2PM. I just woke up and pooped. Sleep seems restful, but was uncomfortable. I kept waking up and still feeling tired. First I woke up at 7 or 8 AM and I had only gone to sleep around 3AM. I felt well enough to be functional, but I felt I could use a full 8 hours or so. Woke up with back pain. My couch doesn’t offer good back support. I tried to sleep on my stomach and I was successful, but it compressed my back because my couch isn’t long enough.
Ayeyeyeyeyeye!
Anyway, I’m going to journal and train, then I’ll eat and head over to Dragon Parlor Games. D. Invited me to go there and play cards at 5. It’s near Argonne at I-90. That’ll be a neat treat to go there for the first time and check it out. The pictures on Facebook of their shop make it look like a generic Magic the Gathering card shop. They have Pokemon tournaments as well.
There’s lots of seating so I’m assuming we’ll be able to find a table alright. There is a Magic event going on at the same time but It’s not a format I’m aware of which leads me to believe that it won’t be that busy. I’ll find out soon enough! It’ll be an adventure.
I just got a reminder in my inbox about Church tomorrow at 10:30AM. I got frightened to see the word, “church” in my inbox. I think that word brings up past trauma of being forced to attend LDS church services.
Tomorrow isn’t church, it’s Sangha Service at Spokane Buddhist Temple. It’s kinda church, but I’m going to call it Sangha Service from now on. I’m not going to worship anything or become a servant. I’m going to practice meditation, mindfulness, and socialize. And get free coffee!
When I was in bed last night, I had a thought of what I want to do today for Jamuary. I want to do a Eurobeat track! There is not enough Eurobeat in the world!
First I gotta listen to some Eurobeat tracks and come up with the format. I might do a direct rip of the structure of a song, at least as far as Verses, Chorus, Bridge order and repetition.
I find that making covers of songs is more difficult for me than making a new song. I just get bored doing covers. It’s work to make a cover, not an expressive exercise of creativity that making a fresh song is!
I still have a few tracks that I want to cover… Pulsariffic Current by TEMPHUiBIS is one of them. Also Teto Territory. I started covers of both of those tracks but I ran out of steam– It’s hard work!
There is one other track I’m interested in covering. Sendra – Conqueror ft. IA. This song seems to be in hundreds of MMD videos, lots of them with Miku dancing rather than IA. The problem is that it’s IA singing, not Miku! That’s a big pet peeve for me. If Miku is seen, Miku should also be heard!
I came up with a way of remembering things that seems to work pretty well. It’s nothing unique or groundbreaking. I’m sure this is something I picked up from somewhere else, but here it is.
When I was in bed last night, I thought of making a Eurobeat track. If I hadn’t acted on that thought, my mind would have destroyed the idea in a few seconds. I’ve heard that that’s how the human brain works. Instead of letting my mind destroy the idea, I could have simply got out of bed and written it down. The problem with that was that I was already nice and comfy! There’s no way I would get out of bed and raise my heartbeat when I’m trying to chill out and drift to sleep!
Eventually I need to write it down, or I really will forget. So what I do is I think of a future point in time when I will get out of bed and walk up to my computer. I visualize that event in my mind as accurately as possible. It’s important to remember what the feeling of walking up to the computer and sitting down at my hard wood chair feels like. I paid special attention to the uncomfortable hardness of the wood against my butt that I experience every day when I sit down. It is that event which I bind to the idea of writing down Eurobeat.
As I visualize myself sitting down at my PC and feeling that hard wood feeling against my butt, I tell myself, “write down Eurobeat when I sit down at my PC.”
After I commit that memory, I am free to completely forget about the idea of getting up out of bed and writing Eurobeat. It’s redundant at that point, since the next time I sit at my PC, I will remember the idea I tied to the feeling of sitting at my PC!
It works every time! I have used it when I’m out on walks and I have an idea worth remembering. I think of opening my apartment door, and I attach the idea to the feeling of the cool metal doorhandle and opening my door and transferring from a bright outside to a dark interior.
I wanted to jot down some things I learned from working with VOCALOID during yesterday’s Jamuary jam.
Firstly, I used VOCALOID Editor FE for the first time. “FE” stands for, “free edition.” This is a cracked version of VOCALOID3 which can be found via shady sites on the internet. It took me quite a while to find a working download link.
I downloaded VOCALOID3FE because I needed KAITO to be able to hash out my song idea of KAITO and Miku on a ferris wheel at an amusement park. I wasn’t about to spend hundreds of dollars on KAITO for a one day exercise!
Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised by VOCALOID 3 Editor. I like it more than I like PiaproStudio. PiaproStudio lags horribly, buttons are sometimes unresponsive, and hotkeys often take multiple presses before their intended action occurs. VOCALOID3 Editor seems much more responsive.
Hopefully Crypton fixes these performance and usability issues in their upcoming cryptaloid software, but I can honestly say I’m not going to be surprised if they do not. I’ll just leave it at that. Be better, Crypton Future Media!
“Be better” seems to be a trending phrase for the internet social media age of virtue signalling. I guess I just hopped on the bandwagon.
So the notes about using VOCALOID are as follows. Firstly, lyrics and a note arrangement are required. I used to do most of this in PiaproStudio, but I think it’s a pain in the ass to do that now, because of how poorly PiaproStudio performs. Instead, what I did with Jamuary2020 day 24 is I completely wrote the lyrics and arranged notes in LMMS. This can be partially seen with day 23’s jam in the way I laid out notes with a simple synthesizer.
This jam isn’t the complete length song, but I think it conveys the idea. I got the notes down in LMMS for both KAITO and Miku. When putting these notes down, it’s important to consider the lyrics that go along with them, and place the correct number of notes not for words, but for syllables.
Next, I export a MIDI sequence from LMMS. This MIDI file contains all the tracks I created in LMMS. I took care to name each melody track after their intended VOCALOID.
After exporting the MIDI file from LMMS, I can import it into VOCALOID3 Editor.
Importing this track into VOCALOID3 Editor leaves me with a perfect arrangement ready to add lyrics to. This is a huge time saver as placing all these notes manually would take hours!
One thing I can praise VOCALOID3 about is the MIDI import screen. It’s MUCH better than PiaproStudio’s. Piapro Studio doesn’t even give me an option to import specific tracks– All it does is it dumps every track into Piapro Studio!
What a minor inconvenience this is! I have to go through and delete every track in here other than the Miku track. With some trial and error, I figured out that multiple tracks can be selected at once with a shift+click, which means it’s as simple as selecting all unwanted tracks and deleting them all in bulk.
Ok, so it was only bad when I deleted them one by one. After I figured out bulk track deletion, it wasn’t a big deal.
2:52PM. Time flies.
I suppose I should wrap this up for now. I need to get out and do some exercising! I’m going to look up some yoga stretches.
Training was excellent today. I felt really relaxed, really at peace, and for the first time in months, it felt like my astral self was aligned with my physical self. I felt taller than normal, thanks to yoga I’m sure. More yoga! Give me all the yoga! Next time I’m at FBH, I want to figure out how I can be part of their yoga group. That actually sounds a lot scary… Maybe not yet…
11:20PM. I went to play cards with D. and P. It was a good time but I had super low blood sugar the entire duration of the meetup. I should have bought an orange juice or something, but I was feeling too vulnerable(8) to act on that.
A guy playing MTG at a nearby table gave me a high five as he said, “because I’m badass” and he turned to our table. I didn’t notice at first but I looked up and he had his hand out. I couldn’t leave him hanging! It was funny but a little strange.
Not that strange or weird is bad. I was just so surprised to see him there waiting for a high five!
I am afraid of talking about anime at that place. I shouldn’t feel that way since the card shop is a place full of nerds. Maybe not anime nerds, but totally board game nerds and MTG nerds. Anime is just a different genre of nerddom and I think I should not have any issue allowing myself to be vulnerable in that place.
I wasn’t anxious at all the last time I went to Gamer’s Haven. I really think my physical vulnerability– hunger, played a huge role in how I felt. I felt anxious(6) at times, but I just allowed myself to feel that way, and I tried to ask myself what I was feeling in that moment.
I had a few moments where I just stayed quiet and let myself experience what was going on in the room. It was easier to sit quietly and observe than it was to talk, since I was feeling so low on blood sugar.
I really rushed to make food beforehand, so I only ate about 0.25 of the portion of rice and peas I had cooked. That was a mistake! I always do that when I go out. When I go out and socialize, I never eat enough beforehand because I’m used to not eating much. When I go out, I get anxious and my caloric needs spike. I should really carry some sort of easy to eat, highly nutrutious snack which can fuel me up right before a social event. Something with fruit and oats, perhaps?
I ate a can of peaches right before the event. Those were really good. If only I had three or four times that amount, that might have given me enough energy to make it through the evening.
Maybe I should drink more coffee… I could get a bag of high quality coffee for about $15 and that would last me quite a few social events. I even have a green, reusable coffee cup that would be wonderful for sipping on while I hung out with friends!
I’m grateful for my friends D. and P. I enjoyed the time we spent today, even if I was not at my best. I hope to play again with them soon, and practice a better solution for keeping my blood sugar in check.
I’m grateful for peanut butter. I didn’t eat any today, but I really like peanut butter. Maybe that’s part of the solution to my on-the-go snacks?
I’m grateful for canned food. I make a lot of curry using canned garbanzo beans, canned coconut milk, and canned tomato sauce. That’s some really great food and it’s easy to prepare because of the work that others have put into preparing the food in the can!
Until tomorrow, I’m Crispy McCrumbles.
