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Yeah, I normally don't post my stuff in here, we have other parts of the forum for that.

It's just that for me these past couple things have been big life-updates. Like "this is what I've been up to lately". But they also aren't enough mine to feel like I should make a new thread, I was a minor part at most. It's a life update, goes to the general "here's how I am" thread in my mind.

Another release with my name loosely associated! My friend Mabel's debut EP, featuring Garry of Memorrhage on vox. Did mix feedback, provided moral support when she doubted herself, and was the one who linked her up with Garry B for the release. Must-hear if you like Mick Gordon's nu-Doom work, Sepultura, etc. She's also just a really cool person.

https://silicloneliquid.bandcamp.com/album/excessive-parosxym

The main problem is it's hugely expensive. And it REALLY doesn't need to be. Take GF pasta, for instance: buckwheat exists and is gluten free, and buckwheat noodles have been a thing forever. But these days I can't even find pure buckwheat soba around here -- it's 50% wheat or, in a couple cases, pure wheat. Why? That isn't even fucking soba anymore. So I'm gonna have to order it, because every other alternative costs two to five times as much as a box of cheap durum wheat pasta, of course.

The big surprise to me is that Cheerios have no gluten tax. They have gluten-free oats, and that's for all their cereal.

Updates:

Partner is NOT dying, AFAIK. She's having intermittent cognitive issues and aphasia as she goes through recovery (brain tumors suck) but it's been confirmed that to all appearances, she's fine. She thought she was dying because she misunderstood the doctor due to her aphasia.

That was still fucking terrifying, though.



I have started going gluten-free due to unintentionally giving myself a gluten challenge that began with about 1800 calories of sausage gravy and stuffing for breakfast, and ended with a near-emergency hypoglycemic episode two hours later. It's week two of this and there are some serious changes I've noted.

1: I'm eating less. Like, noticeably less. QGP can tell you how I used to eat, but yesterday I had, in order:
--1 quarter of a 10 inch pizza
--1 large bowl of black rice stir fry
--1 small bowl of chocolate ice cream
and after that, went to bed full and happy.

2: More energy. The past two days I have woken up to basically full functionality in under two hours of being awake. Yesterday I had no caffeine, and maintained a high-energy-high-brainfog state into the late night. Today I woke up in less than a half hour, and I'm having an energy drink because I suspect the brainfog has to do with insufficient B-vitamins (remember, I got actual fucking scurvy last year, so nutritional deficiencies are a big CHECK for me). Regardless, I'm HERE. I'm PRESENT. That's new! Especially given I woke up one hour ago.

3: Better sleep, or at least better absorption of sleep meds. Normally I overdose (3x recommended amount, doctor approved for me specifically) on sleeping meds and wake up in 5-6 hours. Last night, I did the same overdose, slept 9 hours, woke up feeling refreshed and healthy. I'm going to lower that to a 2x overdose for the next two weeks, and see if I can stop taking sleep meds altogether over time? But, genuinely, HUGE improvement.

4: Better mood? Not much, but no deep depressive episodes since I've begun this. Well, at least none if we don't count "my partner is going to die far away from me because of her shitty live-in partner", which even if it ended up being okay I sure don't count as a deep depressive episode, depression is kind of reasonable there. Also less easily frustrated, etc. Have I mentioned I don't have a doctor, so I'm not on any psych meds at the moment? Yeah, so this isn't a better absorption thing, this is a legitimate mood shift.

So uh, celiac disease seems reasonable to presume, or at least some level of gluten sensitivity.

The hardest parts, no particular order.

1: I have never had to seriously grieve before. I do not know how to handle it.
2: We share a second partner, who is already in a permanent deep depressive state, and who I'm in poor shape to support, and who has no one the fuck else but me. I don't know if it'll survive this, and I don't know if I can survive a third loss so soon.
3: Oh. Right. I'm still recovering from a recent breakup, so this hit me harder than it probably otherwise would have.
4: I never got to fucking hold her.
5: No one's gonna remember all of her. There will be only one name on that grave, and it'll be the one that was never hers. No one's gonna remember Dara, Fox, Val or Nye. No one's gonna remember Cadera, or Laurel. This isn't just one person, it's a whole group sharing a mind. And no one will remember. My memory isn't worth a fucking thing, I don't even remember MYSELF most days. I can't write her story, I didn't know her long enough. She was isolated and alone most of her life. There's no way to properly reconstruct those lives now. There will be no history to write. Just a dozen people, one body, erased.
6: If anyone but me and her other LDR partners had given a single solitary fuck, this probably could have been avoided. 6 months after the diagnosis that she should have been on chemo, derailed by her trash-fire live-in girlfriend. Finally got on it, the course finished last month, and it was all too fucking late.

Anyway. Done shitting up the thread.

Partner is dying. Brain cancer caught up, chemo didn't take. I never even got to see her face to face. She didn't get her name change so they'll bury her with that fucking name.

Anything I promised here is on hold.

So, I got groceries and I'm gluten-free for the past two days.

What no one told me is by G-d you will be TIRED. I knew I'd be hungry, and I've been trying to eat a human amount of food to get my body to adapt, but my intestines are gonna take at least a month to heal up enough that I can do that safely. The hypoglycemia? Expected.

But. Even though I've had more bursts of energy in a given day lately than ever before in my life, I am more exhausted than ever, and having trouble sleeping reasonable amounts of time. Like, I'll be able to get almost everything done in a day now, but in between doing things I can barely keep my eyes open.

Urgh. Not been in that *precise* situation but I had a similar issue not long ago where I couldn't use my phone for a while and I can entirely sympathise.

Absolutely frustrating as fuck.

Also hello. Nothing to really talk about here. The weather is slightly uncomfortably warm, everything is shit, Labour are intent on crushing all hope not already extinguished by the Tories, and everyone is either mad about confetti being thrown at a wedding or (as is usual) people's genitals. Just another day on Normal Island.

I'd send another rescue party, but the G-dless cannibal Englishmen ate them all last time. They worship the Devil himself and perform human sacrifices to their ancient priestly royals, you know. We should civilize them, but I need to find more people willing to risk their lives to colonize the benighted moors of darkest Britain before we can worry about that.

Someone stole two of my charge cables. I know the two people it definitely was not, but everyone else has said they have no idea what I'm talking about, and I checked everywhere they could possibly be.

I am now in a funny situation.

See, all my financial stuff is on my phone. I can't drive. There's no useful public transit in this part of the suburbs. And I just found out yesterday that I DEFINITELY have celiac so need to replace ALL of my food. And just earlier today, someone sent me grocery money. Money I can't use to buy groceries, because my ONLY option for that is Instacart, and guess what is dependent on my Apple account I have forgotten the login to?

This means I /cannot eat food/ until /someone else buys me replacement charge cables/, despite having money to get food with!

And the bitch of it all is, even though I know the people who HAD to have taken them hate my fucking guts, I know they are not aware of how dependent I was on those cables.

Brief sidenote, Scribbly! You have just answered something I've been trying to find the answer to for ages: who The Paper Chase was sampling on When (And If) The Big One Hits... I'll Just Meet You There. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys7IV126T4A John Congleton is so fucking cool.

But on-topic: this is an IMPORTANT piece of writing you've got here, QGP. The way it gets out ahead of all the directions your brain could shoot off in and kindly guides you back onto the path is brilliant.

Yesterday I did a vocal recording for Memorrhage LP2. I had to do 8 throwaway takes to get one good take due to not having a good vocal recording stack. When I finally got a decent take, de-essed and de-hissed, I learned some things.

1: I have a lisp. No one told me about this, and it's very mild -- but it means when I de-ess, you just hear the th instead. Need a de-eth plugin, too.

2: My vocal distortion when recording is WAAAAY higher than I thought it was when just practicing. I thought I was in hardcore-range, but my vocal distortion is closer to the most extreme of post-hardcore. Garry said "Zao, but filthier". I said "whisper-scream harmonic content, death-roar volume, blackened-crust pitch". I have to dial that shit back and get shoutier when recording, the level of distortion is just insane -- the waveform looked like someone ran it through a fucking bassist's fuzzbox with the gain maxed. All I did for recording was use Airwindows Density2 to stand in for a mic preamp since I'm using a USB mic, and throw on some compression to help normalize the volume. I did that distortion with my raw voice.

3: Holy shit, I burnt my voice. I'm feeling it today. That shit is crispy. Gotta be more careful and maybe try not to do 9 g-d damn takes of max-distortion high-pitched shrieking.

4: Actually, I'm a g-d damn good harsh vocalist. I kinda suspected this, but hearing it for real is a different story. When Garry put it in the track, pretty much just some mild EQ work and a delay based on Static-X vocal delays to fill, it took the guitars in the chorus and dragged them up by the high-frequency hair. Yes, the chorus -- this is a keystone vocal feature. I've never actually felt vindicated on this level about my skill before. Legitimately, the vocal stem, for all its flaws (recorded in a garage while cars were going by on a subpar microphone, vocalist lisping, vocalist didn't know their own power) sounds INCREDIBLE.

Today, I need to rest.

Goofy slam death.

Ever wanted to get into death metal but don't like the high percentage of Nazis and pretentious, self-important hipsters that cobble every inch of extreme metal like ticks on a snake? Ever wonder if these guys even enjoy making their goofy ass pig-grunt chug-chug music? Ever wish you could see a metal band just hanging out and being doofuses?

For your listening pleasure, I present to you Snuffed On Sight. Please enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4dot1OyzXY

I've been pushing through a very upsetting (but not bad) breakup by, uh, working on a remix and some trance synth leads for the Memorrhage guy. And crowdfunding my home-recording setup so I can contribute vocals. (Isolation shields worth a goddamn are PRICY.)

I think this is the most involved I've ever been in music. Almost daily I'm discussing with actual successful underground musicians my opinions on production and songwriting, and they're taken seriously. I can commiserate over EQing synth organs to sit nicely in dense mixes* and the other person will nod sadly and say "the decay..." because we've both been there.

It's really nice to be taken seriously by musicians who are legendary among "Thinking Man's avant-death metal" elitists and have done everything from chiptune grindcore to Bay Area screamo to nu metal. It's times like this I know my faith in my musical abilities is not Dunning-Kruger shit.



* Seriously, have you tried to do this without having to automate every band of an EQ to shift note-by-note? it's a fucking NIGHTMARE, and if you're gonna tell me to break out the comb filters I'm going to tell you to put that shit on some Scriabin-ass synthetic chords so you can hear the pan-pipers of Azathoth for yourself. It is an Incontrovertible Fact that organs, even basic ass synth organs with 3-oscillator formants, are made for filling every frequency above the fundamental with pure clean tonal bands and you had just better hope your tits that you have the headroom in your fucking mix to pull that off.

Do you take very dumb music requests? Because there is a very dumb thing I want

Depends. I can't record vocals yet (the crowdfunding was just finished thanks to one of you wonderful fuckers, but it needs to be ordered and arrive) and I can't do physical instruments, but I have production expertise and am pretty good at electronic music -- especially simpler stuff like trance, DnB, goth-industrial.

When I do have my bedroom studio setup done, I specialize in harsh vocals, but I can sing okay. Nothing special, poor range, lacking power, but it's something.

I'm looking for a "dramatic movie trailer" downbeat cover or remix of Billy Joel's My Life that fits the overall vibe of the Andor soundtrack. I'm very normal.

I can almost imagine this. I'm a dork, so I'm imagining it as funeral-paced symphonic blues/funk, like Zeal & Ardor's Hold Your Head Low but with piano and big, swelling orchestra instead of the guitar strums and short heavy sections. That would be really cool. But I don't think I can help you here.

I could mix and master it (the key to moody movie trailer music cover stuff: per track - expand, dither, noise gate, reverb; overall - compress until the mix pumps and heaves like a motherfucker, master), but I couldn't make it. You'd need at least one real live musician, someone who can work with symphonics appropriately, and probably a good, loud singer for that real powerful "impossible odds" movie trailer vibe. I can do none of these.

Sucks about the hearing, but yeah, at least you know now. My hearing has made it through an astonishing amount of abuse, and I've been eyeballing some concert earplugs to cut down the impact of dogs barking, traffic noise and, of course, the rare concerts I go to.

I used to play guitar, but kind of fell out of it because life. I got kind of decent I guess, and it was cool, maybe it's worth picking up again? I tried songwriting, which didn't go anywhere, but maybe I could try again.

IDK, for a while, I've just felt sapped of creativity. I lost passion for anything.

Damn, I miss when things felt good and I had hopes and dreams.

Honest suggestion: channel that hopelessness and frustration into creativity. Not necessarily music, just making things in general.

You're not alone in how you feel, but you are alone in the ways you'll express that. No one will be fed up and downtrodden the same exact way as you, which sounds like it's isolating, but it isn't.

People want to hear, see, feel something that reminds them of what they're going through, but in someone else's words. Making something is healthy catharsis, and helps others that find it, too.

I've been pushing through a very upsetting (but not bad) breakup by, uh, working on a remix and some trance synth leads for the Memorrhage guy. And crowdfunding my home-recording setup so I can contribute vocals. (Isolation shields worth a goddamn are PRICY.)

I think this is the most involved I've ever been in music. Almost daily I'm discussing with actual successful underground musicians my opinions on production and songwriting, and they're taken seriously. I can commiserate over EQing synth organs to sit nicely in dense mixes* and the other person will nod sadly and say "the decay..." because we've both been there.

It's really nice to be taken seriously by musicians who are legendary among "Thinking Man's avant-death metal" elitists and have done everything from chiptune grindcore to Bay Area screamo to nu metal. It's times like this I know my faith in my musical abilities is not Dunning-Kruger shit.



* Seriously, have you tried to do this without having to automate every band of an EQ to shift note-by-note? it's a fucking NIGHTMARE, and if you're gonna tell me to break out the comb filters I'm going to tell you to put that shit on some Scriabin-ass synthetic chords so you can hear the pan-pipers of Azathoth for yourself. It is an Incontrovertible Fact that organs, even basic ass synth organs with 3-oscillator formants, are made for filling every frequency above the fundamental with pure clean tonal bands and you had just better hope your tits that you have the headroom in your fucking mix to pull that off.

Do you take very dumb music requests? Because there is a very dumb thing I want

Depends. I can't record vocals yet (the crowdfunding was just finished thanks to one of you wonderful fuckers, but it needs to be ordered and arrive) and I can't do physical instruments, but I have production expertise and am pretty good at electronic music -- especially simpler stuff like trance, DnB, goth-industrial.

When I do have my bedroom studio setup done, I specialize in harsh vocals, but I can sing okay. Nothing special, poor range, lacking power, but it's something.