OK, so I FINALLY got FL 20 onto my new machine and was able to access a lot of my old projects - which is good, because the cobwebs run deep with my knowledge of the DAW (not to mention all of the new features that come with it...its like I'm learning it all over again!).

One of the things I remember that made me most productive was having a set deadline; it prevented me from leaning on my perfectionism too heavily, and it gave me boundaries on a project to say, "Good enough." Trust me, this is difficult for an analytical soul such as myself...which is probably also at the root of why I haven't finished any songs in nearly 5-6 years.

In addition, I stumbled across a good video from Virtual Riot where he gives 5 tips for producers. They're very basic tips, but I think they're things I needed to hear right now. In it, he recommends having a theme and purpose for all your songs, ideally starting with your song name. Duh! It sounds so basic, but I honestly got so lost in trying to mimic the bass sounds of others that I forgot that a song has to have a SOUL! I mean, why do y'all like Iron God, other than the fact that it's been complicit in an Npesta meme or is the main theme for Kenos/Sakupen Hell in Geometry Dash? It has a voice, it takes you somewhere: to some futuristic battle between two behemoth robots (which is literally what it was, and you can see in the video it was intended for).

I know this is verbose, but all of this is to say two things: I'm developing a starting list here and now of the projects that I intend to complete by the end of the year. I have names developed for them that will stem as the master inspiration for the sound; in fact, I can hear the main themes in my brain, I just have to get them captured. And it's going to be public so that I feel more pressure to create and finish.

Without further ado, here it is:

1. Gut Punch - consider this a "welcome back". For a while, the song I've been trying to create is so cerebral, ambient and contemplative, it just got boring. So I need to go back to what I know, just to know I can do it (which isn't a bad thing). I'm going to strip down my Hypothesis project and make something nice with it. It's going to be a riddim track that just kicks ass, so I hope y'all enjoy it when it's finally done.
2. Peril: Andromeda - it's an idea with a space theme that's been floating in my head for years. It has a similar vibe to a song I heard on the Galaga remake for Playstation 1, with this super deep, dark and cinematic techno vibe. I want to take that and modernize it a bit while also expanding on my other Peril works.
3. Monolith - some ambient dark thing with a Halo vibe. I love the music from Halo.
4. Entanglement - I did a ton of research on particle and theoretical physics for a prog fantasy book idea I had. I have an ambient theme kind of playing in my head with this one. This will be the hardest one to make, as I want to tackle the polyrythmic sound that Tesseract created in One and combine that with dubstep. If it works out, I may make a full conceptual EP based on this song, complete with guitar and vocals. But that's for 2021, folks!

That's all for now. Time to get to creating!