Ok, we have what are you good at, we have what do you want to improve at... it's time to finish the trifecta of tenses and take stock of the past... what once we did not have. Things we wanted and successfully fought for.

(For the sake of our visualists, I'm not limiting it to music composition.)


------
For my part, I've recently made some big breakthroughs with more reliably being able to make pop structured vocal-centric music that passes my own sniff test. This was a long and genuinely arduous journey for me, something I desperately wanted since so much of what I listen to would qualify as some form of "pop". All my past successful forays into it always felt like dumb luck but now I feel I have some command over when it happens. It still takes like five different versions of The Chorus before I find the right one, but I used to simply never find it.

Also feel like I've made some noteworthy improvements in my instrument playing over the past month and in my singing over the past year. Parctice maeks prefect!

- I've been getting way better at writing the ideas in my head into a song, along with being able to express how I feel and think (although this also counts in general, i used to be hella dissociated before).

- Getting way better at writing expressive melodies, which is something that I struggled a lot with before. Some of my latest songs have become earworms to myself lol.

- A lot of people say that particularly my sound design tends to be one of my musical strengthens, and I can see that a lot. I feel like i use the tools at my disposal to create a very distinct sound and design certain sound palettes i want in my music.

- Learning how to master and mix better, at least kind of.
I recently bought the TDR Limiter 6 GE plugin while it was on sale, and it has been serving me as an amazing piece in some of my latest songs.
I also just been learning how to do things like EQ filtering, side-chaining in a way that actually works well, being careful about volumes in the tracks, etc.

- Figure out my "core style", which I feel like is something that I struggled to find for a long time. It turns out that it might be described as "emotional breakcore fakebit" lmao.

getting better at writing background and harmony parts! used to just slam chords down behind leads but i had finally given harmony parts their just citizenship in the land of my songs

really like how this song turned out especially: https://soundcloud.com/goluigi-chan/lightning-bug
this one was pretty alright too https://soundcloud.com/goluigi-chan/crying-cat-face-emoji

Definitely losing my fear to the N163 thanks to the traNce163 relatively recent major. I had been shying away from the expansion for almost 8 years using Famitracker.

Finally making longer chiptunes... as in 4-5 minutes rather than 1 minute songs or short loops (no 20 minute prog epics yet). This has also forced me to improve my musical structure.

Especially proud of this Summer Chip entry of mine

finally got a DJ turntable and actually performed live, which came with a two months practicing time window in June and July (also why I was more inactive here)
so now I consider myself better than before in this area!

where i'm at now is that i've gotten comfortable with enough different tools and methods that i can now integrate them confidently. this means stuff like "instead of just writing a chipped tune, incorporating that as part of a wider arrangement", or "adding vocals to many kinds of things", or "using workflows where part of the song is made somehow in one software and then brought over to another". which is a cool place to be, imo. it's like there's fresh new territory to explore. my most recent solo album Elemental Fusion

was sort of a statement to that effect, among other things!

i also think my writing is more focused than ever - for better or for worse! was listening to some very old albums of mine while traveling last week and it was interesting to see the ways that they held up. one thing i thought about was how dynamic and weird some of it was - you could call it "all over the place" but it was also pretty unique. but yeah, overall i'd say my ideas about structure are clearer and better than ever. (relatedly i, too, have made some good developments in dealing with pop song structure!)

rock climbing

I figured out how to use the n163 supersaw

I'd say in my short time here so far I've picked up a few knacks, not the least of which is SPC generation from DAW for SNES OHBs, which really helps the workflow. I've also learned better how to use and make .wav samples, which will hopefully allow me to create and work with samples better in the future.

I still have a long way to go in a lot of things, but for the first few weeks I'm rather satisfied with my progress, especially amidst a busy musical season.

Make solos that are longer than 4 patterns. My sound is also more full and realistic.