Starfall Haven

I used to work at a TV station in Ohio. On weekends, we only had an 11pm news broadcast. Not much happened on weekends, ya know? I worked Monday-Friday 9-5, but someone on the weekend shift quit, so I also had to come in at 9pm on Sat/Sun to work the 11pm news. It was brutal. I worked seven days a week, even if two of them were ~3hrs.

This was a particularly bad winter. One Saturday, we had a level 2 snow emergency: That means you should only travel if you absolutely must. Like, it's not uncommon for cops to pull you over in level 2 emergencies to ask where you're going and why. It is genuinely dangerous to drive in that much snow.

I told my boss as much, how I almost crashed on the way home at 12:30am after a news broadcast. I told him I would need to call off if there were a snow emergency again during a night snow.

He told me, point blank, "If you ever call me about the goddamn snow, I will take it as a call of resignation."

And that was that! The very next Saturday, snow fell again. It was a level 2, but would become level 3 by sunup. Level 3 means driving is literally illegal except for ambulances and snow plows. I stared out the window, watching the snow, and I had to make a choice.

"Will I die for this? Will I kill myself to keep this job?" I made $11/hr.

Instead of becoming caught up in it, it is possible to learn to observe it, acknowledge it, let it move through you in its own time. The last part may not be pleasant. But if you can let go and allow it, then you are not creating an extra layer of distress: fighting it.

It is like being caught in a riptide. You did not choose this. You do not control it. You can only control your response, to whatever degree you have learned to do that.

If you have not learned what to do when caught in a riptide, you may try to swim against the current towards the shore. This would be the obvious choice. But the riptide is stronger than you, and will wear you out before you can reach land.

If you know what to do, you will either try to float without resistance and call for help if you are not a strong swimmer, or swim parallel to the shore until you are free of the riptide. Then you can either be rescued, or swim to shore.

We're trying to raise $480 dollars by July 24th. $25 by tomorrow, and an additional $60 by the 12th.

Govt slashed our benefits because of a fucking paperwork issue, and we're trying to fix it, but we only have enough for rent. We need money for cat food, phone, vet debt, and OTC supplies like tylenol and sanitary items.

Our kofi link is here if you're feeling generous!

Our account is at risk over overdrawing if we can't raise something by tomorrow night, because a debt company snagged part of our phone bill payment. :')

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: