Random Ramblings About Gaming, Minecraft, music, or note blocks

(don't read if you're offended by bad grammar/disorganized writing)

So I talk about note block studio...

26 October 2024, 12:37PM EST

There are two types of note blockers: those that you Note Block Studio (NBS), and those that don't. I'm happy to be in both communities (although I'm more passive in the NBS community), although both communities have their flaws.

I'm one of those that does NOT use NBS. Personally, I just enjoy working in-game rather than in an editor. I'm in peace with NBS now, but when I first started note blocking, this definitely was not the case.

Why some manual note blockers don't like NBS

Some see NBS as cheating. I kind of see that, especially with the "import into vanilla Minecraft" feature. As I got better at note blocking, I became more sympathetic to NBS. If you know how much effort it takes to just arrange a song before building it, you would NOT blame someone for wanting to use NBS. I also don't directly call NBS "cheating" because Minecraft is a sandbox game, there's no right or wrong way to do anything.

Some see NBS covers as lazy. I think people get this from those very old NBS covers on YouTube. While I can't really say I enjoy those covers, I I don't think they were bad considering the times. A lot of those were made by younger people who probably were less patient. It also doesn't help that there were only two instruments available back then, so it sounded very simple.

Some see NBS as unrealistic note blocking. This one, I kind of agree with. (I'm talking about really advanced covers here, the ones you can barely import into Minecraft). Although I must commend those that can make songs in NBS NOT sound like they're note blocks, I just don't see the overall point if it's too technical for Minecraft to even parse. At that point, I feel like you're better off just making songs with a DAW or MIDI sequencer.

Why some NBS note blockers don't like manual note blocking

A lot of NBSers actually started out with manual note blocking. A big reason that people move on is mostly a time convenience thing. This is a concept I completely understand (personally, it would be nice to post more frequently than once every two months).

Another big reason that people move to NBS is because vanilla note blocking feels too limiting for them. A lot of people like the idea of pushing boundaries beyond vanilla note blocks. Although I could never do this, I respect those that do.

A small subset of NBSers find manual note blockers snobby. I agree with this, although I must say that most NBSers don't have an opinion, and most manual note blockers aren't snobby. There is a stigma within manual note blockers around NBS (see above section) that NBSers have definitely picked up on. I don't blame them, I've seen very passive-aggressive things from manual note blockers towards NBS (I'm not proud to say I use to do this as well).

Why I personally don't use NBS

My main reason is the same reason I mentioned earlier; it's much more fun for me to click note blocks in-game than it is to click in an editor, even though it takes much more time. In-game, I feel really in-tune with my build. I like to compare it to manual transmission cars vs automatic transmission cars. One is more convenient, the other *feels* better.

Another big reason I don't use NBS is simply because I build on a server. That means I can't just import schematics. It also means I have to be weary of not lagging the server with a bunch of repeaters. If you've seen my covers, you'll notice that there are A LOT of repeaters. However, I use the minimal amount of repeaters as necessary for the song I'm building. (This makes building a song twice as much more time to make since I can't just copy/paste repeaters willy-nilly!) NBS doesn't do this, it just places all 1-tick repeaters. With the NBS design, a lot more repeaters than necessary get activated, which would probably lag the server I play on.

Moreover, being good at NBS is DIFFICULT. Since the program makes note blocking more convenient, that means there's a higher stand of what constitutes as a good cover. Like I mentioned earlier, the really good NBSers make songs that don't even sound like note blocks. It kinda sucks that I'll probably not receive respect for my work for limiting myself to vanilla Minecraft's technicalities. (This is NOT to say that those really advanced NBS covers don't deserve more respect, THEY DEFINITELY DO DESERVE MORE RESPECT)

How YOU should note block

I believe that everyone should note block in a way THEY like, whether it be hand building, NBS, innovative redstone... the possibilities are endless. The more people that note block, the better the world is IMO

So I went to the Paris Olympics 2024...

12 August 2024, 12:37PM EST

You might find this post off-topic from the main point of this blog, but considering that I did build some songs I will mention later on in this post in note blocks, I think it's fair game for me to post this.

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If you haven't noticed by now, I really like the Olympics. I'm not even that athletic or like sports all that much, I just love the novelty of the Olympics. Countries competing together in a healthy way celebrating their athletes, the Olympic spirit, etc.

I'm also a bit fascinated by French culture. I don't really consider myself a Francophile, but I did choose to take French class all throughout high school. I loved it.

So naturally, I just had to go to the Paris Olympics. It was my first time in Europe (I'm from the United States), let alone France. Everyone told me it was gonna suck. Random people telling me French people are rude, Parisians telling me that the Olympics is the worst thing that's ever gonna happen to Paris, the list goes on... I'm very glad I didn't listen to them because it was one of the best trips of my life.

As much as I want this post to be all about the good, bad, and crazy of my trip, that's not what this is. (Want to know? Ask.) To stay on topic, this post is mainly just me raving about the music-related aspects of my trip. (Though I might get excited and go off the rails sometimes)

First game I watched (Women's soccer-football [now no one can get mad at me] France v. Colombia)

Unsurprisingly, the stadium was filled with French supporters. I'm also very proud of how much of a presence Colombia fans made, despite there not being a lot of them. One thing I love about the Olympics is being able to hear everyone's national anthem, live. I'm very proud that I got to sing the French national anthem along with the whole stadium. If I knew Colombia's national anthem, I would've sang along with them too. Here in the States, when they play the national anthem, you usually aren't supposed to sing along, so I don't get a lot of opportunities to sing national anthems in general.

At this game, I was very surprised to learn that yankee-doodle (an English song making fun of Americans, that later turned to a song sung by Americans to make fun of the English) is part of a popular French soccer-football chant lol

During the half-time, they played Midnight City. I have a special relationship with this song; it's one of my favorites. While I'm glad they played it, I'm very salty because they only played like 10 seconds of it.

Ceremony:

Holy reeee I loved the ceremony. I actually did not get to watch it live (it was like 4257349857 euro). What I DID get to do was watch it from a fan zone. I think that was 100% the best way to watch it. The cinematography of it was amazing. Apparently, everyone that paid to watch it live didn't think it was worth it. Meanwhile I got to watch it for free, while I got to watch the amazing edited version + have the Olympic spirit of everyone cheering on their country's boat.

They did play Midnight City again. Allow me to fangirl about Midnight City a bit. Midnight City was created by a French band called M83, so it's perfect that this song is a huge part of the Paris Olympics. What's also cool is that Midnight City is actually about Los Angeles, the next city that will host the Olympics. Enough about that history though. You'd think they'd play a song like Midnight City (a song that talks about beautiful night skies and lights) for a long time for something like the Olympics Ceremony, right? WRONG, THEY ONLY PLAYED IT FOR LIKE 10 SECONDS AGAIN. I was bummed about that, especially since the whole fan zone was singing that weird 4-note part. It was a special moment, and as much as I hate that they cut it off (again!), I'm glad to have experienced it.

Other songs they played that I was thrilled to hear:

Habanera (I'm actually currently building this with note blocks right now)
Bye Bye Les Galères (song from H&M commercial)
La Marseillaise (you say "well yeah duh," but I just wanted to spam the hyperlink to my video even more)
There were a lot of Phantom of the Opera references as well. I haven't even seen or listened to anything related to Phantom of the Opera, just thought I should mention it since a lot of people think my channel and name is related to Phantom of the Opera lol

Second game I watched (Women's basketball, Australia v. Nigeria, then Belgium v. Germany)

Fun fact about myself, Australia's national anthem is actually my favorite national anthem of all (I have a small note block cover of it on a creative server I play on, no video unfortunately). I was very excited to be able to sing this. I even studied the lyrics on the train ride there. I also had something to look forward to about Nigeria's national anthem. According to a Nigerian friend of a friend, Nigeria recently changed their national anthem, then recently changed it back. So I was also looking forward to seeing the situation about that.

So I arrived to the site, with my red-white-blue tye dye shirt. (It's a USA gymnastics shirt). I chose that shirt thinking I could support Australia with it since their flag is also red white and blue. Only to get there and see all the green and yellow Australian jerseys!!! And no other country competing there has red-white-blue so now I was just this dumb American walking around a non-US game. But anyway, the town that the stadium was in had a lot of fun activities, one of them being a fencing simulator. I ended up getting the highest score so far! The thing is, we were so distracted by all the fun activities that we MISSED THE SINGING OF THE AUSTRALIAN AND NIGERIAN NATIONAL ANTHEMS. I was kind of bummed about that, it's not like I get the opportunity to sing my favorite national anthem in a crowd everyday. But, I'm still thankful I got to experience the Olympics, and that I got a high score on that simulator lol.

I did, however, make it to the singing of the Belgian and German national anthems. Another fun fact about myself, when I was a pre-teen, I was almost a Germanophile, so I know one verse of the German national anthem. Thing is, the only verse I know by heart is the verse that they took out after WWII. So at the end of the Australia vs Nigeria game, I was literally studying the lyrics of Germany's national anthem lol. It was so embarrassing, I felt like the people behind me were judging, but whatever. I ended up memorizing a whopping two lines of Germany's national anthem that I got to sing a long. I'm proud of myself for that. Since the stadium was filled with Belgians (this stadium is actually near the French - Belgium border), it was also nice to hear Belgium's national anthem sung strongly.

Well that's pretty much it in terms of all I have to say about the music of the Olympics. If you want to know more, well, you know what to do.

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Moral of the story: JUST GO TO THAT TRIP YOU'RE DREAMING ABOUT YOU WON'T REGRET IT

So I started a blog i guess...

7 July 2024, 11:51PM EST

I can't believe it, I'm one of those people now. I'm one of those heavily opinionated people with a lot to say. ahuiyusd;fdf3wfkdsmf

Honestly, this page is just for giggles. This website is only because I had a domain. The domain was only to protect my Minecraft server. And my Minecraft server only exists as a result of an old inactive project. But here I am, just writing away.

I joked about making a blog on this domain with my friend. Well some hours of boredom later, it's not a joke anymore.

That's all I have for now. If you have any tips on how to be a sad beige note block blogger, please let me know as it seems that being a sad beige person highly correlates with being a successful blogger.

P.S. Excuse the abrasive tone, I used to worship cringe blogs as a teen and this is a way of making fun of myself, this is not intended to harm anyone else!