June | 2026 | Two Miles From Nowhere

I got a bass guitar for Christmas last year.

I’m loving it.

I’ve been practicing and trying to learn the fundamentals, and I’m having a lot of fun, even if I am clearly not a prodigy or in any way “gifted” with a talent of magic fingers.

It’s all good, I’m just having fun.

Irony

I thought a positive side of that is that I don’t have to deal with accusations of my recordings being created by AI. I give you the full human experience of imperfection on display.

Turns out I was wrong on that.

Screenshot of a Reddit comment: u/SophieChesterfield replied to your post in r/originalmusic "Are you sure? It seems like an AI song that got played through speakers and recorded back to try adn give it mass, lost quality. I doubt any platforms like Deezer or Spotify would label it human — Fuck this ignorant bitch and all the other insecure trolls.

I guess a troll’s gotta troll…

Anyway, moving right along.

So here we are, at just over six months later, and I present an exercise in writing and recording a song.

For the Record

I also recognized that I could create a record of my growth over time, and that doing so would be of benefit in several ways.

I just had to swallow my pride and put it out there.

I chose Soundcloud as the place I would “put it out there”, mostly because I had already created an account there a long time ago, and uploaded a couple of files.

Path of least resistance, for the win.

A Wrong Bassline

So this all started with one of the first basslines I tried to learn.

I didn’t get it quite right.

I admit that freely, and I will verify the song if anyone figures out what it is supposed to be from.

I got the notes mostly right, but I completely ignored the written tempo and played it at MY TEMPO!

But I stuck with it, and I like it.

Vocals

Barely.

Spoken word, more like it.

I guess the kids might call it rap.

I call it a mic-check exercise.

File it under “Funk”.

Trying to sing/speak at the same tempo of the bassline, I realize why it(the bass line) is so much slower in the original song I failed to copy accurately.

So the ultimate focus for vocals was to not mumble, keep a consistent level, and stay reasonably on beat.

If I was going to keep working on this, I would experiment with the lyrical rhythm.

Production

Minimal, some compression and reverb. The lead guitar has distortion and wah-pedal. Pretty basic stuff.

I used Reason 12 to record everything.

Oh yeah, I’ve also had to learn how to do a lot of things in Reason. Still learning that, actually, so this is a history of my progress with producing music as well.

I’ve been uploading artifacts of the experience to Soundcloud (see below).

You can hear a lot of variety between the different songs, even though it is the same basic beat and bass line.

Things have come a long way in the music production realm, and the world is a better place.

Ultimately, it’s been lots of fun so far.

Receipts

So here are the different recordings I posted over time, illustrating the evolution of a bassline, from a daily exercise to an “actual song”.

New Bass (alternate mix): https://on.soundcloud.com/bjGFT3G9NEnLhw38lG

Feb 1, 2026: https://on.soundcloud.com/hQmxi2T6oOpP2ZPv2L

Testing Mix – In Reason 12: https://on.soundcloud.com/ak19H57TSwGx28sbIQ

Howz Muh Toan?: https://on.soundcloud.com/gbgJkHtZQ4hzLdzUCE

Day 2 Day: https://on.soundcloud.com/vxZKafyvmvSbHypra7

As always, thank you for your kind attention and support!

In addressing the gulf between the cruel and the compassionate, an inordinate amount of patience is required.

Since patience is not a commonly known or typical virtue of the cruel, it falls on the compassionate side to invoke the patience. With patience, the compassionate ones exert the effort of showing the cruel ones a better way of being.

Some things are taught through reciprocity, some through example, others are a matter of conditioning and indoctrination, and still other things require more drastic measures – a tale for another time.

The point being, that in dealing with the human condition, there are many avenues down which an individual might progress. I heartily recommend the path of compassion.

For those who say compassion is a weakness, I offer you the patience to go and learn better, and then return for another lesson.

Sometimes going away is an important lesson to learn, and so we practice maintaining healthy boundaries as part of our compassionate, patient, practice.

This is where the strength of compassion is demonstrated, in the maintaining of healthy boundaries and practicing self-care.

I count myself as one who continues to work on these things.

Thanks for sharing your attention with my ideas.

Blessed be!

Two Miles From Nowhere

Monthly Archives: June 2026

Bass is Base