auberginedreams: An album about loneliness I made in Japan

Dewinged 04.08.19	Gotta give this a check. Our stories are pretty similar although I moved to Japan in 2009, met the wifey one year later and never went back to home country. I was also making music at that time.
TheCynic 04.08.19	very interesting
auberginedreams 04.08.19	So apparently I am very dumb and bad at technology and I accidentally uploaded this album to an account with a url where my artist name is misspelled lol. I contacted Bandcamp support so hopefully it can be fixed. I uploaded it t thehedgehogsdilemna.bandcamp.com instead of https://thehedgehogsdilemmamusic.bandcamp.com. Dewinged that’s awesome, but have you really not been home to visit in ten years? I’m actually back home right now but I’ll be moving back to Japan at the end of June. My gf was visiting here and since she doesn’t speak English I had to translate everything back and forth so she could talk to my family haha, it was fun but tiring after a few days. I mean my Japanese is still far from perfect but it helps having a native speaker I can practice with anytime. Congrats on the wife, my gf wants to get married and we wil eventually but I need to work on some life stuff such as getting a decent job in Japan which is why I came back to finish my degree, and thankfully she understands.
Dewinged 04.08.19	Oh yeah, I go home to visit every year and a half or so, but what i meant is that I'm not moving back in like... forever. Love the country, the people and I got to a comfortable level of Japanese after 10 years.
Sinternet 04.08.19	skimmed through it and compositionally i like it a lot, and the production is mostly on point. it could be mixed louder, but that could be down to bandcamp rather than your actual mix (although i think that would be slightly too quiet regardless). only major thing I would have changed is that I don't think the piano sound on track 2 works, it sticks out like a sore thumb whereas your piano in the other tracks gels nicely. anyway will give a more indepth listen later
auberginedreams 04.08.19	Thank you for the feedback, the volume issue is because I lost the original individual tracks when my laptop crashed and just had the master tracks so I couldn’t finish mixing it. If there is a way to boost the overall volume I will do that and reupload the songs though. I will go back and listen for the piano issue :)
Deathconscious 04.08.19	"it could be mixed louder" I believe your volume control may be a remedy for that.
Sinternet 04.08.19	'I believe your volume control may be a remedy for that.' loud volume =/= loud mix volume means nothing
auberginedreams 04.08.19	Thank you for your valuable input AgentAutism! As for the mixing, I do agree that there are a few elements that should be louder, mostly the snare and kick drum in the first song.
auberginedreams 04.08.19	That’s perfectly fine.
ScuroFantasma 04.08.19	Chill album, neat story (:
artiswar 04.08.19	Pretty good, a little on the short side for an album though
auberginedreams 04.08.19	Yeah I guess it’s more like an EP, I didn’t even realize I entered it in the Sputnik database as an album and the 2012 one as an EP lol.
artiswar 04.08.19	Eh no worries mate, I enjoyed it quite a bit either way and I'll be checking your next release to see how you progress.
keza 04.09.19	Great story, will listen to this album. Japan is pretty magnetic to me, went only last year and already super keen to get back.
ChoccyPhilly 04.09.19	Neat little EP with a great story
auberginedreams 04.09.19	Thanks to everyone who has listened and commented, means a lot.
furpa 04.09.19	This is lovely! Way to go man, digging this. Congrats on the featured list!
auberginedreams 04.09.19	Thanks man (or woman, I still have a bad habit of assuming everyone online is a dude lol) although full disclosure I did ask the mods if they’d feature it and thankfully they did.
auberginedreams 04.09.19	I’m in audacity atm trying to fix the low volume issue. Like I said, unfortunately I don’t currently have access to the original files due to technical difficulties with my laptop that occurred before I was totally finished with the mixing process, but I can at least amplify and normalize the tracks. There are a few things I wish I could tweak like the quiet kick and snare drums on track one and the woodblock thing that clips a bit on track two (I’m using a clipping reduction tool on that) but I should be able to make it a bit better, then I will re-upload. Again, thanks a bunch to anyone who takes the time to listen and give be feedback, once I’m done tweaking this I will resume my other project. Due to moving back to Japan soon I will probably only be able to make a very short EP but I want to get some music finished while I have some time.
artiswar 04.09.19	cool, I prefer shorter releases anyway
Ambrosian 04.09.19	Wow that's a great story will def listen soon
auberginedreams 04.09.19	I was able to get it up on my main Bandcamp page. https://thehedgehogsdilemmamusic.bandcamp.com I couldn’t really raise the volume without totally brickwalling it unfortunately, but I made some slight adjustments to compression, tried to reduce clipping, and boosted the bass a little.
artiswar 04.09.19	Sweet, will relisten
LepreCon 04.09.19	Awesome stuff man, lived in Japan for about two years myself!
auberginedreams 04.09.19	Nice, I didn't realize there were that many people on here that have lived in Japan. Thanks for listening guys.
artiswar 04.09.19	Same, and I'm highly jealous of you all cause I don't have the guts to move there.
Uzumaki 04.09.19	That little hip hop beat on track 3 caught me off guard in a good way. I like how lo-fi everything feels, and like the others, I'll be looking forward to your next release!
Meridiu5 04.10.19	+1 for the evangelion reference
artiswar 04.10.19	just wanted to let you know that when I downloaded the album, every song is 4:44 and has about 2 minutes of dead air at the end.
auberginedreams 04.10.19	Yeah I noticed that and reuploaded it.
artiswar 04.10.19	K it's working fine now.
SitarHero 04.11.19	@Dewi and Aubergine: How long did it take you guys to learn Japanese and was it through lessons+immersion or just immersion?
auberginedreams 04.11.19	I started studying Japanese in 2013. It is an ongoing process, I’m still definitely not totally fluent but I can hold a conversation pretty well. I mean my girlfriend doesn’t speak English and we’ve been together for 4 years so my Japanese must be okay, but I still need to look up words and ask her to repeat herself and stuff sometimes. Movies and stuff are still very difficult without subtitles. Kanji is the worst part, I can read enough to text in Japanese fine but I couldn’t read a book in Japanese yet unless it’s for kids, and my handwriting is bad lol. I studied on my own for maybe a year and a half just using apps and online materials and a couple books I bought, then went to language classes in Japan for five months in 2015 and for another five months in 2017. I’ve been back in the US and will be moving back to Japan in June. I get rusty with my Japanese when I’m gone for too long so I’m gonna take a couple months of classes when I get back. I also completed all the Japanese classes that my college offered. A lot of my Japanese is also learned from talking and texting with my girlfriend every day, as well as hanging out with Japanese friends. Some of my Japanese friends speak English pretty well but I try to talk to them in Japanese anyway as much as possible so that I am always practicing. I think it’s really important to practice with native speakers. There were a lot of people in my college classes who could score higher than me on a test but couldn’t have a natural conversation with an actual Japanese person because they didn’t use their language skills in real life situations.
auberginedreams 04.11.19	@Uzumaki: Thanks man, I’m actually relieved to hear that because I was a little worried that beat may be too abrupt or out of place so I’m super happy you dig it! I was definitely going for a sort of lo-fi hip-hop sound fused with a layered post-rock sort of structure (but electronic obviously) on this EP. I tried to do the lo-fi aesthetic on my 2012 one too but I had no idea what I was doing in terms of production then and ended up taking it too far into just shitty sounding territory lol. This is more “mid-fi@ I guess. I stand by the melodies on that first EP but I think I improved a lot in terms of production, even though it’s still a bit of a weakness for me compared to composition. @Meridiu5 Nice catch haha, I was wondering when someone would get the reference. I actually realized that there’s another band with the same name on Bandcamp though, I think they’re like country or something.
Trebor. 04.11.19	Infinite Jest!
sonictheplumber 04.12.19	A bunch of shite.
Dewinged 04.12.19	@Sitar Studied on my own plus some scattered lessons, but I was living already in Japan and bouncing between jam sessions and parties, knowing a lot of people so I would say a lot of it was immersion. My level right now is medium high. (N2 of the Japanese Proficiency test). I would say it took me 2 years to get to a semi-comfortable level.
auberginedreams 04.12.19	@Trebor: I actually haven’t read the whole book, I saw a quote online that I thought was great and so I went and read that section but I need to go back and read the whole thing when I have time.
auberginedreams 04.13.19	I added this to my Soundcloud page. https://soundcloud.com/auberginedreams00 If anyone is curious, this song I recorded in 2013 is a good indicator of what my current project is shaping up to be. Eventually I'm gonna re-record this song. https://soundcloud.com/auberginedreams00/the-problem-with-porcupines
Uzumaki 04.13.19	Interesting... Not bad. My only suggestion would be it needs a moment of catharsis as the track feels like it's building toward something. I like it.
auberginedreams 06.24.19	My emo/post-hardcore ep should be done in about a week.