It's late and I can't sleep, so perhaps it's time to make a belated thank you to those of you following this page. The total number passed 50 some time ago, and I had intended to write this at that time... but things don't always work according to plan. It feels like just yesterday I was stagnant at 19 followers, but something about seeing how much it's risen just reaffirms my passion for the things I try to do. Thank you so much for any support you have given me, regardless of how small or "meager" it may be. 50 probably doesn't seem like much of a number when 5-year-olds can count that high, but I'm just an average dude with average expectations. To think that I have any person willing to listen to the things I do is incredibly humbling. I'm probably also just in that phase of life where self-awareness really starts to kick in, and I'm feeling the high.

Truth be told, I get discouraged every time I make a new track, because something about it just "wasn't right", or it didn't turn out "as planned". Every new piece feels like a step forward and two immediate steps back. More and more of the minutiae begins to swamp every facet of the work, until suddenly I've piled up articles upon articles regarding the physics behind the human vocal cords (Bernoulli's Principle is cool, kids), and books ranging from recording to the individual timbres and textures of every known instrument. It's an endless rabbit hole. All of this can be tough on the mind. However, though I say "discouraged", I always want to do more once all is said and done. I want to learn more about it. I want to write it better. I want to move more people. It's that sort of naive ambition that keeps driving me to write, and keeps my imagination from clouding. It's still pretty early in life to say anything about that won't change, but I hope to remain passionate about it for the rest of my brief existence. Perhaps it isn't a very unique notion. I'd venture a guess that many other artists, even on this site, have a similar ideology.

To have people who listen to that personal experience of life's progression in my music is something I am very grateful for. I remind myself often about how fortunate it is to be able to share it with such a talented and social community. I hope we can continue to share a lot more of life in our art, and that others can connect with and enjoy it.

So again, thank you for listening and making it worth something. :)

It's been an interesting week. I'm currently sitting in a pretty house in Manzanita, OR, where I've been spending the week getting out and seeing what the scenery of the west coast has to offer. I'll be back home late Sunday, where I can finally reunite with my musical paraphernelia (and a decent Internet connection) and churn out some more random sketches.

Regarding the bad news on a lot of people's minds, I was quite saddened to hear about James Horner's untimely passing. I wasn't made aware of it until yesterday, when I happened to glance at an article title on Facebook mobile. Horner was one of my favorite film composers growing up (though I didn't know his name back then), and I still listen to everything he has done with similar feelings. The music world has lost one of its brightest stars, and now the whole sky seems dimmer. I'll likely continue to listen to his music until the day I die. R.I.P. James Horner :(

On a bit more positive of a note, I finally acquired Kontakt 5 the day before leaving for Seattle, and it's given me access to a few better libraries that have been sitting on my hard drive for a long time (gathering dust). Lord knows I've been waiting on getting it for far too long, but it's finally taken care of. It feels nice to have the lock busted on all of my nicer instrument libraries (which I have very few of). Now it's on to fixing my computer.... sigh.

Originally, I was planning to enter the Newgrounds-Inspired Music Contest (everyone's doing it, after all), but I am pulling out of that. I started too late and didn't really like what I was working on. I had an offer for a collab sitting by, as well, and I decided to just spend the downtime that I had here in OR working on that (it's a very small project, I'll be uploading those soon enough). Good luck to all the talented folk participating in the contest! The final album is bound to be fantastic!

That's about it for now. I don't usually write these things because I have very little interesting things to share, but I thought it might be appropriate to share my condolences for James Horner's death and let anyone interested know that I'm not going to be submitting something for NIM. Sorry for disjointed rambles.

First of all - happy holidays to all of you out there! I'd like to extend an early wish out since I'm sure I'll get wrapped up in family matters when the actual time comes :)

As sure as I am that few people read news posts such as this, I've been needing to leave a minor update. I've been working with a few friends and setting up new avenues for myself, and all of that has been going relatively well. Nothing major has come out of it yet (and most likely will not for quite some time), but it has given me a newfound respect for various job positions within the music industry. It's also been a great palette cleanser after getting stuck in a creative vacuum for the past month or so. I'm working on a lot of stuff outside of writing little vg-ish loops that I hope will be invaluable to me down the road. Because of that, I believe my output here may be scaled back a bit... not that it was ever that grand to begin with. I suppose the main reason I feel the need to write this is simply to inform anyone who passes by here that I am trying to busy myself outside of NG (as opposed to my previous newspost about being completely available for projects). As such, I most likely will be slow to respond to something "important".

For the past month or so, I'd been brought onto a game project to build some music for the prototype. However, this project was recently cancelled, so I'm once again available to work on projects or collaborate. I still have other obligations, but there is plenty of spare time in my days now.

I only have a few presentable audio files from the prototype before it was canned, so I'll probably be uploading those at some point. They're rather short.

Speaking of uploading, I've got a slew of unfinished tracks sitting on my hard drive right now, and I'm hoping to rework a number of these before the end of the year. Many of my next submissions may have been written anywhere from 2012 - 2013. I took a long break from music at the start of this year, so there's not nearly as much content to dig up there.

For the future, I'm hoping to eventually start doing arrangements and/or remixes of other music, but it may be a little while before I get into that still. Remixing is oddly difficult to me, and it's getting hard to make a standout remix of a song when there are already soooo many musicians out there doing it spectacularly. I'd like whatever I do with it to either be creative or very polished. Perhaps even both!

That's about all there is to say for now. Hopefully the rest of the year will be a fruitful endeavour. Have a nice autumn! ;)

Here is an accurate description of how I work on every single song ever.

http://mikemonday.com/the-cure/

I'm sure many of you out there can relate.