Hey hey Brandon! Thanks for the compliments. The solo is my Behringer Neutron. The rest of this mail will be about my "song writing". Apr 13 2021, Brandon Hale has written: ... ... I will try to give an overview, if something in particular arouses your interest, feel free to task, either on or off-list. My song writing as such is usually quite naive and in the moment. In this case, I tried the ShinyGuitar and the first chrods came to me and one or two lines of the lyrics. Well, the inception happens that way. Then I usually quickly construct a song, hear it in my mind. I take that as a commitment. So there is a lot of linear thinking. My Linux environment is rather linear. My DAW certaqinly is, in the MIDI sequencer I sort of emulate a more loop or clip based workflow. Put together my being a keyboardist in a small village (when I began), not having many friends close by and starting out with a rather non-realtime environment: I became a very studio oriented person, not much for live jamming, recording sessions. Since Linux is such an integral part of my workflow, I gravitate towards things that I can do. Sometimes I feel challenged by certain techniques or styles, then I'll attempt to mimic them. I usually don't try big orchestral (no up-to-date orchestras). What we have is improving and the things I know are free! But compare them to real instruments or commercial libraries... I also got bad feedback on my few orchestral efforts, to some extent due to my shortcomings, but a typical phrase is: sorry I can't listen to that plastic in-the-box stuff for long. So I try to play to my strengths both in sound and style. No orchestra and, normally, no other difficult acoustic instruments, no non-linear, clip-based stuff, no sample slicing and dicing or stutter-edit like effects. And still I go into recording a song with a very strong idea of what it will be. Imagining something, even during the production, until I can realise them properly. Pro: quick production, working towards a definite result. Sometimes even developing new tricks to achieve the song in my head. Cons: not going with the flow so much, not letting an idea lead from that stage, bad/no adaptation towards change. In Csound it's different. OK, no GUI, but many Csounders work without one. Well, they certainly used to. :) There it's a question of style, genre, skill and school of thought or approach. I'm sure, with your CLM experience, you can easily sympathise. :) Best wishes and thanks again, Jeanette -- * Website: http://juliencoder.de - for summer is a state of sound * Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMS4rfGrTwz8W7jhC1Jnv7g * Audiobombs: https://www.audiobombs.com/users/jeanette_c * GitHub: https://github.com/jeanette-c 'Cause I don't have to feel the heat of the sun To know it's shining on me every day <3 (Britney Spears)

Apr 14 2021, Brandon Hale has written: ... In my environment (commandline): there are a few. When it comes to really modern genres that might be true more generally speaking, unless you get access to some commercial plugins, since certain plugins are taken to define certain genres or production style. Other things are possible, but completely lacking flow in my system. Dubstep is one of those. I think I'd like to employ more dubstep elements sometimes, but it's too much hassle. :) ... ... I have used that, and most likely will sometimes in the future, there is also the Virtual Player Orchestra now (VPO), which is a combination of the SSO and others with more and more consistent live control. They have an Ardour template on their website. :) Still, even with some good reverb and layering, it has a limited scope for full orchestral pieces. There are some instances where it sounds sublime, but you have to find them and then let your music be guided by them. I'd like to emphasize again that this is not bashing the Sonatina or virtual player libraries, they are completely free and they cover a classical orchestra, which in itself is amazing! And it should not be compared to free downscaled versions of current commercial libraries either, because even those rely on the massive amount of time, work and money invested in the full versions. As for cheating: there's no way for me to load VST plugins, but I do use my hardware, which has the added - and important(!) - bonus of having completely accessible and alive controls. Best wishes, Jeanette -- * Website: http://juliencoder.de - for summer is a state of sound * Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMS4rfGrTwz8W7jhC1Jnv7g * Audiobombs: https://www.audiobombs.com/users/jeanette_c * GitHub: https://github.com/jeanette-c I'm reaching out to you To find that you're not there <3 (Britney Spears)