LORD OF THE GAME

[Salic]

Too early to sleep, too late to quit; it was a state of mind Mikki had become accustomed to over these last few weeks. Maybe there was such a thing as too much inspiration. Over the course of Christmas break, she'd stayed up late because she didn't have shit to do in the morning. The fires of musical passion always seemed to strike her at 11pm, and during the two hour stretch to 1am she'd work her ass off synthesizing her sounds, creating her textures, and finding her non-musical samples. If there was one thing that she loved, it was turning sounds that most people wouldn't ever consider as adjacent to music- fax machines, power drills, mechanical keyboards, the like- and turning them into backing beats, bass lines, and drums that she knew people loved. Her personal favorite was turning the Krakatoa Eruption audio into a powerful, explosive bass. Turning 141 year old audio into a listenable, gratifying sound was tough, but the satisfaction of conquering the challenge made the work worth it.

Now though, it was 2am. The late night rush had worn off, and the lull of energy led directly into Mikki's least favorite part of the creative process: editing. She stared at the screens of the multiple monitors that made up her DAW, the sight of two hours of creative brain spew condensed into ten minutes of music instilling a twinge of resentment in her tired mind. Breaking her gaze from the screens, she turned to the table next to her and grabbed the bong that sat upon it. There was enough smoke left a good hit, but the noticeable lack of bubbles and water meant that it was going to be her last one for the night. She didn't mind though. Following her wrecked sleep schedule, she'd be wandering to her bed in an hour.

Putting the bong to her mouth, she gave a deep inhale, the sensation of smoke coursing its way through her trachea to the bottom of her lungs becoming ever more familiar to her. Holding it in for a few seconds, she exhaled the smoke, and it made its way to the ceiling, contributing to the haziness of her private studio. Fuck, a good hit really could take the edge off. Setting the bong back on the table, she turned to her screens, ready to knock out the mixing, mastering, and editing before she became too tired to continue.

"Fuck it, let's do this."

((Mikki Swift - PREGAME START))

Editing was always Mikki's bane because her music was the inverse of Sturgeon's Law: 90% of it was great, and 10% of it was crap. She was good at recognizing what worked in her songs and what didn't; of the 10% of her music that she thought was below her standards, she caught 99% of it before it was ever released to the public. Of course, some of the sounds she edited out were kept for later; she'd made entire songs out of rejected bits from others. There was a reason the Delete key on her keyboard was pristine compared to the wear and smudging of the other keys. Mikki simply didn't need to use it very often. Still, she hated shortening her songs and editing her sound because she felt like it was conforming to her audience. Judging from the attention spans of her classmates, most people wouldn't care for six minutes of violently aggressive synth music, so to the carving block those tracks went.

Mixing and mastering was usually easy. Mikki loved music that was fast, heavy, loud, and aggressive, and her mastering reflected that. More than a few songs of hers were intentionally released while being brickwalled and compressed to a brutal degree, simply because she enjoyed the experimental abrasiveness that it provided. It was a stylistic choice, and if her numbers on TikTok and SoundCloud were anything to go by, fans of SiDEWINDER certainly weren't complaining.

However, the unedited track that lay before her, titled Sisyphean, was a departure from her usual sound. Instead of being an aggressive, three minute banger with spiky synths, crushing bass, and animalistic drums, it was softer, slower, more atmospheric. It was good to branch out; even the most experimental music could become formulaic if it was done the same way too many times, and if there's anything that Mikki couldn't stand, it was being formulaic. Sisyphean was ten minutes of stripped production, melodic beats, quiet bass, and softer drums. The hook was much mellower, much more subdued. Each musical cycle began with a slow instrumental burn, with the beats, bass, and drums building up to a fever pitch before collapsing back down to Earth to their soft, melodic origins. Each cycle was one minute, and with ten cycles, it added up to a ten minute track built on mania and its aftershocks. Every time Sisyphus reached the peak of his mountain, his boulder would tumble all the way down to the base, and the eternal cycle would continue. Simple, hard-hitting, effective.

Of course, Sturgeon's Law applied to more than just her music. 90% of TikTok's user base were drooling morons, and the 10% of normal people were so spread thin across the site that it was an uphill battle to attract even one of them to her music. That same law also accounted for the user bases of SoundCloud and BandCamp. It was why she hated editing. She was bending over backwards to please the peons on the site because without numbers, she would drown in the sea of the 90% when she knew that she belonged in the 10%. Mikki hoped the era of sacrificing artistry for the sake of mass appeal would cease when she amassed a large enough following, but for now it was a necessary evil that she had no choice but to begrudgingly accept. Since she knew her audience, she knew that a ten minute track wouldn't do; most internet plebs couldn't watch a 30 second video without desperately needing Subway Surfers footage to fill the void of stimulation. With much grumbling and silent complaining, Mikki pressed the Delete key, and just like that, two cycles of the song were discarded on the cutting room floor.

She was unwilling to cut any more. While she was okay with making some sacrifices, she had to maintain an acceptable level of integrity in what she produced and put out there. Unlike her other music, Sisyphean was meant to be an atmospheric background track. It was what you listened to when you sat down to concentrate and write, or draw, or do math, or whatever. 'Short' and 'Atmospheric' were two musical adjectives that she didn't believe worked well together. SiDEWINDER's followers would have to get used to the length; eight minutes was the shortest she was willing to go. Since the track consisted of the same cycle over and over, that was the last bit of editing she needed to do, and she could get to the mixing and mastering. It took longer than she was used to, because she couldn't turn it into her beloved musical wall. Each rise, each fall, each snare hit, each bass bump was carefully tweaked, analyzed, and tweaked some more. Distortion, modulation, and strategic compression was added, taken away, and added again until the sounds graced her ears in the exact way that she wanted. Perfect. Looking at the waveform analysis, her eyes traced the soft hills, violent peaks, and deep valleys of the track, appreciating the look of the music in graphical form.

Yeah. Yeah, this would do fine. Juuust fine.

Downloading the file, she uploaded it to TikTok, SoundCloud, BandCamp, YouTube, and any other platform she could think of at that moment. Once it was done, she glanced down at her Apple watch. 3am sharp. At the sight of the time, she let out a long, loud yawn, stretching out her arms and her back while she did so. Her eyelids drooped. Her brain had done enough creating today. Now it was time to rest up for about five hours before she did the process again. Making her way out of her studio, she ambled over to the sliding door that led to her balcony. Gripping the handle, she yanked it open, hoping that the weed smell would vent out overnight. It was then that she collapsed on her bed, and as soon as her face plopped down in the pillow, she was completely zonked out. Of course, sleep never lasted too long. The grind of an upcoming, passionate artist could never cease, lest she drift into irrelevance overnight.

If she wanted to be more than just a passing fad or a voice lost in the sea of mediocrity, then she'd bust her fucking ass to become St. Paul's greatest musical act. Never rest when you could be clawing your way to success; it would never come to those who waited. It was a creed that Mikki would follow until the bitter end.