music: "crystals and pianos"

hi. as i've been working on learning new skills for this project, i've started learning cursory knowledge about music - things like "what a pad is" or "how to use a DAW." i'll be up-front and say i also had a separate introduction to how to play music with my dad, who plays the guitar. he found the guitar intuitive and couldn't explain things, so i gave up on it pretty early in; now that my hand is the way it is, i figured i wouldn't be able to pursue that anyway.
but you know what i can pursue? trashy 100% digital music.

my biggest shortcoming, besides not being able to play an instrument by hand, is that i tend to not make pieces into whole songs, because game music is often a seamless loop... and i have trouble thinking of interesting progressions, or rather, finding them compelling enough to want to put in the effort to make them past like 1 or 2 progressions. i'm reminded of when i was a kid and thought a few hours on one drawing as so long, haha.
i need to start listening to music more to see what takes up the most time and how they're usually spaced out. i can get a better idea of how long portions are supposed to take, and how progressions generally happen. i can also note complexity and how many instruments are actually playing - something my brain often turns into just one big sound controlled by the main instrument, kind of like how you hear chords as one note despite the fact that they are multiple. it takes actually sitting down and focusing for me to really internalize it, though, so i haven't gotten around to it yet.
regardless, this is the longest i have, which started as an experiment with pad instruments once i noticed that i didn't touch them much in spite of their presence in a lot of modern music. without any instruments to support, it sounded very ethereal and heady, so i made it into a little narrative about music you hear in your head and music you actually make. since the music i've been making has been with at least some intent to make it about sven, the protagonist of the game i want to make, i did think about someone much younger playing the piano in the second half of the song. 

it's been really fun, and learning even a little bit about music combined with trying to make some has made actual music by other people sound completely different. genuinely i would recommend trying it to anyone who loves music or listens to it a lot. honestly, any creative skill you wish you could do, i really recommend trying to learn it. there are so, so many resources online nowadays.
just don't pay for those courses that claim they'll teach you music hacks or whatever, everything they teach you is available elsewhere for free--

VST: Love-Fi 2 Lite