Month: July 2024

Man, time is so fleeting! I feel like there’s not enough hours in the day to do what I want to do with myself. Honestly, I wish I didn’t have to go to sleep. If I could skip sleeping, I’d have all the time I need to do what it is I want to do and go to work in the day time. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way and you need sleep in order to function properly the next day. As it is, I really don’t get enough sleep to perform optimally.

I often find myself slightly scatter brained and doing things I probably wouldn’t do if I could get 9+ hours of sleep each night in bed. Sometimes I fall asleep at my desk at home and that’s not rejuvenating sleep at all. It’s not until I lay down in the bed that I feel I’m really resting and recovering from the activity of the day. But you know how it is. I want to stay up and DJ, or make beats, or watch people on Twitch/Youtube, or play my Playstation, etc. I even get up around 4:30am each AM so I can have some time to do some of those things before I have to head to my wage slavery.

I get the feeling that even people who are celebrities aren’t truly free. From the outside looking in, it looks like they have a lot of money and are living the life of Riley, but it’s not that at all. A lot of them have to participate in things they don’t want to. They are constantly dependent on the public “buying” their brand so they can stay relevant. A musician is only as good as their last album, or as the elites who control them say they can be. I won’t get conspiratorial, but they probably have to participate in things they really would rather not in order to stay in the graces of the “overseers”. That might explain why so many are drug and alcohol addicts.

Anyway, I’m grateful for everything in my life that doesn’t bring me displeasure. I hope that one day I can get a bit more of my time back. When I was working remotely during COVID, I was a lot happier. It wasn’t so bad being able to work at my home around my stuff and having more time to sleep in before I got to my computer to get to it. I could walk my dog Maggie more often and I could pet my feline Lucille and that kept them happy. I was able to make coffee for my wife in the AM and go to the grocery store on my lunch break to get add-ons for dinner that night. Maybe I should look for a remote position to find some of that happiness again in that regard.

It’s hump day Wednesday, and we’re almost to the weekend. Thanks for coming through and reading this. Stay safe, stay blessed, and keep looking for the truth about our reality and existence. Have a great rest of the week reader…

So I swapped out MPCs. I sold my MPC Live 2 which was in pristine condition with the original box and items, and picked up the MPC Key 61. The MPC Key 61 is basically a modern MPC with a 61 key keyboard integrated into it. It’s a full on music workstation that has the usual 16 Akai drum pads on it. I’m in love with it. It’s an amazing piece of gear and I’m geeked to be using it. It even works as a midi controller attached to my PS5 and using the music learning app Rocksmith plus. I can play the keyboard a little bit, but I’d like to become very proficient at it. I’m taking a break from the Rocksmith game/app to write up this post.

The Key 61 has a ton of shortcut buttons on it and it’s really easy to navigate the MPC OS when using it. It has a touch-strip which makes it really easy to initiate effects and things like that when making beats. You can plug in Sustain, Expression, and Footswitch pedals at the same time. I happen to have all 3, and I use them when needed. You can also install a SSD into the bottom of it and keep all of your files and samples on it with a large drive. It also has USB ports where you can plug in a USB drive should you need to move files around with that. You can also plug XLR speakers or mics into it, and it even has +48v phantom power for condenser mics!

All in all, it’s a very nice music device and I feel grateful to have it. I’ve already started 3 beats on it, and the one I was working on today I’m going to record out and upload to my Bandcamp page by this coming Tuesday. I may even push it through on my Distrokid. When the rest of the world is yammering about what’s going with Donald Trump and that fake shooting, I’m enjoying my music gear by making beats and djing where I can. Regardless of what’s going on in the world, I have to go to work in the AM, so I’m not going to spend my free time contemplating what’s going on in politics or the other nonsense going on in the media. Call me when you guys are ready to overthrow and revolt against some ish.

With that said, I hope you have a great start to this upcoming work week. Remember to listen to and make some dope music, and do your best to be positive, in spite of all the negativity around you. I’ll be doing the same, and starting my days looking forward to getting back home to my family and working with music. Peace, love, and light to you reader, and be blessed!