I want a Mac so bad but I’m a poor starving student so I can’t buy one but I’m so fucking sick of windows

I’m considering installing a Linux distro but I don’t think my music production software works on Linux??

Anyone using native instruments software (specifically maschine?) using Linux?

wk142: geekiest non-dev activity

Definitely music production. Especially when using real instruments and capture their audio, so everything is quantized (i.e. fixed to time grid) and very tightly recorded. I make metal, 'tis a precise genre. For one riff it sometimes take 20 takes, since I record 4 times my guitar.

I've learned for the past 10 years how to compose, mix, masterize, but also learned how to sing, learned how to play the guitar, learned how to compose drums and using my keyboard to play drums (people are often surprised I can play double kicks @ 230 bpm) so that I can have a basic drum layer to further edit

Pretty geeky, not a common subject I talk to people about :D

Woodworking.
Making furniture or flooring.
Making music instruments with wood. Wood is life. I’ll probably switch to wood next decade so I don’t have to debug stupid bugs but kill them while renovating furniture.

Is it normal for a student (17yo, high school) to have nearly no free time? I have to leave for school at 6am and come back nearly everyday at 17 to 18pm. And since I play two instruments I'm in class for them again (+3h per week) and I'm in an orchestra (+6h rehearsal a week). So basically I finally come home at 8pm everyday and I'm so fucked that I can't do shit anymore. The only thing I'm able to do is (and in mood for) is practicing music and programming a little (personal projects and stuff). In theory I'd have free time on weekends then but I'm too tired to do shit on weekend. I stand up at 4pm and go to bed 5h later.

How was your time in school? How much free time did you guys have (or are still having)? Music is kinda free time imo but I'd like to meet schoolfriends outside of schooltime again :(

Making music definitely made me a better programmer. In fact playing lots of instruments showed me the different roles that exist on a team. Lead guitarists are kinda like programmers, constantly looking for the next challenging song to make. Singers and rhythm guitarists are like the team leads and PMs who want a nice bow on the product. Drummers are like designers really, they kinda show up and make something bad ass and disappear. Bass players are like solid backend or ops folks silently making stuff stable and grounded.

I have a music that makes me go into hyperfocus. Whenever I listen to it and pay close attention to the instruments, I'm instantly concentrated on a imaginary music clip that I used to refine in my teenage years.

Everything becomes easier to understand after I listen to it.

Today I finally finished editing the video for my new song. I have been working on the song itself, recording hundreds of takes of instruments and vocals, for almost four weeks now.

Editing the video took about 3 days, partly because I am using Hitfilm 4 Express for the first time. It's definitely a huge step up from Windows Movie Maker, but I did hit one mindboggling snag which delayed me for more than an hour.

When the editing was done and I exported the finished video, I play it, only to discover that the first second or so of audio is missing. That's kind of important for a music video.

So I try all kinds of things. Reimporting the audio into the project in different resolutions, trying different rendering settings, deleting or adding audio tracks, you name it. And each time the finished video is missing that first second of audio.

And each render takes about 10 minutes to complete, which is a long time to wait for one second of silence!

Out of desperation I start thinking about adding the audio to the video in Windows Movie Maker, just because I know that always works, even if that will degrade the quality.

But before I do that I try one more thing: I add a few seconds of silence at the beginning of the song in Audacity, then import into Hitfilm one more time.

And then it works!

I shall report my findings to Hitfilm shortly :-)