3 files changed, 126 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)

M pages/contact.md
M pages/music.md
A posts/2022-11-13-bandcamp_page.md

@@ 9,3 9,5 @@ still find me on [Mastodon](https://tech.lgbt/@jelle).
 [SourceHut](https://git.sr.ht/~jelle/)
 
 [Professional site](https://jelle.xyz)
+
+[Bandcamp](https://jellehermsen.bandcamp.com)

@@ 1,12 1,12 @@
 <!--
 title: Music
 -->
-I make electronic music under the name Alternative Cosmetics and played in a
-bunch of bands of various disquality (shout out to the other guys from "Band
-zonder talent" :-).
+I make electronic music and play the piano. In the past I've played in a bunch
+of bands of various disquality (shout out to the other guys from "Band zonder
+talent" :-).
 
 You can listen to my EP "Mood of the leopard" on
-[Jamendo](https://www.jamendo.com/album/60375/mood-of-the-leopard).
+[Bandcamp](https://jellehermsen.bandcamp.com/album/mood-of-the-leopard-2022-rerelease).
 
 I have also created an EP ["Exhumed but not
 dead"](https://www.jamendo.com/album/168049/exhumed-but-not-dead) featuring


@@ 22,6 22,3 @@ horrible Euro Dance before turning to other tools in which I could do even more
 damage. In 2010 I recorded my first EP and put it on Jamendo. The song "Space"
 got played on [Rathole Radio](http://ratholeradio.org/2010/02/ep19/) (Yay!) and
 featured on the Software Freedom Day cd that year. 
-
-Electronics are all nice and dandy, but recently I mostly play blues piano. I
-might make some recordings at some point, but don't hold your breath :-).

@@ 0,0 1,120 @@
+<!--
+title: Bandcamp artist page, rerelease of Mood of the Leopard
+categories: music, english
+-->
+Today I've made a [Bandcamp artist
+page](https://jellehermsen.bandcamp.com/album/mood-of-the-leopard-2022-rerelease) and rereleased my 2010 EP Mood of the
+leopard. It took some time for me to make the jump from sharing my music on
+free sites to making a proper bandcamp page and asking actual money. I'm not
+too sure about whether people are interested, but I'm trying not to be held
+back by too much humility.
+
+<!--more-->
+
+I have made music for quite a while now and when I was a teenager I even
+considered making a career out of it. In the mid 90s I got into making tunes in
+Fast Tracker II in MS-DOS and liked it a lot. I also started playing on a Casio
+keyboard when I was about 12 years old. When going to my high school in 1996 I
+noticed that most of my class mates already knew how to play a musical
+instrument. I quickly ran into problems during the school's music lessons
+having no prior experience at all. My dad bought a cheap Casio keyboard for me
+so I could practice and my love for music grew from there. One of my class
+mates was really into Fast Tracker II and I learned how to use that program to
+make my own stuff. I was completely oblivious of any music theory and just did
+whatever I could to get some sound out of that program.
+
+I continued playing the Casio and started borrowing sheet music from the local
+library. I also began making my own tunes on the Casio and playing some
+classical music. I however quickly found out the limitations of my keyboard.
+When trying to play a Chopin prelude I noticed I didn't have enough keys.
+However, I got an organ from a deceased relative and continued playing on that.
+But the organ also quickly began to show its limitations and what I really
+wanted was a piano. However, pianos are bloody expensive and I didn't grow up
+in a rich household, so I had to work as a paperboy to afford one. Thanks to my
+best friends dad I got piano lessons at the music school. This wasn't easy,
+since I was already 15 at the time, and there were long waiting lists. However,
+he wrote the people in charge of the music school, strings were pulled and
+there I went. I was really nervous for my first lesson and played Beethoven's
+Moonlight Sonata and some of my own music to my new piano teacher. She was
+pretty firm about how my technique sucked, but also extremely supportive. I
+really loved her. She reminded me of the sorceress Polgara from the Belgariad
+books by David and Leigh Eddings.
+
+Anyway, I studied a lot and found out I also enjoyed making my own piano music.
+I actually liked that more than doing the scales, and often when having to
+practice pieces or scales I switched to improvising instead. I started to get
+better and people noticed that I had some musical talent. However as a late
+starter it was really out of the question I could become a professional with
+the piano. Aside from that all my piano playing friends were waaaay better than
+me. I didn't believe I could ever reach their kind of level playing that
+instrument.
+
+The composing side however was a different matter. I kept composing songs for
+the piano and also enjoyed making music with Fast Tracker II and later on
+started using Fruity Loops. I still have hours and hours of material I made in
+those days, but most of that isn't worthy to be shared to a larger audience
+:-). A couple of years ago I made two mixes of Fast Tracker II tunes from the
+90s and [shared
+those](https://soundcloud.com/jellehermsen/sets/exhumed-but-not-dead) on
+Soundcloud.
+
+In my penultimate year of high school I went to the music conservatory in
+Enschede to see if it would be a viable road for me to get admitted after high
+school with a focus on composition. The piano teacher there told I had a nice
+sound, but my technique was lacking, but the composition teacher was very kind
+and offered that I could take a preliminary composition course for a year
+there. I however decided not to do that. I found it difficult to talk about my
+compositions in an analytical way. I still believed everything flowed through
+me, given by the muse or something :-). I wasn't ready to have a intellectual
+debate about the choices of consonants versus dissonants I made in a piece for
+example. I still think it was the right decision at the time, although I can't
+help but wonder what would have happened if I did take that route with
+eventually going to the conservatory. I would have probably ended up a high
+school music teacher. If you would have asked the 18 year old me that would
+have sounded like a nightmare, but right now I think that would actually be
+great. I even went and studied to become a math teacher for a year in 2009-2010
+and I still have plans to go into teaching some day.
+
+I chose to go study computer science instead, but still kept making music. I
+kept playing the piano and I made electronic music in Propellerhead Reason.
+Mood of the Leopard was also made in Reason, a now ancient version of Reason 5
+which I still have, but rarely use.
+
+The thing I noticed about music software is that while they have become much
+more powerful in the 25 years that I've used them, I haven't exactly become
+more productive. I can spend hours and hours tweaking sounds instead of
+finishing music. Regarding finishing songs I think Fruity Loops was the best
+thing ever. These days Fruity Loops is called FL Studio, but they still try to
+make actually finishing stuff their priority. Their motto is even "The fastest
+way from your brain to your speakers".
+
+Now, you might know me as a avid free software enthusiast and I do prefer free
+software. However regarding that "brain to ears" part free software does get
+in the way. Most of the time when using Ardour or LMMS I find the need to go
+through this typical Linux-like tweaking cycles of my tools and that seriously
+gets in the way of being productive. I have even become so unproductive with my
+music tools that I haven't finished any new electronic songs the last years.
+
+However, that has changed a bit and I'm hopeful I will also be able to release
+new electronic music. A couple of years I bought an electrical Kawaii CA-48
+piano and seriously it was the best thing ever. I owned a Kawaii analogue piano
+before that and although it was super great and sounded really nice I also
+always felt a bit hampered by the fact that playing it meant that my whole
+house block would hear it, so I didn't play it too much. Getting the Kawaii
+CA-48 with a nice headset really changed that and now I play regularly and even
+started recording my playing. I'm working on an EP with piano music and have
+already finished recording two songs. The Kawaii has a record button so
+recording is super easy and I can also use Midi via bluetooth to record
+directly on my phone or laptop.
+
+Regarding my electronic music I also have hopes that I'll be able to finish
+more music. I've made some music in Milkytracker, reliving my fondness of Fast
+Tracker II and I'm also starting to play around with the newest FL Studio. I
+know, FL Studio isn't free software, but as proprietary software goes it's
+pretty benign. They have life long free updates and don't try to pull you into
+the typical capitalist schemes that you usually find with modern proprietary
+software.
+
+So yeah, here's me getting out there with my music again. Not ambitious, not
+trying to make it a career, but just in to search of good old gay and happy fun
+:-D