u/CoffeeCat37

Maybe I've just been watching too much Love Is Blind, but it drives me crazy how often people — especially older couples who've been together for a while — insist that relationships are this constant battle that require incredible compromise on both folks' parts.

I get it to a degree. There's no such thing as the perfect partner, and some amount of compromise is almost always going to be necessary in even the best relationship. My wife and I have both had to compromise certain things in order to maintain our marriage. And I definitely understand why special circumstances — sudden illness, death of a loved one, having to move across the country to care for a family member etc — can force someone to compromise.

But if one or both of you are having to constantly make big compromises for each other, that tells me that you're not all that compatible in the first place. If it's making sure you can cohabitate and sustain a healthy relationship is this grueling daily battle, why are you with this person? I get that relationships require work, but they shouldn't require constant, difficult work. There are plenty of potential partners out there who you naturally get along well with, and don't have to make constant compromises to please.

I'm diagnosed with depression and am on SSRIs, which normally work pretty well. I binged the show over the last month or so and for some reason, almost immediately after it ended, I felt deeply sad. I'm not the type to get sad when a TV show ends and I don't know if this is even related, but after finishing the show I listened to the Album Leaf song "The Light" that always plays when Liv and Fitz are talking and just broke down in tears. And I've been sad af all day since. I can tell that it's chemical depression, but it seems to have been kickstarted by the end of the show and I dunno why.

Anyway hi, I absolutely loved this TV show and feel silly for waiting so long to watch it. I didn't love S7 quite as much but all in all it was still a really solid show.

(I posted this a few minutes ago but it got removed because I included a link to the song upon request — I'm sorry, mods!!!!)

I've dabbled in many different artistic mediums, and have been producing instrumental hip hop for the better part of a decade. But I've never rapped until now, and while I think what I recorded was pretty good, there's this strong internal judgement I'm making of myself, because the idea of an upper-middle class white guy deciding to start rapping at 40 feels parodic and embarrassing.

The thing that's always tripped me up is what to rap about. The rap I enjoy tends to be about subject matter that doesn't actually resonate with me on a personal level at all. I love hip hop that's about the street life, the rap game, drug dealing, and so on, but the idea of ME rapping about that stuff, even as an alter ego, feels deeply inauthentic and just wrong.

But then the TV show Scandal, of all thins, inspired a solution. The idea of being a gangbanger doesn't appeal to me on any level, but the idea of being an elite mover-and-shaker, a fixer who lives in the shadows and pulls the strings, does appeal to some part of me. That's not a life I want to live, but there is a LITTLE part of me somewhere that thinks hey, that'd be really fucking cool. It's similar to how I feel watching heist movies.

So I built a song around that theme instead. And it was SO fun and satisfying. Strictly from the level of craft, writing bars plays to all of my strengths: It's all about rhythm, vocabulary, articulation, wordplay, and the creative use of language. I love that shit. And in contrast with screenwriting, it works well with my short attention span, because you can just write four lines at a time as opposed to mapping out a story arc over the course of 100 pages.

I have no idea what I'm going to do with this. I'm still rapping about shit I have no experience in, and I wonder if the best way to put myself at ease would be to create and release any rap I make under an alter ego. And the idea of creating an alter ego is actually kind of appealing to me, though also completely foreign.

Anyway. I would love to hear anybody's thoughts on this, especially if you've struggled with self-doubt the way I am.

EDIT: Wow, I really didn't anticipate getting this much encouragement. You guys are awesome, for real, thank you so much for your tips, encouragement and perspectives. What a great community.

I still don't think the songwriting is great on this album, but goddamn it SOUNDS good. The production, those guitar tones and solos. It's so heavy and hard-hitting and I really dig that about it.

We've all got our pet peeves with regard to Letterboxd reviews, right? Some people don't like long academic treatises, some people don't like one-liner jokes, etc. I have my own pet peeves and I've taken to blocking users who leave the type of reviews that irritate me, so I won't see them in the future, and doing this has improved the quality of my Letterboxd experiences.

Personally, I don't like a) one-line reviews about how hot the actors are, b) one-line reviews that just reference another movie the actor was in, and c) repetitions of joke formats that are already played out ("this happened to my buddy Jerry," "men will literally [plot of movie] before going to therapy").

Does anyone else do this? If so, what sort of reviewers do you block?

The verses are ridiculous, lyrically and musically, but goddamn that chorus is sublime. Especially the last one after the bridge.

Just had a frustrating conversation in which I told somebody that a movie they'd identified as "the best horror movie of the year" wasn't a horror movie, and I outlined the reasons why. They got snarky and blocked me without engaging with any of my points.

I find this kind of thing so frustrating. Saying "this band/movie isn't X genre" is not tantamount to saying it's bad, or telling people they can't or shouldn't enjoy it, but so many people act that way. As if a movie can only be good if it's a horror movie, and by saying it's not a horror movie, you're saying it's bad. I find this kind of thinking so juvenile and insecure and it's really common in online discussions about media. Grow up, people! Okay, rant over.

Hey y'all. Just got my Sidekick in the mail and I'm absolutely loving it. My only issue is that the three-band EQ knobs kind of suck. Does anyone know where to buy replacement ones that have more of a grip (or at least don't have that awkward thing sticking out)? I found these on Etsy but they're $58 and includes more knobs and faders than I need. I only want to replace the EQ knobs.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/4508550988/orbital-controls-knobs-faders-for

Hey y'all. The only Sonicware box I've ever used before is the Lofi-12 XT, which I love. Never touched any of the Liven series so I can't compare them. But I got my Minimal in the mail a few weeks ago and, spoiler alert, I love it. It isn't perfect and there are few things I really hope get fixed in the next firmware update. But by and large, I love it.

Pros:

-The workflow and sequencer both super intuitive. It's so easy to just sit down, throw a track together and start jamming. It feels like *playing* a musical instrument more than most grooveboxes I've used, which is an enormous plus.

-The hardware feels great. Given that it's a somewhat budget box that looks kind of cheap, I was surprised and impressed at how good all of the buttons and knobs feel. I thought the keyboard would be terrible to play but I actually don't mind it at all.

-The kick drum synthesis is fantastic. This is a matter of opinion for sure, but for the types of kicks I'm going for when I make this kind of music (acid house/techno), I was so pleased with the kick synthesis module. It gives you just enough control so you can really shape the sound to what you want, but it's not overwhelming either.

-Once you sketch out a track, there are a lot of really simple and non-destructive ways to add variety and randomness to it. You can record knob automation, which really adds a ton of dimension to things (especially with the bass synth). You can change the length of the patterns for individual tracks, thus creating polyrhythms and completely changing the feel of whichever track you're on. You can change which step the pattern starts on for individual tracks. And that's not to mention the four main knobs on the bass synthesizer itself, which can totally transform the track. What's great is that none of this is permanent - all of the above stuff can easily be undone, taking you right back to where you started.

-You can switch between patterns and projects without skipping a beat; it's all quantized, so you can build a set from multiple projects and just play them one after another. It's also very easy to switch back and forth between projects - have it play four bars of one before popping back into another, etc.

-The multi-effects all sound great, with one exception that I'll get to below. I especially like the phaser and the distortion.

-It's very easy to modulate the delay parameters while performing, which opens up a whole world of dub-style effects performances.

-Battery power WITH internal speaker! Which means you can take it anywhere without any cables and make a beat.

Cons:

-No individual outs. If you want to record what you're doing with this, you have to just bounce out the whole thing (or go to the trouble of bouncing out each track individually, but that sort of ruins the performance-based quality of the machine).

-There are a somewhat limited number of sample storage slots. That can cause problems because the sample library is shared by all projects, which means that if you run out of slots and want to sample something new, you have to backup the entire device to your computer and then start fresh, otherwise your old projects won't work. Backing up is very easy - you just connect via USB to computer and drag-and-drop - but I can see this being annoying further on down the line.

-The stock samples are mostly good, but the 8-second sample library (which is aimed at being loops as opposed to one-shots) leaves a bit to be desired. I ended up creating my own percussive loops in Ableton and importing them.

-Saving samples can be annoying. For reasons that elude me, samples can only have a four-character name, even though the display is six characters. If you sample over an existing sample, it still has the old sample's name, and when you're saving samples, it's can be unclear if the slot you're saving to already has a sample in it, because by default samples are unnamed (you can rename them on the device). Small stuff but can be annoying.

-The snare synthesis gets the job done, but I would have liked a bit more flexibility with shaping the "top" of the snare sound. It ultimately hasn't been an issue for me, as I've always been able to find a snare sound I like, but it would have been cool if there were a few more options.

-While the bass synthesizer sounds awesome IMO, it's not totally passable as a 303 clone. If you listen very very carefully while twisting the filter cutoff, you can hear the "steps" between the different cutoff frequencies - it's not a totally smooth transition. 99% of the time you're not going to notice this, but if you're in love with the original 303 filter, this could be a con for you. TBH this doesn't really bug me, but it could bug some people.

-Some small bugs in the sequencer that I imagine will get fixed via firmware update.

-The filter multi-effect needs a bit of work. The resonance is too high for my taste, and it doesn't seem to kick in until the knob hits ~2 oclock or so. I imagine this too will get fixed in a future update.

-You can't use the sidechain compressor while using other multieffects, which is a bit limiting.

-Reverb is solidly okay but could sound a lot better.

Miscellaneous:

-There's something interesting about the bass synthesizer here. If you want to automate, say, the filter cutoff over the course of a 16 step sequencer, it doesn't record smooth movement of the knob between the steps. Rather, it creates a set cutoff value at each step, and jumps between them. It's more like stairs than a curve, if that makes sense. While this means you can't get a smooth sloping effect via automation, the tradeoff is that you instead get a rhythmic automation that jumps in time to the music. Personally, I love this; it's added a whole new dimension to my tracks, and at times almost feels like a new rhythm track. But some people won't like it and will wish it had smooth automation.

Conclusion:

Honestly I love this thing. It's probably the first groovebox I've had that I can easily imagine myself performing an entire set on. It's definitely worth the introductory price and depending on your income, maybe even the full price. Happy to answer any questions anyone has.