Sup' guys, it's me, the birthday dude !

I just noticed we're the 24th, and realised I missed the deadline for Pixel Day (but hey, at least I didn't miss my own birthday this time).

I wanted to make a song for both Pixel Day and my Birthday, but I eventually forgot about it. So instead, I decided to share some infos on what I've been doing for a while !

Music : Learning new genres

If you talk to me on Discord, you might be aware that I've been trying to improve as a producer over the past few months. I feel like everyone else is improving except me, which is extremely frustrated as I feel left behind.

So for the past few months, I tried going out of my comfort zone and tried some new genres.

• Melodic Dubstep : The Quest of the Perfect Stack

If you know me well, you're probably aware I absolutely love melodic dubstep.

There's many different types of Melo-Dub : bass-focused, stack-focused, incorportaing color basses, the Mestrix kind...

I love all of them (but Roy Knox, Skybreak and Alesda hit different).

Basic Melodic Dubstep seems to be a reachable goal for me (unlike other Dubstep-related genres) so I've been slowly but surely getting the hang of it.

I received some advices from Jarrix and @MestrixMusic, which I thank a lot.

• Future Bass : The Wub one

Haters will say it's just melodic dubstep without the growls, and I will say they are not completely wrong.

There's many type of future bass songs, but the one I'm going for is similar to PatFromLastYear and Nurko.

So far I've gotten some pretty good attemps at it :)

• Future Bounce : The long-time coming

I like Future Bounce a lot. There's a lot of cool ID's and remixes I've never shared but will eventually post on my second alias). The main problem is that my leads and mixing usually sucks.

Some days ago, I've made a pretty cool track which reminds me of old Retrovision a little bit. I will work on it with @Astedroid so stay tuned !

It also reminds @Rodsyk of Sam Ourt somehow. Check out Rodsyk, he's a pretty cool and talented dude !

• UK Hardcore : Because Speedcore was just too hard

It's the 3rd time it happened since I've started making music, but I fell down the rabbithole once again.

I'll be honest with you : I think I'm already pretty decent at it ! It's a pretty beginner-friendly genre on a basic level.

Once I'm able to finish an entire song (I suck at structuring songs, except for drops), you can expect a couple of those on my channel.

I will also try learning Rythm Game Hardcore / Speedcore, but don't get your hopes up.

My guy @Astedroid will probably help me with that since he gets the hang of it.

• Colour Bass : The unexpected and painful one

You know me : I suck at Dubstep. It got me into music production, i always wanted to learn to make it, but I just can't.

Just like UK Hardcore, I've tried getting the hang of it and my friend @TrickshotMusic showed me a couple of cool tricks.

I'll probably give it a serious try, but I first need to understand basic Dubstep.

Let's hope @Hookington and @Froej keep giving me some tips. Cool peeps, check them out !

• Dark Progressive House : What do you mean it doesn't need chords ?!

The final one I can think of at the moment. It's pretty hard to make but I'm going for a Revealed type of vibe.

I think Bertuss has made a tutorial which sounds pretty much like what I'm going for if you're curious.

It's quite hard for me to learn because it's quite different from the Progressive House I usually do, but hey, we all gotta start somewhere.

What else ?

1. You can probably expect a Future Bass EP in the near future.
2. Two Original Tracks (One needs a better drop snare and I'm currently looking for a vocalist for the second one [which is hard when you can't afford one]) Those have been done for months but I just want to make them a bit better.
3. A guaranteed Melodic House EP with @MestrixMusic (Already 3 solid ideas I sent over to him).
4. A reboot of one of @TMM43's classics (once I'm finally able to finish working on it). I swear I'm not procrastinating, it's just hard.
5. A bunch of collabs with some good friends.
6. Potentially some 2019 songs of mine on my second alias which I've talked about earlier. Trust me, they are pretty good and I just forgot about releasing them.

So is it just Music Stuff then ?

Nope !

The past year, I've browsed the art portal almost everyday, talented artists like @Bacun (probably my favorite on Newgrounds) made me want to learn digital drawing even more than before.

I've been learning various softwares (Photoshop, Paint Tool Sai, Clip Studio) for some time now, here's what I'm planning to do :

• Painted and Semi-Realistic Landscapes (Concept Artist ?).

I just love those, it's pretty hard to understand at first but i think I'll get the hang of it :)

• Vector Arts

I already understand it, just gotta better my "compositions" if that makes sense

• GFX

Logos, Banners, that could be neat

• Finally, Characters

The reason I put this one at the end is because it will take a very long time to learn. I'm starting from nothing and am currently going through what I call "the painful part" : Anatomy.

I basically have to start learning from scratch which is gonna be hard af, but I'll try my best.

I'd like to learn Anime, Chibi and Semi Realistic styles first, and then slowly develop my own style. I love stylized designs, which is probably why i like Bacun's art so much

What about Newgrounds ?

I might participate in a few contests this year. I think I'll give AIM (Art Inspired Music contest) a try, probably NGADM and NGUAC too if I have time.

I'd also like to host my very own Newgrounds Megacollab, might be hard though.

That's all for now. Props to you if you've read this far. This literally took me over 1 hour to write xD

As a token of appreciation, I will sharing some of the musics I've been working on to you guys.

Just leave a comment with which of the stuff you're curious about :)

You can also ask me anything you want.



Have a good day !

- X3ll3n

P.S. I've linked the people I've talked about throughout the post, don't hesitate checking them out