interesting. Every time I feel I could keep Lifeforms in case I find something weird from them. Midi to CV conversion has weird feature which appeared in current setup. It is really annoying but it can create cool randomness when used correctly. Addition to that I have had really had time calibrating SV-1. I get them working perfectly but next time they are all over the place. It could be temperature and calibrating them when they are cool. Unless I get them to stay in tune without constant calibration there will be major changes in what modules will be in that case.

When I set home studio I got proper workspace for drawing and video editing. Wasn’t planned but it made sense to do that too. After I got work spaces in proper condition 2022 year 2023 will be year to git gud. There are things to get good at. Making music, drawing and 3D animation with Blender. Nothing that I start from zero because year changed. It has been on going process which I try to focus more this year. There is one bigger secret drawing related project I want to do. Publishing it depends how it works out. 3d animation would be for music videos at the moment. I like how Cinematic Laboratories and Make Noise use 3D animation in their videos. I did that few years ago in few videos. Music is just fun and I like to get better at it and produce more of it.

Trying to figure how to schedule this year so I manage to learn everything I want. There is a problem of using it or losing it. I have few online courses to take on each topic. But which order to take them so I don’t take the course and then don’t do anything with it afterwards. I feel I need to learn basics of Blender every time I use it. Goal is to time learning in a way I start to use what I learn. At the moment learning Blender again for fourth or fifth time and music theory seem most optimal route. I haven’t found course which teach one thing I need for that secret art project. I would like to know if there is good online course on how to draw same character again and again and make it look same every time. You can get there by drawing but I like to learn on which things I should concentrate on. I learnt to draw male and female faces after someone pointed good web site teaching the differences. I haven’t found good enough information on drawing the same character again and again.

If you wonder why I am learning Blender for forth or fifth time there is a simple answer. Earlier times rendering time has been huge issue even when using rendering farms. Now it should be better. I have some ideas for 3D animation besides music videos but it has been too time consuming so far. It might still be but I want to try again and there is online course which tells how to make 3D animations fast with Blender.

It is that time of the year again

It is time when people make resolutions only to break them in couple weeks. I don’t believe into starting something on first of January. However this is good time to check goal and make plans. My plan for year 2022 is to spend less money on everything. There have been times when I haven’t had money and now when I do I have spent it like preparing for times when I don’t have it. Have thought what I might want to do when I have less money and more time. This has lead to having lot of everything. Trying to get rid of this habit.

Habit has lead me to have good video and music making setups, big music library and lot of digital comics which I haven’t had time or energy to use, read or what ever. Not going to stop buying but concentrating on getting limited setups instead of getting everything I might want to use when I don’t have money. I could have got studio setup to point where I don’t need to buy any music gear on 2022. But don’t want to get everything at once just to have new year’s resolution.

The point is trying not to use all available money on something I might want to use in future. It won’t start 2022. I have done it before but will do more systematically on 2022. That is closest thing I have for new year’s resolution this time. Drawing and music courses continue. Trying to get more into doing than taking courses sometime during 2022. For drawing it should be current course and two or four more courses. Will not stop taking drawing courses after it but taking them slower and spend more time on drawing something. Should happen on first half of 2022.

For music it is more complicated. I don’t have as structured plan there. I want to learn good habits. That is why I have spent so much time taking courses instead of doing something same time. On music side I am trying a new thing which should unblock creativity. I’m not good playing keyboards. I can do it based on what I know from playing guitar but I am really bad at it. I bought Linnstrument 128. I should be able to play it with what I know from playing guitar and bass. Every scale I learn on guitar should be easy to apply on Linnstrument. Considered full sized Linnstrument but couldn’t justify price and size difference. Maybe I regret not getting full sized when I get good at playing it but at this time shorter was better option.

For videos I have no plans. Not for 2022 at least. Want to get back to making them but not sure what kind of videos. Have few ideas but there is long way to go before getting anything ready. Current pandemic doesn’t urge to go outside shooting videos and my flat ain’t cinematic. Talking about pandemic. I will be coming out of it better than going in. When ever it will end. Have lost lot of weight and had time to learn drawing and music. Still need to lose weight and learn but it is not over yet.

Plans for 2021

It is that time again. I don’t believe in new year’s resolutions. But it is good time to check you plans and plan for the future. Covid-19 changed plans for 2020. I have planned to make my flat more like studio for couple years. Didn’t want people to get old stuff out and new stuff in during pandemic. If pandemic is over by summer I probably rearrange my flat during summer vacation. I didn’t plan to ride as much as I did. When pandemic hit Finland I started to ride daily. Did it until end of October. I rode 9670 kilometers 2020 and lost about 20 kilos. I plan to continue this until end of April. By then I should be close to my target weight.

Going into 2020 plan was to limit gear purchases. On music front it mostly went ok. On software side it was upgrades (or what could be considered as upgrade with little imagination) until yesterday when I got new synth. On hardware side I got two synths which I have wanted for a long time. There is still need for polyphonic analog synth. But otherwise hardware synth side should be ok for now. Next is to get guitar side to ok state. I got new amp last year and started to build pedal board. Building pedal board is plan for first half of 2021.

On second half of 2020 I started to rearrange plugins in Cubase to have small set of plugins I start to concentrate and learn to use them. That new synth I bought yesterday filled cap I had in those plugins. After having pedal board ready my music making set up should be ready and not to get major changes any more. Rearrangement of the flat would make using it easier. I will upgrade computers but music making software and hardware should stay the same for years to come.

On camera/video/photography side situation isn’t as good or plan as clear. There is gimbal which could be the gimbal for years to come. My current one doesn’t have all functionality I want but that has. There is camera which could be the camera for years to come but I would have to get lenses for it. I am waiting for upgrade to my current camera which would give all features I want. Then I would have camera setup I don’t need to think about upgrading. Current setup have some limitations. Mainly 8 bit video and rolling shutter. I could get rid of those problems by paying about 10 000 euros and waiting for stores to get cameras and lenses. I don’t want to pay that much at the moment because there could be camera for my current lenses which would fix those issues.

I got some lights from end of the year sales. Still need few stands and softboxes for them but bi-color lights setup is ok at the moment. Still need some RGB lights. After that it is waiting for rearranging the flat and I can start to shoot more cinematic videos in my flat.

To conclude everything above 2021 will continue same transition that started during 2020. I haven’t released music or videos for a while but I will do that in future. 2020/2021 has been/will be time to reinvent how I do things. In music I will add more playing into programming. On videos it will be better lighting and more cinematic footage. You could get from above I concentrate on gear but that is not the case. 2020 have been more about learning to use what I have and that will continue 2021.

Then when to expect new music or videos? I don’t know that yet. I had plan to do something during holiday season but Festive 500 was easier. There will be something this year. 2022 should start me already continuously making music and videos.

New Year's Resolutions 2018

Here is little video of my new year's resolutions or lack of them. I talk about aspect ratios in the video. When I uploaded it to Youtube I found out why no-one use different aspect ratios here. You can't use end screen if you use different aspect ratios than 16:9. This means I will get back to 16:9 on next video.

Happy New Year

I didn't felt like going out to shoot last night. But after almost four hours of walking and shooting I got some good footage. I got really good footage of fireworks. I am tempted to color grade it and releasing it without cutting. I might do that if I don't manage to do proper video for this week. I usually do music on Sundays but I haven't even started to edit footage yet and it might require some heavy color grading. I won't be able to start making music today. Editing should be done by today.

Video will probably be three to four minutes with one and half minute of fireworks. I wasn't sure what I was doing but guessing worked. I had my second widest lens on camera. It was 12 mm. Widest would have been 10 mm. Not big difference there. I just guessed where to point the camera and got almost everything without having fireworks on small part of the frame. I didn't need to adjust anything during fireworks. I just let camera do its work and enjoyed the fireworks.

I tried new way to stabilize camera with strap. It worked nice when I tested it. I still need to learn it better. It doesn't give as stable image as gimbal but it is faster and draws less attention. It could be close to gimbal if you are good at it. It looked really good In video where I learned it from. Idea is to make strap one point of contact and stabilize camera against strap. It might look bit silly but it works better than I expected.

Not buying new gear got good start. I bought plugin from sales during weekend and learned to use older ones. I might still need more analog sounding delay but I should have reverbs and delays covered now. Just don't ask how many of them I bought during weekend. Good thing is I learned to use them better when tested what I had and compared to demos. I should manage with what I have at least until next sale.

Monday is training day but I still feel last night's almost four hours shooting trip. I probably force myself to gym to keep the schedule. Right now I don't feel like it.