SuperBiasedGary

@SuperBiasedGary

sorry for posting

they/them
superbiasedgary.carrd.co/

I make visual novels! Also play them sometimes. Wish I had time for more of both. I also do a podcast and LPs, because I don't know how to stop myself.

Twitter

twitter.com/SuperBiasedGary

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Youtube

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SuperBiasedGary @SuperBiasedGary11/9/2023, 9:51 AM

brian @infinitebrians

Children of Children @childrenOfchildren10/31/2023, 6:06 PM

https://childrenofchildren.bandcamp.com/track/shankill-butchers-cover

RSS download -> https://ghoulnoise.com/feed/@ghoulnoise11/8/2023, 11:49 PM

gonna be real for a second, the main reason this cover was finished in time for Halloween was because I needed to finish something after hearing that we were stopping production on Revenant Hill. my coping mechanism was staying up until 4 am every night for a week+ laser focused one Something so I wouldn't think about anything else

I am very bad at promoting myself because I have never been totally satisfied with anything I've released and I always imagine some faceless person scrolling by, seeing it, and thinking "wow they're proud of this? yikes, someone needs to tell them to get another job"

but despite this i keep making music and keep wondering if it's even possible to be satisfied by something i've made. is the trick to just keep making things, always pushing forward? because that's the only tactic i've got.

part of why i'm glad to have @childrenOfchildren right now is because well, for one I have rarely had the chance to collaborate with others, and secondly, because it's a great outlet for experimentation. i'm hoping that maybe in having a space to make music that isn't constrained to loops and parameters and someone else's creative direction, i can figure out my voice (in a few ways).

one of the things we've been talking about is making smaller EP releases alongside longer projects, and using those 2-3 song releases as a place to really experiment with sounds and to figure out our process. this way, when we dig into making an album, it kind of feels like we've done our homework, we did our stretches, we prepped our mise en place, and we can just cook.

which, it's funny to me how often I turn to cooking as a metaphor for making music. because while I've never listened to anything i've made and thought "wow I really nailed it" I do consistently make meals that have me going, "oh my god, i NAILED it, it came out perfectly."

...Queue my monthly self-interrogation where I ask, "should i have gone to culinary school instead of [studying theatre while playing open mics and somehow ending up writing music for games] --- but, no. I'd never survive in a real fucking kitchen, good lord.

edit: also, i really wish i understood the psychology behind this, because I can also look at a photo i've taken and think "this is an objectively good photo, this elicits something in me" but I can't do this for my music? what gives. brains are a fuck.

#blog? i guess?#sorry for melancholy posting #music #food

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in reply to @ghoulnoise's post:

SuperBiasedGary @SuperBiasedGary11/9/2023, 9:55 AM

I think one of the ways this gets really hard is when you are too good at something, you spend a lot more time focused on it, tinkering with it and ferreting out flaws. Your ability to detect deficiencies (or even just potential ones) is just so much more powerful, that it's easy to forget that the average person will just hear a banger and call it a banger.
I'm more of a writer who noodles around with music. Music is satisfying for me right now because I don't even know the mistakes I'm making, it's just charming that I enjoy the output. Writing I can hem and haw over forever.

Also this is a certified banger, already re-listening to it.

RSS download -> https://ghoulnoise.com/feed/@ghoulnoise11/9/2023, 3:35 PM

🙏

thank you, yeah, i watched something recently about like "how good should you get at an instrument" in terms of sheer hours of practice and study and he reasoned that after a certain point it really depends on your goals. like "are you playing well enough to entertain? is that your goal?" and he talks about how over time kind of pursuing more complex and technical playing (becoming a "musician's musican") can create a disconnect between player and audience (if you're trying to reach a big audience) because the ideas in the music become harder to understand for people who don't understand the amount of technical stuff going on (even I find fast/busy bluegrass difficult to listen to because there's Too Much going on, maybe I find it overstimulating?).

and i thought that was interesting because, while i'm not really a fantastic player at any one instrument i play, i have my strengths and weaknesses on all of them, and learning how to play even basic stuff on a new instrument usually teaches me something new in a general sense about music, which i find very valuable in terms of then writing music.

in writing music i feel like my weak Academic Understanding of music theory is a blessing and a curse, because I tend to write without overthinking (at least initially) BUT then I either worry my writing is weak because of this, or that it comes across as careless because I don't always "follow the obvious rules", or if I do need to write something very technical, I either need someone with a better understanding of theory to help me work out the kinks or I have to take much, much longer to develop the piece than I normally do.

^ and so I often wonder, if I'd gone to school for music instead of kind of winging it since I stopped formal music ed in high school, would i be more or less confident in my work than I am now?

that video -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZP5kX-p-4c&t=19s&pp=ygUdaG93IGdvb2Qgc2hvdWxkIHlvdSBnZXQgYmFuam8%3D

SuperBiasedGary @SuperBiasedGary11/9/2023, 4:37 PM

Yeah I definitely feel a way about Formal Education. It's funny, I feel it both for writing and music. I went to college for animation instead of anything else, and now my day job is programming lol. That means my formal education and understanding is in the thing I do least often and least well (art/animation), I've also had programming classes but much more basic ones.

Watching that video, I definitely have the complexity bug with writing. There I'm way more invested in making weird stuff that satisfies my need for doing something a bit different, whether that's structurally or with some gimmick. What I get stuck on is more "will anyone else actually like or understand this". Especially working alone, I find it hard to have a critical remove to know whether what I'm doing is 'working'. I suspect an education in writing would've taught me some of the tools to do that myself, but I just do my best to cobble together coping mechanisms and get feedback where I can.

One thing I've been trying to think about is the why of what I actually want. Some amount of that is just making stuff in itself being pleasing, but there's also the desire to have people read/play it. And acknowledging that is important, I do want to spend time getting a playable game in front of people. But it's also a desire that oscillates. Sometimes I wanna mess around with something nobody will like but me and one other sicko. And the frustration can happen when the desire changes and makes me think "why did I spend 2 weeks on something no-one wants?" because I'm no longer thinking about the satisfaction of my indulgent little thing. I've switched to wanting something I can engage other people with, and I'm evaluating a project on the wrong basis.

That was rambley, but I hope the core of it helps, 🙏 just trying to bear in mind what is you want from any given thing and then evaluate it on those merits, rather than getting frustrated when everything doesn't work on every level.

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