Free Lunch #74 (Christmas Edition)

Hola te gatos curiosos. Today is Tuesday, which means that it’s time for another Free Lunch! Did you miss me? If you don’t know what Free Lunch is, I just type for five minutes without stopping about whatever I want.

I figured I might as well post because it’s a Tuesday and I don’t have any other pressing issues to tend to. In the last two months, things have been going pretty well for me! I’m going to release a neat electronic song this Friday and I’m working on a new vocal song as well! I also started playing Clash of Clans again, so feel free to join my clan (Polar Cheese).

I’ve been pretty busy the last few weeks hence the lack of posts. I had my midterms, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate came out, and I needed desperately to prepare for my jazz concert. Speaking of which, I didn’t mess up my solos too badly, so it turned out pretty nice. I was really nervous about it but I practiced A LOT so I was able to mix improvisation and previously played licks. I think I have a video of half of one of the solos, so comment if you’d like to see it.

For Christmas, I got some neat stuff. I received two pairs of socks with cool designs, a CD of one of my favorite albums (Little Dark Age by MGMT), and an interesting book called The Beatles Anthology, among other stuff.

Something that has me kinda shook is that I turn 16 in about 6 months. That means I’ll be old enough to drive here in the US! Time is starting to just fly by, I still feel like a kid. I guess I can’t do anything about it though.

Thanks for reading all the way down to the very bottom of this post, I appreciate it!

Merry Christmas, see ya on Friday!

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Free Lunch #73

Hello there you subspace sine waves. Today is Sunday, which means this post is out a whole day later than it should’ve been. I just completely forgot to write this yesterday, sorry.

I’ve gotten a lot better at soloing on basic blues changes with my Trumpet, but I still need to work on some lines so it doesn’t all sound like random bloops that are in key. I’m going to be getting a pretty good microphone soon and I’ll be able to incorporate better sounding real instruments into my music. Up until now, I’ve just been using my terrible laptop microphone, but that changes soon!

Nothing too exciting has been going on in my life recently, just basically getting by and doing what I like to do. I have been generally happy with things. I enjoy practicing my instruments, being at school, and playing video games with my friends after school. I haven’t been working too much on my compositions recently aside from the jazz waltz that I made in a week (which was not particularly good). I’m going to try to work on them at least 2 hours every week in hopes of finishing a few of them sometime this year. I’ve been working on one of them for more than a year now…

In other news, an Undertale spinoff called Deltarune was released by Toby Fox. I played about the first hour of it, and I think it’s pretty good. The combat system mixes the bullet hell mechanic with that of a traditional RPG. Magic was added, as well as an improved menu. I like the music a lot, it’s typically on par with that of Undertale’s.

That’s all I have to say for today, thanks for reading all the way down to the very bottom of this post!

Free Lunch #72 (‘Probably The Last Special Edition Until 100’ Edition!)

Hello there you peaceful piano plinks. Today is Wednesday which means thanks to the schedule changes it’s time for another Free Lunch! If you don’t know what Free Lunch is, I just type for five minutes about whatever I have going on in my life, or really whatever I want to talk about.

Since the last Free Lunch I came back to school from fall break, and so far things haven’t been too bad. The teachers seem to be wise enough to slowly wean us back on to the workload instead of putting us right back into the fray. I don’t know how much longer this will last, but right now I’m in a golden zone where I can finish all of my homework at school, and practice music/play video games at home.

Speaking of practicing music, I’ve been using Musescore as a replacement for a D.A.W. (Digital Audio Workstation) while working on some electronic music, and I think it does a pretty good job. I don’t think I’ll post any of the songs on Soundcloud until I finish a good amount of them and learn more about the program. I might ask some of you for individual feedback on the songs before I release them, but that’s news for another day. I’ve got two songs finished right now, one called Rubber Trees and one called Chamomile Chameleon. I’m working on the You Make a Song thing, and I’ve got about 30 seconds done so far. You’ll find out what you all voted for once the song is released next Tuesday!

In my Jazz Combos club at school, I’ve gotten better at staying within the style of music I’m in while improvising. So, for example, I won’t randomly add in licks that conflict with what I set up as the idea before just because I feel like it. I think I’m a lot better at it than I was when I started.

That’s all the time I have for today, see you on Saturday I guess.

Thanks for reading all the way down to the very bottom of this post!

Free Lunch #71

Hello there you conversing cobblers. Today is Tuesday, which means that it’s time for another Free Lunch. If it’s been so long that you’ve forgotten what this series is, that’s alright. I just type for five minutes about whatever I want to and then publish it with only light editing.

I haven’t posted in almost two months, and I can finally have a good reason. Hume Fogg is pretty academically challenging so I have been using most of my free time to just relax instead of writing. I was spurred back to this by remembering when the author of one of my favorite books said my review was written eloquently. That’s a really fond memory, and I’d like to make more in the future, so here I am.

I’ve gotten a lot better at Trumpet in the last few months, thanks to being in two after-school clubs and practicing at least an hour at home every day. In Jazz Combos (one of the clubs) I’ve been developing my improvising skills, and I am a lot better at soloing than I was when I started. I think I’ve made more progress in the last 2 or 3 months than I did last year. I haven’t been working on my piano songs that much, but I did buy a melodica, which is fun to take around and play with. Speaking of my melodica, here are some very short musical ideas that I put on Soundcloud using it. They don’t make a lot of sense unless you read the description of each song, (click the title once it’s playing) which offer some insight on what I was trying to do. I think that trying out concepts from other mediums in music is super fun, which you can see in Hero’s Ringtone.

I got a raise at my job and made all A’s and high B’s in the first quarter of the school year, so my life is pretty good everywhere else too. I’ve generally been happier at high school than I was at middle school so far. What’s been going on in you guys’ lives?

That’s all the time I’ve got for you today, I’ll see you in the next post.

Free Lunch #70

Hello there you remind me of the rainy days. Today is Friday which means it’s time for another Free Lunch! If you don’t know what Free Lunch is, I just type for five minutes about whatever I want to talk about. It seems like this is the only type of post I do these days, but I plan to release a book review sometime in the next month.

Since the last Free Lunch, I’ve gotten a bit more settled into my classes, and boy do I have some stuff to say! For the first time ever, I’m behind the class in Math (I had a very confusing teacher last year), so I really need to study on something like KhanAcademy. In Band, I am significantly worse than all the other Trumpets except for my friend who came with me from my middle school, and it feels weird going from like top 10 in the whole band program to one of the worst in my class. I haven’t had any particularly challenging work yet, but I’m trying to stay diligent and not fall behind on anything to prepare for whatever lies ahead. I’ve been going to the library after school every day to do my homework and play video games with my friends, which is pretty fun.

But here’s the fun part! Today my friend Iverson and I were walking around downtown, and we saw this guy singing old jazz songs with a microphone on a street corner (Fly Me to the Moon, What a Wonderful World). We both had our instruments, so we walked over and talked to him for a bit. I tried to play Trumpet along with his singing on Fly Me to the Moon, but I did really poorly so I stopped halfway through. However, Iverson took out his clarinet and we started playing a song we learned last year in band, “Park Street Celebration”.

And then someone actually left a five dollar bill in my trumpet case! I split it with Iverson, and the dude on the corner said that there were these two boys who were about my age who busked on street corners like that for a couple hours, and would pull in hundreds of dollars! This is the first time I’ve ever seen music as something you can make money like that so easily. I’ve never really thought of hobbies as careers unless you put some serious dedication into it, but thinking that I can be good at an instrument and make money without going to college or having connections is interesting.

I typed for about ten minutes instead of five, I hope that’s alright with all of you diehard Free Lunch fans.

Thanks for reading all the way down to the very bottom of this post!

Free Lunch #69

Hello there you potential pots. Today is Tuesday, which means there’s like a 50% chance of a Free Lunch coming out. Lucky for you, today one’s coming out! If you don’t know what Free Lunch is, I basically just type on my computer or phone for five minutes about whatever is happening in my life, or anything I feel like typing about.

I have officially finished a whole week of high school, and so far it’s been mostly positive. The worst things about the new school year have just been getting lost on the way to classes (my school is like a maze), and being in awkward situations around people I don’t know. However, I think all of my classes will be pretty challenging and fun, even if they might get tedious later on. My favorite part of being in high school has been the freedom. At the end of the day, we aren’t shepherded into rooms to wait to be dismissed or even released over the intercom. Once it’s 3:00, we are just free to leave the building. There are no announcements telling us to leave or anything, the teacher will just say that class is over, and then we walk out of school.

I am 6th chair Trumpet out of 11 right now, which I think is higher than I should be. I’m not really going to complain about it, but I’m pretty sure some of the people behind me are better than I am. The schedules are pretty weird as well, we have double period days where classes are an hour and a half long, which is a really long time to be sitting and paying attention in my opinion.

The second unnamed piano piece that I’ve been working on for about 8 months is nearly finished, and I’m trying to think of some good names for it. An idea that I have is “Gymnopédie No. 4” because it draws so heavily from the original Gymnopédies.

Thanks for reading all the way down to the very bottom of this post, I’ll see you in the next one!

Free Lunch #68

Hello there you kindly cooks, it’s time for another Free Lunch! If you don’t know what Free Lunch is, I just try to type for five minutes without stopping about whatever I want to. These typically come out every Tuesday and Friday.

Starting at 9:50.

Since the last time I made a Free Lunch, I haven’t really done enough to warrant a new post. I got the strings fixed on my Electric Guitar and a haircut. Now that my strings are fixed, I can finally play solos that use the high E string. I haven’t made very much progress on any of the songs I’m learning/composing since Tuesday, but I have started practicing the Trumpet vigorously. I have band camp next week and I haven’t really been practicing every day over the summer. I’d say I’ve practiced about 35% of the days this summer, and a lot of that shouldn’t really even be counted as practice. Mostly I’ve just been playing Fly Me to The Moon, Megalovania, and doing a bunch of scales to try and hit new high notes. My record right now is High D, which you can see below.

I’ve made a little bit of progress in Earthbound, I’m past Saturn Valley and starting up the next arc of my journey. Enter the Gungeon had a huge update so I started playing it again for the first time in a few months. The new content is definitely enough to warrant picking it up. On the Nintendo Switch eShop it’s 50% off right now, and I’d say it’s totally worth it.

That’s all the time I have for today, thanks for reading all the way down to the bottom of this post.

See you next post! (Retiring the Bai?)

Free Lunch #67

Hello there you inklings of thought. Today is Tuesday which means it’s time for another Free Lunch! If you don’t know what Free Lunch is, I just type for five minutes about whatever I want to talk about. It’s allegedly posted twice a week, but that hasn’t really been happening for the last few months.

Starting at 2:05.

As I think I’ve said a lot of times before, there’s no real reason for me not posting for these long stretches of time. I just don’t do it. I suppose I would just rather do something else a lot of the time.

On the Piano, I’m learning Gymnopédie No. 1 by Eric Satie, which has influenced me for a long time. I’m not quite sure where I first heard it, but I’m pretty sure this song has been around me for a while. I never really realized until recently but one of the reasons it probably feels so close to me is because of how much it touched the Minecraft music. Some of my favorite songs on Volume Alpha seem heavily influenced by this one ambient piano piece. One of the songs I’ve been working on composing for a while has been mistaken for a Minecraft song by a lot of my friends because of how it’s similar in form. I think that Gymnopédie No. 1 has been indirectly inspiring me through the form of a video game that I started playing around 2013.

In slightly more embarrassing news that also has to do with Minecraft, I was playing on a Pokémon server the other day when the Youtuber PopularMMOs was on and got a shout-out to like 15 million subscribers. Here’s a link that starts around when he said my name.

The high E string of my guitar snapped and I haven’t been able to get it fixed yet, so there hasn’t been much progress made on my Smiles and Tears/Home arrangement.

I’ve gone way over the time limit that I normally set for myself, but I’m going to stop writing now.

Thanks for reading all the way down to the very bottom of this post, I’ll see you in the next one!

Baiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Free Lunch #64

Hello there you emo omelets! Today is Tuesday, which means it’s time for another Free Lunch! If you don’t know what a Free Lunch is, I basically just type for five minutes on either my laptop or phone. I have plenty to talk about today, so I should be able to actually type the whole time. I’m starting at 8:20.

I started off today with a tour of my soon-to-be high school, Hume Fogg Academy! The impression it left on me was that high school is going to be really fun. A lot of the teachers were talking about how difficult the increased workload would be, but I think I’m going to be fine in that corner. We peeped in on the Band class during one of their rehearsals, and they sound awesome! It’s kind of inspired me to try to become amazing at Trumpet over the summer, which was already on my ‘maybe’ list of summer activities.

Fast forward a few hours, and I’m in Physical Science watching the SpaceX Falcon Heavy test flight. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I’ll put a link to the liftoff here. I got to watch the rocket launch on a live stream, and it was super cool. My teacher was jumping up and down in excitement when it made it into the air. It was pretty great, maybe I can be an Astronaut Trumpet player?

At the end of the school day, we had a Pep Rally. Most of my friends and I got to play in the Pep Band for it. It was pretty exhilarating to play in front of almost 500 people.

I’m all out of time for today, thanks for reading all the way down to the bottom of this post! I hope all of you are having a great day, and if you aren’t, you can still change that now!

Baiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Free Lunch #63 (7×9 edition!)

Hello there you computational contact forms. Today is Tuesday, which means it’s time for another Free Lunch. If you don’t know what Free Lunch is, I just get on either my laptop or phone and try to write legibly for five minutes without stopping. I’m writing on my phone today, so this will probably be on the shorter side.

Starting at 9:19.

A lot has happened since last Free Lunch, but luckily, you have me to catch you up on my recent life! I have my confirmational job interview on Friday at 6:30, and I will most likely get the job (unless for some reason I don’t pass the drug test, which is impossible). If I do, I will be making from anywhere between $2,500 to $6,500 a year, not counting taxes or Social Security. That’s still a lot of money! I think I’m going to save about half of my monthly paycheck, and spend the half on stuff like musical instruments and video games. I’m really excited to be starting my first job!

In other news, the band got a name change! Cubix Rubes, your boring reign is over, pave the way for Coocoloris! I got Coocoloris as a reCAPTCHA the other day, and I wrote it down because I thought it was a good name for something. You can check out our Soundcloud page here! Thanks in advance for checking out my music!

I’m out of time for today, so thanks for reading all the way down to the bottom of this post!

Have a good day/night/life!

Baiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii