Kye Fox

It’s easy to say Patreon’s fate was sealed the moment it took venture capital (VC). It’s widely understood that VC locks a company on a trajectory with three possible outcomes: acquisition, IPO, or yet another “our incredible journey” shutdown. The received wisdom is that all…

Spotify's dual announcement that they would start banning free accounts that used ad blockers and that they were buying Gimlet and Anchor made me rethink how I spent my entertainment energy. Netflix and Spotify have both been habitual for years. I checked Spotify when I…

I grabbed a huge bundle of samples and presets last year! They're all from a company called Echo Sound Works, and I have yet to find one I didn't like. I'm going to go through some of the 1000+ Serum presets and make little demos…

Facebook, libertarianism, good news for trans rights, and a new twist on an oldschool way of making music. Hello! Welcome to the first edition of Fox Populi, my semi-regular collection of links and things. Members at the bonus content tier get these in PDF…

Helm is the prime choice if you want the pure signal of Serum but don't care for the price. It's not a wavetable synth, but it does set modulations in a way that's similarly intuitive to Serum. You click the helmet by the modulator…

The supersaw was a patch on Roland Corporation’s JP-8000 and JP-8080 synthesizers. Roland wasn’t the first to come up with playing 7 detuned saws at the same time, but as far as I know they were the first to make it this easy to…

This is a followup on my more general "ActivityPub Could Be The Future", which was wildly popular. Here, I focus more on what ActivityPub means for musicians. The gist for people not extremely online: ActivityPub is the latest in a series of protocols aimed…

This began life as a thread on Mastodon! https://snouts.online/@Kye/101500582369285895 If you're thinking about starting a Patreon, one thing to keep in mind: just because people aren't talking to you/looking at posts doesn't mean something is wrong. Sometimes I get responses to broadcast messages months…

There’s so much advice on making music out there, scattered about, and it’s hard to sort through. I compiled various bits of advice I give to people in this article. Learn a little music theory I promise it’s not as hard as it looks,…

(note: it’s not deja vu, this is an updated review! It’s existed in various forms) (note 2: DistroKid replied to a few points! See below) I was skeptical about DistroKid, the music distribution service that’s quickly making a name for itself. The guy behind…