Theory of Learning

Learning is an open ended word. Some people define it as the acquisition of knowledge from experience.  I believe that the definition of learning is dynamic because the process of learning itself is dynamic. Most people would probably agree that learning is essentially the modification of old thoughts or the integration of new thoughts. I'm interested in the phenomenon of static experiences and variable learning. There exists a disconnect between what someone experiences and what they learn from the experience. You could describe two synonymous experiences as being different only because what is learned from the two experiences is different. This would suggest that how you experience reality affects what you learn from reality. Because reality is a comprehensive experience the best understanding of reality would also be comprehensive. Because of this, my strategy for the future is to alter the way I experience things in hope that it will further my learning.

Problems with sleep

Although I suppose this has very little to do with my creative learning process it does affect me and I thought I would post something about it. Sometimes I have particular trouble falling asleep because my mind seems to be racing. When I close my mind its as if lots of strings of ideas and visualizations just come streaming through. Sometimes the images are crystal clear sometimes they are not. Sometimes the thought is more of a feeling or more of a concept. Its during these extreme feelings of mania that I really can't control my mind at all though. What was even stranger is that when I finally did fall asleep I had an extremely vivid dream that took me by surprise. In the dream I went from being extremely comfortable and happy to extremely distressed in a matter of seconds. Its sort of weird how it happened but I was in this room playing with some cats and I was very happy and then well my cousin came over to me and smelled my hair. In my mind I knew it was my cousin but his face didn't actually resemble my cousins at all. After he smelled my hair he tried to lick it sort of like a dog(this is where it starts to make even less sense). I didn't want him to lick my head so I sort of pushed him away and told him gently not to. It was at this moment that my cousin dogman turned around and sort of fled because he felt bad or something. I was with this guy I know at the time also, someone who has been stressing me out recently (its a long story and one not worth really illuminating). After my cousin dogman seemed hurt I tried to console him but I only make him feel worse. This is when he starts to run away and this guy who was with me tries to stop him from leaving for the same reason I did(to make the dogman understand he didn't do anything wrong and shouldn't feel bad). This only freaks the dogman out even more until he is struggling and pretty much being held down. Its at this point that I really start to empathize with the dog and everything emotionally flips. The thing about empathy is that if its really working right you pretty much become another person for a bit and this is what happened to me at the end of the dream. I was utterly terrified and emotionally experiencing the dog's state yet I was looking at the dog from an outsiders perspective. Whats weird is that a lot of things that have been on my mind were part of the dream in some way or another. The guy, the dog(my roommate has this dog that is very loud), my cousin(my mom recently text-ed me that we'll be visiting them soon), and the bipolarity(something I've always struggled with).

Thoughts about reading

Recently I started utilizing a new style of reading. But what varies between one reading style and another? Do people usually have different styles of reading or do they reuse the same one they learned as a kid? I know the way I was taught to read 'worked' for a very long time. Even though my method of reading was "good enough", was there no room for improvement? I used my skill of reading everyday but never thought, should I change how I read? This was a classic mistake of first order thinking thats trapped me in lots of suboptimal habits that I still exhibit today.

The last couple weeks I tried something new and very different from my normal type of reading. I tried reading very slowly and found that part of the experience was different. It was as if the words themselves had slightly different meanings when read slowly. This is because words DO have different meanings when read slowly. A sentence is really just a data construct. It expresses ideas using vocabulary interwoven into grammatical structures. Books are composed of paragraphs, paragraphs are composed of sentences, sentences of words, and words of letters. Within every level of this system there are rules that govern the combination and order of elements. Its these rules that allow us to read and comprehend (at least a certain amount of the info) our language so efficiently. So how exactly does reading slowly change anything. Well its my belief that reading slowly not only aids in the comprehension of the sentences material, it also allows the mind to get better at reading itself. Its this recursive improvement thats so exciting about reading slowly. Because we read so often. The ability to further enhance the speed and assurance at which one comprehends sentences is a worthwhile skill to invest in.

Another interesting idea to explore is how to write for the best comprehension. So where exactly is the best resolution(the lower limit being letters and the upper limit being entire books) for a concept to reside within this system? Letters by themselves communicate basically nothing. Its only combinations of letters that actually form words. But words themselves are also ambiguous. Nouns are the only words that actually mean anything by themselves. In fact, we often use sentences to define words for further use in other sentences. This procedure emphasizes the complexity of even the simplest communication. So I would say the smallest resolution of comprehension is really a sentence.To understand an entire sentence one must read it all completely. A sentence's meaning is changed by each word in specific ways. Words like and,  but, and or, all serve as words that connect concepts within a sentence together. The words have no meaning outside of the sentence. 

Anyways, both reading quicker and reading slower offer some advantages and should both be considered for use.

Further Improvement of Learning Method

I recently read an article that highlighted some of the reasons that simply reading something doesn't really lead to the intense type of learning that I pursue. The reality is that for your mind to really learn something it needs to make mistakes and be challenged in a concrete sort of way. This is whats so great about subjects that implement instant feedback. Because of this I've decided to reassess my method for improving. Although reading is important to learning, immediate integration of the concept is more important. Since what I want to be good at is designing games, writing music and writing creative sci-fi stories I have lots of opportunities to explore immediate integration.

I also have a great amount of time to try implementing this technique in the next week which I have off from school. Ill try and implement it sooner rather then later although this will mean my focus will be completely breadth-wise.

My new approach to learning and assimilating techniques/knowledge from these different activities should heavily emphasize some sort of independent integrative techniques. Potentially the most revealing thing is that my main focus should be activities that actually integrate all of these tasks together. Write a short story in sic-fi about some concept/philosophy I've been thinking about. Write a song that goes with the short story. Make a game that incorporates the sci-fi story at least in a very weak way and incorporates the music in a much more obvious way. This way I would be furthering everything I should be all at once. The problem with this method is its hard to know when you should create rather then learn something new.

So the general formula seems to be to loop: Read--> plan bundle-->execute bundle


The bundle here consists of the tri-fecta of activities being writing music, writing code, and writing stories and their interrelated nature(no matter how weak).

This is my recursive plan from now on. I will try and do this as frequently as I can. This will no doubt slow my reading progress map while hopefully pushing my real progress map to its furthest.

Shrooms: its intense

Yesterday I had pretty much the most intense experience in my entire life. I ate some shroom powder with a bunch of my close friends. I had an incredible experience despite being basically overwhelmed. Its really hard to express so I'll do my best to highlight some of the things I remember and noticed. The first thing I'll talk about I suppose is the fact that time was an abstract meaningless construct. I didn't notice time going on at all but rather noticed that when you checked time its value changed. The other thing was that you only thought about time when you re-engeaged with it. So pretty much something you take for granted seemed to not exist. Time is one of the main things that you actually have the feeling of "experiencing" regularly but when I was tripping it was the absence of where time was that made the experience very disorienting.

In the intensest part of my trip I basically started to fell like a completely different entity then my sober self. I also viewed everything differently. The combination of both of these things made my tripping self pretty much become more and more uneasy. I felt myself incrementally become more and more anxious slipping into this maddening feeling of endless confusion.The visuals made it hard to understand things a bit but it was really the thought behind everything that destroyed me. The only way to really describe what the trip made me experience is to explain that I felt that me and my friends were not actually humans at all. We were much more like these little helpless computer programs stuck in "existence". The only way we survived was by staying together and withering the storm of endless loops. It wasn't like my friends were really experiencing the same thing as me at all. It was kind of like we were all in this rift and we would occasionally meet up in the center for a bit, consoling each other that it would be over eventually. Enslaved and trapped in existence.

 Eventually after my mind looped through this process a bunch of times and I finally came to the conclusion that I would rather sleep then continue tripping. I kept coming back to this conclusion. It was like I was in this trance/loop of de-ja vu. Like a while loop thats waiting for something to end the loop. I honestly felt like a computer processor or something. Struggling to answer a question and eventually having my entire brain and rational deconstruct or break upon itself. I felt like a computer that noticed an error in my reality I was in but couldn't actually change anything in it. It was like when a program has an infinite loop in it and realizes its only saving grace is to try and abort, self-destruct, or restart everything. An imperfect and limited consciousness, I felt that I had discovered the limit of my brain, memory, and comprehension and that I really didn't like it. Finding your limits terrifying. I felt the void where the unexplainable was more intense then before. That I was far less free then I thought I was.

I remember thinking about how....how do people learn things. How do we recall things. What makes us different from animals, or computers, or anything. We are programmed a certain way. We can learn...but what is it? How is it even working. How are we able to actually come to conclusions and why. When we make a decision why and how do we make it. Are all the options we have actually predetermined? Are we intelligent? I don't know really anymore. I never really "knew".

It seemed rather deterministic in nature emphasizing the vastly powerful, complex and dynamic world that I and my fellow humans had somehow came to be able to traverse in our own weak and infinitely fragile way. I felt like an artificial intelligence struggling with identity and unable to really reconcile it. Incredibly powerful, scary, and new. The best way to describe it was that I suddenly became part of this system (whatever it was, reality) and that I walked to the edge of everything and realized there isn't something after it. This felt very much like being a program that was either running or terminated. Awareness of what not really knowing anything felt like. I realized I was trapped in this system but that I understood nothing outside the system at all.

I realized that I use my brain everyday to "understand" things but that I don't even know how its working itself. When I eventually started to come back down out of my trip I felt the illusion of time and comprehension start to come back but I knew, that it wasn't for real. Its become even more relevant to me now that humans sustain thoughts and data somehow through time. Even though time doesn't really exist. Is intelligence really just a very elaborate database that sustains references to many different things all at once?

Reading Review

I'm posting an update on my advancement in my reading list. I've been trying to knock out a bunch of reading to get closer to my goal of freedom in winter break. I'm also thinking about adding another book to my list but who knows. The book is still being perused for content.


Books:(here is an update on my reading list)

Essential Guide to Flash Games: 420 --> 320
AdvancED ActionScript 3.0 Animation: 440 --> 340
AdvancED Game Design with Flash: 740 --> 700
Game Design AS3: 40 --> 0
Game Design Workshop: 450 -->320
ActionScript 3.0 animation: 50 --> 0

total pages = 1950--> 1600 pages left
total pages actually read = 2290 - 1600 = 610 completed

Note that this list also ignores the reading which I did before I started the challenge which was a lot also. (That would change the numbers considerably)

I've realized that my method of updating my reading progress is pretty confusing granted that I'm updating based on how many pages are left to read vs how many pages have been read from the main total. Basically The difference between the number 2290 and the current number is the amount of pages actually read.

Update

The last couple days I've been working on programming more and more independently. I mentioned last post that I would construct a task/test for myself so I think I'll shed some light on that now. The assignment I created for myself is really pretty open ended(the main reason for this is I'm still not trying to make a specific game, but rather integrate techniques/structures and programming practices to apply the tricks I've been learning). Pretty much the main point of it is to create a "game" which has multiple levels where each level exhibits different things I've learned how to do. This project is well under way and I've set up what seems to be a fairly functional framework for multiple levels and system states. The next challenge becomes trying to create complex and interesting environments in each of these levels. For me each of these levels is pretty much a great place to show some of the things I've learned how to do already/reuse code I've already written. Understand though, that reusing a lot of this code is not as easy as just copying and pasting classes in folders. This is mostly because as programs get larger and more complicated their structure actually changes a lot. This makes smaller applications tricky to integrate into larger things. In as3 having access to the stage is particularly strange when your program has many more levels then just a simple application/main class with simple support classes also. Anyways, I've been progressing well enough that I thought I should post here. I wish I was writing more music now but I'm really trying to make huge steps towards video game programming. Hopefully by this winter break I actually will be able to post a song and then mass produce a bunch more. Everyone knows that the best way to learn anything is through continuously doing it many times. Emphasis on the quantity over quality aspect here. This is exactly why I want to get back into writing music as soon as possible.
PS. I'm continuing my reading as well(its starting to take me into some really interesting directions).
I'm also going to get a whole lot of practices creating images/graphics for my game which I'm already anticipating with childlike glee!

Moving Onto Some More Complex Things

I'm entering the next stage to my own custom built education curriculum. This one should bring me much further along into game design, programming, and game programming specifically. Along the way I hope to get better at asset creation. I've been monitoring my improvement in programming but I haven't explicitly tested it yet at all which is why I may try and create some sort of bench mark test for myself to complete. The problem is that this benchmark will not replace the curriculum but rather move parallel to it. Its purpose is to aid in my assessment of myself. So basically, my job in the next few days is to complete the transition to the two new books and create a programming/video game exercise that will put everything I've learned to a test. To do this I'm going to have compile a list of everything I know how to do so I can create the best test for myself. I'll update this post later tonight with an accurate list of the objectives I'll have to cover and hopefully a specific assignment generation.

How to improve your programming skills

Programming, viewed completely,  is a system of interrelated comprehensions sustained together used to construct variable programs.  Many different things must be understood at the same time to program freely and powerfully. The first of these things is the idea that the language you program in has its own syntax and rules. Unlike written languages however these rules are not just grammatical in nature, the rules are a hybrid of mathematical and grammatical principles. Without having a firm grasp on the grammatical rules and linear progression of program execution your code will resemble a kid tinkering with toys. This concept of being able to do something without actually knowing why and how everything works allows for many many misconceptions and bad habits to be formed. This is partly whats so dangerous about programming. One of the hardest things to actually understand is how large complex problems are solved through combinations of many small solutions. It becomes even more difficult when you want to solve a problem generally thus making the solution more dynamic and less rigid. Making something more and more dynamic usually means understanding the literal relationships between things even more intimately also. Its incredible how subtly things are layered in the world. This makes coding for simulation of things in the world equally fragile and subtle.

Coding too me is made up of several different skills:
1. Understanding all of the tools your using to code (the better you understand your tools the better you'll use them)
2. Understanding the systems your coding specifically for (if you can't understand the thing your coding to being with your pretty much screwed)
3. Integrating these two comprehensions together
4. SImply put you must identify the problem and or goals of the program, visualize a solution, and then construct a solution. The more and more complex a problem becomes the harder and harder each of those steps becomes. Understand that this method barely changes but rather recursively builds upon itself.


Books:(here is an update on my reading list)

Essential Guide to Flash Games: 450 --> 420
AdvancED ActionScript 3.0 Animation: 440
AdvancED Game Design with Flash: 740
Game Design AS3: 40
Game Design Workshop: 450 -->350
ActionScript 3.0 animation: 50 --> 0

total pages = 2140 --> 1950

Music One Big Puzzle?

So I'm reading this book about game design and I came across this section that talks about puzzles. After reading this section about puzzles I realized a lot about my favorite things in life. They are puzzles! Basically I love puzzles and I sort of try to think of everything in terms puzzles. Most of my life I've been rearranging the problems around me into different puzzles. This is why I love listening and writing music soo much. I see music as a puzzling creative process that requires a well incorporated combination of many different things. These things are inherently linked to uncovering underlying processes and laws that govern music. Despite music's inherent subjectivity I still enjoy seeing what sort of things I can create and how! The only problem with me is that I assume depth to be in everything which leads to me over thinking some problems. Hopefully my partner will post some more about music!
Edit:
I was wrong depth pervades all of reality.

Thoughts Regarding Learning

So the main problem with being an autodidactic learner like myself is that your faced with many problems usually never even considered by more passive learners. The first of these is obtaining good information to begin with. This can be particularly frustrating because often when your at the beginning of learning something new you really know very little about it so its hard to assess what the quality of the material is to begin with. This can lead to learning poor solutions to things or in worst case scenarios just getting wrong information. This puts the responsibility on yourself for cross referencing knowledge  to make sure its legit. The next problem is having your learning become a jumbled mess of inconsistent knowledge. This is where you learn 50% of what you need to succeed and then just keep spamming what you know to do everything. I guess it would help if I used a specific example of what I've been learning recently which has been programming little video games in as3 using the flash IDE. So basically there are a couple different ways to make video games and  this makes it sort of easy to stick with the first methods you learn and resist all the other ways without actually understanding the advantages and disadvantages between different approaches. This problem could be mirrored by any sort of creative practice from writing music to writing novels. Basically sometimes you can get stuck into using the patterns that you understand the most rather then the best ones. Similarly to the earlier problem the only way you really get around this by yourself is being opened minded to everything regarding what you're learning and sort of piecing it together by yourself. You have to suspend a lot of concrete ideas until you get really deep into a topic. So, I'm still kind of stuck in this transitory position in programming video games. Its like I KNOW some things but I also know there are different ways to do the same things. So basically I think the best thing is to try not to reuse too much of anything until you know its here to stay. As a last note to everyone listening the project to finish all this reading/ coding has been progressing nicely. Still have a shitload of work too go.


Books:

Essential Guide to Flash Games: 520 --> 450
AdvancED ActionScript 3.0 Animation: 440
AdvancED Game Design with Flash: 740
Game Design AS3: 40
Game Design Workshop: 450 --> 425
ActionScript 3.0 animation: 100 --> 50

total pages = 2290 --> 2140

Damn, School is meh.

So, I'm at this cross roads in my life where I've realized that I basically am spread too thin... The only thing to do is drop something. Thats why I've decided I will do as little work on my classes and school as possible to give me more time to learn to program video games. Its unfortunate because I've always felt like I need to do pretty well in my classes to feel in control. The thing thats become more and more apparent to me as I grow up  and learn more about myself is that I am pretty bad at school. The structure and flow of school has always clashed with myself. I never figured out if the pace of classes was too slow or too fast also for me. I guess it sort of depended on the class specifically. Going to listen to some teacher lecture for an hour everyday is soo boring anyways. I don't know what it is. I love learning but I guess I never got engrossed in school to find it interesting. Too bad.

The 10 week AutoDidactic Challenge

So, its been quite while since I posted anything here and I figured I've give an update on my plans in the next ensuing weeks. Basically the plan as of now is to prepare for December 15th, or the first day of my Winter Break.  I have 7 weeks and 4 days until this day arrives and I plan on using every last second of it. Here is the list of books I plan to have finished reading by the end of these 7 weeks.
This list factors in parts of books I've already read which is why some book page number counts are so much lower.

Books:
Essential Guide to Flash Games: 520
AdvancED ActionScript 3.0 Animation: 440
AdvancED Game Design with Flash: 740
Game Design AS3: 40
Game Design Workshop: 450
ActionScript 3.0 animation: 100

total pages = 2290

These books were all picked by myself based on the customized education I want before I start mass producing indie games with Flash AS3.

Based on the amount I must read plus the amount of time I have available I have figured that I basically have to read 44 pages a day to reach my goal from one of these books(excluding the school responsibilities I already have and whatnot). I figure what I really need to do is push my programming skills as hard as I can to improve up until December 17th so I can embark on the REAL crazy challenge. Let me tell you the challenge during winter break now then.

So basically during the 3 weeks I have off I'm going to write a piece of music everyday and release it on a website called newgrounds. I will be making 3 video games, one for each week I have off, as well and also posting them on NewGrounds. During the next 10 weeks I'm going to occasionally post about my endeavor and its challenges and the experience as a whole.

Some Musings On Sound Design

CAUTION: RANT AHEAD

So, I do enjoy simple, conceptual sounds more often than not. Since a lot of my music is melodically driven, I tend to forego at least some of the "dressing" that is perhaps customary. While my music is usually not minimal (I suppose I'd view minimalism as an intentional and rigorous reduction of a medium to its fundamental elements) I do view some basic sounds as "sufficient" for carrying a melody or some melodic element of a phrase and hence make no further effort to add interest value to the sound itself, as that would possibly even distract from what I want the listener to focus on. In fact the melody carries itself (or should, at least).

I've posted a piece called "Tapioca" on Newgrounds just now. I've had it on my drive for a while, but only just got around to "publishing" it, which spurred automatic mental review and also general reflection. Take the guitar-ish sound from its middle section, for instance. It is basically just a monophonic pluck with some porta (made in Massive). The important details are that its pluckiness comes from an enveloped low pass filter variant (I used Scream, which is surprisingly smooth if you null the resonance), which reduces some of the high frequency content, making the pluck somewhat smoother, and the porta is a legato type, which is basically the only kind I ever use, since it allows you to shape your melody in a micro way and make it more diverse (as opposed to all-glide or no-glide). It's simple. It's functional. It incorporates the needs of my melodic considerations into its design, but nothing more (there is some more, such as reverb and some amplification stuff, but those are basically no brainers).

And that kind of approach appeals to me, because, mentally, I'm still in that stage where I often don't have the patience to engineer an entirely unique and complex sound from scratch, while also making sure it's capable of being used melodically.

If you've heard Knife Party's "Sleaze", the gated formant lead they use is a good example of a sound that relies solely on its own design to provide interest value. I shan't muse for too long about what precisely defines a melody, but I think it's relatively safe to say that "Sleaze" contains basically no melodic content in the traditional sense, and that doesn't in the least stop it from being great music, because it just has really nice structure, sound design, and it's innovative, in some respects. It's just not the sort of music I'm good at, or even capable, of producing.

I probably wouldn't mind being an electronic music guy in the 80s and/or 90s. Hell, even today's market pushes lots of software that emulates analogue sounds and whatnot. There must be some demand or interest in it, at least. But I feel like this is beside the point. Producers back then were doing the best they could with the tools available to them, and the same approach would equate to something totally different now. But, I'm emphasizing mere functionality.

But, speaking of maximum utility, Massive is such a great VST, and for more than just bass sounds, though it seems like a lot of its appeal comes from that. Or maybe there's just a lot of online content that's just like "Oh, how do I make deh Skrillex wobbles, gotta use Massive". Yeah, I've used Modern Talking... ONCE. Anyway, this is all just a stereotype. People know that Massive is dynamic.

rant.end();

The Inconsistency of Emotion

For my entire life I've been trying to learn how to control my emotional state and emotional response to circumstance and my environment. Along the way, I have experienced many things and gained some control, but I have learned mostly that intense emotions transcend most people's ability to change them. How does one who is in a euphoric state maintain it? How does one in a depressed state break out? These are all things that I never quite figured out on a whole. Emotions are sometimes so unstable while other times the complete opposite. They change for seemingly small things. This is all probably linked to my innate personality and brain chemistry to begin with, but I expect many people have trouble maintaining an emotional edge. I'm a fairly emotionally charged individual which has struggled throughout a lot of my life figuring out how to reduce the negative emotions and sustain the nicer emotions. Some things, like self-esteem, can be worked on to improve the emotional state of most life. But these tasks sometimes work in ways not completely expected. Its hard to predict emotions and control them. The method of focusing on self-esteem to regulate emotion is probably the latest development in my palette of life tools. I'll be honest though, I'm still working on trying to figure it all out. If I come up with any better ideas, I suppose I'll post them here though. Cheers!

clams.

Today, I was strolling by a seafood shop the entire perimeter of which was adorned with clam shells piled on the ground. There were probably thousands, it was like a clam graveyard. Impulsively, I thought that was pretty metal. Why don't butcher shops or burger places decorate their premises with a plethora of animal skulls and the like? It occurred to me that with PETA and Food, Inc. around (among other such influences), one rarely sees any intentional public displays that highlight the carnivorous nature of our species. As of now, I am still reluctantly ambivalent on the matter, since, admittedly, our eating habits can be somewhat gruesome at the core. I would just contend that perhaps they needn't arouse as much shame or contempt as they do in some people and institutions (not to discredit the aforementioned).

Thoughts about How to Learn

I've spent a lot of my life thinking about how to learn as fast and thoroughly as possible. In my eyes, there are a couple of different stages that are involved when learning almost any new thing. The first step to learning is assessing the challenges that face you. This usually means understanding just how difficult what you are trying to learn is and how you plan to accomplish it. This first step is often overlooked because people are impatient and want to be amazing at something too quickly. It's as if their excitement impulsively overpowers their ability to rationally attack the problem before them. Learning is not a simple or easy problem (despite the human brain making it look super easy). Planning your learning can help reduce its complexity, turning initially impossible goals into smaller manageable goals.

   The main problem with slowing learning down for most people is that they lack patience and/or foresight to stick with it. I cannot explain how important foresight is to me personally. Foresight is something everyone should spend time developing. Foresight (the way I'm using it) allows you to understand the patterns of reality enough to predict your own future. You develop your foresight from studying the beginning and end of different tasks. There comes a point where your prediction (exercising the foresight part of your brain) matches the outcome. If you're anything like me, this moment is basically an epiphany. This is the turning point where you start to think about things on a larger scale trusting your foresight and using it to construct your own reality. Foresight helps to build your confidence in the future which transfers to cool patience in the present. Start trying to think ahead of your own timeline everyday.

   With that said, I'd like to talk about a couple techniques I personally employ on a daily basis for learning. The first of these things is reading. The problem nowadays is that very few people actually read anything that isn't strictly required of them, that challenges them. Reading was one of the doors I unlocked a few years ago that knocked me off my feet. I simply couldn't believe how much control I felt I had after starting to use reading as a tool for learning. It started off small but soon grew out of control. I actually began to feel as though I had access to something much greater then myself. I felt like I could learn anything through reading alone. Although reading is a huge irreplaceable part of learning, it's not the only part of it at all. In fact, if one spent all their time reading they would have a lot of difficulty taking the words on the page and applying them to anything. This brings me to my next point. To learn something, you have to use it as immediately as you can. You cannot learn to DO anything (aside from read) from reading alone. You must become a master of applying information you have temporarily inserted in your mind from reading. The two actions of READING and DOING together become a formidable learning tool indeed.

   Open up a book and try to challenge yourself. You can't wait for someone else to challenge you for yourself. Besides, what else is there to do on the planet but solve puzzling problems?

There is something to be said about the classical musical discipline in the context of electronic music. Matters of production and sound quality aside, I do not think I've personally improved much in the realm of music making in the past couple of years. But, what does that realm consist of? Let us examine that. Music is a form of artistic expression, first of all. This expression can potentially take on the form of many things, but at the crux, it is how well it can communicate a particular feeling or impression upon someone else.

Traditionally, the musician has had a set of acceptable harmonies and complementary melodies at his disposal in order to express him/herself, as well as the set of time-period-consistent instruments for the practical element. These sets have been expanding rapidly for most of the recent century and modern times. Not only have more and more obscure harmonies and combinations of harmonies become acceptable, but more instruments and synthetic instruments have become available. The modern composer has more tools to use and conventions to draw from than any predecessor. This should not be surprising. Though there have been many shifts in the styles of music that are popular and acceptable over the centuries, this legacy is cumulative and one may draw inspiration from any and all assets that are part of it.

The sound quality of music has always been regarded as important, but until recent developments in electronic/digital music, the methods by which sound quality may have been controlled were very few. In an orchestral setting, the amount of control over sound was limited to setting the amount of instruments in each section and the volume at which they played (perhaps a slight over-simplification, but bear with me). Keep in mind that the standard orchestral setup has not significantly changed over hundreds of years, and, in fact, remains quite similar today. Electronic music, on the other hand, has transcended these particular limitations, and many more. Sound design can now be controlled on all virtually all levels, from sound and harmonic shaping, to volume and compression balancing. There are many creative decisions to make in the area of sound design, without even touching on the melody writing aspect, that will surely affect the overall impression a composition will have on listeners.

The role of classical musical discipline in electronic music should not be ignored, though, unfortunately, it often times is. I believe that much of modern electronic music lacks the foundation that is derived from understanding what makes non-electronic music good. Regardless, I still enjoy a lot of it, as it more than makes up for it through interesting or convincing sound design.

Making compelling music is part music theory, part sound design, and a whole lot of experience in both. I've been getting some experience in the latter, but not so much the former. I notice myself re-using similar melodic and harmonic patterns across songs because it's trodden ground. It is easy because there are so many other elements/variables in electronic music that distract from the core musical concept. Or do they complement it? It's a delicate balance.

Forgive the rambling nature of this commentary, dear reader. I may revisit many of these topics at a later time, perhaps when my thoughts are more organized.

Hi fellow Bloggers! So I'm planning on writing some Science Fiction short stories in the upcoming weeks, (if I get time) as well as some other things. I'm currently getting better at animating and  so I'll probably post a couple of examples in the next couple weeks also (I'm working on a logo for the gifted guys stuff!). Another thing is that I'm working on writing a whole album of music that will be free to download and access so stay tuned for lots of action is awaiting. Everything is still in the infancy of production but I figured I would give you guys some information about it anyways.

So during the summer I had this crazy idea to start this whole new project. Now I've tried doing smaller projects before and I usually find myself in way over my head but I figure nows as good time as any to aim for something bigger. This is the beginning of a new phase and stage in my own creative development. In my own experience the beginning of something is often the most exciting part of it. Anticipation is terribly undervalued by most people. Its hard to find someone who is not totally consumed by instantly gratifying themselves. Anticipation is the chocolate of the patient worker. One problem might be that anticipation really stems from imagination and belief which may actually prevent many people from reaping its benefits. Anyways, me and My friend will keep posting on this blog to keep people updated about our efforts to get this project going and the difficulties ahead.