Read part one first.
Despite recording myself almost every day, I felt great anxiety around recording myself play or sing or make music. And I certainly wouldn’t share it, or at least, not often. And when I did, it was meticulously controlled: I’d obsess and worry over and about how it and I sounded.
I wanted to make a tool that would “fix” me. The goal of the tool was to make me record and share music more freely. Arroost was always supposed to change me.
Even so, I didn’t expect it to make the changes that it did.
Shane Crowley wrote about his experience of trying arroost and now it’s my turn.
The only way to make sound in arroost is by recording your own sounds. Or at least, that’s the only way I personally know how to do it. I’ve seen other people figure out ways to get around that but I don’t know how.
This means I’m forced to record myself. There’s no way round it for me.
And I can’t record it outside of arroost, even. No, I can’t import it. I have to record it there and then, with no editing or touching up or cleaning or polishing or whatever.
I’m forced to hear what I really sound like on my crappy microphone, which is pretty crappy, and not because of the microphone.
I recorded sounds from my baritone ukulele, and claps and taps, and a lot of my voice. To make music with arroost, this is what I had to work with.
I also looked to my surroundings to look for sounds, like objects to hit or shake or scratch. Maybe there was something on my table, or maybe I could use the table itself. Either way, I was pushed to invent new instruments, because otherwise I had nothing. I was starting from scratch every time I—
This forced invention got me to think more carefully about the sounds that I wanted. I wasn’t just doing the— I didn’t have all the instruments I needed, so I had to be pragmatic: I had to think and feel deeply about the nature / quality of the sounds that I was reaching for, seeing the sounds for what they were, separating them from any idea of what my music should sound like, or how an instrument was supposed to be used.
Before that point, I would always worry if I was playing an instrument “right” or not / if I was singing “right” or not: As if there was a “right” way to make sound. But there’s not, and arroost forced me through that.
I hope that makes sense. I was inventing / discovering sounds from scratch, truly considering what I wanted, rather than anything else, because— With arroost I didn’t have the luxury of doing things the “right” way and I gave away most of my clothes to the charity shop because they didn’t fit me anymore.
Of course, I recorded my voice a lot.
I think it’s quite common for people to be self-conscious about their voice, especially people who are transitioning, which happens to be everyone.
Certainly, hearing your voice back can be an uncomfortable experience. However, I found that the pitch shifting feature of arroost served as a comical ice breaker— made me laugh at my own voice to lighten the mood. The pitch shifted versions of my voice sounded so bad that the normal versions began to not sound so bad anymore.
I became used to— desensitised to hearing recordings of my voice.
I learned— I got used to hearing my own voice, again and again, repeated in cycles, and it wasn’t so bad in the end. The absurdity of hearing myself say the same pitch shifted phrase again and again in a loop cracked me up / broke me down.
I stopped hearing my own voice as my voice, and I started hearing it as any other sound that I recorded into arroost: Just another sound that I had some control over but not in totality, with limited recording quality— With limited recording quality, I could only influence—
Just like with any other sound, I felt the freedom to modify my own voice and explore what kinds of sounds I could make with it. I stopped thinking about what it should sound like, and instead I worked towards what I wanted it to be, to the best of my ability.
I’m telling you the truth. Making music in arroost is so far removed from “normal” practices that I felt free to go my own way with it. I wasn’t worried about my vocals coming out “weird”. If my vocals came out “weird”, then it was because I was using a “weird” tool: Arroost. It was nothing to do with me. I could pass on the blame. That’s what I told myself and I started getting madame’d on the phone.
I used arroost every day while I was building it. I’d start most coding sessions with twenty to thirty minutes of use. And on days when I didn’t work on it, I’d find the time for a quick arroost session, usually after my commute home.
It was fun trying out different sounds and instruments in it. I have a hearty collection of “toy” instruments like a stylophone and otomatone and more and it always surprised me how they would come out inside arroost.
I think— When you do something every day, it changes how you think. I noticed my—
During this time, I didn’t stop playing my— I continued playing my baritone ukulele too, and making music in other ways. And I noticed that my non-arroost music started to change, to become more like the music I made in arroost.
In arroost, it’s hard to make your music sound as if it’s in time with itself. Everything sounds polyrhythmic or polymetered or both (I always get them mixed up).
It’s hard to make phrases sync up with each other so interesting overlapping patterns form without you even trying.
Its hard to make music that follows a traditional bar structure. I couldn’t tell you what time signature my arroost music was in. I couldn’t even tell you when a cycle started or ended because it didn’t work like that at all.
It’s really hard to line up the individual sounds themselves. When you hit record, it doesn’t start recording straight away. It waits for the next beat because every part of arroost is part of the same sloppy simulation (even the microphone part).
Everything can be programmed by arroost itself as long as the graph stays the same shape. But who cares? Why should we care if arroost is programmable or not? Well… It’s important because it means that nothing is free from arroost’s sloppiness. It’s all part of the simulation / the physics / the—
If you want to make a drum beat hit the beat, well— You can’t. Or it’s very difficult and it involves a lot of luck. Yes, you can adjust the timing of sounds to make them happen earlier or later, but you don’t get any feedback while you do this, visually or otherwise.
Arroost tells you to LET GO of lining things up perfectly by making it near impossible.
Arroost steered me towards making music that was more ambient and arhythmic / lacking rhythm, pace, or any kind of beat.
The focus was on the sounds / overlapping sounds, or how they interacted or didn’t. I enjoyed making songs that sounded like they crawled forwards with ten legs all stepping at different speeds
The songs could crawl forwards with ten legs, or they could flutter about, or they could pound pound pound out of time, or they could be twins, with two competing storylines and I had to stop using the men’s toilet.
Arroost crashed often. This was not intentional.
However, it did shape my experience of using it. It meant that any bit of code at any moment could die and disappear forever.
There is no way to export or save or share arroost code, other than recording a video or audio snippet. There’s no way for me to give someone else my arroost program.
For me, this put the emphasis onto the experience of using arroost, rather than creating some artifact from it. The goal became to be present / in the moment while using arroost: To enjoy it while it lasted.
For me, this firmly shaped arroost as something to “do” rather than something to “have done”.
Just like transition. You don’t “come out” and then transition and then it’s done. It’s not an end goal to get to. It’s a continual process that you have to continually do time and time again.
Creating music puts you in a vulnerable position. There’s always the chance that it comes out “bad” and you seem “bad” or get ridiculed, just like on—
Shame is embedded into our culture. There’s not much difference between the classroom bully calling you a faggot for being too camp, and Simon Cowell mocking your singing on TV. We need to kill both of these practices.
The killing of these practices is more widely known as “normalising sharing scrappy fiddles”.
I will come out time and time again: out of the closet and out of my shell. I know that being brave / expressing myself is not a one time thing. I don’t do it and then it’s done. “Being me” means consistently reaffirming who I am or what I’m about, and not just when it’s easy, but especially when it’s hard. This is what it means to be open: To make yourself vulnerable: To leave your weak spots open.
With arroost—
Arroost changed me because it made me start coming out of my shell with music, and I haven’t stopped. I care less and less about the rules! I now know that I don’t need rhythm or timing or a beat. There’s no “right” way to make music or sounds. And scales aren’t real! Notes don’t matter. I make the sounds that I want! I do what I want! And I’ll keep coming out again and again to make that real!
Some people don’t like it!
When I first shared arroost, some people were rude about the music I made. Well, fuck those people! Fuck you! I didn’t do it for you! I did it for me and I’ll never stop coming out in all ways!
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