We got our voting taken care of today. I would like to not hear anything about polling, horrible ad campaigns, conservative PACs disguising themselves as progressives to spread misinformation, fascist anti-democracy threats, Democrats who think their best bet is to imitate the right wing even more, etc. until the races are called, thanks. But we can’t always get what we want, can we? 😐
While I haven’t had another 4-songs-in-one-day day with the album project, it’s coming along. 7 finished songs, a start on #8, and three ditched attempts so far — a bit worse than my ratio has been for a while, but I can chalk that up to trying a tweak to my process that didn’t quite work out. No worries, I’m still on track to break my personal record for releases in a single year. Which really isn’t a goal in particular, it’s just something that’s going to happen unless I intentionally just stop recording anything for a while.
It’s Spooky Season, and the moon has really delivered. I have no photos because phone cameras are generally horrible at decent sky pictures — but from cloud-obscured Scooby-Doo full moon last night, to pumpkin orange full moon low on the horizon tonight, Luna clearly understood the assignment.
In our neighborhood, we’ve got a few impressively decorated houses. There’s one with a bunch of light-up inflatables including a dragon with red eyes and embers in its throat, but better still is the one with a kraken and a pair of sea serpents undulating out of the “water,” creepily lit after sunset.
I’ve started playing Halloween music — the creepier ambient kind, naturally — and started a thread on MW asking peoples’ favorite horror movie scores. It hasn’t gotten a whole lot of response, but there have been a few suggestions, plus there’s another thread about older electronic movie scores. I could maybe be in the mood for Goblin (who were behind several Italian horror movies) on occasion, but… not quite what I was looking for. S’okay though.
Speaking of forums, I may just give up on KVR. I’ve been a member since January 2003, when I was first getting into FL Studio and plugins. It’s always been something of a mixed bag — certainly a good place to keep up with plugin announcements, a little less so for useful advice and opinions. There is a lot of petty bickering, and one gets the sense that some people have something to prove. But there are some good eggs too.
But… AI.
KVR has no AI policy. They do have a separate subforum for discussions of machine learning/AI/vibecoding, which has been helpful to get most of it clear of the rest of the forum for those tired of it. But it’s done nothing to stem the shit tsunami of vibecoded plugin announcements.
I cannot find a reliable way to measure just how many of them have swarmed the place… one person claims “in the past two days, 17 new compressors have been added to the Marketplace.” I count 41 newer instrument plugins in KVR’s database then Chipsynth OPMZ, which was released a mere 28 days ago — but there are MANY MANY posts on the Instruments forum announcing things that haven’t made it into the database. And Effects might be worse than Instruments.
KVR also doesn’t have much else going for it, frankly. I’ve gotten inspiration from peoples’ questions and ideas on MW, and Lines leans toward more thoughtful and insightful meta-discussions. KVR has people trying to prove that their semi-informed opinions are clearly superior to everyone else’s, pedantry, threads that consist mainly of two people bickering, arguments about aliasing or 432Hz tuning or zero-delay filters, and what is “pro” and how to be a commercial success, and a surprising amount of the ol’ hardware vs. software.
If I stop visiting KVR, I will miss out on… maybe a few actually good plugins once in a while? And a couple of people who are funny sometimes. And that’s totally fine. Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite glad to have picked up OPMZ, and Octaves, Pyros and Sinusoidal Run Rhythm and the free Anina have all been good to me. But I already knew I liked Plogue and AudioThing, and I’m pretty sure I heard of Anina through a different website. I think I’m okay just scrolling through more curated sites and occasionally checking up on what favorite developers have been doing.
While I’m complaining about websites where I was a regular… I gave MetaFilter another look today. I used to enjoy it quite a bit, for a wide variety of odd/funny posts and a certain take on news. But then Trump got elected the first time and the centrist Dems blamed leftists to the point where I just couldn’t deal with the bullshit anymore. Years later, I thought I’d give it a poke. And I saw several commenters with a “why are you picking on AI?” take that just made me nope out. I have another, much more sympathetic community, which went entirely private and is equally good or better at curating the weird world of the web as well as bitching about current events.
My latest read: Martha Wells’ Platform Decay, the most recent of the Murderbot books. It just jumps straight into a mission without any intro or background, which was disorienting and made me wonder if I missed something, but it caught me up just fine. It is probably the most action-y and tense of the books so far, but doesn’t lack in personality or relatability at all. The whole series is recommended, as far as I’m concerned.
Have started on Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World. I’m not sure that it’s going to be a big revelation for me, since it advocates for living with curiosity instead of setting and pursuing linear goals, climbing corporate ladders etc. and I’m already very much on that. (Now that I think about it, the whole “Gear Acquisition Syndrome” thing, and the need for so many KVR users to be “pro” and for music-making to be efficient, could be tied up in this.)