what i am doing with my life

well, Im headed back to carleton p soon. I'm bringing all my music equipment with me, but only so that I can do shows there. Someone from my school found out about [The Rap Album] and pretty much shouted it out everywhere. So yeah, I've got a following i guess? idk. Somebody told me that they were getting high and listening to it with friends, and that made me really happy because thats the kind of stuff i want people to do with my music. Idk, i'm just glad my marketing-by-not-marketing worked so well with the 18-24 year old demographic.

Because like thats the thing. I don't want my music to be discovered on the radio. I want my music to be something you stumble upon at 3am, something that your friend sends you and its only got 1000 views on youtube. Something that one guy you know really likes and you think, "idk, maybe i'll check that out." Idk, If you hear a song of mine on the radio, its gonna be a song you didn't know about and you'll wonder why you think its so good and then you'll be like "OH WAIT x^2 MADE THIS FUCK". Idk, something like that.

So yeah, the reason the "x^2 is bored" pretty much stopped was laziness, album release, and now I have to pack up my shit to send it all to college. I'm sure I will be able to make videos when I'm at college tho, even if I'm not gonna do any new song writing. But i've got some stuff in the works. I've been thinkin about new songs for sure. Idk if i'm gonna try to workshop material that i made two years ago and release it anymore tho (even tho i got a fuckload of material I could do that with), cause thats what the rap album was and idk if i was happy with the way it turned out. I wanna make new shit now. Idk, maybe you will get the rest of 2012-2013 x^2 at some point. I've been listening to alot of twinklecore recently. Its gonna be rad.

Anyway, see ya'll later! Keep it real, and remember to send an email to theneedledrop.wnpr@gmail.org and tell him to review my album. See you in a couple months, maybe even sooner! Love ya to death!

THE RAP ALBUM IS REAL

told ya.

Got my meds back

So that was fun, but not that fun. I'm glad i have my medication now because that means I can actually do things. In fact I've basically finished 2 more tracks on the rap album. So that's pretty cool. I forgot what not taking my meds for so long feels like, and I don't know why I used to think it was "fun". In all honesty, it's kind of like tripping acid. My brain moves a mile a minute and thinking is so easy but actually doing stuff is hard AF and interacting with people is a bit weird and like everything is just really overwhelming. Idk, its not that fun. I mean it is fun, but its not like, good. Idk. It's weird. It's not healthy probably.

The good news is that a thought alot about the game I'm making. Not Varg (speaking of which i just played through the demo and it says it would be out summer of 2013 WOW i fucked that up), but another game. It's called "My 8-bit Existential Fantasy" and is basically a ripoff of Yume Nikki. It's gonna be weird AF and creepy as hell. I'm also gonna have fun designing all the music which is gonna be balls weird. Like all sorts of weird mangled and bizarre loops and all sorts of disorienting things that are bound to cause cognitive dissonance. It'll be a grand old time. Idk when thats gonna happen though.

For now, I need to concentrate on finishing the rap album. That shit has been unreleased for way to long and it makes me sad. I have like 4 of these albums planned out in my head and its like most of them don't really need any new songs (except for one). but like I've got the schematic of all of them laid out. I just need to stop being lazy and actually make them happen.

I feel really bad about wasting my break, but there wasn't much I could do about it. Like, Just coding the midi sequencer was alot of effort, and the only reason I was able to finish it was becuase i could copy alot of code from other projects. Idk, ADHD is real man.

Anyway, hopefully classes wont be to tough this term and I can still make some music. I'm gonna do a ton of live shows this term, thats for sure. idk if i'm gonna do another radio show, but like, i'm gonna perform a bunch. so if you're in minnesota, check it out.

I'm gonna go to bed.
             

Home sweet home...

Whaddup guys. I am back in maryland for now. I would've posted sooner but some shit went down and it was sad shit. It was inevitable shit, but i wish we could've postponed it for a little bit longer. Oh well.

Anyway, I'm back to making music all the time, or at least as much as I can. The funny thing is that I left all my synths and recording stuff at college, so i can only do things that require FL for now. Stuff requiring synths and vocals will have to wait. I do have my guitar though, so maybe you will all get some really weird whatever for christmas.

The thing is that I had a big album planned, because there was a particular thing going on in my life. But that thing went to shit recently. However, I still have a bunch of songs that I made or had started to make that were about/dedicated to that thing that was happening. They are all quality jams, so it would be a waste not to release/finish them, but its a bit weird now, because the planned story arc isn't real anymore. It used to have some real part. Now it's purely imaginary.

Anyway, check the bandcamp for new singles and shit. Also possibly new stuff on the youtube page. Who knows. Only time will tell.

Peace.

So college is cool

That's where I have been all this time. I really really really like it. Thank you Carleton. I had some free time so I'd figure Id update this because I haven't. The music has been put on hold for a bit, mainly because I haven't found the time to just kind of sit down and compose stuff. There's always something to do. I've also just been trying to put a band together and that takes time. I haven't really adjusted to the new environment enough to record yet, so most of my musical output has taken the form of improvised jamming, which I've been doing via my radio show at Krlx.org. It's from 4am to 6am Minnesota time. Check it out.

I have grown kind of tired of recording. I like the instantaneous-ness of improvisation. Everything you do is immediately laid out. At the same time, I really appreciate the precision of recording. It's just nice. Making songs on my laptop is also kind of hard because I'm not as used to FL 10 as I am to FL 8. I just like the way FL 8 works. I am familiar with it.  

Anyway, you all should tune into my radio show if you really wanna know what I am thinking about. Maybe I'll have a new song at some point, but I just don't think I'll find the time for it. IDK. We will see what happens.

See ya later!

I might be taking a break from music for a while

Idk, I just haven't been feeling it recently. I'll try to finish mastering the new EP for August. I still havent got a new microphone shockmount yet so I can't really do any serious recording. I don't think the rap album is gonna be finished in time. Writing lyrics is so hard for me even when it's not rapping and when it is rapping it's even harder. I feel like I don't have any conceptual basis for my music right now, you know? Everything is just kind of "oh i bet this is cool" or i feel like I'm trying to hard. There's no greater point anymore, you know?

I'm thinking of doing stand up. I've been writing some material and I'm gonna try to find a comedy club open mic and preform some of it. I also might just record me telling the jokes in my room and upload that to youtube or something. I need to get some press.

Idk, it's a weird time. I feel like I've reached some pinnacle because my high school self has everything it wanted, and I haven't evolved enough to want something new. I have nothing to strive for, and I'm not dead yet. I've plateaued.

I'm not gonna try to force music out of me. If I wanna make a song I'll make it, but I'm not gonna lie to myself by making something I don't want to. I hope you all can understand that.

But I don't have like any fans so what the hell who cares.

Despite you're best efforts I am still alive

Hey guys, just wanted to give you a quick update on whats going on.

I am alive, and just graduated high school. Woop de fuckin doo, i know, but this means that now music can really take a top priority for a while. There's gonna be alot of content this summer, both music and otherwise., and it will all be really cool.

First off i'm working on a new EP thats gonna come out around the beginning of july and be all shoegaze. Then there is gonna be an album coming out around august. Or at least I think there will be. Idk. Rapping is hard.

I'm gonna try to put new videos on the youtube atleast every week, so thats something to look forward too as well.

Maybe I'll even try to get a gig. The last one went pretty okay.

Why you should go see Spring Breakers

So I figure the college admission counselors have already made their decision by now, Hence I'm resuming the blog. I hope everyone enjoyed the new ep that came out on Monday. The summer LP is well on its way, and if you all are super lucky you may even get a new ep in april (been listening to some MBV). Honestly this time of year is kind of the worst because I have so many new ideas but i still haven't finished the summer LP so i have to focus on that. This is what happened with TYGFAC last year. In all honesty the last track wasn't finished until about a day before if was put up. Not to mention theres this other LP i'm working on too and it's like Oh my god brain hush I need to rap.

But anyway, enough about me, I'm here to talk about why Spring Breakers is really good and why you should do see it. Thanks to it's obnoxiously competent VICE marketing campaign, it sold itself too well as a stupid movie and now no one is going to see it. This is a shame because the movie is not at all stupid and really good. Harmony Korine is a seriously talented director and he deserves all your money and since I pirated Julian Donkey Boy I was more then happy to give him my money for this.

First off, the movie is shot excellently. It looks really, really nice. There's all these flashing lights and upside down camera angles and it's honestly really beautiful. Secondly, despite being all big and mainstream, it is a still a Harmony Korine movie. He didn't sell out, he didn't water himself down, nothing like that. It's just the right amount of Harmony Korine weirdness to make this movie fuck with people in just the right way. When I went to see it there was like 2 people in the theater and that made me sad because seriously this is not at all a stupid movie and really needs to trip everyone's nut. Had I not already known who Harmony Korine was, my head would've exploded. It's a classic Harmony Korine subversion that manages to deconstruct your expectations without being self referential and pretentious. It manages to blow your mind, but instead of going "oooh look at that i just blew your mind" it just lets your mind actually get blown. It's brilliant.

So to all the smart people: this is a stunning movie from a very talented director who is gonna kick your mind in the ass.
To all the dumb people: Holy shit this movie has so many tits and beer and dubstep holy fuck I got so hard in the theater go see it bro!

Go see this fucking movie.

1500 hits to the website

we are just chuggin along aren't we. It's not that much, tbh, but its a really nice and rounded out number.

I wonder when I will get 3145 views. Maybe you can help?

new song + whats up everybody

Made a new song. Go check it out in the singles section. It is very aphex twin inspured becuase thats all i was listening to this morning while I did my homework. then I finished my homework and I was like "I wanna make a song" so i made one and it sounds like Aphex twin. It isn't that surprising.

It's also mastered differently then most of my stuff is. Most of my just has a limiter on the master and that's that. But with this one, I subtracted 8.0 dB from all the channels and then set the limiter gain to 8.0 dB and the ceiling to 0.0 dB. This is essentially zero gain, but it still sounds louder than it would have if we had just set the limiter gain to zero (or at least that's what my ears are telling me). Now, not only do we preserve some of the dynamic range, but we also get the loudness. It also feels a bit more open and spacious, because all the signals aren't mushed together.

Mastering is surprisingly difficult. Most of the tracks on TYGFAC don't have limiters on them at all because I didn't really know what it was. All I noticed was that when I wanted to have a bunch of instruments the limiter made everything really quiet and when I had only one or two instruments it made those super loud (listen to Industrial Horror Funk, near the end, you'll see what I mean). I also didn't know that going beyond 0 dB was bad, and I couldn't hear any distortion through my headphones. On the other hand, when I listened to some of the tracks on my old speakers that my grampa gave me, everything sounded really shitty. There's wasn't straight up distortion, but it all sounded really muddy and murky. Essentially when I listen to it on anything other then my beats headphones it sounds really bad. On the other hand none of my friends seem to notice anything wrong with it, so who knows. Maybe these speakers are just shitty.

I'm thinking of remastering all the songs on TYGFAC and then putting out a cd. I mostly wanna do it because that album cover is too fucking good to not ever see a physical existence. I don't know when I'll do it but I will at some point, and it will be so cool.

Anyway, that's whats up with me. Go download the new song.

Look how close the donate button is to your mouse

It is surprisingly close now. Only the most recent post is available to look at and there isn't an archive which is maybe not the best idea thing but I really like the fact that the donate button is so close because now people might actually be able to see it and only when they see it can they click it and give me all of their money.

I had a weird dream. I went to a Dubstep concert and some nerdy kid I know was blowing up a playground. It was kinda lame and underwhelming.

In other dubstep news, my MLP dubstep video has reached nearly 1000 views, with 661 of the views coming from the United states. That is a pretty clear act of god in my opinion, and definitely shows you wear the internet's priorities are. 931 views, it is my most viewed video of all time. Other interesting statistics include that 90 percent of people stop watching the video after the first minute, and the video is most popular with men aged over 65.

Anyway I'm still stuck in the midwest so no new content but you can watch this video of me playing "Big Buck Hunter". It's pretty friggin sexy and I get every bitches. I didn't want to talk loud though because I thought everyone on the boat would look at me weird. But after they saw my impressive Bison hunting skills they did all look at me but instead of laughing at me they said "Look at his powerful erection" and I was like "thank you it is very powerful" and then every girl sucked my dick and I am not lying at all.

Blogging is hard when you can't think of anything to blog about.

reddit is the best place ever made

only on reddit would a term like br/opiates exist. I love the opiates subreddit. also r/trees is good to.

but this one is BY FAR the greatest.

I made a movie

I've been watching some movies lately. There was no doubt I would make one at some point. And I did make it. You can watch it here. It's an alright movie if i do say so myself.

I'm gonna submit it to the your film festival thing thats happening. That way i can get some publicity.

Ironically there is not an x^2 song in the movie. There is music that I worked on with someone. You can check out that side project here.

Speaking of movies, that harmony korine motherfucker. He makes some good ass films. Traumatizing, but good.

BANDCAMP

I got a bandcamp. From now on, the albums will be hosted there, and you can download them there (the singles will still be on mediafire). All the albums are right now at name your own price, and if you wanna enter zero you can, but hopefully I'll be able to trick a few people who can't read into giving me money.

The bandcamp is here. As of right now, only Abestos and Weakly Closed (because those are the ones I like best) are up there, but the rest will be up by the end of the day hopefully.

WHO IS PSYCHED FOR DESERT BUS???

I AM PSYCHED FOR DESERT BUS!!! Man this is about to be the most Canadian thing about Canada. Like More then maple syrup. A bunch of funny Canadians (that also happened to be members of the famed sketched comedy group loading ready run) will play the world's most boring video game Desert Bus until people stop giving them money, and then donate all that money to charity. And of course, they stream their pain and suffering live over the internet, so that you can laugh. But they also do all sorts of cool things like have auctions, giveaways, and celebrity guests. They also let YOU, THE VIEWER, ask them to do silly thigns in exchange for a donation. It's so awesome.

It's gonna be starting this Friday, November 18th, 6:00 PM PST (that's 9:00 PM EST) and its gonna be the best thing to happen since the universe was created. You can go to http://desertbus.org to find out more and stay posted.

ERROR: I MESSED SOMETHING UP

So guys and girls, because I am a genius, the song "661" on the album prime numbers is not actually the version of the song that I wanted you all to hear, but is actually a work in progress. As such, I have reuploaded the Prime numbers .rar file with the new version and have included a link beneath it that allows people to do download just the new version of 661.

If you downloaded Prime Numbers before today (aka 7/11/2011) you do not have the correct version of 661 and should click this link now.

I have a sound cloud

http://soundcloud.com/xsquared