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!

Advertisement

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!

DHWP42 – Jazz Waltz [Re-Upload]

[Edit: For some reason the link on Soundcloud didn’t work, so here’s a reupload so you can actually hear the song. Thanks for listening!]

Hello there you pickled pickles. Today I have for you the song that you came up with last week. If you don’t remember, here’s a link. If you don’t feel like clicking a link today, I just put out a bunch of polls and asked for elements for a song. I got that the song should be jazzy, in 3/4, about 2 minutes long, and with Piano, Trumpet, and Alto Saxophone. The Alto Sax sound is really bad on Musescore, but I didn’t have the time nor resources to get a friend to play it for me.

If you have any suggestions or corrections, give some feedback in the comments!

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!

You Make a Song!

Hello there you chicken pickins. Today I’ve got a fun activity for us, along with some updates. Let’s get the updates out of the way so we can get the fun stuff! I’m going to be changing the schedule of Free Lunch, from Tuesdays and Fridays to Wednesdays and Saturdays. This helps my schedule a lot so that I have everything more spread out in my week. Tuesdays and Fridays are also not very good news days for me, as I usually have nothing to say that hasn’t been said on the Tuesday post since I have so little going on between those two days.

For today’s magic trick, I will be making a song appear! I’m going to give you a series of polls that will determine the song’s structure and such. Once I get the final results this Thursday, I’ll begin creating the song. I’m going to give myself a week to complete this so it will be out the following Thursday.

Let’s begin!

If you have any other suggestions for the song, feel free to leave them in the comments! Otherwise, thanks for reading all the way down to the very bottom of this post, I’ll see you next time!

 

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 #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 #62

Hello there you chilling cartridges! If you don’t know what a Free Lunch is, I just get on either my laptop or phone and type for five minutes without stopping. It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted, and regardless of how much has happened since then, in usual fashion I’m still probably run out of things to say.

Starting at 7:45.

Today I had my first job interview, and I think I have a good chance of getting the job. I’m trying out for the supermarket that my step-dad works for, so unless I royally screw up on the first day, I’ll probably be able to adapt and integrate it into my lifestyle. I’ll be working on Bagging, so I need to practice my social skills a bit before I start, as I am expected to interact with every customer near me.

In musical news, I really haven’t done much composing recently. I’m learning Great Fairy Fountain on Guitar, and practicing Megalovania for Trumpet (as usual), but I seem to have left the Piano behind. I’m going to try to start playing it again every day, because the reason I’m not playing as much is less of me not wanting to, and more of me forgetting about it. I’ve screwed around with some lyrics as well, but I haven’t really found anything that strikes a chord with me (PUN INTENDED) recently. Wouldn’t it be a disappointing career if I released one emo song and then never wrote again? I think it would be, so I’m making an effort to try and write something every day, even if it’s short or bad. If I don’t practice writing, I’ll never improve.

I’m out of time for today, so thanks for reading all the way down to the bottom of this post! I’m going to attempt posting regularly again, I’m really sorry about Throwback Week not happening on time. Consider it rescheduled, for a surprise date!

Baiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii