DipperDots

(More under the cut)

Only ONE DAY left until Art Fight starts! Hope everyone is super excited for this year's event!!! Please remember that there is no obligation to attack or revenge. Go at your own pace!

Hey thanks for the opportunity to ramble!

Alright so here’s one of the weirdest gigs I’ve played thus far in my life. Picture this if you will:

I’m young and just happy to be playing places, and somehow I land my first gig with a real name: Alex Skolnick of Testament fame. Apparently he’s got a jazz trio and they were looking for a local opener for their show. I snag the opportunity (somehow), and am excited presuming this will be a very cool show.

Now I’ve never been like a Testament fan, but I liked them and I knew their stuff, so it wasn’t exactly a meeting the hero moment, but more so I was nervous to be on the same ticket as a well known musician for whom I had a lot of respect. I got the gig through the band, not the venue, so I didn’t know where we were playing but I assumed it would be one of the multiple small local theatres, potentially a local club (I didn’t know how popular the jazz trio was, but I assumed that a guy who can fill stadiums on world tours could manage a small theatre).

This is where things got confusing. We get sent an address. Marizio’s (not the real name but same vibe) Deli.

What?

“Setup starts at 6”

??

Setup in the…deli? Alex Skolnick, Billboard topping metal guitarist is playing jazz gigs here?

(Not pictured: the abandoned playground across the street and the hair salon hidden by the trees that makes up the other half of the building)

So we show up at 6 and there is a stage and a lighting and sound system much to my surprise. The lights are completely off and the chairs are on the tables, despite it being well within normal operating hours on a Friday evening, and we’re let in by a small man—presumably Marizio—who seemed to have forgotten there was a concert going on in his establishment in about an hour. He asked for clarification when we said that we were the band, momentarily reinforcing the idea that it was absurd to have a concert in a deli, but after mentioning Alex’s name he let us in.

During our setup Marizio—I’m running with it his name is Marizio now—was asking all the usual technical questions to our lead singer, who doesn’t do the tech stuff and was sitting off the to the side. She kept pointing him in the direction of one of the several of us who knew the answers to the questions he was asking, but he still only asked her despite this. Odd.

After about half an hour, the Trio shows up. We make our introductions, thanks for the opportunity, blah blah blah, they’re all nice whatever. Alex announces he has to go to the bathroom. This is a normal activity, announcing your intention to young strangers is odd but not a sin. I do not think about this situation.

Time passes as the Trio sets up and we wait until it’s time to start playing. At one point I offer a fun fact about the Meiji restoration period and my guitarist says “I should put you in a dumpster.” Not hugely relevant I just remember that. I get my ass beat in a game of chess against the other singer because I was a little too gay for him to focus on the game (also irrelevant but that added to how weird the night was). The doors open and people start to come in.

After a little bit I become aware of three things: we’re supposed to be on in 5, there are two (2) tables of people in the audience, and Alex is still in the bathroom. The latter two items struck me as odd. Firstly, that world famous Alex Skolnick had attracted a crowd as large as our no-name nothing band that broke up a year after this had. One table was Alex’s friends/family/fans, and the other table of equal size was our own crowd. The second, it had been over half an hour since Alex had entered the bathroom. What was happening in there? Was he fighting for his life? Was he doing drugs? What’s going on? Does he know we’re about to start?

The answer to that was yes, but he wasn’t done yet. So we had to push our starting time back by a few minutes to give him a chance to finish and set up his guitar, which he did. I used to opportunity to enter the tiny cubicle bathroom to attempt to discern what was going on, and was hit by perhaps the strangest answer I could have been: nothing. There was no odor, no disarray of anything, the sink was dry, there was no evidence that it had been recently used towards any end.

So what the fuck was he doing in there for 40 minutes??

We start playing, the set goes well we sound fine I played pretty good whatever. We finish up, “thank you for coming out, get ready for The Alex Skolnick Trio!” type deal, bing bang boom, and our guitarist just walks out of the building. Doesn’t grab his guitar, doesn’t have a car with him, just leaves the place without saying anything. At the time I assumed he was just going outside to take a breather or whatever, but then he just. Doesn’t come back? The next time we got together I saw the drummer walk in with the guitar, so I think he took it home? I asked the guitarist what the fuck that was all about and he said “I’m just not a big fan of jazz.” Which he saw as a perfectly satisfactory reason to WALK HOME AT NIGHT ON THE HIGHWAY?? I hope he got a cab or something because he lived a few miles from the venue.

The trio plays their set, it’s quite good, and at one point they play a song in 5/4. Given that we had done Take Five, Alex tried to quote that in his solo and fell flat on his face (proverbially). He didn’t get it at all and he quickly moved on from it, which I found funny. After the show he told us we sounded great, I said likewise and we broke down and went home.

NUMBER ONE:

I would like to apologize that this took so long

Your ask just inspired me and I knew I had to do it justice

But I also have ADHD and justice=procrastinating... Apparently

NUMBER TWO:

They are done! Truly they are! I will add more come tomorrow but if anyone has any requests for more of these I will happily oblige!

Without further ado:

✨Them✨

Individuals under the cut

It’s been a long while since I’ve done some digital art, I tend to focus more on my hand illustrations these days. But, it has always bugged me that I only did two in my #Zelda series. Maybe I should revisit and start planning a third.

What do you think, and which game could I portray?

Both prints are available on my @redbubble and @society6 (use promo code LOVEART25 for 25% off my Society6 store) store:

Wind Waker

Redbubble - ‪https://www.redbubble.com/people/jonrobertbaker/works/23802447-the-waker?asc=t‬

Society6 - https://society6.com/product/zelda-wind-waker_print#s6-6140664p4a1v45

Breath of the Wild

Redbubble - ‪https://www.redbubble.com/people/jonrobertbaker/works/26972905-under-a-blood-moon?asc=t‬

Society 6 - https://society6.com/product/under-a-blood-moon542324_print#s6-7217771p4a1v45

Room at the Inn

Read on ao3

"No animals allowed, huh?" Legend read the sign outside the inn, then smirked up at Twilight. "Guess that means you and I need to stay out here tonight."

"Oooh no, not me Vet," Twilight shook his head vehemently. "I've been fixin' for a bed all week!"

Four poked his head around Twilight and stared at the sign for a moment. "I bet you Time could get an animal in."

"You really think the Old Man has a tricky streak?" Legend scoffed. But his eyes glittered. "50 rupees says he can't."

"Deal! C'mon, Twi. I wanna see this."

-----

Time sighed, then smiled down at the Smithy. "You really bet rupees on this, Little One?"

I never expected a fic for one of my silly doodles iduhcjhsgbdvjhdsgbvjdbgvhdvdvf

Thanks I will dsuyhvbgdjvgbjdf I will keep this fic forever like uygvjdfgvbjdfgbvjdgbhdfvdv thank you so much thank you so much yufgjugbvdjhvd

This made me laugh a lot, of course it had to be a bet xDXD Poor Legend, he's poor now kjaskjsakjsak Think better when you bet about the old man, vet xDXD

Let the record show that when I first thought of the concept 'Twilight shaving' I meant for it to be cute and domestic. Cursed to be an eternal edgelord

you need NONE of that shit!!!!! there’s a website called beepbox.co. literally all you have to do is press things until it sounds a modicum of nice. it’s easy it’s free and it works on anything which has a browser because it’s a website.

if even ONE person starts making music bc of this post it will be worth it.

I'm gonna try and make music

Ableton has excellent free websites to learn the basics:

Learning Music

Learning Synths

You can learn basically everything you need on YouTube. I recommend:

Mercurial Tones Academy

Dan Worrall

Bthelick

A lot of your favorite artists, mainly in electronic music, likely have done track breakdowns, you can watch those to learn how they do things.

DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) ultimately all do the same things, and Cakewalk is a great FREE fully fledged one. Sure it has some issues, and doesn’t have many plugins included, but it works just fine. All the music I released so far was made there, before I made the jump to Ableton.

As for VST plugins:

Vital is an excellent free synth

Native Instruments Komplete Start is a good free collection of plugins

TDR Nova is a great free EQ

There’s a lot of others and I don’t wanna name everything I’m aware of here, but feel free to DM me for more (Or if you have any other questions and stuff too).

And as for samples, you can get a bunch of free ones at:

Cymatics

Ghosthack

Having good headphones is nice and what I’d recommend you invest in first once it comes to it, but even your current ones will probably be fine, mainly if you slap AutoEQ onto them to flatten the frequency response. And ultimately, music isn’t all about the mixing, the most important part is conveying an emotion.

Yeah, there is still quite the learning curve, I get that, though it’s also why it’s managed to hold me as a hobby for so long.

I do however have something of the exact opposite variety too, the most simple way to make music I know of, and a wonderful little semi-social experience, along the lines of the game Journey:

The shapeshifters of the chain loves to mess with people, yes that includes Legend, Hyrule and Four xDXD