Here’s the world map theme to this RPG I’m creating called “Apex” it’s still a long way from being finished, but I throughout the week I will post more information to flesh out the world and game. So, Stay Tuned
Here’s some Pre-Alpha play of Apex
Tag: Facebook
The Death of the Facebook Like Pages
When I first started my Facebook like page for my music, it may not have been the most popular but it had small engagements. Now, years later, it seem I can barely get Facebook to show my post to even 10% of the people who like my page unless it’s a popular meme. What happened? My theory has two premises.
The News Feed Filter
The first sign of the death of the like page was when Facebook turned the default setting of the news-feed from “Recent stories” to “Top Stories”, which filters your news feed. What happens is when you engage with someones post, Facebook sends more post from that person to your feed. Sounds good right? Well…it also works in reverse. When Facebook sends you post from someone and you don’t engage with it, post from those person slowly disappear, resulting in an echo chamber of similar/samey content. This resulted in like pages drastically losing reach and engagement because they were slowly being filtered out unintentionally. This problem is even more inflamed by like farms since they like random pages so when you post something they don’t engage causing you post to lose reach since the more people who engage with your post the more news feeds Facebook will place it in. (The Youtube Channel Veritasium explains this from a perspective of a more popular like page here)
Facebook Post Promotion System
Shortly after they changed the Facebook news feed, Facebook announced their new service. Paid Post promotion, in which you could pay Facebook to place your post prominently in people feed. This seemed fine on its own, but coupled with the news feed changes it’s a little more disingenuous. Essentially, Like pages were paying for the reach they originally got before the filter. These changes didn’t affect avid fans who would visit the like pages directly but hurt the more casual fans because it was slowly filtering it out their feed without them realizing it. Now Facebook like pages are great at engaging with loyal fans, but is counterproductive for trying to increase a new or casual fan of your page.
There’s my thoughts on the death of the Facebook Like Page. If you liked this post, check out my YouTube Channel where I post a video daily, usually a short theme I composed or the occasional tutorial. You should also check out my other post linked below my YouTube embed.
Further Reading
Audio Mixing Tutorial – Compression
Advanced Music Theory – Granular Synthesis
Lately I’ve been trying to find some deep and obscure music theory techniques and facts. Today I found this thing called “Granular Synthesis”.
When a sound designer combines two or more sounds (usually called synthesizers) to make a new sound it is called “synthesis”. Granular Synthesis takes short 1-50 millisecond samples of a sound called “Grains” and layers them on top of each other with different types of alterations to create a new sound.
I have only lightly dabbled with this technique but it’s something I may gradually add to my repertoire so below is an example I found from YouTube
Daily Music Making Challenge
For those who don’t know I make short compositions to hone my music composition skills. My dream is to make Video Game/TV/Film Music.
There’s a poll above the video embed, Let me know what you think I’d love to hear from you.I post en masse so Subscribe to get the latest piece sent directly to your YouTube feed and not miss a beat!
The Oldest Song Ever
So, After some hours of boredom I thought to myself what is the oldest song known to history. The answer is the “Hurrian Hymn”, which is circa 1400 BC from Mesopotamia.
Daily Music Making Challenge Day 30 – Adventures
After a week of taking a break to letting idea summer I’m back with day 30 – Adventures. For those who don’t know I make short compositions to hone my music composition skills. My dream is to make Video Game/TV/Film Music.
There’s a poll above the video embed, Let me know what you think I’d love to hear from you.I post en masse so Subscribe to get the latest piece sent directly to your YouTube feed and not miss a beat!
Ear Training Tips
So, you want to be a musician or a listen who want to take their music appreciation to the next level with ear training. You also want to do it as effectively as possible. Here are some tips to help you achieve that.
What is Ear Training?
The best way to describe ear training is “music theory for the ears”. It trains your ear to recognize crucial music theory elements such as intervals,chords,scales,etc.
Tips & Tricks
Here are some tips I found online and from experience.
Consistency over Quantity: They say it’s better to 15 minutes everyday for a week than cramming about 2 hours of practice into 1 day.
Variety is Key: There are a variety of types of ear training each one giving your ears a different set of skill so it’s best to cycle between them to lessen fatigue as the training progresses
Have Fun and Ignore the Score: Most ear training sites or apps keep track of your training results and scores. Ignore them! It’s fine to post up the results because I do it occasionally, but don’t take them to heart because a 90% one day cause be a 70% tomorrow. What really matters is the test itself, not the result.
Ear Training Sources
Musictheory.net has not only ear training exercises, but other music theory exercises as well.
“My Ear Trainer” is an app for Android and iOS that is an awesome ear trainer that I use. It may only do ear training,but has more test types for ear training than musictheory.net.
If the Music Industry Crashed…
After writing about the decline of the platinum album and my prediction of the future of music, I wondered what would it be like if the music industry crashed and people stopped buying music, attending concerts etc. due to over-saturation. Here is my theory.
Decline of the Record Label: I believe the biggest to be hit by the crash would be the record labels since they have the biggest stake in the industry. Labels will either close or focus their services on shows for revenue and create less CDs/Vinyls.
The Price of Physical Media will Rise: With the labels making less physical media the price of such media will rise. They may begin discontinuing content from older artists that don’t sell cause that artist physical to rise in price due scarcity (or decline in price depending on the artist’s obscurity)
The Revival of the Indie Scene: With the current vacuum created by the declining record labels this gives the independent artist a chance to fill the empty venues on the local level, but there’s one problem with that.
Artist Compensation: Due to the horrible state of sales, Label bound artist will cause a lot more than they used to book.This will translate to the ticket prices and will cause the venues to eventually lose money so they will seek lesser known independent artists, BUT the indie artist may be payed scraps based on said artist’s popularity and performance ability.
There goes my ideas about “if the music industry crashed” What do you think about them? Accurate or absurd? Leave a comment on what you think.
My Plan for 2016
Here are some plans I have for the rest of the year and upcoming year.
- Taking a break from the daily music making to let thoughts settle and will start back in a week or so.
- Working on mixing down songs for some friends.
- Writing more article and opinion pieces.
- Having more fun.
Music Creation Challenge Day 29 – Rhapsody 3
So I’ve decided do a daily music making challenge where I try to make a short 1 to 2 minute theme daily. I then create a visual version using the program Synthesia for my YouTube channel. After a day of technical difficulties here’s Today’s piece is titled “Rhapsody 3” .
There’s a poll above the video embed, Let me know what you think I’d love to hear from you. Subscribe to get the latest piece send directly to your YouTube feed.
Audio SeXXX 