Mal Morgenstern

I'm in the fevered state where I'm thinking about coining a genre. You have to stop me

I felt like I needed to listen to more weird stuff to refill my cup while I am experiencing my annual musical leeching (participating in rpm and fawm)

I don't remember if they always had the option to search for albums in multiple genres at once on rym but I have loads of recommendations to try out now for artists that cross over dance and prog, industrial rock and avantprog...

dantealexander.bandcamp.com/album/birth-... new music today! 5 instrumental dark/experimental electronic tracks with a pessimistic undercurrent and a self-indulgent piano solo in the middle. #MusicianSky

What was I doing before then to layer FX you ask? shuffling unused tracks around the mixer in my DAW, only when the inspiration strikes (which... often doesn't happen). And often losing the duplicate track because I forgot to name it.

Outing myself as a complete silly billy, but I only just made a DAW template that sent all my tracks into a few duplicate tracks (turned all the way down until I need them) so I can put separate layers of effects on them. Made my favourite drums ever I think.

Platforms which claim you can make it big as an indie artist will push you to labour over ad-friendly, algorithm-friendly content for which they will pay most creators pennies or less. There is too much competition for everyone to succeed.
But that means there's no point trying to be marketable 👍

Though I'm contemplating an in-person gig setup where mike patton tomahawk style I just do all my vocals while wearing a respirator and it is part of my style for the gig. No idea if they're the right type of mask to work, but I'm in one of the best genres for wearing a mask onstage I suppose.

And like, also, you're not thinking when writing, is this possible to perform live. You are revelling in the impracticalities and the studio magic of it all

Limiting your COVID exposure but also still making music is weird because you have such a struggle finding new audiences for your work. but it is also incredibly freeing because it disconnects you from having to make music for an audience instead of primarily for yourself

#fawm and #rpmchallenge (February Album Writing Month and Record Production Month) is tomorrow... If you're taking part, it would be cool to follow you. Let's suffer together 👍

wish I had done all that BEFORE deciding to put vocals on my first EP though

Okay I recorded some samples of different types of vocals that I might use for the Feb album, so I could quickly set up FX that fits. after a few months of vocal lessons last year it feels like my voice has been concentrated. There is a lot more earnestness and a lot less self consciousness

why is it that everything on your computer has to update the second you have a spare moment to record 🤡

Don’t bake this, please. A ‘recipe’ by Mal Morgenstern.

Also here's a PSA of my own kitchen crimes written for the lovely folks at QSO Media: quasistellar.space/2026/01/02/d...

I am alive! I just wholly detest social media promotion cycles. But I wanted to let you know I exist because there is new music from me (@dantealexander.bsky.social) coming soon. Firstly I have an EP of some experiments, and then a full album after #RPM2026 and #FAWM (February album writing month).

House for Broken Dolls, by Dante Alexander 7 track album

Hello folks it's been a while. The important update is that I made an EP in a month from my couch. is it electro house? industrial? synthpop? some unholy combination of the three? I don't know but I think it is a new genre called couchcore. Feel free to check it out :)

dantealexander.bandcamp.com

Anyway regardless of whether this becomes a project for public consumption, I'm still building a huge playlist of very good songs from rhythm games. And I may release this publicly. We'll see!

Like now I'm just super interested in what happened because many of the producers on that OST are great in other soundtracks. Did they just have b-sides to give? 🤔

2) my brain loves the ranking format, but I don't like having to listen to a bunch of music I dislike AND having to be vocal about that dislike, which of course is necessary for an exhaustive ranking. and I'm not gonna lie I just got through an OST that was so... Go off give me nothing at all 😂

I had wanted to do rhythm game music rankings for a while but I am encountering 2 issues:
1) I want to rank some games that are still actively being updated so I'm inevitably going to miss songs

the wildest part is, Spotify's tiktok tag surfing feature is ACTUALLY GOOD but seems to be different to what they use for the tiktok style tiles on the home page, which alternate between "extremely popular album that is trending worldwide" or "a radio station for the last 3 bands you listened to"

Literally taking up so much real estate on the home screen for something I don't use and don't want to use.

Spotify, of COURSE I want more of the suspiciously untailored album and podcast recs (I don't know if they are promotional, but if they are, please stop adding advertisements to a paid service whose main selling point is "there are no ads") just straight up on my home page, unavoidable

I love rhythm games because as a musician they produce a) the illusion of being good at video games and b) the illusion of a musical performance being something that can be perfected, that has a finite end to it where it can't get any better

After completing my first transcription, I did a deeper dive into my music collection today and came out with 100 new songs to analyse. I simply cannot help myself!
hopefully as my ear improves it will be easier to transcribe stuff? Or it won't be needed to do it so exhaustively?

I have like 40 tracks on my shortlist which is Ambitious. But I'm just gonna start with transcription (arguably the "easy" part), then try designing sounds to sound like the original (ouch oof ow).

Would love to know other people's experiences of this, or if anyone would like to come on this journey with me and transcribe or reproduce some tracks they love - even if just for a track or 2.

Likewise, there is a thin line of what I consider amplified enough to go into rock. But it's just a guideline! I'm excited to finally do this. We actually were going to do this at the conservatoire before I dropped out nearly a decade ago LMAO so this is nice to return to on my own terms.

The sorting itself was actually quite an agonising thing especially differentiating between maximal and minimal electronic. My thought is if there are lots of layers and aural candy that's maximal, and if there are just a few tight layers that are manipulated through the track, that's minimal.