A crew demolished a couple of buildings by where I work and they’re almost done cleaning up the site.
This week, I saw an excavator working and I had to get a photo of the situation because it’s kind of a great visual metaphor for some of us. Right?
It really is about perseverance. You have to get in that excavator of life, drive onto the pile of broken concrete and rebar, and clean it up. Then it’s on to the next job.
I bought a new effects box this week from Empress, out of Canada. It should be here by Christmas. I have two of their effects boxes already, but I saw another one demonstrated and realized that I must buy it because it will make my music that much better-sounding.
Then I put in an order with MyVolts for a 9 volt to USB cable to power the box. Even though MyVolts is out of Dublin, Ireland, the cable should be here by Christmas. Instead of plugging into AC, I plug everything into an 30,000 mAh USB battery bank which makes it fully portable and self-contained inside a laptop bag.
This week, I got back to making some new music, mostly “long-form ambient”. I’ll have enough for a new Aleodeology release in February 2024.
For the past few years, I try to make “Christmas style ambient” music at this time of year. Some people make Christmas cookies. I make Christmas music.
I’m also crafting more playlists based on this music on Spotify and pushing them to other major streaming services. Some of my older Christmas Ambient playlists have picked up an audience over time.
I was looking through other past Christmas-style playlists I made on Spotify and was surprised to see one from a few years ago that was doing exceptionally well. This playlist didn’t have any of my specifically-titled Christmas and holiday music in it. The playlist consisted of my regular ambient music, but geared towards the holiday time based on the title and description. That cracks me up. It was an experiment that I completely forgot about, but from the looks of things was one of my crazy ideas that has taken root with others. I’m leaving that playlist alone. Don’t get in the way of success. Do try to copy it, but with a twist.
Finally, I’m going to feature a playlist I crafted recently and posted on my Playlisting Substack called 20 Piano Instrumentals You Should Know. It’s on Apple Music, Pandora, YouTube Music, Deezer, and Tidal (and others), are the links are there. Here is the Spotify playlist: