Remember back in the 50s when they'd record like Elvis singing YOU AIN'T NOTHIN BUT A HOUND DOG and then they'd turn the record over and reverse it and it was all NYERP NYERP NYERP NYERP NYERP and people were all like, "That is actually the voice of Satan coming from that song."
thenamelesssamurai: Ouch. Sorry to hear that. I hope you feel better soon, too.
Thanks guys. I appreciate that. I really do. And even if it is only an e-hug, I still appreciate it, Naney.
@Anonus: No I haven't, but maybe I should. The thing is though is that the timing is incredibly sporadic. I mean, I'll go about a month or 3 being reasonably normal and well adjusted. Then one day I wake up and I'm depressed for a few days and then everything goes back to normal. That's the main reason I haven't gone to see someone is that most of the time I'm fine, so it doesn't normally interfere with my life, but when it hits its bad.
I was seeing someone when I had a depression that lasted continuously for a year and a half, but that was me reacting to an external situation.
I've learned to tolerate drama...except on the boat
Oh.
I've felt that way about what I suspect to be OCD (but have been told isn't). It flared up really bad last summer, and seems to be getting ready to do so this summer too.
It took me a little over a solid hour, but for the first time ever I have deliberately drawn what I believe to be a picture recognizable as a human face.
edit: this version is much better. Left out the "u" though.
Huzzah! My first step to sort of possibly being able to somewhat kind of draw.
Remember back in the 50s when they'd record like Elvis singing YOU AIN'T NOTHIN BUT A HOUND DOG and then they'd turn the record over and reverse it and it was all NYERP NYERP NYERP NYERP NYERP and people were all like, "That is actually the voice of Satan coming from that song."
^^^Ouch. Do you need anything? I mean there's not much I can offer besides internet hugs, but...
Every time someone rips into something I do art-wise it sticks with me for a good week or two, regardless of whether or not I think they're right. I'm still hung up on that guy who left that nasty comment on my Youtube channel a few days ago.
I can't get over it, and I'm delaying working on a sepia empirebecause of it, but I doubt any of you care too much about that.
Doctor Who reference in Pokemon B2W2? Headcanon accepted.
Any of you guys remember John Solomon, who made all those ultra-hateful (and hilarious) webcomic reviews (especially against Dominic Deegan?) On IRC one day he ripped into me about the "sidetalking" thing I did with my characters in my earlier comics. You know, the animation technique the DD uses where the open mouth is on the side of the face facing the viewers. I was all damn, you're right and amended that issue. A while later some other guy ripped into my comics over something else regarding my art, and spitefully so. But he was right and I fixed that too.
Harsh criticism is the best criticism. The absolute worst, the most fucking useless is "constructive" criticism. Constructive criticism is telling you that you have a turd there, but my, what a nice shiny turd it is! This doesn't help you improve at all. It only inspires complacency. If anything, be glad someone took time to rip into your work, most will just give it one glance and pass on.
I tend to find both kinds of criticism equally worthless to be honest with you, not because my work is flawless or something, just because being told what I'm doing wrong does not actually help me fix what I'm doing wrong. It's like having a pothole in the road pointed out to you after you've already fallen into it.
The most useless advice I ever get is "practice".
No shit, dumbass. What do you think I do, twiddle my thumbs and just wait for great tunes to spontaneously appear on my computer?
The second most useless is "get better software" A) because I cannot afford better software and B) because it assumes that anyone can be an amazing musician if they would just shell out $500 for ProTools.
The third most useless is "your work is bad and you should feel bad" because as I outlined above, telling me what I am doing wrong does not tell me how to fucking fix it. Even worse than that is when they don't tell you what you're doing wrong and just expect you to figure it out. I am not a telepath, I cannot magically find out how to fix something. Sometimes I'll pick it up on my own, other times I can just Google it, but this is rarely helpful.
And of course the kind of constructive criticism you're talking about, but that's a dead horse by now.
I don't know. This is why I will never be a professional [anything artistic]. I gave up on that dream a long time ago. Better to leave it to the people who know what they're fucking doing.
The process of creation is surprisingly easy. The process of refining what you're making is the hard part. I am forever stuck at a level that is just below amateur because I do not know how to refine what I'm doing, and I probably never will.
I'm sorry if I sound annoyed (I am, but not really at any of you), I'm just frustrated as hell and don't know what to do about it anymore.
You know I really am just stupid, I should be able to self-teach myself all of this shit and I can't. I tend to just give up. It's a problem of persistence. I don't know if I have ADD (I've never been tested for it) but learning I did would not surprise me. I cannot focus. On anything. Not anything I want to do not anything I'm supposed to do. Yes I know I should "stop doing that" I've been given that piece of oh-so-wise advice god knows how many times. People always think they're imparting some kind of revelation into me or something I suppose. They're not, I know I lack work ethic, I know I lack focus. Telling someone these things does not magically dissipate either of them, and beyond getting a therapist (good joke) I don't know how to fix them.
So I sit, every so often I'll try some new thing (I cannot honestly disclose the amount of random synthesizer programs I have on my computer that I tried once and never touched again) and I'll just give it up after a few hours because why bother? It's gotten to the point where it's meta, I don't even try anymore because I know I'll just get distracted by some other shiny thing or otherwise give up. I don't even finish half the media I consume.
So what am I supposed to do? I can't just will something to happen. I overthink things too much for that. I cannot be the only person in the world who has this problem (I know I'm not, xkcd has made fun of these people) so where's the "I can't ever finish anything Anonymous" club? Who do I have to blow to figure out how to fix this?! IS there a way to fix this, or am I just stuck being a nobody with big dreams and no way to accomplish any of them?
I would be so far beyond content with just accomplishing one. Comics, music, movies, writing, I don't care. I really don't. And I just kind of...can't I guess. I'm not good at any of these things and I've already pointed out why I can't "get" good at them. I don't know how people do it, I see people posting shit on their deviantart where they re-draw the first picture they ever do and the old one (which is almost always shit) is turned into something magnificent or at least okay. And the practice periods are never any more than like, what a year? Two? I've been drawing still lifes for months and still can't draw a damn door. I've been fiddling with FL Studio for a year and still don't know what half the buttons do. I am a fucking M-O-R-O-N.
This wasn't a response to anyone in particular, I'm just whining. I guess.
Today I read in a book* that nobody, as far as we know, ever became tops in their field without first doing at least 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.
The second most useless is "get better software" A) because I cannot afford better software and B) because it assumes that anyone can be an amazing musician if they would just shell out $500 for ProTools.
Well, they're right.
A.) You're gonna have to work on that.
B.) Listen, making music with Audacity is like doing surgery with the tools around your kitchen, it just doesn't work. You need the right tools to do something, you know? I mean, that's just not what Audacity is for.
The reason you don't progress is because you're stuck in a dead-end path. Get a professional (*Or even semi-professional*) DAW and you can start to make some progress.
B.) Listen, making music with Audacity is like doing surgery with the tools around your kitchen, it just doesn't work. You need the right tools to do something, you know? I mean, that's just not what Audacity is for.
The reason you don't progress is because you're stuck in a dead-end path. Get a professional (*Or even semi-professional*) DAW and you can start to make some progress.
Reaper has all the features you need, and the "demo" is the full-featured product. That gets you around A.
Dude do you think I don't know this?
I have an acer notebook, man. Audacity itself barely runs on it. FL Studio has been known to crash the thing, I will *attempt* to install and use this but it probably won't work.
Plus, I'm so used to the way Audacity displays tracks (horizontal waveform readout) that I have a really hard time even trying to use anything else.
I've learned to tolerate drama...except on the boat
Honestly, about the professional work thing, sometimes I feel the same way when it comes to anything related to Adobe's Creative Suite. It doesn't help that Photoshop Elements doesn't support OpenType features, which are included in pretty much every typeface by every foundry now... >_>
See this is the part that usually get me. I have no idea what I'm doing. Actually it's worse than that, I really have less than no idea what I'm doing.
I can't even paste more than one object at a time it looks like. I'm probably just being dense, but I'd think the logical thing to do would be [highlight what you're copying] --> [hit copy] --> [go to where in the track you want to paste] --> [hit paste]
Doctor Who reference in Pokemon B2W2? Headcanon accepted.
I don't know much about music production and software but I can tell you, from my time right out of high school to working on Music Row in Nashville, among the many recording studios there, that even the cheapest modern netbook has more music production and editing capability than the hundred thousand dollar systems those studios stocked themselves with, and do so completely digitally too. As for synthesis software, all I know is there's been synthesis software around for the past 20 years. Have you thought about digging around abandonware sites for older, less resource-hungry software? On these sites I've actually ran across Photoshop 4 for Windows 95 which in its total compressed .zip size is something like 7MB and has 99% of the functionality that anyone would need from such a software, and runs zippy on 16MB of RAM to which you mostly likely have 100 times that amount now. If the OS on your laptop is dragging, be it Windows 7 or a bogged-down stock XP install, you can format and install TinyXP along with a win 7 theme that makes it look exactly like, well, 7 -- I have that on my older workstation and it works great.
Thing is, that might be the case, but it doesn't honestly help, I just plain don't know how to use synthesizers.
And is it just me being bad at Google (I didn't even know that was possible) or are there absolutely no manuals for this kind of thing? It seems like every program assumes you already know how to use it, and what tutorials are offered tend to be confusing and even those assume background knowledge I don't really have.
And let's just not get into that time Tzetze convinced me to download PureData.
this is really annoying. A lot of pop-up windows in programs like this, just seem to assume your monitor is at least a certain size. And frankly, mine is not. So the bottom of the window (the part with little bits like the "okay" option) tends to get cutoff and hidden behind my taskbar.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
I take it PureData is notoriously difficult or something...?
A few weeks ago Tzetze and I were talking about Linux and he told me he uses a window manager called "awesome". I said I wanted to try it and he warned me like three times that it probably wouldn't make any sense to me.
Comments
Have you tried seeing someone about it?
(*Hugs, even though they do nothing*)
@Anonus: No I haven't, but maybe I should. The thing is though is that the timing is incredibly sporadic. I mean, I'll go about a month or 3 being reasonably normal and well adjusted. Then one day I wake up and I'm depressed for a few days and then everything goes back to normal. That's the main reason I haven't gone to see someone is that most of the time I'm fine, so it doesn't normally interfere with my life, but when it hits its bad.
I was seeing someone when I had a depression that lasted continuously for a year and a half, but that was me reacting to an external situation.
I've felt that way about what I suspect to be OCD (but have been told isn't). It flared up really bad last summer, and seems to be getting ready to do so this summer too.
It took me a little over a solid hour, but for the first time ever I have deliberately drawn what I believe to be a picture recognizable as a human face.
edit: this version is much better. Left out the "u" though.
Huzzah! My first step to sort of possibly being able to somewhat kind of draw.
actually I totally just could've written "u mad?" and it would've worked fine.
brb kicking myself
I think I"m kind of starting to get back into that whole self-loathing thing.
ugh.
:[
I dunno.
Every time someone rips into something I do art-wise it sticks with me for a good week or two, regardless of whether or not I think they're right. I'm still hung up on that guy who left that nasty comment on my Youtube channel a few days ago.
I can't get over it, and I'm delaying working on a sepia empire because of it, but I doubt any of you care too much about that.
I tend to find both kinds of criticism equally worthless to be honest with you, not because my work is flawless or something, just because being told what I'm doing wrong does not actually help me fix what I'm doing wrong. It's like having a pothole in the road pointed out to you after you've already fallen into it.
The most useless advice I ever get is "practice".
No shit, dumbass. What do you think I do, twiddle my thumbs and just wait for great tunes to spontaneously appear on my computer?
The second most useless is "get better software" A) because I cannot afford better software and B) because it assumes that anyone can be an amazing musician if they would just shell out $500 for ProTools.
The third most useless is "your work is bad and you should feel bad" because as I outlined above, telling me what I am doing wrong does not tell me how to fucking fix it. Even worse than that is when they don't tell you what you're doing wrong and just expect you to figure it out. I am not a telepath, I cannot magically find out how to fix something. Sometimes I'll pick it up on my own, other times I can just Google it, but this is rarely helpful.
And of course the kind of constructive criticism you're talking about, but that's a dead horse by now.
I don't know. This is why I will never be a professional [anything artistic]. I gave up on that dream a long time ago. Better to leave it to the people who know what they're fucking doing.
The process of creation is surprisingly easy. The process of refining what you're making is the hard part. I am forever stuck at a level that is just below amateur because I do not know how to refine what I'm doing, and I probably never will.
I'm sorry if I sound annoyed (I am, but not really at any of you), I'm just frustrated as hell and don't know what to do about it anymore.
I have to be back to work at 7 a.m. Yeah...not gonna sleep much tonight. If at all.
You know I really am just stupid, I should be able to self-teach myself all of this shit and I can't. I tend to just give up. It's a problem of persistence. I don't know if I have ADD (I've never been tested for it) but learning I did would not surprise me. I cannot focus. On anything. Not anything I want to do not anything I'm supposed to do. Yes I know I should "stop doing that" I've been given that piece of oh-so-wise advice god knows how many times. People always think they're imparting some kind of revelation into me or something I suppose. They're not, I know I lack work ethic, I know I lack focus. Telling someone these things does not magically dissipate either of them, and beyond getting a therapist (good joke) I don't know how to fix them.
So I sit, every so often I'll try some new thing (I cannot honestly disclose the amount of random synthesizer programs I have on my computer that I tried once and never touched again) and I'll just give it up after a few hours because why bother? It's gotten to the point where it's meta, I don't even try anymore because I know I'll just get distracted by some other shiny thing or otherwise give up. I don't even finish half the media I consume.
So what am I supposed to do? I can't just will something to happen. I overthink things too much for that. I cannot be the only person in the world who has this problem (I know I'm not, xkcd has made fun of these people) so where's the "I can't ever finish anything Anonymous" club? Who do I have to blow to figure out how to fix this?! IS there a way to fix this, or am I just stuck being a nobody with big dreams and no way to accomplish any of them?
I would be so far beyond content with just accomplishing one. Comics, music, movies, writing, I don't care. I really don't. And I just kind of...can't I guess. I'm not good at any of these things and I've already pointed out why I can't "get" good at them. I don't know how people do it, I see people posting shit on their deviantart where they re-draw the first picture they ever do and the old one (which is almost always shit) is turned into something magnificent or at least okay. And the practice periods are never any more than like, what a year? Two? I've been drawing still lifes for months and still can't draw a damn door. I've been fiddling with FL Studio for a year and still don't know what half the buttons do. I am a fucking M-O-R-O-N.
This wasn't a response to anyone in particular, I'm just whining. I guess.
*can't believe everything you read, but still
A.) You're gonna have to work on that.
B.) Listen, making music with Audacity is like doing surgery with the tools around your kitchen, it just doesn't work. You need the right tools to do something, you know? I mean, that's just not what Audacity is for.
The reason you don't progress is because you're stuck in a dead-end path. Get a professional (*Or even semi-professional*) DAW and you can start to make some progress.
Here.
Reaper has all the features you need, and the "demo" is the full-featured product. That gets you around A.
Dude do you think I don't know this?
I have an acer notebook, man. Audacity itself barely runs on it. FL Studio has been known to crash the thing, I will *attempt* to install and use this but it probably won't work.
Plus, I'm so used to the way Audacity displays tracks (horizontal waveform readout) that I have a really hard time even trying to use anything else.
the thing with Audacity is that it doesn't have any way to keep things in time, so you get stuff going at completely different tempos and...
yeah.
So I see.
Thank you for the thought if nothing else, but I'm still doubtful this'll work.
I really hope I get that new laptop soon.
the company that makes this is called "cockos"?
Really?
Really?
Well whatever. It hasn't crashed my computer yet, that alone puts it ahead of FLS.
Well I accidentally right-clicked on something and it froze.
People, if you remember one thing I say, let it be this: never buy Acer products.
Wow.
See this is the part that usually get me. I have no idea what I'm doing. Actually it's worse than that, I really have less than no idea what I'm doing.
I can't even paste more than one object at a time it looks like. I'm probably just being dense, but I'd think the logical thing to do would be [highlight what you're copying] --> [hit copy] --> [go to where in the track you want to paste] --> [hit paste]
but that's not working for some reason.
Thing is, that might be the case, but it doesn't honestly help, I just plain don't know how to use synthesizers.
And is it just me being bad at Google (I didn't even know that was possible) or are there absolutely no manuals for this kind of thing? It seems like every program assumes you already know how to use it, and what tutorials are offered tend to be confusing and even those assume background knowledge I don't really have.
And let's just not get into that time Tzetze convinced me to download PureData.
oh and also
this is really annoying. A lot of pop-up windows in programs like this, just seem to assume your monitor is at least a certain size. And frankly, mine is not. So the bottom of the window (the part with little bits like the "okay" option) tends to get cutoff and hidden behind my taskbar.
It is infuriating.
It's using coding (which I don't know how to do) to directly create assorted output.
In other words, yes. Also it's organized in a way that makes it look like an electrician's diagram.
UGH.
WHY is there so much STUFF here and WHY does NONE of it DO ANYTHING.
See this is a problem.
I've been using Audacity since I was like twelve, and now anything with more than four menus makes me claustrophobic, for lack of a better term.
I DON'T KNOW WHAT THESE BUTTONS DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO