In just a few short years, my circles went from saying, "listen to disabled people!" to essentially excluding me from their events because they don't practice accessibility. Everyone has been so brainwashed into thinking COVID is over.
Remote
Arend (they/them)
@arendleejessurun@musicians.today
mastodon 4.7.2I make downtempo folk music to relieve world-weariness. I teach, produce, mix, and master music when I'm not bedbound.
New album #TheTowerOfBabelFalls out now.
I’m nonbinary, autistic, and disabled;
white, of Surinamese-Dutch-Sephardi-Irish heritage;
exvangelical, ietsist or something;
reluctant settler on Tongva land (so-called Los Angeles);
practicing dismantling white supremacy;
hopeful for decolonial futures;
learning.
Spouse of @jgerhardtmusic@musicians.today. <3
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46 Posts
Joined January 17, 2023
Website:
Just my toots:
Digital garden:
I just discovered my Vital synth presets were featured in a Japanese music production blog. "This preset pack has such varied and practical sounds that it is almost impossible to believe it is free." :)
https://projectofnapskint.com/vital-synth-presets/
#musicProduction
Unfiltered Audio is offering a Linux beta of their new, free BattleFX plugin. Freaky, glitchy delays and reverbs with saturation/wave-shaping.
You've got to "buy" a license from their main products page, but it's $0.
https://www.unfilteredaudio.com/blogs/news/one-battle-after-another-week-3
#LinuxAudio #musicProduction
Reasons to pay indie artists:
- They tell truths that media conglomerates simply cannot.
- They're less likely to harvest and sell your data.
- Their creations are less likely to be funded or sourced by fascist, colonial enterprises.
- They, like you, need to eat.
Cancel Netflix, Spotify, Disney today, forever, and go make yourself useful to creative society. Fedi is at no shortage of talented artists who could use kind patrons.
Hey folks, I wanna throw in on this #FediHire thing. I'm a freelance musician based in Los Angeles in need of more work. I teach guitar and voice, and I record, mix, and master music for others.
I got hit with a one-two punch of long-COVID and autistic burnout In 2021. I'm a former church musician, and I'm queer (you can imagine how that might have gone). I've been scraping by for a long time.
1/4
Boosted by @GroupNebula563@mastodon.social
I think some #honkwave is called for, given all the goose discourse.
TapeHack has become a very welcome addition to my day-to-day mixing tools. I use it as a soft-clipper. If you set the output slider to 0.5 and adjust input to taste, it clips incoming signals to -6dB, which is great for highly transient material like drums. I prefer the original TapeHack, as it seems to handle Reaper's oversampling algo better than TapeHack2.
Bah, I recorded a little one-mic performance of one of my songs the other day, and the file seems to have gone. :(
Been thinking about the lydian chromatic concept lately and how the next tone after sharp 4, a perfect fifth away that is, comes flat 2, or rather sharp 1. If you treat the new tone as replacing the original root, F lydian becomes F# locrian. Otherwise, you have F lydian with a split 2nd degree (flat 2 and natural 2), which has some neat bebop implications, in a way tonicizing the ii (or II) chord.
You know that saying, "When God closes a door, he opens a window?"
Well whoever said so must think God dgaf about disability access.
ICYMI, you can still get my latest album for free for #DisabilityPrideMonth.
This album was mostly recorded in the summer of 2025, when not on bed-rest for #longCOVID, #MECFS, #fibromyalgia.
It's a response to the rising christian nationalism/dominionism in the US and the world.
I was a worship leader for many years. I left that world for how it treated me and other queer, disabled folks.
If you grew up in the church and have been burned, this one's for you. ❤️🩹
https://arendleejessurun.bandcamp.com/album/the-tower-of-babel-falls
Nationalism and fascism are on the rise globally, which means it's a good idea to start preserving and continuing culture, especially the kind of culture threatened by these evils. This is why we need art. It's also why artists are often targeted by fascists. Can't help but think about Refaat Alareer as a recent example, RIP. Artists, good artists, tell the truth, even if that truth is simply "we exist, and we won't be snuffed out." No one hates the truth more than tyrants.
My least favorite part of most books on #songwriting is when the author feels the need to list their accomplishments in an attempt to cultivate authority. Just get to the craft. If you've got good craft, I don't care about your accolades. More pedagogy, fewer press kits please.
I'm grateful people are still into physical media. I've already made a decent return on my new album selling CDs. A few generous people have even opted to pay more than the list price. (Let's break even on costs, woohoo.)
https://arendleejessurun.bandcamp.com/album/the-tower-of-babel-falls
I think of "twee" as a musical development that is the result of autistic and disabled musicians trying to find an artistic lane that neurotypicals can understand.
Replying to
@sb@metroholografix.ca I think he'd have a hard time "loudly ignoring" a data center built across the street from him lmao.
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@forestine@sunny.garden Ugh, it's the "not so bad now" idea that just bewilders me. Yeah, the novel, life-threatening, disabling virus is not so bad now lmao. If that were the case, it wouldn't change the fact that it's a novel, life-threatening, disabling virus. People forget so quickly.
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@flenyo@hear-me.social I heard about this a year or two ago! Such a neat concept.
Have you heard my cover of the Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer classic? I've made it into a commentary on income inequality. Download for free (or name your price).
Can't believe this release is already two years old!
@morachbeag@aus.social Now that you mention it, I think the naming convention is part of the problem. Leads actual socialists to believe liberals are on their side. That, and the way liberalism is called "left" in the US.
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@miclgael The Apple walled-garden/manufactured cost of switching.
Happy birthday to my partner @jgerhardtmusic@musicians.today and happy belated #MusicWomenWednesday to all! Go listen to my partner's music! If you like #indie #altpop with more than a dash of #catholic religious allusion from a #queer perspective, you'll like her stuff. :) For fans of Sufjan Stevens, Lucius, Fiona Apple.
https://jessicagerhardt.bandcamp.com/album/alight-beyond-the-sea
There are a lot of songs I'm proud of on this new album, but this song is one that is really special to me. I wrote it after a period of deep depression and existential dread about climate change. It's a song about the slow, often discouraging work of resistance, and why rest and reliance on others is necessary to keep going.
Hey, that's no way to resist.
Superman doesn't exist,
and you can't do it all.
You're not the only one.
https://arendleejessurun.bandcamp.com/track/youre-not-the-only-one-atlas-song
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@ambientspace As for the editorial aspect of the job: it's important to trust yourself. Once people start asking you to mix their stuff and paying you, I can tell you it's most likely because they trust you. When I'm mixing for clients, I spend a lot of time upfront asking them questions to understand what they want done to the mix. When you establish that communication, you have some guidance to make creative decisions. Then you get their notes, change what they ask for, send a revision.
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@forestine@sunny.garden Yup lmao. "Well, they may have lied about all that other stuff, but why would they lie about this?"
What baffles me is how many justice-minded people I know have been gaslit into believing that COVID is not a big deal anymore; that COVID is not a justice issue; that COVID is just something we have to lie down and take now. How do justice-minded people become so cynical? Mask up, or risk becoming a complacent, politically out-of-touch normalizer.
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@ohmrun@musician.social I haven't heard of metaharmony. Lots of richness in the fully-diminished chord, for sure! I'll have to read more.
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@mcmullin@musicians.today Me neither, unfortunately. Just exploring the basic framework for now, given by YouTube vids. The book is too expensive for me at the moment. 😕
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@mathias@metalhead.club Just started Six Steps to Songwriting Success by Jason Blume via Libby, which inspired this toot lol. Also working through a hard copy of The Craft of Lyric Writing by Sheila Davis, which is fantastic and imo not guilty of this thing.
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@amadeus@mstdn.social I sure hope so!
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@ambientspace And Airwindows has some great stuff! TapeHack has been in all my projects the last four months or so.
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@miclgael You're right. They'd like for us to think of it as a garden. In reality, perhaps it's more like a high-surveillance open-air digital prison that just wears the facade of a garden.
Kaiser is not a healthcare provider, it is a circle of hell.
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@NouranKhaledGh Happy birthday, Nouran. Wishing you an end to this suffering. 🙏
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@jwtownshend@toot.wales A lot of people seem to quite like that one! I had demoed it once a while ago, but I preferred Goodhertz Wow Control and u-he Satin, which were already in my collection.
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@so_treu Thank you for sharing. Rooting for you so hard.
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@monkeyben@mastodon.sdf.org Thanks so much! Glad to hear!
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@mosgaard@uddannelse.social I'm a sucker for Mellotron.
Today is Ketikoti, emancipation day in Suriname. Remembering my Afro-Surinamese ancestors today and looking forward to the end of colonialism and white supremacy. I spent the day listening to kaseko, house, and bubbling. ❤️🇸🇷
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketikoti
#suriname
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@amadeus@mstdn.social Ah, if they'd only bring the rest of their suite! I miss SlickEQ.
Tomorrow is #BandcampFriday, and the day after that is the one year anniversary of my album #TheTowerOfBabelFalls!
https://arendleejessurun.bandcamp.com/album/the-tower-of-babel-falls
#indie #folk
I want to bring your attention to a particular need from a family in #Gaza. Poor Ahmad, @mahmoudmohmmed233@mastodon.social's nephew, is suffering greatly from a virus and lesions. His sister died of the same virus. He is just a child. The family needs £500 to get Ahmad treatment to save his life. Please consider giving. You can follow Ahmad's condition on Mahmoud's page.
https://chuffed.org/project/190533-help-mahmoud-look-after-his-family-orphaned-children-in-gaza
#mutualAid #mutualAidRequest #freePalestine
My record #TheTowerOfBabelFalls turns 1 year old Oct 3 (and I turn 34)!
If you haven't bought it yet, a great time to do so is this Friday, Oct 2, on #BandcampFriday.
https://arendleejessurun.bandcamp.com/album/the-tower-of-babel-falls
Tomorrow is my birthday and the 1-year anniversary of the release of my album #TheTowerOfBabelFalls. If you'd like to treat me, a great time to buy any of my music is today, Friday, Oct 2, for #BandcampFriday. :)
https://arendleejessurun.bandcamp.com/album/the-tower-of-babel-falls
#indie #folk #queerMusic #exvangelical
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@mosgaard@uddannelse.social Thank you! :) Mellotron! Particularly the Arturia one.