Dreams Of Incarnadine - Online Musician
Welcome
Hey! Welcome to my page. You've seen the name, so it's safe to assume you know where you are. Here is where I can explain myself in as much detail as I want.I figured this was better than just making an entire website since I'm not at the stage where I would really need one. This also lets me get more down to earth without clogging my social media pages or having to box myself into the character limits on music websites.
Who I Am and What I Do
I am an IT student who is also an amateur musician. I play the guitar and the bass, have briefly dabbled with drums thanks to high school, and I make use of software synthesisers and drum programming to round my projects off. Bass is the instrument I have been playing the longest, followed by guitar, and then synth programming.I listen to quite a varied selection of music, with many artists and several styles. My personal playlist is around 240 hours long, to give you some perspective. Styles that I find myself favouring particularly above others include alternative metal, industrial metal, post-punk, and pop punk (odd mix, right?). Generally as the one creating my music, I focus on industrial/alternative rock, but I am attempting to expand my horizons and skillset.
Tools of the Trade
Prior to 2023, my setup was a laptop, FL Studio Mobile, Audacity, a cheap 40W guitar amplifier, my PJ Bass, and 7-string guitar that I didn't actually know how to play. I began with a cheap USB mic which sounded abysmal, then moved on to using a broken headset.In early 2023, I decided enough was enough and bought Ardour and some plugins, and I created my first song for Desktop PC. Until mid-September, I used a 3.5mm to 6.3mm cable plugged directly into my PC to make music. After this, I saw a Focusrite Scarlett in the window of a pawn shop and I bought it.In late October, my original PC packs in, and thanks to some savings I had accumulated, I was able to buy a slightly upgraded replacement and resumed work in early November.Disclaimer - The list below is NOT a sponsorship or endorsement. I am merely stating what I use. The entities mentioned are not in control of my writing.Guitars:
Harley Benton R-457 - My seven string.
Fender Stratocaster - Bought secondhand, my preferred six string.
Rockjam Strat Clone - A cheap guitar I bought online to attempt to fix a problem (spoiler: it did not fix the problem).Basses:
Fender PJ Bass - My original weapon of choice, gifted on my 14th birthday.
Harley Benton MB-5 - A five string bass I bought to compliment my seven string guitar.
Harley Benton RB414 - I have admittedly underutilised this, bought it to experiment and to compliment the third guitar.Software:
ML Drums - It hits hard and loud, and sounds enough like an acoustic kit that I can make metal.
MONSTER Drum - I mostly use this for the more synthetic kits, but it used to be my weapon of choice for quite some time.
Vital - It's a customisable synth. I have a love-hate relationship with it. Sometimes it's agreeable, other times it just does what it likes.
Tunefish - Used for further experimentation. This is the "wompy" synth you hear on Downtown Vultures and the chime you hear on Nostalgia and Amnesiac.
Ardour - My DAW of choice since 2023. No strings attached, and it does what I need it to do.
Get to Know my Music
Below are some of my tracks. They are embeds from soundcloud, so they may be compressed, for which I will apologise in advance.
About the Artist
This bit is basically my life story and some over-the-top technical info about issues I have encountered. You don't need to read this.I was born into a rock-oriented family. My father liked hard rock and grebo among other genres, and my mother liked most rock that was available at the time. Pair this with a substantial dose of Kerrang on weekends and you've got a recipe for an avid rock enjoyer. I grew up on the tail end of the nu metal era, so that was a genre I saw a lot of. Other than that, it was mostly re-runs of 1990s pop-punk and mid 2000s metalcore that stuck with me, with exceptions to these, of course. Rather ironically, there was a period in my pre-teens where I didn't like anything rock related, but I gradually got back into it after re-discovering a love for Muse. From there, I expanded my horizons to punk, post-hardcore, a small helping of death metal, an overwhelmingly large helping of alternative metal, and some niche genres like electronicore (funnily enough, one song from this genre always popped up on TV when I was a child).When approaching my 14th birthday, I decided that I wanted to make music of my own. I initially sought a guitar, but after coming across a famous online bassist (you all know who) and learning the importance of other instruments, I decided to start with bass. Since punk (and punk-adjacent material) was my focus around the time of my birthday, and since most punk bassists I had seen used a P bass, I requested a P bass and was gifted the PJ. I have never been formally trained in music, nor did I study it at any level. Most of my expertise is from brute force and I only have a very basic understanding of theory. I can read tabs and I know what notes are called, but I'm not much good beyond that. After trying to learn the bassline to an A Perfect Circle song, I downtune to C# standard, and this becomes my tuning of choice for years to come until around 2023. Christmas 2021 rolls around and I, now deciding to throw myself into the deep end (I was a dumb 16 year old, Ok?), requested a seven string guitar. I get it, immediately violate all common sense by uptuning it, and write some very basic songs. While in my final year of high school, our music room finally opens up due to a new teacher, and I, along with 4 other people, become a frequent member during break periods. I dabbled with everything that was in the room; guitar, bass, drums, physical keyboards, xylophones, even a bongo, but my affinity lay with the stringed instruments.As 2023 rolls around, I experiment with other tunings, eventually settling on drop A for a while.Realising that there are some limitations to the seven string, namely certain tunings I can't use, I seek out a six string guitar and find my strat listed on eBay. I purchase it, and almost immediately fell in love with it (not in that way, before you call me weird). From there, I slowly build up my instrument collection using money from major events like birthdays and carefully selecting budget/second hand options.In late 2023, I notice that some of my guitar recordings have artefacts, and upon testing, I realise that most of my instruments have gone microphonic. Luckily I have never dealt with the squealing associated with this but this severely limited what I could do. Most of what sounds good to you involves heavy tweaking such as cutting silences, using volume automation and filtering to mitigate unwanted sounds. This meant that long fade-outs and sustains were harder to do because they could pick up noise that was completely unwanted and useless. Thankfully, I have gotten wise to this issue and build my works around it to minimise its impact. Soon I hope to learn soldering and to pot my pickups so they stop.While in college, I get bored one day and through some mindless wikipedia clicks, I find industrial metal. Listening to the likes of Pitchshifter and Godflesh, I quickly come to appreciate the industrial scene and influence. Here I also broaden my tastes further, getting into post-punk and post-punk revival through Killing Joke and Interpol respectively, and rediscovering grebo. Here I discover some bands that blow my mind, like PWEI and Ned's Atomic Dustbin. This new expansion of my musical interests comes to influence my works. Recently, I have also been getting into The Cure. Who knows what's next? I could start incorporating goth rock into my compositions.Anyway, that was a ramble, but if you found it interesting, I'm glad.