Update: All my accounts were reinstated at some point in the last couple days. (I say “at some point” ’cause I only just noticed when I checked on a whim. Didn’t get any emails or anything.) Apparently a bunch of folks who got swept up in the recent ban wave are getting unbanned.

Seems Xitter is cracking down on third-party apps tonight, ’cause all my accounts – which I accessed through OldTweetDeck – just got permanently suspended simultaneously for “inauthentic behavior”. Lol. I mainly lurked there, since *so many* peeps I follow still haven’t moved to Bluesky. 😔

Equally terrifying addendum: Only VST2 plugins supported. (Seriously, Avid, add VST3 support to Sibelius already. It’s over 15 years old, and most new plugins are VST3-only. Are you waiting until Sibelius users can’t use any new plugins at all?)

In honor of Spooky Month, share a 4-word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand: Only VST3 plugins supported.

Transcribing sheet music with 20+ staves and absolutely no instrument names (and sometimes not even instrument group brackets) is FUN, lemme tell ya. SO MUCH FUN.

In honor of Spooky Month, share a 4-word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand: Scans cropped out instruments.

For the pianists

I can’t believe Twitter rebranded to be a double sharp

Not my first time posting this, but I just love this piece so much.

Happy release day to Sword of the Sea, the latest game from Giant Squid, with ethereal soundtrack by @awintory.bsky.social :) I once again had the privilege of recording woodwinds, including this beautiful Mayan triple harmony drone flute. It has a haunting voice that's all throughout the score 🪈

TFW you wake up with a new melody playing all fully-formed in your head, but you have no sounds in your music arsenal that could capture it, and you have no projects to use it in, and you have so much to do anyway, so you have to ignore it and let it disappear. 😔

Every few months someone reads a terms of service and spots the *basically necessary* copyright license that any site that handles 3rd party content HAS TO HAVE to avoid getting sued out of existence by awful copyright lawyers and freaks out. Mike here explains why.

Sod it. This account’s collecting dust, and I feel like rambling a bit, so here we go. I’m feeling musically blueballed right now. This will take some explaining. 1/

Good on them for clarifying the ToS language, though arguably it shouldn’t have been necessary. Can we all move on now?

Do we have a title for this piece? “Lament for Ghorman”, maybe? Obviously hits 10 times harder if you hear it after just finishing the episode it’s attached to, but it’s still quite the lovely, tragic piece on its own.

Quick thread with my thoughts regarding the “SoundCloud mentions ‘AI training’ in their terms of service” panic going around, and why maybe people should slow down a bit before yanking all their content from [checks] every social-media and art-sharing website ever:

One of my favorite things to do: » Notice lovely background music in YouTube video » Identify it with Shazam (assuming it isn’t credited in the description, which it rarely is …) » Add it to my playlist Got a small but growing collection of esoteric atmospheric tracks happening Tonight’s find:

[blows dust off account] I mentioned my revised thoughts on ‘The Wild Robot’, so I figured I’d comment on the OST, which I’m currently binging for the second time in a row: It’s excellent, of course. But I was not prepared for the choir that suddenly kicks in at the end of the penultimate track.

This is the one and only true Threatening Music Notation on Bsky. Accept no other.

Holy fuck Audacity’s “crossfade clips” plugin is so fast and simple and good I’m a bit mad I haven’t tried it until now

Optimist: The cup is half full Pessimist: The cup is half empty Musician: If I wet my finger and rub it around the rim of the cup it makes a cool sound

Just a quick li’l proof-of-life wave hello. I’m in between projects at the moment, and I’m again caught up in non-music-related work that consume all my free time, so it may be a while before I start my next musical project. (Unless someone commissions me – that always takes precedence.) ✌

This is so cool. Love the sound. (via @skijarama.bsky.social)

Bluesky now has over 10 million users, and I was #305,610!

Bro why is your leitmotif playing in a minor key. Are you ok dude

Hard disagree. Every single one of these is amazing and I now need to write music for all of them. (Already have for a few of them!) Also, aren’t bagpipes kinda everywhere already? Can’t go to Scotland or listen to anything vaguely Celtic without hearing them.

This tweet is good enough to be on BlueSky

🎵 NEW MUSIC: Elegy 🎵 Sometimes, you write music for a general audience, or for a popular project. Other times, you decide to combine the themes from two late-90s Discovery Channel documentaries about the Titanic for fun. (That is, if you’re a giant nerd.) ➡ BANDCAMP ➡ SOUNDCLOUD ➡ YOUTUBE

Update to this three-month-old thread: My channel’s “advanced features” have been restored, meaning I can once again put clickable links in video descriptions. Went ahead and fixed the links in the last few videos, so that’s done. Oh, and also – new song drops tomorrow.

Gee I sure love how Sibelius doesn’t bother remembering the values you set hairpins to so that every time you load a score they all get reset and you have to configure them all fucking over again Goddamned pile of bugs, this app

Titles are hard. 😒

When you get completely stuck on a piece of music and you can’t decide whether to keep working it, or take it in a different direction, or give up entirely and just start something new. 😖

This is incorrect. Stacy's Mom by Fountains of Wayne has, by any objective measure, the most music theory.

🎵 NEW MUSIC: Sunken Horizons OST | Sunken Horizons Suite 🎵 In the grand tradition of ending a soundtrack with a recap, this is a 10-minute suite of themes from the ‘Sunken Horizons’ score. Think of it as “SH in a nutshell”. ➡ BANDCAMP ➡ SOUNDCLOUD ➡ YOUTUBE

My DMs are, and ever shall be, open. 📧

By golly, this mammoth freaking track I’ve been working on since <checks timestamps> *last August* is finally approaching completion. Y’all better like it, or I swear I’ll cry. Like, ugly-cry. You’ve been warned.

I refuse to use clickbaity titles. I don’t spam my posts with a million tags. I don’t post on Spotify. I don’t plug my songs on Xitter anymore, only on Bluesky and Mastodon. Most of my works are soundtracks for fanfiction audiobooks. I think I’m playing the social media clout game wrong.

Tfw you discover a new tool that produces absolutely amazing results and would make all your existing music sound 200% better and you have to fight with yourself not to redo and reupload all your old tracks Oh well. Look for improved sound quality and *clarity* (heh) in future releases!

Today’s adventure in Google fuckery: Got an email saying my YouTube channel has “lost access to advanced features”. Apparently these features include things like pinning comments, higher upload limits, and – the only one that matters to me – adding links to other sites in video descriptions. 1/

I just posted a thread promoting my newest track without remembering to add a single hashtag. Cuz that’s just how I roll. Apparently.

🎵 NEW MUSIC: Toots & Bloops 🎵 Sometimes, there are beautiful little moments of spontaneous synchronization. Or, that time two D&D characters came together to make some music as an elephant-man flew whilst trumpeting bubbles. Commission for @skijarama.bsky.social ➡ BANDCAMP ➡ SOUNDCLOUD ➡ YOUTUBE

Semi-important update: The Empty Horizons OST – despite being completed years ago – has new cover/album art! This replaces the previous art. Unfortunately, I also had to blur out the old art in the YouTube videos. You can read more about this decision in this YT community post I just published.

I miss Swappano. 🥲

Well, how’s this for a nice surprise! My friend RedPandaCoding, who commissioned me for a track two years ago, just posted a new video for it featuring a snazzy new rendering made in Blender. Check it out!

ICYMI:

🎵 NEW(ISH) MUSIC: Scales (2024 Update) 🎵 A remaster of an old music-class assignment! Fixed a few issues that bugged me in the original. Also serves as something to tide y’all over whilst I continue working on bigger projects. ➡ BANDCAMP ➡ SOUNDCLOUD ➡ YOUTUBE

<stares into the horizon> Something’s comin’. 🎵

I’ve updated my commission pricing, as part of my everlasting quest to find a simple and intuitive system that also covers all cases