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Belthagor
Writer, Musician, and Animator of simple-drawn things.

Age 33, Male

In between colleges

New York

Joined on 6/25/12

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Belthagor's News

Posted by Belthagor - December 6th, 2015


I am glad you decided to fill out this interview: stratkat (of Daydream Anatomy) and let us know more about yourself.
Well I'm 25,  a male, total nerd. Generally a mixed view of myself as a person, I have good intentions, but I'm a recovering alcoholic.  Like I was a real alcoholic, wake up to sleep, if I didn't have it I'd be physically sick.  I have generalized anxiety and adhd, both would be at their extremes during withdraws, so I did some not so great things to get my fix.  I got medically detoxed, and went rehab for 28 because of my habit, but in 6 months (may 8th 2015, to date this) I haven't went back to liquor.

On a much lighter note, I'm a total gamer and anime weeb, check out stratkat on myanimelist to see my list of watched shows, it's quite a long list.  Steam name's stratkat too if you wanna see my games and how much time I spend on my pc playing games alone. PSN is stratkat.  You get the idea, you see stratkat, 7/10 times it's me. I'm starting to get more serious work with video-games, and have made music for vidya and animu abridged series.  I play the occasional roleplaying game, DnD 3.5 campaign going right now, got my own full set of overpriced dice.  I love certain western (english) cartoons, adventure time (gone downhill since the lich arc imo) rick and morty, gravity falls, and quite few more, too many to name.  In games I recently beat the Bloodborne dlc and am trying to beat all of payday 2's heists on deathwish difficulty.  Souls games and indie games (especially if they're pixelated) are my favorites, even if the pixel indie market is saturated.  Sometimes I stream/record lets plays with my friend Karzie, you can find his channel searching stratkat and karzie.

 

How did you make up your username?
I saw it on a Fender guitar shirt when I was 14, luckily I don't regret it, and it's not copyrighted or trademarked by fender, in music strat works for it's association the stratocaster guitar, it's the same first four letters of a famous luthiers (Stradivari,) online in games it's short for strategy, there's stratosphere, I've found a lot of meaning in that name.   Daydream Anatomy just sounded cool to me, with ADHD I daydreamed a lot, and the name shortened to DDA is ADD backwards.

 

When did you start making music, how did it happen?
When I was 14 I picked up guitar, there was always one in the house, but this is when I decided to pick it up and toy around enough until my father who's a guitar player could teach me. Honestly I picked it up at first because I was awkward, and thought it'd get girls to notice me, learned later that not many non-musicians really think it's all that cool.  After about a year I had to self teach myself, and learn music theory on my own.  I wrote my first original songs when me and some local kids formed a metal band in 2006, we played one live show, it was an amazing experience, learned a lot.  Around 2008 I tried FL studio, being in a rural area, I'd run out of musicians to form metal bands with, and seeing kids on newgrounds make music on their own (dj nate, f777, etc. Trance Crafter was a HUGE influence for a long time,) made me really think that I could figure it out if I tried.  I adopted the name Daydream Anatomy in 2010 and decided I wanted to try to reach out to an audience and make a living, or at least supplement income from making music in a DAW.

 

Is there a certain message you want to give your audience in your works?
It's cool to be a nerd.  Also I leave up all my very early work to show people how bad I was when I started, on Newgrounds you can find stuff from 2008 and maybe earlier.  No shame.  I think that's a good message, that, well pretty much everyone, comes out and isn't amazing at making music when they start out.  But many artists change their name or delete their old work out of embarrassment.  I have no shame in my early attempts at creating music.

 

Would you have any difficulty composing a certain type of music or genre?
Dubstep's given me quite the headache before, I can't do any of the newer stuff in that style.  Bluegrass and some folk stuff would also be hard to do, not only because of my medium but also because I'm not well practiced in either.  Specific scales are hard for me to follow, the non-major ones, it takes a lot of focus for me to follow something like say the arabic scale, or asian scales.  I've been practicing orchestral music, people say I'm getting better, but I'd love nicer sound banks.

 

What programs/instruments/other things do you use?
FL studio, 8, don't want to upgrade, did to 9, went back.  I play guitar, I currently don't own one, but I had a les paul quilt top, the headstock snapped off, instead of paying to have it repaired I sold it for booze money, don't get addicted to drugs if you like having gear.  Komplete 8, z3ta+, sytrus, kontakt with NI banks, shreddageX, fmsynth2601, psg, and sylenth1 are my main vsts.

 

Do you see music as a career?
It can be, but to make a living it's much easier to be as diverse as possible if you want to work for other people, getting famous making what you want to make is harder.  You can like everything you make, but sometimes clients will want you to dive into a genre you normally wouldn't listen too, but you can still make something you like personally.  Networking is also very important, in my experience connecting with artists, promoters, and content creators is as easy as 1-3 emails, remember sometimes persistence is seen as dedication, and if it's annoying, who cares, it's just a few emails, some miss them, some will respond just to get you to stop, but you'll still get them to notice you.  I'm not near a living wage with music, but I wasn't making a living wage washing dishes either.  It's becoming easier to do your own thing with things like youtube fanfunding, and patreon.

 

Are you working on anything right now? Tell us about it.
A Megaman X fangame, it's challenging emulating snes sound, but it's fun. The beta feels really good, it's on an original engine, not one ripped from a game, so it's awesome, even though it's bare bones art and design wise. It was one of my favorite games as a child.  I can't say much more than that.  There's a few paying videogame projects in the pipeline that I'm hoping work out.  I also made 1 or 2 tracks that might show up in yandere simulator at some point, but that game's a musician free for all right now, so who knows.
I'm saving most of my originals for game stuff, but I release a lot of remixes to fans, I try to upload one to youtube at least once a week.  I was working on a project I didn't know if I was gonna call clockwork calamity or boss blitz, but the project files were lost and I went on hiatus for a while since my hard drive was trashed, as well as my pc.  I'm close to getting my studio to it's former glory.  The last album I was very proud of was Cloud kicker, and that came out 3 years ago, losing those projects hurt my motivation for a long time.  Now I'm too busy using originals for projects, but those will come out as OST soundtracks eventually.

 

Other comments? (This section is for anything else you would want to write)
Check out my music at
bandcamp: http://daydreamanatomy.bandcamp.com
youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCujJwknig-p65ZP_voZYzzw
soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/daydream_anatomy
picarto (somtimes make music live) https://picarto.tv/DaydreamAnatomy
Check me out on spotify, iTunes, and any other major music outlets too.


Posted by Belthagor - December 6th, 2015


I am glad you decided to fill out this interview CamRa, and let us know more about yourself.
My name is Cameron Rich, my hobbies include Gaming, YouTube, and Twitch. I am 12 (Do not worry, I'm mature). I am an aspiring musician and Pro-Gamer. Not much to talk about.
How did you make up your username?
Well, It originated from my GD Username. CamRa had a lot of factors in it, Cam came from my real name, Cameron. Everyone would associate me with a Camera because I am good with tech. The reason it's CamRa and not CameRa is because everyone always misspelled my name, thinking it was spelled Camron.
When did you start making music, how did it happen?
 Well.... I used to be a dumper. It was a noobish thing to do, but now I am legit.
Is there a certain message you want to give your audience in your works?
 Well, most of my songs are gonna be video game/dubstep. I am a gamer. Yeah.
Would you have any difficulty composing a certain type of music or genre?
 Yes, actually. I loathe pop songs, and only listen to EDM.
What programs/instruments/other things do you use?
 I use FL studio (demo) and GarageBand.
Do you see music as a career?
 Honestly, kinda. Ironically, I think youtube is a career, but music isn't much of a career in my mind.
Are you working on anything right now? Tell us about it.
 Just remixes and covers and whatnot. Nothing special really.
Other comments? (This section is for anything else you would want to write)
Eh, not much.


Posted by Belthagor - December 6th, 2015


All musicians are welcome to answer.
Questions found here: http://justpaste.it/phr0

 

First up: TroisNyx

I am glad you decided to fill out this interview, Troisnyx, and let us know more about yourself.
Alright, where shall I begin…
Uh, I’m 24, engaged to Seán (who is also on NG but mainly because I forced him to be), and generally downright weird. With a capital W. And everything else besides. In size 300 Comic Sans font with loads of exclamation marks and 1s. In 1998-style WordArt.
But in all seriousness: I grew up in Kuala Lumpur, and as I grew up, I wrote articles criticising the Malaysian authorities. I came to Britain to study law at my parents’ behest, and the situation where I grew up worsened. It’s now no longer safe for me to return home. So, I am an asylum seeker. Some may not like this, and consider me the lowest of the low. I don’t give a damn about what they think. If they don’t like asylum seekers, then they have an ignorant perception of what asylum seekers really are like.

How did you make up your username?
My username was initially TroisNyxEtienne – something that I had conceived in 2004. ‘Trois’ is the French for three, ‘Nyx’ is the name of the Greek goddess of night, and ‘Etienne’ was what I thought would be the closest proper name if I spelled my own first name backwards. The three parts of my username have a deeper significance for me: Trois is my homage to God as Holy Trinity, a very Christian understanding. Nyx is what I took to signify personal darkness. Etienne became an homage of sorts to St Stephen, protomartyr, because Etienne is the French equivalent of the first name, Stephen.
In later years I shrank that username to Troisnyx, simply because I didn’t want people asking me how on earth to pronounce this mess of letters that went Troisfdalgndausngvh.

When did you start making music; how did it happen?
I was apparently 2+. My mother used to tell me that I tinkered on a toy piano, and made some really nice melodies on it. I remember that toy piano, but I don’t really remember what it sounded like.
I began composing when I was 10, as part of a mandatory composition project that my classmates and I had to do. I don’t think any of us had prior experience in composing, and I dug my heels in. It was an absolute drag. Little did I know I would pick up that compositional skill that I had learnt at that time, and little did I know that it would stick with me.
The first time I ever recorded my own voice was in 2009, and a year later, I shared some songs made on Mario Paint, which at the time was the only decent way for me to record instrumental music.
Doing stuff on a DAW (digital audio workstation) is another story. I first got acquainted with a DAW when I was 19, and at university. A friend of mine taught me the basics of the piano roll, volume envelopes and things like these on Logic Pro 8, which I couldn’t take home with me because I don’t own a Mac, and never did own one in the past. Then FL Studio was introduced to me by another friend, and the rest is history I guess.

Is there a certain message you want to give your audience in your works?
The message I hope to give is Christ’s. It’s a message of hope, love, joy, peace, reconciliation, forgiveness... It is the uplifting of the human soul, and just a slice of the highest heaven. It is something I truly find beautiful, and I really want to share that beauty with all of you. Thing is, this message cannot be condensed to what you find in this post. Even the songs that I sing will not be enough to encompass what I’m trying to get across. I’m probably not the best example, either, when it comes to giving the message of Christ to people. But I want to do so anyway. And I hope the music I’ve made does this.

Would you have any difficulty composing a certain type of music or genre?
Composing, probably not. Mixing, yes.
I struggle with mixing any kind of rock, despite knowing how to compose for it, and theoretically, I should be able to handle genres I wouldn’t touch with the end of a ten-foot pole, including dubstep, rap and hardstyle. If I don’t know anything, I normally learn quite quickly, both with YouTube guidelines and advice from fellow Newgrounds musicians. But I’ll be honest; I can’t mix these, not yet. Do I really want to, though?

What programs/instruments/other things do you use?
*groan* Here comes the long list of equipment, I guess.

• DAW: FL Studio 11.
• Hardware: Blue Snowball, Samson MIDI keyboard which is small, and I forget the serial number, and 11 rosewood tippers for the bodhráns, three pairs of drumsticks (2C, 5A and I forget what size), a pair of timpani mallets.

• Physical instruments – at least the ones I use anyway:
o Four bodhráns (20" standard, 18" standard, 18" tuneable and 8")
o Darbuka which is incidentally shaped like a djembe, don’t ask me why
o Half-sized djembe
o Triple bongos
o Another set of bongos that have been separated because one of the lugs broke
o A small, flat Chinese drum called bian gu
o Glockenspiel – no, not a concert one, just a student one
o Small diatonic xylophone
o Recorder (G? I think)
o Tin whistle (D)
o Chromatic harmonica
o Electric organ – the kind with all sorts of colourful tabs
o A small keyboard that doesn’t have internal speakers and has to be routed to a radio or an external speaker for it to work
o A medium-sized keyboard with MIDI output that currently doesn’t have a base to support its innards, and needs repairs to the point that I think it’d be more worth it to buy a new one
o Stylophone
o Celtic harp, tuned to G by default
o Tambourine
o Loads and loads of bells – and I mean the jingly kind, the kind that you find in jewellery or hobby shops on occasion
o Pretty much anything that can class as a found instrument, for percussive effect. I once tapped on the base of a stack of CDs on Uplift, a track of mine that got played on BBC Radio Lancashire.
 The other instruments that I do not yet know how to use are two violins, two guitars (one ¾ and one full), a concertina, a button accordion (which some people like to call a melodeon)…

• VSTs (do these actually stand for Virtual Sound Technology or something like that?)
o Fruity Soundfont Player. No, I am dead serious. The vast majority of my songs use soundfonts in some way, shape or form.
o Sytrus, my new go-to for electronic sounds.
o Versilian Studios’ plugins, including Chamber Orchestra 2 which is in beta (I think?), Miscellania I and II, Fretless Zither, Upright Piano and Dan Tranh.
 Versilian’s VSTs are the only external VSTs I actually have. The rest of my inventory consists of FL Studio defaults.

Do you see music as a career?
Not yet, but I aim to. In my current situation I cannot accept paid work, but I welcome any commission, video game project or voice acting project which is clean and gets my name out there. And hopefully, once my case is settled, I may be able to start taking steps to turning my musical dream into an actual career.
Well, being a musician is a legitimate career, despite what some people like to think. I was forced to read law because both my parents shoved the belief on me that music is not a career. This caused me years of suffering that I cannot begin to get into. Some of it, I mentioned when I was interviewed by @TheInterviewer.

Are you working on anything right now? Tell us about it.
I’ve got two smallish projects going on right now -- @Ceevro’s singalong collab for Christmas, as well as an entry for a Christmas competition hosted by @Bosa. The competition entry is something I hold close to my heart.

Other comments? (This section is for anything else you would want to write)
Newgrounds seriously needs to come up with an Android app. It has been there for 20 years, undergone various sorts of design changes, and the least we could do for those of us browsing on mobile devices is enable an Android app, or perhaps a mobile version of the site for those who would prefer it. We have a lot of really talented programmers; surely a few people at least can chip in and help the staff do this. I get especially frustrated with this when I want to make a new news post, with content available on my tablet or phone for instance, and cannot do so because the text editor isn’t supported by Android, for example.