I love anything by Solar Fields for tasks requiring concentrating, it’s especially good for reading scifi.
Whenever he releases a new album though I have to listen to it a few times, before I can have it on in the background… It’s very beautiful and intricate.
Yep has to have no lyrics or I get pulled into the song!
“Don’t say things about someone behind their back, if you wouldn’t be prepared to say it to their face”
I’m so, so sorry to hear this.
I feel really lucky that I get some government support because I have autism / bipolar. It’s not much, but the specific benefit I receive also allows me to do some work… and I’m also very lucky to be self employed in a field I enjoy (writing music). So I’m certainly not rich or even that comfortable, but it does allow me to morph my days and nights to suit my unnatural rhythms.
One thing I find about lack of sleep… it makes me really emotional, grumpy, increases likelihood of a depressive state. For me, it’s SO important to almost literally inject happiness. If we have a condition that takes away our happiness, it’s really crucial to create happiness in any way possible. Binge funny TV shows, go for a walk, watch some standup comedy, call a friend (not at 2am unless they’re also a night owl haha), make some art (doesn’t matter if you’re good at it), try learning a new skill, play a game, join a volunteering group. Those are my go-to activities, probably different for you.
Also, and I know it’ll sound trite, but I got into a couple of things during lockdown that made a big difference to my overall happiness; Buddhist and Stoic philosophy. I’m not a Buddhist, probably never will be. I definitely have a long way to go in applying Stoic principles. But they have really improved my life. Meditation is very hard at first but incredibly beneficial. If I could recommend a couple of books (one is an audiobook and for me was more transformative than Buddhist principles)… if you’ve never used Audible, you can sign up for a month trial and keep the audiobook you select, no charge if you cancel within 28 days.
Thanks, I do suspect I have delayed phase sleep disorder. It’s good to know I’m not alone. Do you have any coping strategies?
My coping strategy is ‘modafinil to keep me from not being a zombie when particularly sleep deprived’, and ‘zopiclone for if I have been up longer than I should and it’s early enough to push me back into normal sleep pattern’. But of course I’m very wary about doing that more than twice in a row, so it’s never enough to establish ‘normality’.
Thank you so much for the detailed response, I really appreciate it. Over the years I’ve looked into this a lot but you’ve given me some really useful new information!
Health care in the UK, especially for lesser known genetic diseases, can be a bit of a lottery… I moved up the country 6 months ago, and within a month had been tested & diagnosed for a generic mutation called FMF (familial Mediterranean fever). My dad / sister both have it but despite nearly a decade of requests I was unable to get a doc to investigate it. So far up here the gp response has been a referral to a website for cognitive behavioural therapy.
I’ll push on though and see if there’s anything more they can investigate. Thanks again for the info :)
Sorry to piggyback onto your comment, and I know you can’t give medical advice, but I wonder if you have any insight into a problem I have with sleep.
I’m early 40s now. One of my earliest memories, aged around 4, is not being able to fall asleep. I’ve tried EVERYTHING over the years. Sleeping pills are a guarantee if things are getting squirrelly, but give me severe rebound insomnia the next day. When I do fall asleep, it’s like I can sleep for way longer than is normal (so either cause of sleep debt or poor sleep quality).
I’ve always joked that maybe I should be on a planet with a 28 hour day. But I also know that my lack of normal sleep is potentially storing up huge problems like increasing my risk of cancer, heart disease etc.
Melatonin kind of helps. But no matter what I do… My sleep pattern goes out of synch.
I’ve gone through school, ‘normal’ 9 to 5 jobs, relationships, all a big struggle as I have to perform at a normal level despite not having slept for 24+ hours fairly regularly.
I can do everything ‘right’ (no light in the evening, exercise, healthy diet, no excitement in the evening, no caffeine, mild sleep supplements) and still find myself unable to sleep. What the frick is wrong with me… Am I doomed to continue like this? I just want to sleep like a normal human being!
Yeah I’m the same. I’ve got DDG set as my default search, if the results aren’t useful then I go to google as backup.
Is it just me, or has autocorrect on phones also gotten way, way worse? When would I ever want to type ‘thbnks’?
Spotify iirc pays $0.003 per stream, so for 80m streams he’s got $24,000.
If he’s got less than that then he should be directing ire at his label or publisher.
I see what you did there ;)
I guess, I just don’t see many people getting something for free then deciding to go buy it out of the goodness of their heart… maybe I’m too pessimistic.
I try not to pirate music production software because I make some small money from my music, and I’ve personally seen companies go bust and get snapped up by Apple because everyone (me included) justified pirating their small plugins as “they’re making lots of money anyway”. But I justify pirating shit like Adobe to myself I hate paying a subscription to use software. I dunno maybe more people have this mindset than I realise and are happy to pay after ‘trying before buying’.
I’m interested to hear responses from anyone who genuinely buys the music they enjoy after pirating it. Why would they not just buy it in the first place?
Ah come on you know what I meant.
People say this all the time about Spotify, but it’s actually a viable outlet for revenue if you’re on a decent label who understands how to leverage playlists.
Obv that doesn’t apply for freeform… but for styles like trance, techno, DnB etc it’s not unheard of for a track to get 500k streams across a variety of playlists, which equates to $1500.
Got a sample preview of your favorite release?
I don’t think it would be wise to dox myself here after I’ve made an unpopular comment!
I agree. I think people have taken my comment as a defence of the geoblocking, was just offering an example of why someone like a small indie musician may choose to do that. I do find it frustrating when I have to VPN to a different country to watch a video.
But the reason I geoblock one country isn’t to be an arsehole, it’s because Russia has no recourse for indie musicians like myself who have their music stolen. They have no law preventing music theft which is why it’s rampant in that one territory (not saying it doesn’t ever happen elsewhere). Pretty much the entire rest of the world has some sort of avenue where I can issue something like a dmca.
Hard to say really. I’m fairly sure if it was available online for free, less people would have bought it.
When you’re talking only £2000 or so of sales for a small indie release, piracy makes a huge hit to sales. My more popular stuff like trance, the sales drop off a cliff the moment it’s leaked. There was a huge problem with people on promo lists leaking pre-released tracks to warez sites, not sure if the main labels (eg ones like Armada, Anjuna etc) ever got to the bottom of it, but it really hurt the sales of people who aren’t exactly making bank from their music
Exactly. I had a 12 track album up for £9, or single tracks for 99p, don’t think that’s unreasonable!
Pirating from massive companies who exploit their workers and customers is different from pirating small indie artists, surely?
Whenever I release music myself, I actively block it in Russia, because they relentlessly steal my trance / freeform releases and upload them in warez sites.
Of course geoblocking can be circumvented by a determined pirate but it helps to not be on their radar in first place as a lesser known artist.
As an example, once I released a freeform album. Freeform is a very niche, small scene. It was on Russian forums within a couple of days. Fortunately one of my fans notified me, I had a Russian friend contact the site on my behalf to explain that I’m a poor struggling artist, and they’re literally taking money out of my pocket; to my surprise they agreed to take the links down.
For years I was adamant that I didn’t like ambient, I think because I’d only been exposed to very boring drone stuff. Then I discovered Solar Fields / Carbon Based Lifeforms and it changed my musical world.
I’m quite horrible at self-promo so sadly it’s just gathering digital dust, but after 20+ years of writing dance music for myself and others, I decided to get heavily into writing ambient / chill. Made a load of trippy animation videos and setup a youtube… if you love Solar Fields, without meaning to sound bigheaded I think you’d enjoy them.
Ambient / Chill by Ain