TL;DW: Dial-an-attack, like sidechaining.
Swell
Every now and then you come up with something a little different. The fun of that is in identifying it.
I've been listening to house music by Deadmau5, and I took an interest in the way the sidechaining worked. (That's the way the music, or the reverb, or the pads, get 'smooshed' down by the kick drum and then swing back up in volume again.) The Mau5 is pretty good about talking about his techniques, which I appreciate (I'd love to do a coffee run with that guy someday) and he's spent some time showing people how instead of actually sidechaining, he automates an LFO which he applies to track volume. It gets a great effect.
I wondered whether it'd work to do a gate that intentionally opened real slow. Specifically, it seemed possible to treat 'full volume' as a 'floor' and have a 'decay' that falls up toward 1.0 rather than down to 0. It'd never quite get there, but it could have a similar envelope as the fall-off of natural reverb, just upside down.
If that sounds odd, don't worry about it, just try Swell. It has a threshold like a gate, and the Swell control handles the attack speed once the gate opens. The dry/wet works as you'd expect. Sort of like Deadmau5's LFO trick, it doesn't have to be a real sidechain, and is independent of whatever kick you have going on. Unlike the LFO trick, it's also not tied to tempo: Swell reacts to EVERY attack that comes along, provided the threshold's set right.
What this does is very interesting. I expect to see this turn up in an EDM channel strip at some point. Essentially, you can play with the controls in various ways and completely step on the attack of anything you want. This relates to GROOVE and the layering of stuff in a dance mix: any element, no matter what it is, can be turned into a pad and back again, just by squishing away its attack. You can do it live, you can take an element (snare, punchy chord) and manipulate how it hits inside the groove. Extreme values make stuff extra soft and quiet and squishy, and then if you drop the threshold or Swell, you can have the element jump right back out again, and the control is direct, not relative to a sidechained track or LFO setting. It's a more organic approach, more hands-on, and I think it'll fit into a lot of people's mixes. There's always a place for balancing the intensity of the attacks of your tracks, and that's literally what Swell does.
Swell's made possible by my Patreon. There's been a little drama over Patreon, so I've revamped my pledge levels so I could communicate exactly what you'd be paying at any imaginable pledge level. I hope other Patreon creators find my tier system useful, as it lets people know what to expect: if Patreon doesn't want to do that, well, I do.
This video was made before Wednesday the 6th, and some things have happened since. If you watched the Regarding Patreon video I made, you know both of them. Firstly, my Mom died Wednesday night. I don't want to say a lot about that, except to say this: she got to see me get up to what I told her was success with the Patreon, and as far as she knew that meant I was going to be OK. Patreon didn't keep me from becoming homeless, or starving, or any of that over this tough year. She did. I've had one Airwindows fan ask tactfully how it was I survived on $700 a month: an even better question is how I survived when it was $300 and Kagi had gone out of business still owing me two months of peoples' sales. The answer is Mom. I wouldn't be here working on plugins for you if not for her, in more ways than one. I'm glad she thought I'd made it through to safety, and I'm grateful she was there for me.
The other thing's the Patreon stuff. My take on it is this: I never set up with them thinking they would bring me a thing, certainly not to get me started from nothing. I was bringing my Airwindows crew, and trying to set up a stable income while still giving my plugins away free. I also was very interested in seeing how stable I could make that income, by trying to get the largest patron base I could, at the lowest possible pledge. I even rebuffed some people when they wanted to bear more than their share of the burden, because it seemed important to attempt the 'nobody really feels the bite, but there are so many that I still do just fine'.
Patreon's just completely thrown sand in my gears with their new fees. If you go to my Patreon you'll see how I've outlined a huge range of possible pledges, rather than just '$1, and more if you want, not too much please'. That's because (a) I have to tell people how much they will REALLY pay when they do it, and (b) if you make small pledges, you're just giving as much as a quarter of your pledge to them and NOT me.
This is not what people wanted. They followed me to Patreon, and I have to honor their intentions of keeping me working, rather than just having them shovel money over to Patreon. Plus, I've effectively forced everyone to pay an extra fee that doesn't benefit me at all. I need to take a minute to explain why I'm even still sticking with Patreon, much less leaning on them. To do that, I have to link to an article that's been going around: "Inside the 6 Hypotheses that Doubled Patreon’s Activation Success"
You don't have to read it if you'd just as soon take my word for what it means: part of what I do as Chris from Airwindows is try to understand and communicate this stuff. Point is, what Patreon is doing is harmful to teeny just-starting creators (which constitutes the vast majority of Patreons) but it's being done because they're trying to reinvent themselves around people like me. I'm convinced of this, and for that reason I want to let them do it: if you want Patreon to be a viable payment thing for me, they're making it even more viable, AND they may even be interested enough in my story and situation that they'd help me… or not.
That's because, like the music business, there's a leetle trace of preying upon people's hopes and dreams which is part of their thing, and they've just amped it up. Patreon's a payment processor, associated specifically with a lot of people who give their content away and are supported by patronage. That's not wrong, but they're not an incubator and never were. And their stated plan in that article is to take people LIKE ME, who are established enough that we MIGHT be able to shift into what they call 'life-changing' income through Patreon, and use us as bait to get a lot of other people to sign up.
I'd like to be one of those people, because I know that IS how it works. If you catch on and go viral, the money's there and feedback sets in. They are absolutely right about how that goes, and if you're someone doing your thing and it's on a level where it could catch on, and if you can support that and run with it, you're the kind of person they want to boost.
I'd ALSO want to be there to tell people that you have to do the work first, somehow, at your own expense, until you're big enough to catch fire. We know that's how it is: we're in the freaking music business, at least some of us old coots are. Jimi Hendrix worked as an R&B sideman for a decade before hitting as Jimi Hendrix, and everyone said 'what an overnight sensation!'. It's always been this way, it's never been any different. Don't be fooled by Patreon's fantasies: you have to do the work first, and since this is 2017 going on 2018, you have to build your customer base too. I had to do it. Everyone has to do it. Patreon never did a DAMN thing to change that, they just posed as if they did, because hype, because internet, because it benefitted them to look like life changers. So's the lottery.
The difference is, the lottery is chance. Patreon's a payment processor. If you have revenue, Patreon will pay you. If you do super well, it might even become trendy, and then the 'life changing' happens. Patreon didn't do it. Your patrons did. Patreon just might have helped other patrons notice you… but it's like all internet things, it's viral and only helps those who don't need it.
So, though my airwindows paypal is at https://paypal.me/airwindows, I'm going to ask you not to pay me that way unless you absolutely can't stand Patreon anymore, or of course if you're buying one of the AU plugins that hasn't come out (see my 'Buying' page at airwindows.com). Paypal aren't saints either. Even if you can set up a recurring thing (I still don't want to go back to crazy fluctuations and never knowing what I'd earn next month), I'd rather people deal with Patreon, because at $700 a month I'm getting into the zone of people they want to see succeed, and you know, that wouldn't be so wrong. My work is worthy. I want to get to the open source level and begin expanding what people have access to, code-wise.
I no longer ask for people to always pledge $1 ($12 a year), and find more people. You can't now, anyway, you can only pledge $1.36 that they pretend is $1. If people all switched to $2 (pledge $1.60, be charged $2) it'd probably take me to my open source goal already, but there will still be people dropping out, and I'm cool with that.
What I want now (now that the more you pledge, the fairer a deal Patreon makes me) is this: IF YOU CAN, behave as if you're buying plugins from me as before, back in the Kagi days.
IF YOU CAN buy one $50 plugin a year, don't paypal me that: pledge $3.70 a month and that will total $50 in a year. I did the math on it, I can tell you what it'll end up as. If their numbers change I'll update things.
IF YOU CAN buy two $50 plugins a year, don't paypal me $100, pledge $7.75 a month and that'll total $100 in a year. I'll even get more of the total than I would have if you'd 'bought a single plugin'. This is of course if you can afford it, otherwise pay me nothing and I'll work for you for free.
IF YOU CAN buy three $50 plugins a year, don't paypal me $150, pledge $11.79 a month and that'll total $150 in a year. And so on.
The thing you have to understand is, even if Patreon doesn't want to act like I'm a marquee customer and publicize me, where I'm at, their changes already help me. In recent months, their existing fees turn out to be about what they'd be at the $2 mark in the new system. When people pledge more, their deal becomes more and more favorable for me, because I'm not a struggling beginner, I'm doing serious work. And, most importantly, most of you would be buying at least a plugin a year if I was still in the commercial sphere, and $50 a person a year is already more than most Patreons will ever see.
Patreon is not a savior of the starving, unknown artist. I respect that people are mad at Patreon for failing to live up to that hype, and they've hurt people who're too far in that direction.
But because of what I do, and the value of what I create, Patreon just became an even better environment FOR ME, even if they never say a kind word in my favor or link me to anybody. Trust me on this: sometimes I know this stuff and understand what it means. If you are also someone who's doin' okay and works really hard for your people, they may have got better for you, too. I guarantee it's better for me to change my Patreon strategy (by asking people to go ahead and give money if they want! instead of asking them not to!) and I might even be able to get noticed as someone for whom the new changes worked out.
AND if I do, especially if it's notable and newsworthy, that would put me into a position where I can tell people how to be honest under the new system, and I could tell people to NOT get sucked into Patreon unless you're ready to do business and have your following already. It desperately needs to be said, now more than ever, but I'm not sure who's ready to say it besides me.
So yeah. If you can, help me be their poster child, because I need to straighten a few things out. And I can't teach people how Patreon really works, if it just fizzles for me. They won't listen unless I'm one of the successes.
Hope you like Swell. Thanks for listening. Normally I won't be so long-winded, but it was important (and it's a big change in my attitude. Sorry, anyone with money I offended before: I was trying to do a thing, but the rules changed. Didn't mean to scorn you
)Also: your Xmas present will be Console5, then PurestConsole. No, not kidding. Cheers! <3
(edited: turns out the buggers won't allow a $1.60, so I've made that plain on the Patreon. I was updating what pledges I myself made, so I just made them be $2 even. For what it's worth, if you pledge $2, they'll charge you $2.40, and their cut is 16.66%. No comment!
They do allow cents on all higher pledges, near as I can tell, so you can do $3 even, or any of my plugin-related ones.)(edited again: in less than 12 hours Patreon changed this, now you can pledge $1.60. Not sure if it was me causing this change but it's an important change for being able to offer patrons a real $2 tier.)
