You know how they say do what you love and you won't work a single day of your life?

Well, turns out things can go both ways and in my case they didn't exactly turn out the way I thought.

Long story-short, I took some decisions regarding what I wanted to do in life and that means making less music.

Just to clear out, yes it's me singing on If You Only Listened For A While and I deeply appreciate all of the comments both here and on youtube, it makes me really happy to see this song reaching out so many listeners.

Can't say for sure when and if I'll post any new tracks, it's not like I have become deaf or lost my voice, but I'm defintely on a undetermined hiatus from music production and meantime felt right to reach out and thank the NG community for all the great comments on my song and for all those geometry dash modders using my song.

oh newgrounds, the place where I discovered hentai and adult flash games,

the place in which I realized for the very first time that a video could be uploaded in a computer and watched in any other computer over the world with an internet connection.

but that was a long time ago,

it took me 10 years to finally realize that it's not about making the highest quality content and getting it frontpaged cause if that's your main creative drive then you're on your way to an insatiable ego and a possibly shitty attitude,

in my humble opinion newgrounds is about bringing people together by sharing a common idea that can be clock day, pico day or an ng dj set.

I've spent three and a half years making dj sets that included nothing but my own productions and thinking I was an amazing artist for that but slowly and steadily came to terms with the fact that I was closing in and alienating myself form the rest so I decided to start including stuff from friends, followees and people I admired and the result was/is great and I partly owe that to newgrounds,

If you've made it this far then you probably realize that this site is important to me and if by any chance you're into house music and feel like sharing a track you made or you love then I'll be happy to give it a good listen and maybe even mixing it in the next october dj mix.

thank you newgrounds, I love you

I sold my guitars, I sold each and one of my guitars to see if I could finally figure out if turntables were instruments or not.

and guess what, they're not.

turntables are machines that combined with other machines produce noise, sorta like a printer or a microwave, a washing machine or a blender.

a spoon is an instrument, the triangle or the whistle are instruments.

instruments are banjos, balalaikas and an aeroplane's control panel.

a turntable is an overpriced rotary engine, a merry-go-round for adults, a serotonin-releasing-mechanism, all but an instrument.

and that's why I like them so much.

my non-instrumental music boxes.

Special thanks to all those people who personally reached out and extended their music for the mix!

@CryNN thank you for that amazing energy and for letting me tear your track to pieces

@Mollywhollop thanks for your finesse and for adding that special flavor to the closing minutes

@MoustacheExpress I've got your track stuck in my head for the past few days, a real killer!

@tektula second appearance on this podcast

If you're a producer and feel like your track might snug nicely in the mix shoot me a private message and we'll make it happen

June reality check................

/quarantine..................check

/newgrounds dj set...........check

/art inspired music contest..check

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all systems go....................

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21 Productive Things to do While at Home or in Quarantine, How To Stay Productive Under Quarantine are a couple of the titles written by minds who think that not having to assist to certain events (in my case electronic music parties) would make you more productive but I think that's not the case, I think the amount of time you dedicate on animation, art, music or any other branch of media production is based solely on a certain variable I like to call the existential need, it's what makes you listen to love songs when you're sad, it's what makes you stay up all night cringing on obscure animations in the portal. The existential need is there whether we want it or not and it remains unaffected by mundane circumstances like social isolation so free yourself from the idea that you should use this time to boost your skills or grow your fanbase, let the existential need take over and you'll be naturally driven to create when the times is right.



On other news, the ng dj set is still going so you if you have a particular track you think could be showcased send it over. I'd like to thank @MoustacheExpress, @CryNN and @Mollywhollop for reaching out and making this newgrounds exclusive dj set possible, I'm looking forward to mixing a whole lotta new tracks in the music portal.

hey there, redsoul here checking in and calling out to all music producers out there. here's the plan, monthly mix of newgrounds exclusive content featuring five to six tracks mixed together in a dj set fashion. genres can span from dubstep to trance from techno to drum n buss it doesn't really matter as long as the track has a solid percussive intro and outro. the goal here is to shine a light on the newgrounds music portal and present it in a digested format that's pleasant and easy to listen. also looking to have post-mix podcast style discussions with showcased producers hearing about the creative process behind their music. if you're wondering how would this look like please check my audio submission under the name 199X.

if you think your track has what it takes send it my way and we'll discuss the factability of having it featured.

If Miniclip looked like Coldplay Newgrounds would look like Keane

If Miniclip sounded like Green Day Newgrounds would pretty much sound like Blink 182

If Miniclip were to be EDM Newgrounds would surely be in the ranges of Trip-Hop

If Miniclip was a bag of Doritos Newgrounds would be a packet of Pockies

The list goes on and on but my point being that Miniclip is a lifeless cyborg and Newgrounds is a lively Corgi when we it comes down to the level of activity in their communities and fan pages. But RedSoul92, why even bring up Miniclip? We're in newgrounds u num nuts. Cause I can't help but place them side by side the same way I can't help putting Harry Potter and LOTR movies together, they just appeared at the same time and offered a myriad of entertainment, right?

Miniclip was launched on 2001 and was one of the first sites to feature a generation of low poly MMORPGS like Runescape , cutting edge browser graphics with On The Run and groundbreaking strategic gameplay with Motherload (no pun intended). But Newgrounds, having launched 6 years before that was a more independent looking site that never stayed out of the picture when it came down to getting my fix of flash games, it offered unique content of its own with violent and adult themed gameplay that bordered the politically incorrect; Pico's School featuring school shootouts, Pimp's Quest, a point & click that taught you more about street hustling than anybody else would dare to and games like SIM Girls or Frank's Adventure that would open a whole new world of graphic nature that AAA browser game sites wouldn't never get their hands dirty with. And those were exactly the things that kept me coming back for more, while Miniclip started to fade away relocating their games to consoles and adding DLCs Newgrounds would still be that freaky site and the cool thing here is that Newgrounds is still up and running and I'm as amazed as anybody else that it hasn't fallen in the archive of browser oblivion.

I think the open community is what kept it going and I can't really think of any place like it. What do you think, is Newgrounds the last standing bastion of independent flash-based videogames? Miniclip sure looks dead to me, so do sites like Armor Games and Kongregate, have they all hopped aboard the Steam boat into the promised land of mainstream gaming demand?

Even though I live in a second floor apartment I define myself as a basement dweller, urbandictionary.com defines it as male over eighteen with no formal education who continues to live at home with his parents and has no ambition to move out or contribute to society. His will to live is sucked by his daily marijuana regiment. He can be found working second shift at your local gas station. Lives in a perpetual "getting his shit together". An arguable definition that fails to include video game addiction and social awkwardness. Definitions aside, basement dwellers have been globally considered social castaways and by no means referred to as distinguishable citizens, sure, we have earned ourselves a reputation in the internet as anti-heroes but god forbid b dwellers from becoming role models of the real world, lol... the real world... it's a bit different now, isn't it? Society is no longer demanding us to go out there, travel the world, get that dream job, that promotion so you can become the best version of yourself cause now your best version is being toned down, unless you're a b dweller, in that case your usual slacker attitude, your no-contribution-to-society has become a following-the-rules-and-kicking-ass-at-it role model, holy shit! Basement dwellers are now even advicing normies how to spend their newly acquired reclusive lifestyles by cattering a selection of video games and media content, revenge is balance.

Same goes for weebs now that social networks are booming with all these live stream trying to fill in the void of social isolation, again, the I've-been-doing-this-when-nobody-was people are a bunch of freaks who were formerly known as weirdos but who now seem to have the higher ground.

I've even dread the thought that we're finally getting how animals feel locked up in their cages, maybe now we'll see having household pets with a different perspective?

Sure, this might all be temporary (or not) and things will go back to normal (or not). Come what may it certainly looks like the status quo is changing and we're at the verge of true sovereignty. (thunderstorm sound fxs)

Ever wondered why it takes so much time to build a house of cards but so little to bring it down? Try to think of an inverse example, you can't, can you? One could even argue that the beauty of something resides on how easily it is destroyed or how big that destruction can be. The bigger they are the harder they fall, right?

Now, fucking things has been one of the top activities of mankind and doesn't seem to ever lose popularity, why is that? Cause it's a fun thing to do, think vandalism, doing drugs, cheating or even tossing your phone into the nearby river, sure, you'll have to get a new phone, but wasn't that fun?

The thing is we humans are hedonist-natured beings so even when we're not having a good time we're projecting ourselves into the next big hedonist adventure. Like when you're at your workplace, thinking about what you'll do with your free time or your earned money. So even when we're not fucking up we're still creating stuff we can fuck up later on. Isn't that fucked up?

So I've been taking some acting lessons in which we were instructed to slowly transition from homo sapiens to neanderthallic beasts and viceversa. I was amazed on how easy and fun it had been to dispose ourselves from ethical and social conducts and how painstakingly difficult it had been to recollect ourselves and create a functioning system of human beings. Yin yang I guess. It's just like the snakes and ladders game, sliding down can seem like a jolly good time till you realize how far up you have to get back, this climbing-up-to-go-down mechanic is a perfect equation of balanced karma, it really isn't that bad if you think about it, hell, at least its something that keeps us on our feet right?

I wanted to use this opportunity to talk about electronic music culture,

specifically the rave code of conduct as I would like to call it, a sort of electronic club etiquette.

So there are a couple of do's and don'ts in the scene, I've had my fair share of raving so I'll go ahead and mention what I've learned in the process;

1. Don't arrive in big groups and set your own dancing circle with your buddies, electronic music is individualistic, we'd rather have dance by yourself, maybe someone will tag along.
2. Don't move on big groups either, save the party train for your friends bar mitzvah. Big movements of people tend to break the personal space of everyone around, and that goes for you too individual person, try not to relocate too much and if you absolutely must go to that other spot, be respectful when moving in between other fellow human beings, sure, some people will say it's better to move while you're dancing, I'd say, touch other peoples shoulder while moving to let them know they're personal space is being broken.
3. Don't spend the whole night facing the dj, this isn't a rock concert, looking at another human being press buttons and turn knobs isn't the most compelling spectacle to focus your eyes on. Instead, face other directions so as to let interactions take place.
4. Don't stand in the middle of dancefloor with a bloody mary on your hand, alcohol make people aggressive, we don't want that in here, grab some bottled water or stay in the cocktail lounge. Excessive smooching is a no go in the rave scene, if you want to go to a party and make out there are plenty of cachengue clubs you can go to.
5. And last but not least, cellphones, there's no clear etiquette about how much you can stare are your smartphone other than keep the brightness low and we'd rather have you recording a video of the dj's performance rather than having you take a blinding flash selfie bragging about how much fun you're having, you can take a squad picture once your outside the club, everybody will be happy to be your photographer once the party is over.

It may all seem like a bunch of weird riles but it all comes naturally when you're actually there. I think they're all codes of conduct that would eventually lead to a better a society, a more human society. Anyway, that may have been a little over the top but I hope this pointers have given you a closer insight about the electronic music culture.

I'm gonna tune out, till the next entry, hope to hear from you again!

RedSoul92 a.k.a 199X trance dj