Wow, thanks, I didn’t know about that one so I didn’t even include it in my post so you stop saying it!

That’s not a solution. That’s a workaround for another workaround. If we want to make Lemmy become a useful resource, communities need to grow. And there is no better way to promote content besides posting it on other relevant spaces. I don’t run a shitposting space, it’s educational content and I post stuff once in 3-5 days, so I’m not spamming anything. If you have an alternative method for growing a community, I’ll hear it out.

Fun video and great analysis from squash! I think nobody was under impression that type beats were there to stay, but we see a lot of sentiment nowadays how “music gets easier and cheaper to make” and how “the artist market is oversaturated”. It applies to visual art, animation, film etc. And every single time that sentiment is used to say that there is a lot of bad [form of art] out there now and how it’s hard to make money from [said art].

Here’s the thing, yes the market gets oversaturated with amateur producers doing the easy and simple things to get cash. But music being easier and cheaper to make means more opportunity for people to develop their skills into something unique. It also makes it easier for you, if you take a bit of time necessary to learn better tools.

The monetary value we try to put on art is unhealthy because art will never fit into economy on it’s own merit as art, since economy puts value on things based on immediate demand. People who make their self-esteem based on the value of their art set themselves up for failure and complain about it instead of adapting to it. We have natural needs like food, water, shelter, sleep, etc, but when we go further away from that our desires start becoming influenced by society. Sometimes people can’t know they want something if they never experienced it. Music can often be like that and this is the key to creating value in music.

For example, diamond is a rock most people don’t have a practical use for and it’s actually quite abundant. It’s value was created by limiting the available supply and creating a mostly artificial demand in form of the wedding ring and expensive jewelry as symbols. This surface-level useless thing is desired because people have attached it to their relationships and interactions with society. You can say that this is where the real value is created. A lot of people listen to music in the same way. Sometimes, the quality of the music itself as art is secondary. The opportunities it creates for bonding and topical discussion is what really makes it worth it for most people.

What I’m trying to say is that no matter how great the music is, it’s only worth as much as you successfully market. Marketing low-effort music and having great success is kind of a feat on its own, there are tons more type beat tracks that didn’t get almost any traction. And a good track might market itself and it will definitely make your other marketing efforts more effective… but we shouldn’t bet everything on just having a good song/album. Almost every successful niche artist is doing some stuff behind the scenes to get their music out there and seen. Playing that game well is what brings you fame and money. Whether you consider it success or a part of success is entirely up to you!

Thanks for sharing, it’s been an interesting addition to my day!

I used to have a friend back in middle school who was getting a music education at the time. That was right around the point when I just started producing and he mentioned that my music sounded like it was from a videogame. And well I kinda took that to heart and looked up a bunch of itch.io games. I found a cool project and they were just in need of a soundtrack, so I said “let me give it a go”. They liked my drafts and the rest is history. I’ve learned so much since then. Working on the game for the past couple of years boosted my skills into something release worthy. I even rewrote the whole thing twice because the skill gap was so massive between the first and the last track in the playlist. This last rewrite is gonna be final, and gonna become my portfolio in case I want to hit another studio after this. Hope it works out!

Ah, I used to be in a chorus myself back in elementary, though it was an after-school activity for me. One vivid memory I have of it is that I hated sitting in classes because I was so bored and wanted to move. Guess that one might count towards my ADHD diagnosis and it certainly counts towards my music taste. I actually hated music for a while after that and it wasn’t until 13 when I started to listen to a lot of cool stuff that eventually prompted me to try and make something myself. And I actually liked it! Maybe I was always meant for it? ;)

And those are some interesting channels mate, thanks for sharing. I watched a bit of Andrew Huang myself, his “producers flip a sample” series was amazing inspiration for me, but he’s got this intense youtuber vibe that makes his content hard to watch for me. Sonic state and JNJ seem really interesting, much appreciated!

I like the idea! I think the instruments feel a bit too clean on this one though. I’d add some more reverb and reduce the sample rate on drums especially, but also on the synths slightly. Soft bit crushing may apply here too. I would also add an ambient pad - it would fill out the empty space in the song while still keeping it minimal. Levels may need some work. As for the rest, the track works quite well compositionally, the idea is solid and it fits the lo-fi style quite nicely without being boring or bland. Looking forward to your next work!

The alternative squares do exactly that, and the effects become way more obvious with distortion. Ultimately, changing phases on the same frequencies you need to build a square changes the volume due to phase cancellation and introduces some micro-changes to the sound which is what impacts the way the sound interacts with processing (distortion, compression, all that).

Also, using less frequencies to build a square overall will produce a softer and nicer square sound. Modern software really pushes it when building a proper square by adding a ton of high frequency sines to make it “textbook square” (something that wasn’t done in older hardware due to limitations). That sharpness can be easily removed to get essentially a square that doesn’t cut into your ears. Something to keep in mind if you feel the need to lowpass your squares later in the chain.

Hey man, I only know about distortion in old hardware from documentaries, it surprised me too when it produced the sound straight out of a console! I just tried one patch, but there is probably more you can do with triangles and perhaps some FM-synthesis, that’s something to feel excited about!

Insane! That’s getting added to my mental list of “things I didn’t know I needed to know, that I now know”, lol

Also, someone in the comments pointed out, the wave will interact differently with distortion and also sound differently in lower octaves. I just toyed around with it in Vital, and you can get some pretty old-school sounding imperfect square waves by randomly phaseshifting different frequencies and passing them through a clipping distortion to get back the volume. Sounds like something straight out of Atari and NES sound chips, cause I suppose the sound chips themselves on console or/and on the tv produced a ton of distortion. Playing several notes close together or in a chord and pitch shifting is completely wild, though perhaps everything I just outlined isn’t a surprise to any chiptune veterans out there.