u/Born_Farmer5221

I’m just using Logic to record my electric bass through my Focusrite and experiment with different tones. However my bass just always seems really quiet. On a new project, before messing around with boosting it through a compressor and bass amp designer, I have to turn my volume all the way up in my headphones to hear it at all, and even when I mess with that stuff it’s still a struggle to get it to be heard at even half volume in my headphones.
I try to compare it to other things like playing youtube or apple music on my Mac through my headphones and my bass is always super quiet compared to that. However if I set the output to my Focusrite and plug the headphones in there it sounds perfectly fine with the volume knob at like a quarter of the way up.
Is it just always quiet through the actual Mac? Is this normal? I’m very new to Logic and DAWs as a whole and don’t really know what I’m doing as I’m just figuring it out myself.

Pretty much a complete beginner though I’ve had and been using my 2i2 (4th gen) for a few months now. I really just want to record my bass into Logic to make videos and stuff. But like I said no matter what, I have to turn the input gain all the way down and it still clips on the low E and B and the high G string if played hard at all (which is how I always play). It’s frankly infuriating me and I don’t know how to fix it. Even with the preamp knobs turned all the way off it still clips. Any suggestions? I have no clue what I’m doing. I know it’s not happening in Logic because of the orange/red ring on the interface.

Hey everyone! Former ska hater here. For whatever reason the last few days I just decided to start listening to (most third wave/ska punk) ska during my first week of college, and honestly this is such a great and fun genre of music. I don’t know why I used to dislike it, I guess I was just a lame genre purist who didn’t like how the horns mixed with the punk sound.

I made myself a playlist of some ska albums and have been listening straight through it the last two days and I love everything I’ve heard so far. Here’s what I have on the playlist:

Morning Glory - The Whole World Is Watching
Operation Ivy - Operation Ivy
Reel Big Fish - Why Do They Rock So Hard
Sublime - 40oz. to Freedom
Sublime - Sublime
Reel Big Fish - Turn the Radio Off (my favorite so far and the point I’m at in the playlist right now)
Against All Authority - All Fall Down
Less Than Jake - Anthem
Less Than Jake - Hello Rockview

Any artist or album recommendations similar to these that I can add to my playlist? Thanks! :)

Also I’m living in Nashville right now so if anyone knows of any ska bands around here or shows coming up I’d love to try to go to a show

Hollow Knight is my favorite game of all time, and I finally got to play Silksong this summer after getting a Mac Pro for college (I haven’t had a console or computer besides my school Chromebook in years). This week I finished 100%ing the game and my God was it peak. I think Silksong is better than HK in a lot of ways; Hornet just feels so fluid and good to play as, but I can’t decide yet which I like better overall.

While I loved Hollow Knight and Silksong, I’ve honestly never played any other Metroidvanias. I just played Hollow Knight based on my friends’ recommendation and only really got into it during Covid; previously I had sucked too bad to beat False Knight and had ragequit. While the art style and world are huge reasons why I love the Hollow Knight games, I would love to play more games in the Metroidvania genre, especially if they have movement that feels flowy in a similar way to Silksong because Hornet being all flippy and acrobatic genuinely brought me so much joy.

I’m really open to any suggestions; the only caveat is that I need games with a native Mac version which not a ton of games have.

I've been stuck banging my head against a wall (sometimes literally because it makes me so pissed) on Groal for the last probably 7 or 8 hours of gameplay(across like a week) and I've said this a lot as hyperbole but I really mean it this time: this is by far the least fun I have ever had playing a game. I would just leave Bilewater since apparently this isn't required (which makes it even more stupid how hard it is) but I can't get out without going super slow and ending up dying anyway so I'm just pressing forward. I've tried every crest, every (good) tool combo until I ran out of shards, every strategy, it all just seems to come down to luck.

I'm just so fucking tired man. I've given TC a lot of grace which has paid off 99% of the time but this is just straight up not fun in any way shape or form for me, and when I beat it I know that I won't feel satisfied, just glad that it's over. Yes I have the close bench, yes I know the cheese strategy. Most of the time I die to the arena or get to 2-3 masks before I can even fight the boss itself because those enemies are so annoying and just run away whenever I try to hit them. Cheesing him takes about 15 minutes it would seem because the only time I can find to hit him without risk of getting hit is immediately after the sucking attack. The furthest I've gotten is probably 5 minutes into his second phase before dying to one of his loogies exploding through a platform which is bullshit. After that run I now have no more shards and there's nowhere to get them in this hellhole.

Seriously this is the longest any HK boss has taken me since Radiance; even NKG and Pure Vessel only took me 2-3 hours tops and no other Silksong boss has taken me longer than two hours. I really, really want to finish this game because I've heard such good things about the end of Act 2 and all of Act 3 and I'm dying to know the lore (HK in my opinion has one of the best and most unique stories in any form of media; THK is one of my favorite characters of all time because of their tragic and doomed nature) but don't want to spoil it for myself. But I'm just incredibly discouraged right now and the gameplay fully feels like a Sisyphean chore that I'm slaving away at to unlock the rest of the experience. I don't doubt that the rest of the game is good, and I'm gonna keep trying until I do it, but I'm not gonna have a good time.

I haven’t touched it since I just hit delete on accident; it’s still sitting on the “create new track” screen. Cmd+Z does nothing.

Total rant post but I do need help. Yes I know I’m a dumbass, I don’t need to be told that further. Genuinely Logic is making me rethink going into music because I’m supposed to be learning how to use it for college but every time I open it I immediately get a headache because I don’t know what anything is and what it does or anything. I’ve tried to watch youtube videos or look at tutorials but everything either assumes I’m stupid and have zero experience in music or that I already know what I’m doing with a DAW. I have been a musician for 6+ years and I literally just want to be able to create different tones for my bass and record bass tracks, which I thought would be simple, but apparently I’m too stupid to do ANYTHING even CLOSE to that. It’s genuinely making me feel like a complete idiot and making me want to quit music entirely.
I would ask for help but I don’t even know where to start. I keep accidentally doing things that apparently can’t be undone (I somehow just made the effects completely disappear from the main strip and I can’t find where they went or how to put them back; I can still hear the effects though). I spent $2500 on a Mac Pro for college exclusively because I needed to use Logic, and I feel like I completely wasted my money because every time I open this stupid software I feel like I’m going to cry because I can’t figure out how to do the most basic thing. I have friends who use Logic but every time they try to explain something to me it feels like they’re speaking a different language.
I don’t know how to finish this. I’m stupid and suck at this and I literally just want to record bass tracks and mess around with different bass tones.

Edit: Obviously I made this post while not in a great headspace (directly after somehow losing my effects) but the gist still applies

I have about 40 hours in my Silksong playthrough. I'd say I'm mid Act 2 though I don't know how big Act 2 is so I could be earlier or later. I just heard about the Slab prison break sequence and I think it sounds insanely cool and fun... but I won't get to play it unless I start a new save file because I already went into Act 2 and got the >!Faydown Cloak!< before I knew about the Slab sequence. I swear on my life I never even SAW a wardenfly in my whole playthrough, even though I explored Act 1 extensively and didn't rush through it. I feel super left out to be honest. What is it about the >!Faydown Cloak!< that makes it so you can no longer do the Slab sequence? I haven't played the sequence obviously or watched gameplay because I want to experience it myself eventually, but couldn't they just, like... take it away? I don't see why it makes a difference. I suppose it's sort of like Wings or a Dreamer activating Infected Crossroads in Hollow Knight, but that's just a change to an area, not a whole fun gameplay sequence that I am now just locked out of :(

This post turned out to be kind of word vomit. I should mention that I played HK a while ago and it’s my fav game of all time (so far). I had like 106% I think and kind of sucked at it to the point where I couldn’t do the pantheons at all and never beat NKG. I got a Macbook for college shortly after I got out of school and heard that HK and Silksong are available on Steam for Macbook natively and immediately bought them. I’ve been wanting to play Silksong since it came out but didn’t have anything to play it on, and I deliberately avoided anything about it so I could play it blind because the one thing I regret about playing HK is that I knew a lot of the content already from watching videos and hearing from my friends and didn’t really get to truly explore the game. The only specific things that I know are in Silksong that I haven’t seen yet are:

- Wall cling/climb ability that I think I get very soon

- Harpoon (from trailers and controller menu)

- Some kind of hard platforming section that I think is called Sinner’s Road

- I saw a short-form video of the First Sinner boss… holy shit I‘m excited. It looks so hard and fun and well-designed in every aspect

- A version of Lace called Lost Lace that’s really hard

Other than that I’m on my own. Anyways, once I got the games I decided to replay HK in its entirety (I’d played it on Switch before so didn’t have my save file on my Mac) before starting Silksong and spent ~35 hours playing through normal ending, true ending, beating NKG, and beating the first two pantheons. It was just as fun as I remember if not better.

Two days ago I started Silksong at 2 AM, hoping to play for about an hour and just get past the first area. (Yes, my sleep schedule is fucked, I usually wake up at 11:00 since I never work until 5 PM.) Well… I sort of ended up pulling an accidental all-nighter, playing straight from 3 until 10:00 AM. I didn’t realize how long it had been until I heard birds outside. My initial thoughts were pretty much: 1. Wow, this game is beautiful. 2. Hornet is so fun to play as and the movement in Silksong already feels way better than HK. 3. God DAMN, people were not lying that it’s harder than HK and that Hornet dies super fast.

This is where we get to the title. I was stuck in Greymoor for like 3 gameplay hours (mainly stuck on bird arena, chapel of the reaper fight, and moorwing) and genuinely considered uninstalling. I don’t know why I sucked so bad at Moorwing but I just KEPT DYING. It felt like the fight lasted 5-8 minutes every time and every time I thought I was close I’d get nervous, mess up, and die. I was getting way too mad and decided to ragequit and considered uninstalling, because quite frankly none of Greymoor was fun for me. I decided to give it another shot because I’m probably less than 10% into the game and I trust Team Cherry. I finally beat Moorwing and made it to Haunted Bellhart and honestly thought I was softlocked because I didn’t think I was supposed to go right through a named area to another one but eventually I asked one of my friends who I belong has 100%ed Silksong and she told me I just needed to move on to Shellwood. I felt really stupid.

Anyways, I just beat Sister Splinter and holy shit what a fun area and what a fun fight. I honestly wish I could have fought her before the nerf. She felt like baby Radiance mixed with Hornet Sentinel mixed with THK (maybe PV but I suck too much at pantheons and have never fought him) if I could describe it with HK bosses. As soon as the last nail hit on Sister Splinter landed, I sat back for a second and pretty much just thought *I’m so glad I didn’t quit this game because of sucking at Moorwing.*

So anyways, TLDR I guess I almost uninstalled after Greymoor because I sucked at Moorwing and now that I’ve beat Sister Splinter I’m VERY glad I did not. I can’t wait to play the rest of this game and I will remember to not ragequit because of further hard areas. And I can’t fucking wait for First Sinner.

I've been fighting Sister Splinter for the last 20 minutes or so, and it's such a fun fight. I really had a hard time with Moorwing and just didn't find it fun, but Sister Splinter feels great and is super fun to fight. The only issue is... I always use Thread Storm to kill her minions, and twice now I've been beneath her and hit the boss herself with the Thread Storm which caused her to stagger, falling from the ceiling and promptly killing me via contact damage. Her hitbox when falling from the ceiling is pretty big; is there any way to avoid this happening that isn't just "don't use thread storm under her"? There's probably too much going on in this fight for me to count how close she is to staggering unless there's a cue for it.

Edit: I think I am stupid, idk how i missed that she telegraphs her stagger for a super long time. I beat her and it was super fun.

I’ve become really close with my now-best-friend during my senior year and her junior year since meeting each other snd becoming friends about 10 months ago. I’ve never felt so close to someone; it really feels like she’s my sister sometimes. I love her so much and wish we had more time together and had known each other sooner. Every day that graduation gets closer I think about it more and get more sad even though we will still have all summer until I move away.

I haven’t really found many songs that reflect this feeling of nostalgia/sadness/happiness/dread. Here’s a few that are sort of the vibe:

1979 and Today - the Smashing Pumpkins

Screen - Brad

No Surprises - Radiohead

My Lucky Stars - Tupperwave

Wait For the Moment - Vulfpeck

Pop In My Step - KGLW

Time - Pink Floyd

Doesn’t necessarily have to be niche songs although I’d appreciate anything; I‘ve been blanking on some obvious ones (Time and 1979) until just now and might just need to have my memory jogged.

I’m moving to Nashville for school this fall and hope to be gigging quite a bit, as well as aspiring to become a professional musician. I’m working on a list of things I’ll need to buy for gigging and recording—a good gig bag, DI capabilities, DAW, audio interface, etc., that I’ll be saving up and using grad party for.

In my limited gigging experience in my hometown, I’ve never felt that a pedalboard was entirely necessary. I’ve borrowed my friend’s (overdrive, chorus, flanger, and octave) a few times and mainly used it for beefing up my tone when the only guitarist was soloing and getting certain tones more accurately. But I always felt like I would have been fine without it. I’ll tune with my clip-on tuner or Positive Grid app and have a good enough ear to adjust things during the set if need be.

I have my own Digitech RP250 unit that’s fun to mess around with, but it’s not really viable for gigging because some of the sounds aren’t the best and it absolutely sucks having to cycle through all of the presets in linear order. Also it’s annoyingly finicky with pushing both buttons at once to use bypass/tuner.

A pedalboard, pedals, power supply, and a case for it all is a pretty big investment, and I don’t know if I’d want to deal with figuring out a less expensive multi-effects unit. Is it even necessary to have pedals? If so, what should I get? From my limited knowledge a tuner is a necessity, and compressor and chorus are the most useful for bass. Should I try to just make a small 4-pedal board with a good tuner, compressor, chorus, and something else? Overall I’m really lost and both don’t want to spend money I don’t need to or end up without something I need.