Hi everyone! Welcome to my first week of blogging through my Instagram hiatus.
I decided to write some daily entries on the fly during the week so I would definitely have something to show you, and I’m glad, because when I sat down to ‘blog properly’ not only was I able to remember what I did, but I was also able to connect some dots. A handful of relevant themes became apparent.
There’s a good chance I wouldn’t have noticed these themes without aimlessly writing to myself in my phone notes. Maybe talking to oneself is more valuable than I thought.
This is a long entry, so here is a handy table of contents so you won’t get too lost in a massive amount of scrolling.
Week #1 Contents
- Sunday, 26th November
- Monday, 27th November
- Tuesday, 28th November
- Wednesday, 29th November
- Thursday, 30th November
- Themes of This Week
Sunday, 26th November
I unwittingly got roped into a brand new music community.
When I made my remix of Oblivion by Andrew Huang for a challenge he put out, I had a little look for some fellow contestants. One of these individuals was an artist by the name of Undulae. He posted to his Instagram stories that he was taking part in something called a COMPO which is the name sometimes given to a sampling and beat making challenge in the D&B and breakbeat communities.
COMP01 was being run by an artist called Machinedrum who I quickly realised had a very chilled out, kind, and open minded community of creators surrounding him.
The challenge was as follows (as paraphrased by me):
- Download the sample pack
- Create a piece of music using only elements from that sample pack (no extra synths, vocals, instruments) with the exception of you being allowed to sample parts to create your own synths, for example.
- We had 2 hours to complete our tracks, with an extra 15 mins of leeway where the form could be submitted to account for rendering/exporting time.
- Submit an MP3 of your track with no artist name information, but you can give your track a title.
Much to both Machinedrum’s joy and horror, he received 70 entries! That meant there was no way all of them could be played in full live on his YouTube stream, but he soldiered on and tried to play at least one minute’s worth of each. I took a screen recording of the reactions to my track. I was number 57 so by then the initial hype had died down, but I did get a few people I didn’t know making positive comments, and the stream’s host did nod his head a little. I consider this high praise from a community who didn’t know me at all, and for a track I made in 2 hours with samples I didn’t really know how to use!
After that came the voting, and the organisers very wisely provided a SoundCloud playlist with a full complement of all submissions so even those who couldn’t make the listening party could still hear the tracks. The voting was split into two rounds: a top 5, then a winner. My favourite of all of them was one called Track 33 which I voted for in both rounds. My runner up was Track 66 which ended up being the overall winner, with 33 as second place (this did wonders to validate my music taste!).
And guess who Track 33 was?
Undulae.
Congrats, man, and thank you for sharing the competition or I would never have stumbled across such a rich and warm music making community. Click here to watch his breakdown on how he made all those pretty synth sounds from scratch.
The next competition will be in January. If you want in on the action, check out Machinedrum’s Discord community and familiarise yourself with the rules and the vibes.
Monday, 27th November
Today was my first day of ‘freedom’ and I’m already beginning to feel a greater sense of mental space.
I worked a lot on my website today, staying in my PJs and working on my bed since I had a lingering cough. I worked mostly on fiddly admin, but it should stand me in good stead when I start adding new content.
I also invented a ‘work game’ using dice. I listed tasks according to another list I made of things I want to achieve during my hiatus, gave them an estimated duration, separated them into categories, and assigned a number to each category.
I worked a little bit on a spreadsheet I’m creating that lists all the artists and creatives I follow so I can see at a glance what kind of contacts I have. I made a second spreadsheet to map my website and list all the links on each page. There’s a lot I need to restructure, and having that document really helps me get a good view of where I can make improvements.
I took part in a Discord listening party for tracks in progress (which I screen recorded) and got some feedback for my song I Am Free (some of which directly from Ellie Dixon and Charlie Deakin-Davies!). I also heard a track in progress by another artist on the call and the group said they could definitely hear rap and stacked harmonies on it, so I volunteered my services, showing him Delighted and I Am Free (Voice Notes Version). He really liked my sound, so I think a collab is going ahead!
Tuesday, 28th November
Went on a date, got my Gustav Klimt moment.
The Kiss by Gustav Klimt was one of my favourite paintings for many years because to me it expressed that fuzzy, gorgeously warm feeling that comes from the affection of a romantic partner. It really does make you feel like you’re made out of gold, surrounded by jewels and flowers.
It’s not something I feel like I need to sacrifice a lot to experience. It’s just the way he is with me.
– Affection
One of the reasons I’m so happy in my current relationship (coming up to 8 months now, woo!) is because that feeling isn’t a rarity. It’s not something I feel like I need to sacrifice a lot to experience. It’s just the way he is with me. There’s no ‘cost’, it’s just a constant. And you can see on my face just how happy and contented I am to be snuggled together in a photo booth in the middle of Blackpool on a chilly November night.
Spoke to Unnamed Collaborator from the feedback listening party on Discord and he suggested the topic of the song should be friendship and the joy of hanging out with no particular goal.
Wednesday, 29th November
Felt exhausted so when I got back from the school run I spent my morning catching up on sleep.
Was feeling a bit stressed out by the evening and remembered it’s likely a lot to do with my hormones (The Event probably happening in the next few days), but the awareness didn’t make it feel much better!
Had a phone call with Izzy Kershaw to discuss getting mixing lessons and attempt to set up my PC for Discord DAW sharing. We weren’t able to route my DAW audio directly to Discord (I could only get my full desktop audio in rather than just the sounds from Ableton), but my hopeful, trouble-shooter self is confident that someone has worked out how to do this, so I’ll keep searching.
Izzy very kindly offered to do some away-from-DAW tuition for at least a couple of lessons since she was confident she could still teach me a lot that way. I’m looking forward to pinpointing the gaps in my knowledge and gaining more confidence in my technical ability. My first lesson is next Wednesday!
To add to the stress, once I ended my Discord call at about 23:00 I realised I hadn’t taken my meds (I usually time my dose for between 20:15 and 21:00), but I was so tired I still ended up getting to sleep by 00:30.
Thursday, 30th November
Went to the gym for the first time in the week.
Only had time for one exercise as I had plans to meet an old school friend for lunch. I hit a new PR doing deadlifts. After my usual set I thought I’d just try it out and managed 70kg for 1. Not bad given I haven’t been well this week. That was my first time ever lifting something heavier than me off the ground.
I checked in on Donny Stunts/Donny Davis and he had posted his remix of my sound. If you want him to remix one of your sounds, shoot him an email at this address: donnydavisofficial@gmail.com
The clip he used is from my song Alter Ego, a future album track. It started life as a toplining challenge run by the She Knows Tech Discord group, but I decided to make it a full song for myself. I need to make my own production for it, but I’m not sure exactly what I want. I thought my entry for COMP01 might work, but it feels more like a remix than an original. The search for this song continues…
Met up with my school friend who I haven’t seen in 13 years, but it was definitely as if no time had passed. We told each other our life stories up until that point, and it was great to be able to converge on a path together again. By the end of our meeting it was clear we were both really proud of each other for everything we’d done in our decade or so apart, and also for becoming more the people we wanted to be. And the people we changed into are still great friends! I don’t know about you, but that feels amazing to me.
One of the things we discussed was an ongoing issue I had with someone I’d been friends with for a few years, but it wasn’t exactly a happy scenario. I’d made several attempts to get away from them, but they’d always guilt me back into friendship by popping up on ever more obscure platforms (that I hadn’t thought to block them on) to tell me how much they missed me, how sorry they were, etc. I blocked them for the final time in January of this year, but some time this autumn I started getting this panicked feeling that they were about to get in contact again.
I felt like I was going insane. There was nothing to indicate an attempt at contact was about to happen because I didn’t have any way of seeing what this person was up to elsewhere online. I shared this feeling of paranoia with my Roëmænce Partnær, and he told me he thought it made total sense to have residual stress and negative feelings associated with all this, regardless of if I’m right about them getting in contact imminently.
Around that time I went to seek advice from someone I trusted, and they immediately picked up on this sense that I needed to identify the hurt that was still roaming around inside me, and actually take the time to heal from it. Admitting to myself that yeah actually it was very bad, and yes it made sense to have PTSD-like symptoms, and of course it made sense to feel creatively blocked, was immensely helpful. I was able to give myself permission to identify those hurts and heal from them.
But, that’s not the end of the story…
How dare they use such a word? If they truly understood, they would never had presumed that.
Friend?
I said goodbye to my school friend as she dropped me at the bus stop. I got on my bus home. I opened my phone to check anything I might have missed during our catch-up and I noticed an unread message on Telegram. I thought it was from a friend who had asked me to contact them through that app while I’m away from Instagram.
It was not that friend.
It was the former friend. The one I kept blocking. A little over 10 months after our last contact, they had found me on the most obscure app I could think of. Telegram! Of all places! Something I downloaded just to chat to one person!
In the message they tried to go for the guilt jugular. Telling me they understood that I didn’t want to talk. Reminiscing about a gift I’d made them years ago that was ‘getting them through’ and thanking me. Saying, “I miss you, friend.”
Friend? I squirmed a little at that word.
How dare they use such a word? If they truly understood, they would never had presumed that. And yet, even with the most emotionally charged thing they could have sent, I felt no compulsion to reply, or even give acknowledgement of receipt. I didn’t even block them. Just deleted the conversation. Telegram gives the option to delete without notifying the other person, so that’s the one I picked. They won’t know if I even saw the message.
That story is over.
After those lovely and surreal experiences, I began to feel some inspiration for my track with Unnamed Collaborator. I wanted to use the expression ‘picking up right where we left off’ since that was my experience talking to my friend. I’ve managed to come up with a bridge-like section that’s insanely catchy so far.
Themes of This Week
Disconnecting
Obviously, I’m here blogging like this because I’ve disconnected from the use of my Instagram account, but in a wider sense I’ve been disconnecting from many things. Anything that brings me down or negatively affects my mood in an extreme way. Anything that distracts me from the things that are the most important to me. People who have shown me they can’t be trusted. Places and practices that I’ve outgrown or that no longer feel right for me to continue with.
Reconnecting
When it comes to leaving something behind, it’s really important to add something else to your life to replace that thing. Leaving a void there is more likely to result in you going back to the thing you’re trying to leave. So, to avoid getting sucked back into Instagram life prematurely (or indeed, any of the other things I’m trying to move on from), I’ve been leaning into communities, both online and offline.
I’ve been enjoying Discord communities like Machinedrum and Charlieeeee’s World. I’ve reached out for learning opportunities such as mixing classes with Izzy Kershaw. I’ve spent time with my lovely Roëmænce Partnær and even got back in touch with one of my oldest and dearest friends. I didn’t mention this in my Sunday entry, but I’ve also started attending body doubling Zoom calls for weekly planning with J*M*A/The ADHD Music Producer (I’m not ADHD myself but my condition has a lot of practical overlap so it’s very helpful stuff!).
Recollecting
All this sort of thing will naturally lead to a lot of self reflection and thinking about the past.
It’s been wonderful to see my childhood self through the eyes of a now grown-up school friend. The fondness and warmth I felt from someone who clearly looked up to me back then was a welcome realisation. I was never a super popular or influential kind of kid, although my academic and creative ability made me stand out in ways I wasn’t exactly comfortable with. And yet I have this person telling me how smart and hard working they thought I was, how much they respected me for the choices I’ve made in my life, how happy they were to get a message from me inviting them to meet.
I’ve learned to show kindness to those awkward past versions of myself, in part because I was clearly loved, even when I didn’t love myself. I’m only going to continue being awkward! So I guess I’ll like this current version of myself, too.
Until next time, my dear readers!
Caryl