Wrapping 2020

Previously posted on DeviantArt

2020 was an insane and tough year for everyone. Really, I was expecting it to be a normal year just like everyone does, but then a lot of horrible news started to pop up left and right. It's on Twitter, it's on the local news, not to mention the current pandemic where we are still currently in as of writing this.

My Hectic Quarantine Journey

When quarantine orders were strictly enforced, my first thought was - "okay, I am going to finish all of my unfinished videos"; but as always - I always procrastinate despite writing down post-it notes on my computer.

2 months during the quarantine, I was going insane momentarily, my popular upload at the time was "Captain Foxy - Foxy X Mangle All Season 1 Episodes", I couldn't handle the comments and all this unneeded attention - I was upset due to pressure of all the comments from that video, COVID-19, and all that, I was unstable - and deleted the video in April 2020, the approximately 149,000 views during this time in its deletion.

The next thing I did was upload random videos because I was still upset, and I was immediately kicked into the YouTube Partner Program for "reused content", this is also the same thing when I was kicked from early-2019.

And this got me to push on my high notes and has gotten better at the end of this year, and I was really surprised at how high my voice can go, and I could find potential in some of my songs in the albums and some of the albums that I've planned.

Full steam ahead on music production, audio mastering, and hitting high notes

2020 was also the year where I got super focused on music production, I got my Spotify, iTunes artist profiles, etc. as I planned last year. I got it verified and accidentally released my album "Nostalgia Vibes: Reincarnation"; where I didn't have my vocals yet - it contains 14 tracks, and I am still in the works on the songwriting and mastering process. It's also the year where I started to get into singing as I discovered Dimash Kudaibergen - I discovered him by googling "vocal range", and discovered Roomie's reaction to a 2017 Sing for You performance.

I've gained a huge interest in not just making music, but also getting myself into audio mastering, since I wanted to make something that doesn't sound terrible, and honestly - I wanted to keep my music as high quality as possible, I really don't care if any music critiques say that a certain aspect of my music is bad or whatnot, as long as it sounds good that makes people dance or something, I'm OK with it - it's my hobby anyway, I'm just putting it on streaming services and cataloging it on music publishers to extend my reach as an artist.

It's crazy to think that I can go very high despite not taking my vocals seriously, but now because of K-Pop, I've been serious about improving not just my dancing, but my vocals as well, I got more into singing when I found out about the boy group EXO, I found out about their vocal ability by K-Pop compilations and whatnot - Baekhyun was my first impressions when it comes to his high notes and I couldn't replay the part on EL DORADO, and also Chen, his solo EP, shows how stable he goes with his vocals. But that is when I found out about Dimash Kudaibergen, I was blown away when I found out about him and he is my inspiration for singing, and also Brendon Urie from Panic! at the Disco.

And, of course, when I get into new things, I have to learn a thing or two, relatively, when I find something intriguing and find something to get into, then I would learn very quickly, and this is why I got into video editing in the first place and I've built over 5 years of experience on it but since I've been burning out on editing videos and I wanted to try something that I've wanted to do for years now, and I've drastically improved my vocals and I hope that it goes well and I wouldn't lose my voice by hitting high-notes a lot.

I was also thinking about doing song covers but I still can't decide on, one since YouTube has tightened its rules, especially when it comes to copyright, and I'm still not confident enough to go to a high range but I am someday going to upload various covers since I am also making music as well (duh).

Editing wikis

On June 2020, I was just bored and started editing Fandom wikis, one of the first wikis I contributed was BlastphamousHD Wikia which totaled over 200+ edits because I decided to waste my time and dig info from various sources, but then I went to other wikis and then I decided to create my own wiki and dump as much information as I can gather so that when people would get to know about me, then they would go there.

In fact, I was wasting my time editing wikis so much at I became an admin in one of a few wikis, such as SMTown Wiki and Lucky's Tale Wiki (previously Luckypedia), which I adopted since the original founder of the wiki disabled his account due to stupid, childish quote-unquote "drama".

I adopted Lucky's Tale Wiki since I wanted to add further changes that only an admin made as well as add a lot of complicated code stuff, and that's all.

"Majira Strawberry Sings BTS' Dynamite"

This one is probably the craziest one and probably the most unexpected one, and I was not going to get attention, but basically... in August - BTS' released their full-English song called "Dynamite", y'all might've heard of it.

I've heard the song so many times that I'm really getting sick of hearing it over and over again, and I just had this idea to make Majira sing to Dynamite, this idea popped up literally the first thing in the morning, and it took 3 months to take because it wasn't really going well and it's a very tedious process to look through all of his 180+ videos that I've downloaded and to make things easier - I downloaded subtitles for each of his videos to make things easier to pinpoint what word was spoken.

The problem is there are some words in the lyrics that Majira himself - at least from all of his videos, don't have words that have been spoken at all, words like "funk and soul" had to be mediated using the sentence-mixing method or word or syllable mixing, which it worked really well. Another problem arises, most of Majira's videos don't have a clear audio quality and Melodyne couldn't recognize it.

However I tried to use CN Levelator and remove any noise and it helped it a bit - for manipulating the vocals - I pitched his vocals to an octave lower to fit his singing voice. And I also tried Jin's high notes part of the song, and I finished the video in November, and scheduled it to be uploaded on November 12, 2020 - because I couldn't do anything due to a 2 day and a half of power interruption. And I had thoughts that the video would explode in views after I went back on, but when I did went back on - it got a few views, which I was half-expecting and half-disappointed.

I'd be doing this process for "Life Goes On", but I'll be using English covers since I won't go through all the Hangul and all that and it would be 10x more difficult if I did. And I started working on the worst day, Christmas Eve, since I slacked a lot on any things but I wasn't able to finish it, but as of writing this, I only finished the chorus part of the song, this video will be my first video on 2021 and just like it happened on my last upload, I wouldn't be expecting munch.

Strange obsession with Paco's art

I think I have a strange obsession with Paco's art, probably it's because his art style, in my opinion, stands out from the others, and it reminds me of one of those cartoons that I see in movies and such. One of my first impressions was he was a concept artist from Disney or something because that's the first thing that immediately crosses my mind. I followed him sometime in 2019, and I have grown an unhealthy habit of opening this specific picture and pinning it on the top-left corner - I've been doing this for almost 2 years, I've been doing this since November 2018. I really have no idea why, I only opened it for a drawing reference of some sort.

In fact, I was using one of his art for various K-Pop album covers because I find it fitting the vibe of the song, I've used his art extensively in my K-Pop playlist compilations on Spotify, but as long as I don't use it for monetary gain in any means, I think we'd be alright on that unless if he private message me about such issues that needed to be addressed, but overall - the reason why I like him is that he's just has a wholesome personality in general!

His art was one of the factors that I joined the furry fandom in 2019 - I'm even inspired to draw like him at one point but I just gave up since I've been focusing on music production since I find it way more intriguing and it was going pretty well this year.

I noticed that he also does special projects as well, one of them being an album cover for "Heat" by Baxxter & Burr, I've saved this on my Spotify list for several months and I can't find an appropriate time to listen to it and I still can't maybe because of music stuff that I've been working on for literal years, I'm currently on the songwriting process.

As much as I want to support him through his Patreon, DA Core Memberships, and all that, I couldn't get PayPal to work through my music revenue for some reason, which I am currently under control but I'll try to spend 50% solely on my music income because... I just love him! I admire his art - but I'd really hope that I could be in touch and be friends, I'm somewhat shy when meeting new people.

Finally wrapping things up

2020 was an experience, and we held on for long enough that hopefully, 2021 will be the year that everything will turn normal, and I'm really hopeful that the awful virus will be eradicated and quarantined for good.