Thus it begins! I hope.

I've decided to go for it and document my newfound progress for this musical side project of mine called "Gigarob." My goal here is to simply talk about my journey, complete with its struggles, triumphs, and everything in between.

Naturally one of the frustrating aspects of actually "officially" starting on this project is all of the AI music and art that has taken over with great controversy. Matter of fact, as I'm writing this, I'm listening to this synthwave version of the Metroid soundtrack, feeling a bit of a mixture of emotions because it's pretty good, but also, it had some AI assistance in its production (read the description).

With that in mind, my goal is to not use AI for Gigarob songs as far as:

• Compostion
• Lyrics
• Tracking
• Overall production

However, I will be asking AI questions when I hit a wall. Questions like:

• "How did this song get this sound?"
• "What plugin can achieve this vibe?"
• "What synth settings would make this sound?"
• "What is this effect called?"
• "Can you tell me the chord progression of this song?"
• "How the hell do I do this stupid thing in Logic Pro?"

Stuff like that. I want the actual production to be 100% created by humans (probably mostly just me). It'll just be a tool I bounce questions off of. Cool? Cool.

I'm proud to announce that I've written 90% of the lyrics to a Gigarob song. Right now I just have the ending to wrap up, but I think I'll start bringing things into Logic to see where it takes me (doing that after I finish writin' this post barf). Until now, most Gigarob songs have just been concepts or a melody I sung into a voice recorder.

It's time to fill in the gaps and glue it all together. Currently I have enough song ideas and concepts for a full album, even with a few being cut or set aside.

I found inspiration on Psychostick's last tour while I was driving. I currently have several projects on my plate, and I had to make a choice on what to work on. I landed on Gigarob's first album because:

1. The other projects were far more complicated and insanely large.
2. I've already spent money on software and plugins
3. I have so many ideas that I love that need to be completed
4. I want to sharpen my musical skillset and ability to compose things

Lastly, I've been reading a bit more of "Feel Good Productivity" regarding procrastination and finding your motivation. A few bullet points I want to uh, point out:

• When you feel the procrastination dragon slobbering all over your desire to do the thing, just shrug if off and set a timer for five minutes and do the thing. If the timer goes off and you don't want to keep going, you got five minutes of the thing finished. But, the likely outcome is that you'll want to keep going.
• If you're feeling insecure and "waah" about the thing, trying putting yourself in the shoes of someone would is badass and confident. You know, like Batman.
• Define the next actionable step if you're not sure where to start. Like if you want to work out, but you're not sure what to do, just throw on your workout stuff. Chances are the next steps will pop in your head.
• Track your progress with an app like TickTick or maybe even a whiteboard. This keeps you motivated when you see those checkboxes get checked.
• Forgive yourself if you screw up or completely space on any of this stuff. Reality is already a pain in the ass, you don't need to tack on to that, y'know?

There you have it. I'm off to get lost in Logic Pro. If you want to keep up with my musings and project updates for some reason, subscribe! I'd stay off the paid tier for now until I get this habit down. But I won't stop you if you do.