Dragon Reborn A New Life

Journals - Major Programs
#161

song structure.

Even in innovative contemporary forms, certain old principles are often still adhered to.

Establishing Theme - Abstraction of theme into alternate form - Elaboration of the alternate form - Reminder of Establishing Theme - Final union of alternate form and establishing theme - Ends with restatement of original theme.

There are other structures too of course. That’s just a common one.

That is a beautiful one by Sully. I have not listened to this kind of drum and bass for a while. This is a good way to return to it. So fucking liberating. So good.

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#162

Not sure if I articulated that right. I have a bunch of theoretical knowledge for most of this stuff, there’s just a serious gap in applying it. I’m having trouble describing it. I’ve studied a lot of songs, watched track breakdowns to get a better idea, studio videos of producers I admire, but at the end of the day it doesn’t seem to be knowledge I’m lacking. Best way to describe it is it’s a very stuck, drained feeling. I can go up to a certain point with my music and then have trouble pushing beyond it.

But yeah Sully is amazing. He’s got plenty of other great tracks, this one has been on repeat for me for a while now. That Swandive track has so much character to it and a firm identity. He’s a great example of music being enhanced by the sound engineering. It never overshadows or gets in the way of the music like with some artists.

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#163

Ah, it’s more about the process of it, than the concept. You are figuring out what you want to do. Not so much how it works as a general principle.

Is that more it?

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#164

Yeah that’s definitely it. Like lets say I’ve got a pad I’m playing. Sounds good, maybe throw some drums down. Alright cool. Well it can’t just be drums and a pad, I mean it could but it would get boring very fast. So then my immediate thought is, “what else goes in here”? Then I’m just drawing a blank at all the infinite possibilities and sounds. So I think “maybe a pluck?” Well it works, but I don’t really want it I’m just putting it in there to have something else in the song. And then I just start thinking “how does anyone write music?” And then I get depressed because once again I find myself at a point where I know this song I’m going to finish is probably going to burn me out completely and I won’t go back to it so I have to get the bulk of it done. It’s always a compromise. Either I finish the song and don’t go as heavy into detail as I like or get stuck on the details, burn myself out, and then throw away the song because I’m sick of it.

This has been my writing process for close to 6 years now and a lot of tracks I work on get me to the point where I consider just not even making music at all anymore. I mean it’s not all of them but it makes me wonder if any other musicians go through this. I’ve gotten better over the years with it, but I’m not progressing as fast because of it. And what really bugs me is it always feels like I gave up on songs, they’re “finished” but I don’t consider them finished.

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#165

You’ve heard of Billie Eilish, yes? I find watching interviews with her brother Finneas O’Connell about how he composes music to be enlightening.

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#166

Indeed I have. I’ll have to give those a watch

#167

Every so often DR just pokes at something that’s bothered me for years and it kind of brings it to the forefront. I’ve never been good with people. I like a lot of online interaction because you can engage or disengage from conversations and take time to collect thoughts and write. But you don’t have that luxury in face to face interactions. So I’ll often find myself worrying that as a conversation goes on or time spent together increases the person will slowly get tired of me or I’ll screw it up somehow. This is always on my mind when meeting new people, hell sometimes even among friends.

Do I identify with that and take it as the truth? Partially. My biggest issue with subliminals is understanding I can be so much more, but at the same time hitting these walls. I don’t feel like I can change it, but at the same time I’m trying to. It just seems like the more ambitious I try to be the more depressed I get as I struggle with the reality of where I am at the moment and where i want to be.

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#168

Let you and the DR work it’s magic. Your subconscious is a good friend of yours. Give it some time.

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#169

That is the very definition of reconciliation. I think the key is to realize it takes time to make massive change. Just focus on the fact that you’re a percent better than you were yesterday, and you’ll be another percent better tomorrow. Don’t worry about breaking through the walls (talking to myself here too) all at once, just realize that you’re pushing them back inch by inch, day by day.

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#170

So I started the Astral Projection sub yesterday. Just one loop a day, Q is still very dense.

It’s hard to tell what I’m imagining/wanting to experience vs actual experience of it. But I went to bed last night and just started relaxing on my back. At a certain point it felt like there was this humming in my head and I was playing with decreasing and increasing the intensity of it. And then when it felt like I was getting into a deeper trance state I had the sensation of being slightly above the surface of my body. Definitely strong detachment feelings from the physical.

I can sense there’s still some fear holding me back that I can tell is being addressed. Astral projection really is unknown territory for me so it’s expected I’d be afraid of it. But I’m remembering all the reading I did when I was younger and how fascinated with the concept I was. Robert Monroe’s books were my intro. It’s weird recollecting how excited I was back then to be reading about something like that. Maybe it was because deep down I felt there was more to life than just everything people were showing me and I wanted to explore more. That curiosity got squashed eventually when I started being more open with people and they thought ideas like these were pure fiction. I think I’m going to re-read his book Journey’s Out of The Body again.

I do wonder what else is in the script. It definitely cultivates this internal sense of relaxation in me and energy movement.

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#171

I went to bed early last night, just kind of laid there and decompressed. Then I thought to myself “What’s wrong here?” And I thought about my job, the amount of times I’ve come in in the morning and I can’t even settle in, just a bunch of issues. How I do my best to not get stressed but it happens anyway. I’m only human, I’d love to be able to just deal with this shit without it triggering my anxiety and stress levels but it feels like I’m not there yet. So the idea of “Yeah but the job isn’t the problem, you’re the problem. You should learn to control your stress and anxiety better.” Yeah or maybe I work for a bad company? I don’t really know why I’m so quick to blame myself for environments that aren’t good for me. When I worked retail for a bit and got burned out and depressed from all that instead of showing compassion I just criticized myself for not being able to suck it up like everyone else.

Kind of leads me to my next topic. I’ve been digging in more with how to license music and make stuff for TV shows and such. But I stopped the other day and asked myself if that was just another rat race. If I can make stuff I like, that I feel good about producing, and make money? Hell yeah. But if I find myself in a situation where I’m working on stuff because it’s what a network wants or whatever, that’s not any different from a regular job. See, that’s the mentality I want to get out of. I don’t want to be in the “oh man I have to make money to survive” mentality. I want to be in the “fuck yeah I’m doing something with meaning for myself and making money from it”.

The “I need to make money” mentality causes me to…

  • Convince myself a needed job is only “temporary” while I get on my feet. Meanwhile I stay there longer than I should and waste years of my life

  • Put aside real passions because I don’t have time for them

  • Delude myself into believing this is how the world works and resign myself to a fate of doing crap I have no interest in doing

  • Compromise my own internal values and settle for less than I could have in life

  • Give my power away to someone outside of myself. Manipulated by fear and grow resentful of both myself and the person taking away my time.

I mean is it that insane to actually live a life of fulfillment and make enough money to live comfortably? The fact we live in a world where that’s thought to be reserved for a privileged or lucky few is absolutely fucked. You know how many people I’ve talked to where the common sentiment is “Well that’s just how it works, you don’t always get to do what you want in life sometimes you just have to work a job you’re ok with and try to be happy”. Why do people do this? Just close off possibilities by default? More importantly why do they think it’s true? Just because they associate with other people that believe the same thing?

It’s depressing as fuck. And the fact that I never wanted to buy into it but it felt like almost everyone around me held this sentiment was even more depressing. I constantly felt like I was too idealistic and I had to lower my expectations just because someone else didn’t get to where they wanted to be.

#172

Dude… this is your subconscious speaking… I think the Dragon is doing its work, and so are you.

You might want to consider a rest day.

I think your subconscious is working overtime on existential issues.

What is on your play list and how many loops?

9 hours of sleep might help.

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#173

Currently I run DR every other day, 1 loop. Sometimes less, I go by feel now and don’t push it. Aside from that I’m running the Astral projection one almost every day. And love bomb lite once or twice a week. Definitely resting tomorrow.

Yeah very existential. But I’ll be honest I’ve hated most of my life. A lot of that is coming up now because I’ve buried it for years. This feeling of being trapped and not really feeling like I’m living.

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#174

I understand. Also thank you for clarifying your listening schedule. If 1 loop every other day might be too much, you could listen 2 times a week.

On DR I had to put aside all other Ultimas and subliminals for about 1 month because I just couldn’t handle it.

I think you’re on the right track with “not pushing it”.

I can certainly sympathize with any self-loathing you’re having because I went through more than a week of self-loathing myself.

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#175

Thanks for helping out. I’m still calibrating what’s a good amount of loops per week. I think I should try way fewer loops. Every other day seems a lot too. I often wonder if I’m on a 2-3 day lag as far as processing goes and maybe I should just take one week and listen a single day and see how it unfolds. I still don’t know how to get this right, but I guess starting really low would be worth a shot.

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#176

That might be better.

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#177

So it’s really interesting how the processing takes place with DR or maybe any q subliminal for me. The initial day of listening it’s usually 2 to 3 hours before I start feeling it. Then it transitions to this almost heavy feeling. Like I’m deep in thought but can’t actually make sense of what it is. If I give it another day then the emotional stuff starts coming out. Then another day after that usually some type of reframing from learning what that emotional stuff was. So yeah, I think I have been overdoing DR and haven’t given it a chance to fully process in my mind before hitting another loop. It’s kind of like I get there part way, then restart, but I start stacking more inner healing than I can reasonably handle so I overload and actually don’t get to a lot of the emotional release. It seems crazy that you can listen to a subliminal once a week and that’s it, but I think that might be where I’m headed.

Anyway felt like posting another track I worked on. This one was inspired by memphis style rap. I’ve mostly played around with typical east coast boom bap style stuff in the past so it was interesting.

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#178

Did I mention perhaps 1 loop of DR a day for 5 days in a row?

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#179

Hung out with some friends on Friday. One of them was talking about starting up a YouTube series and asked if I’d be interested in providing background music. He’s supported my music for a bit now, always wondering what else I’ve created, he’s a good friend. So I’m looking forward to that.

I think this is the first weekend where I don’t feel emotionally crushed and overwhelmed, so definitely was too much DR in the past.

I really want to make music, but I procrastinate so terribly with it and I’m trying to rebuild associations of fun to it instead of stressful. It’s very hard for me to even think about writing a song nowadays without getting some anxiety and I really need to change that. It’s not about bulldozing through that, it can work but at the end of the day I’m still stressed. So I’m trying to figure out what’s giving me anxiety. Part of it is definitely the idea of writing full songs. Catchy 8 bar loop? No problem. 7 minute track? Shit there’s the anxiety. But at the heart of a lot of dance music is repetition and that’s why they’re 7 minutes. Rhythm and groove and subtle automation on stuff. I just fuck that up by overthinking and being too critical if my stuff isn’t groundbreaking.

Ive been looking at courses for finishing music and stuff like that. Some of them have previews. One thing that I’ve noticed in all of them is they seem very easy to please. Like they get excited over their work even if it isn’t great. I’ve never been able to do that, I mean in general I don’t get excited about a lot. It’s like my threshold for what excites me is very high. I don’t know I guess overall my life has been very grey for a couple of years now and everything is just there but doesn’t provide much pleasure. Maybe stemming from the perfectionism, idk.

For a while now the goal has been too focused on writing great music and that’s it. And I’m tired of it. Because it demands my energy and at the end of the day I get stressed about it. So really what’s the point if I’m not enjoying it? I have to correct that.

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#180

:partying_face:

In a tutorial, DeadMau5 made a comment that all his songs are about 23 seconds. Then he proceeded to prove his point.

More progress mate! Congratulations!

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