Hello everyone. I've returned from Hamburg yesterday and man was it a good time. :D I had a blast being on stage with the guys from Fons&Friends/Yes! It's warm. We had an amazing time performing for you people out in the crowd. If you were there, thanks so much for coming out this late to come and see us. I'd say it was totally worth the wait and I can't wait to do it again next year. Hopefully I'll be able to make my bass rig a bit more compact until then because lugging this stuff around is cumbersome af! x.X Thankfully I had some very nice people helping me getting my stuff To the convention and back so that's something I'm extremely grateful for. Thanks a lot for the help. ♥ What will happen next year? Hopefully something awesome but I don't want to spoil the surprise just yet. ;3c

To those that went to EF, I hope you've arrived home safely and hopefully you avoided the nasty concrud and have something to fight off PCD with. Give yourself some rest, you've earned it. Stay safe. 🤗

Heya Peeps,

just wanted to give you people an update. I'm going to EF. ^^ I'll be supporting Fons&Friends on bass.
We're gonna be playing on Thursday the 4th. :D I'm really excited and looking forward to our concert
and ready to tear up the stage and put it on fire (not literally obviously, that'd be mean). So I hope I'll
see you there. :) I still got to prepare and practice a bit for the concert but I'll be ready until EF so I can
rock the stage with you and the band. 😄

Hey folks,

just to get it out of the way, not much happening on my own music front BUT!!
I'll be playing live with Fons & Friends at NFC. Gonna support them in a few
songs on bass so I'm looking forward to that concert. =) So if you want to see
and listen to some furry rock and got some time to spare, come over and join
us. :)

In other "news" I've started to further develop the background of my characters.
i.e. Monoko and his human dude (which has a name now btw. but will be kept
a secret for now. 🤫). I was able to find a good reasoning for my humans background
and why the circumstances are the way they are. As has been mentioned in Monoko's
monolog called "The real Monoko", they'll be getting a house that is more suited for
the human and his big wolf. I'm still looking for artists who can pull of drawing humans
and large quadruped wolfs, but since money is a bit tight at the moment, this will
have to wait. I did however dabble in 3d modeling for a bit (again) and was able to
roughly model their new home, or rather ideas that could become their new home.

I'm actually pretty happy that I've found some new ideas for these guys which allowed
me to further develop their "lore". I'm sure once their background has been well
established, it should become a pretty cool story to tell. :)

Oh yeah and I also started scribbling again when I out of curiosity grabbed a pencil
instead of a pen and will now see how far this will take me or if this was just a little
spark of interest coming through.

But that's all for now, hope you all arrived safely in the new year.

Best regards.

Hey folks,

long time no read. Yes, I am in fact still alive. So I've been away...or not really away, I've always been here but I haven't uploaded anything for a long time. Well...if you're interested in the "why", then lemme tell ya...what's been happening.

Absolutely nothing.

I'm currently very removed from the whole furry music thing that I'm not even all that interested in making any furry related music at the moment. Instead I've been busy contributing my skills to non-furry projects as a bassist and those projects are a lot of fun to work on. I won't promise anything but there's a teensy tiny small chance of one of the projects eventually coming to a furry convention in the very distant future...or not at all...but well see.

But yeah, I don't have anything to say that I want to put into a song at the moment but I finally found a simple way to re-record my vocals for "Thoughts of winter" in a small studio. So I'll eventually give that a try and see if I can finish that song now. If you forgot (I don't blame you), here's a refresher, the demo of that song was recorded in the wrong key, meaning it wasn't within my vocal range which at the time I didn't notice since I just did rough takes and slapped some pitch correction on and called it a day. Well, my first attempt to re-record those vocals revealed my blunder and it was back to the drawing board. I'll still have some things to take care of before I can re-record those vocals but the barrier for that to happen is lower now and once I've re-recorded the song in a key that fits my range, it should be easy to hop into the studio and get the takes recorded.

Will this happen anytime soon? If you followed me for a while, you'll probably know by now that everything is possible, from the next day to in several years time. Soooo...yeah.

Thanks for reading.

Monoko

If you prefer listening to music on YouTube, you can head over there
and listen to my demo of "Thoughts of winter" if you're interested.

Thoughts of winter Demo on YouTube

Thanks for reading and listening to my music.

prior journal: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10701795/

I finished recording all the instruments so now only the vocals are left to be
recorded.

Also funny enough, just by raising the key by half a note I bumped the song
into a range where I could comfortably sing it and my vocals would actually
stay on the note way better than before so I'll call that a win. Will that mean
I'll eventually ditch the autotune so all those furs who can't stand autotune will
be able to listen to the song as well without feeling the sudden urgen to tear
their ears off? We'll have to see about that. I did some rough test vocals to
check whether the key would work for my vocal range and I didn't put much
effort into it. But while I stayed in key much better, I didn't quite like the
un-autotuned result but I'll have to check whether or not that'll change with
a bit more effort.

It might still take quite a while before the song is (re-)released since I want
to record the vocals at a local place that has a neat little studio which I want
to use and I also have to see whether I'll go with the original drums or have
them be re-recorded by an actual drummer....who can actually play the drums
unlike me.

So yeah. Thanks for reading. :)

So I finally found the motivation to redo...errm...."begin" to redo my old song called "Real k9" or..."They say I'm a real k9" if you want to be cool.

I've wanted to do this for quite a while now because I did a mistake back then when I wrote and recorded this song and that would be to have recorded it in a key that didn't fit my vocal range. It's right in this spot where it's too low for me to hold the notes comfortably so it constantly goes into and out of key which is annoying. But if I go an octave higher (the same note but higher), it's so high that I can't reach it. Which was also the reason why I turned to using autotune/pitch correction on my vocals. Back then, I didn't really know much about my voice and my range. I only finally found out this year that I'm a male tenor and even more recently I found out what my actual range was. xD So yeah, knowing that already helps alot narrowing down the issue (apart from me not practicing really obs.).

So I wanted to redo the song and re-record it in a key that fit my vocal range better. :)

It'll still take a while but at least I already got started which is already a great archivement in my case. xD

So, yeah I'm still alive. Thanks for sticking around. ^^

Bye
Monoko

Hey everyone,

I'm back from EF 27 and it was a bit of a bittersweet
experience this year but I won't delve into that here.
But my small concert had been a lot of fun even
though we had some minor technical issues which
were easily sorted though.

If anyone remembers my post about NFC this year
you'll know that I had a few hard lessons to learn
back then and also at EF I have learned a few
but I can proudly say that I learned from my prior
mistakes and my hardware was fully functional
and did everything as planned. But you know
how it is, if it isn't one thing that fails, it's another
and this time it was me personally who failed
myself. 😆

*edit*
I later heard that my vocals were set extremely
quite and that no one really heard what I was
singing. My apologies for that. ^^' I'll keep that
in mind at my next performance where I'll
hopefully be better prepared. At some point
I'm bound to give you people a flawless
performance. XD Apparently it wasn't this time. ^^'
Oh well. Thanks for coming though. =)

So the set wen't swimmingly until I decided to
engage the crowd...."a bit" and instantly ruined
my voice. 😅 Yeah, I totally overdid it and my
throat became hoase instantly. So what did
we learn?

1# Don't overdo it

2# Know your voice's limit

3# Friggin' warm up your voice before you
sing, dangit! >.<'

So yeah, if you can, learn from the lessons I
had to learn so you won't make the same
mistakes. 😉

Thanks for reading.

Eurofurence is approaching faster and faster. I'm not feeling
comfortable procrastinating for much longer. I'm shaking off
the dust that has gathered on my skin over the course of the
year, stretching my limbs, slowly but surely getting rid of the
stiffness in my joints because shit's about to get real!

I have a set date for my small show now and with that there's
no turning back.

06.10.2023 - 2:00 PM On the open stage.

So I'm currently preparing my show by testing my equipment,
optimizing my gear, dusting off my instruments, practice my set
and so on.

As you can see there is still quite a bit to do before I can head to
Hamburg and perform at Eurofurence this year. I'm very excited
to see the new location and hopefully see you people at my show.

Feel free to hang around until after the show if you want to chat
for a bit while I'm tearing down my equipment. :)

I'm looking forward to the show! Until then. ;)

Check it out!
on bandcamp:
https://monoko.bandcamp.com/album/the-demos-tape

on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDTC_qhCY0g

Let me know what ya think. =3

Thanks for listening. ^^

If anyone of you is excited about a release of some old "never seen before" junk.
Well...get excited because I've got the release date for this crusty ol' junk right here!

Friday 21.04.2023 18:00 CET on my bandcamp account....that's 6 PM for y'all using a 12-hour clock btw.

You can find it right here, once it's released 😉
https://monoko.bandcamp.com/album/the-demos-tape

So yeah, lots'a hype an' such an' all. Y'all get ready for the most unspectacular release
ever!

And remember if y'all listen to this junk goin' like: "A'ight, dis dog ain't half bad." I'll
take full credit for that, a'ight? Just sayin... I'll be watchin', aaalways watchin'... >.>

ye...

Thanks for reading. 😉

You may or may not have noticed that my song output is rather low
which in return also means that most of my songs are quite old.

For quite a while I had the idea of re-recording a selection of my
songs and releasing them as an album. Problem was, that I had
no idea about what level of professionalism I wanted to archive
and what level I'd even be "able" to archive to make it worth
the effort. Would I want to book studio time and record those
songs in a studio? Would that actually improve the result? Or
would I end up with the same thing just... prettier but not better?
Should I hire people who can actually play their instrument?
Would I really want to spend that much money on songs that
were just a re-release of an already existing song? Would I
ever get that money back and if not, would I be ok with having
spent that money on something like this? Would this bring me
happiness to know that I spent that money on this? Would it
be worth it?

The short most likely answer is....no.

The long answer is:
From the perspective of wanting to earn money with your
music, it's a really bad idea anyway so unless I'm doing it for
myself, it's not worth it. From the perspective of attracting
listeners? Hmmm also not very likely, I mean, those listeners
who these songs "didn't" reach, those won't be reached now
either since the songs didn't really change. They've just been
polished. So unless those people were audio engineers who
get off on production quality...it's just not gonna happen.

But if I'm being honest, I have no intentions to make money
with my music. If people toss me a few coins because they
like what I do or think I'm a cool dude or want to support
me or they want to see me drown and suffocate in money,
I won't say no except for the suffocating part...I'd rather be
alive than dead, thank you. '>.> The support is very much
appreciated but I won't make music something I'm dependant
on no matter how much I enjoy making music.

So if spending tons of money on polishing my music isn't
the wisest approach, then what "can" I do? In short, grow!
Not my fanbase but myself, learn, find likeminded people,
hone your skills, enjoy what you do. Find people to critique
your work and use it to improve. Getting constructive
criticism from people who actually know a thing or two
about what they do is worth a whole lot more than the
money you could spend on letting other people do the
work for you. Also it's a lot more satisfying and fun. =)

Also, getting in contact with other musicians inspires me
to improve my craft. For example am I currently going
through an old project of mine to see what I can improve
and let me tell ya that it's a lot! How this song even reached
the final stadium in this state is beyond me, but maybe
back then I didn't know any better or couldn't do any
better. After 8 years I look at this and see tons of room
for improvements.

As an example: I re-recorded certain sections to tighten
them up or fix small playing errors that I left in, or in some
areas I would even play something entirely different in
order to leave other instruments some space to breathe
and not burry them underneath other stuff. That way I
give every instrument their moment to shine in the
arrangement. Another thing I'll take another shot at,
is re-recording some vocals because some of them are
just plain awful and deserver redoing.

tl:dr
But yeah, I'mma re-record and fix shit on one of my
songs to see how much improvement there is to be
had and then we'll see about the rest of the songs.

If I can get myself to do that for all those songs that
I've released and that are in my gallery right now,
I could even try to release them as a song collection
of remastered pieces on my bandcamp account.
Who knows? ;)


Thanks for reading.

Hey everyone,

I'm back from NFC. 🙂

My "concert" was a bit of a disaster and here's why:

Lesson No.1
Test your equipment VERY thoroughly!
Also test it in simulated situations that would actually
occur while on stage. The closer you get to the real deal
the better.

Lesson No.2
DON'T change your setup 1 hour before you leave
for the con where you don't have the ability to do
any further tests on your equipment.

Lesson No.3
Don't waste peoples precious time by being an idiot
who doesn't test their equipment properly. 😅

Lesson No.4
Not really related to my own shortcomings but what-
ever you do, be always prepared! Bring spare cables,
batteries, etc., my In-Ear receiver actually died right before
soundcheck but since I "was" prepared, I could quickly
swap the batteries for new ones.

Lesson No.5
Check your stuffs condition. Does it actually work? Is
it faulty? Is it broken? In my case it was a microphone
cable that I brough where I realized that it was one
with a loose connection. Thankfully they had a spare.

Lesson No.6
This is also a more general rule. Bring a backup plan
if things go south! In my case I had to revert back to
my old setup where I sent everything to the stereo
sum which also meant that I had to adjust the volumes
of my tracks on my own. Not great but at least I could
play my set....in front of 2 people and one of them was
a close friend of mine who helped me with setting up
my equipment. 😅

Lesson No.7
Don't get a spot at a time where everyone is out to
get dinner and also don't have a major concert start
right after your show. 😁

So, I was a bit glum afterwards, I mean who
wouldn't be? There's always a bit of self-doubt after
experiences like that but if I'm honest it was an
important lesson on what can go wrong and what
to prepare for. So all in all I would still call this a
positive outcome even though things didn't go
quite as planned. 🙂

So let's see if we can do better at EF 27. 😉

Until then and thanks for reading.

So empty here. Yeah.

I decided to do a bit of a clean up and reduce my
posts to audio Posts only since that's what I'm all about.

But that's not the whole reason of course. I don't feel
comfortable sharing too much information about myself
which makes me occasionally just go through my online
presence with a digital weed wacker and mow down
everything that I actually don't feel comfortable sharing.

I have however saved the screenshots of all the posts I
deleted so your lovely comments are still with me to put
a smile on my face every now and then. 😄

Thanks for reading
Monoko