i enjoy listening to foreign language content while drawing occasionally. this guide will be a longshot that anyone here wants this
'best' way to learn languages:
works for any of the most-spoken ~10-20 languages in the world
download 'drops language app' on your phone. its basically Anki but not crappy. (has other memorization techniques far better than just the self-reporting SRS that Anki does). grind this app to learn the ~2500 of the most frequent words spoken in the language. my advice for which words to add/not add to the app's vocab when they come up in the app:
1. Don't add any of the junk phrases the app has started adding recently, anything longer than 2 or 3 words, just don't add it to the vocab mix. leave it hidden. anything longer than 2 or 3 words is a pain to have to input caus they're so long... usually its made up of words that are taught in other cards in the app anyway, so pointless pretty much.
2. Don't add any words in the language you already know... don't add them to the vocab mix if you already know them
3. Don't add any words that sound similar to an english word, e.g. don't add "el limon" in spanish caus its similar enough to "lemon". dont bother adding it until youve finished all the other ~2000 words. (probably you dont want to add about 1/10 of the words at least)
4. Don't bother using Drops language app on PC. the implementation is trash and pretty sure the company has sold out at this point so it will prob never get fixed. theres no hotkeys, no typing input, nothing. its just a mobile app on PC which is pretty shit. just use it on phone if you can.
5. The nice thing about Drops, they do seem to add more words, like every month. and a lot of it is garbage long phrases, but i assume they'll continue adding words so maybe in a few years it'll be up to 3000/4000 words idk. i think its about 2500 words for every language atm... not sure.
so you do this to grind the 2500 words. the next step is to grind duolingo. people think duolingo is good for learning vocab. its not. drops app is good for vocab caus it helps you memorise each word with an individual picture and SRS included in the exercises it runs through. what duolingo is really good for is learning the grammar of a language. i wouldn't advise using duolingo on phone. its fine. id only use duolingo if you can touch type, and mainly only use it on PC. i think you'd want to create some custom AutoHotKey macro presses for your keyboard to use duolingo on PC more easily. theres a hotkey {ctrl down}{space}{ctrl up} built into pc duolingo which replays audio for example, i remap this to just {tab} in autohotkey. and things for switching keyboard layout to a different language in one press, if needed, and also things for sending {enter} twice in one press (i think something like send, {enter} sleep, 800 send, {enter} can be useful) etc. you can figure it out easy if youve done any programming.
so after you've finished grinding drops app and duolingo you have a vocab of ~3500 words maybe who knows. for reference, Harry Potter 1 has around 5k unique words, afaik. so its a good choice. the good thing about harry potter 1 is it's translated into every language ever created. and all of the top ~20 languages have a free audiobook upload somewhere on youtube.... you can listen to this audiobook 24/7 in any language, even english. you prob want to memorise harry potter 1 if you want to learn multiple languages.
but i think the main content thats really good for learning languages is twitch. if you go to twitch stat sites, you can filter by language spoken... and just click through all the top twitch streamers of any given language, until you find streamers that talk incessantly and plays video games. once you find a twitch streamer in a language, if you look in the bottom left of twitch's interface you'll see "viewers of this channel also watch" - this another way to find more channels to check out. you should be able to come up with a list of 5 or 10 of these streamers that you enjoy just in 1-3 hours of doing this... make sure the streamer leaves their vods up so you can watch them (some streamers require payment to view past broadcasts). the nice thing about this content, is a lot of the time these streamers play english video games, sometimes localized into their language. anyway it makes it easier to understand whats going on, easier to attach words that you can attach loosely to what's happening in the game. also, the twitch chat is a fun little puzzle. most commenters only make comments with 3-10 words, so its a fun game to try and guess what the viewer is saying, and then you can copy and paste it into google translate to see if you were close. i think the main advantage of watching twitch is its pretty natural conversation with slang... and its more natural than a podcast or an audiobook..... but whatever. the main part of this guide is to grind Drops language app first, then duolingo. doesn't have to be strict... just in general... if you instead, tried duolingo before drops, you'll be hovering your mouse over every other word to try and remember what the word meant. so you really wanna grind Drops app first before doing anything else. but you can listen to harry potter or twitch streams at any point as well. you can listen to harry potter audiobook while doing other things.... whatever....
so i think this is the best way to learn a language probably. takes too long to learn languages. do something else is my advice. english is good. but if you really want to learn a language. i think i have a good system... mostly this is an endorsement for Drops language app. its really good. except possible theyre sold out. pretty sure they were bought by some huge corporation. and the app will prob get shitter every day. except they are adding more words. just half of the words are shitty phrases and they even double add words lol... just put them in different sections. which is fine. i just dont think the app is going to get better. but its already great so it doesnt matter... its great app, best way to learn that 2500 vocab... really before the app was sold out, the app is actually fucking sick.... like really good design... youll see if you try it. its a great memorization tool... each word has custom image and the app uses spaced repetition well... really good design for memorizing quickly. oh you do need to pay for it.... but its worth it. you can do i think 5minutes per day, unlimited amount of days, before having to pay for it
guide for finding foreign language harry potter audiobook when you know nothing of the language:
1. find the name of the harry potter translation e.g. 'Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal' in spanish
2. type 'audiobook' into google translate -> translates to 'audio libro' in spanish... or also just try 'audiobook' instead
paste the above 2 things into youtube searchbar. for any of the top 10-20 languages there might be 2-3 different readers of the audiobook. pick the best reader
oh yeah check that drops and duolingo has the language you want to learn. ideally you'd want a language that is on both these sites. 'memrise' is the next best option ive found... people make their own custom language courses on the site. there are some pretty good ones with audio files for memorizing words.
i prefer listening to music while drawing... its pretty cool how easy it can be to learn languages today. foreign language sitcoms are another good choice. the sitcoms, unlike dramas, have non-stop dialogue, and the storylines are usually fun and enjoyable even if you dont know whats going on. a lot of it is more physical humour. dramas typically everyone is stone-face 80% of the time. sitcoms has more animated body language. dont watch dramas to learn a language. its stone-face... thirty seconds of no dialogue... more stone-face... dramatic music. and you dont even know whats happening. dont watch dramas to learn language
at some point i think having google translate on one half of the screen and some type of video/videopodcast/etc on the other half of screen can be good... and type constantly words you not sure of into google translate, with an AutoHotKey macro on Enter-keypress that sends {ctrl down}a{ctrl up}{delete} to quickly clear the field. another good one is listen to harry potter audiobook WHILE reading harry potter PDF at the same time can be a good handsfree exercise to get your head to be able to break up the string of an entire sentence into the separate words better. really i think draw with music caus english is pretty sick but do what you want
Rihanna - Umbrella (Orange Version) (Official Music Video) ft. JAY-Z
screen capture of the midi input system im working on. even though ive done ~100/150(?)hours muscle memory into this system, im only just starting to try writing music with it. the metaphor id use is that the muscle-memory-training-games i used to learn this system are like READING... and now i have to actually learn how to WRITE with the system so its a bit different, the difference between reading and writing text maybe is the metaphor. all the pauses in this are me either a) thinking of what note to input next b) making typo c) trying to remember what the macro chain for a specific note/velocity is. the 2nd half of this video has a bit faster inputting of notes. also i just used the same velocity for all these notes, but when im not screencapping im working on getting better at inputting velocities between around 90-120 atm. also theres lots of functions that dont show up in this short video segment. pitching notes up and down octaves... changing velocity of existing notes. selecting a box of notes and deleting. all has similar but different muscle memory to learn for each function with typing on keyboard. still dont know if this makes any sense.
ultimately i want the muscle memory to be 3/4 times faster than this at least. dont know if it will happen but ill do some more inputting with it and see where it goes. i could get rid of the 4 bars and just keep using the first 2 bars, like i was doing here pretty much. thats half the muscle memory requirement gone if i did that, so should be twice as fast to learn. dont know yet. you can build these input systems a million different ways. are they worth it? probably not. you have to already know how to make music in DAW/play instrument. you have to be a programmer pretty much, and you have to sink 100s hours into boring muscle-memory-training game before even attempting to make this slow tedious inputting of actual music. id rate it . 0 out of 10 stars nah whatever but i dont recommend input systems,. like i keep saying. also i built the system just for index fingers... would probably be more ideal to build it for something like index and middle fingers... or use different hardware than qwerty/ergodox keyboard... or use talon voice-to-text software(no muscle-memory-training required for talon voice-to-text i guess looks good). which would be completely different muscle memory/no muscle memory and coding of the system layers in all cases. you can see why i talk about making a pixel-inputter system. since the muscle memory ive learned is basically to-do with inputting boxes onto a grid. its a 64 wide grid, 58 high. all the notes are limited to exact grid-coordinates atm, but i might build in things to move things slightly off grid etc.
you can see the keypresses i make onscreen. thats not normally in the code, just added for the illustrative purpose. its a lot of keypresses, but a lot of them are typos and theyre maybe nowhere near max speed yet............................. dunno. ill know in a month or 6 whether this is worth it. probably... not.. because of all the reasons i listed in the above paragraph.
the input system is doing everything in this. inputting the notes and getting ableton to play audio, mainly. most of the other functions arent shown in this clip. i think i move the pitch of an already-existing note once in this clip somewhere
also its fixed in the key of A minor/ any minor/major scale with no out-of-key notes. you dont have to build it this way.
i couldnt say for certain whether ill keep using this input system. maybe ill know in a month or 6. i think it could be stripped back in complexity and be good. dont know. ive made these input systems before over yrs
and learned them to some level so maybe i think it will work based on that. the goal would be 3/4 times faster than this inputting at least. otherwise i think i wouldnt use this system and chop bits out of it and remake it somehow and see if that works
the code for this is in the github link i posted a couple days ago if you go two posts ago the massive wall of comments i made on the post 2 days ago. its not fully finished code at all... ist just the version im working with atm. needs to be rewritten probably. its not good code. it is pretty well-commented code i think. it just does this 4bar editing of midi pretty much, its not set up for songwriting or made for multiple different computers or anything like that. im not super interested in helping people with these systems other than these text posts and any questions people have. although to be honest i wont be able to answer any questions. like its input chains. it takes a long time to learn the muscle memory.... idk wot 2 telya. write one for talon, then you dont have to learn 100 hours muscle memory. you need to know how to program to make these input systems so you gotta figure it out i guess. idk how much more detail i can go into... its input chains.... you make long chains of macros and write training games to learn the muscle memory. its an enormous waste of time
im going to start doing music posts on a different streak, if you want to listen to emo trap bangers u can find me on daily music dump probably. ive uploaded a source code of the input system im working on for electronic music. if you check my last post the link is in the comments. im not using it yet... it takes say ~200-500(?) hours muscle memory training game to learn an input system like that so idk if you really want to waste your time trying.... but yeah... maybe ill keep working on it and have a video of it working in a month or 6, dont know. maybe if you like the idea of the input system you can build something for your own needs. its just basic autohotkey script. wouldnt take long to learn how it works. maybe. but input systems like that can become enormous time-sinks. maybe in a month or 6 i should have video of it working at speed. and properly explain how it works in video format. dont know. so its just sneak peek for now i guess. input chains like that can be used for visual art as well. pixel art. bezier curves. changing color using CMYK color format. maybe something with blender/houdini scripting and low poly. whatever. i havent built any of that. ill probably do a pixel art inputter eventually. im hesitant to say what kind of 'speed increase' such input systems offer. depends how well you design the input system... and then it depends per artist. one artist might use an input system like this and get no real speed increase... another artist might get 5x faster electronic music input. you kind of have to always be adding your own macros to the system and then learning the muscle memory for what you just added... always changing the system. the input system should never really be 'finished'... youre always going to be adding functions that you find yourself reaching for over and over again. so you have to be a programmer pretty much... and you have to be an artist as well... input system isnt a silver bullet... just allows some things in the computer to be done a lot faster than regular input, maybe. but some things wont be faster than just using the normal tools like mouse and keyboard and midi clips automation etc... might be the same speed for some things. also because im a programming noob and i just built the system for spamming mouse movements and keystrokes into the ableton window... its probably always going to be somewhat a buggy piece of shit... so yea its unlikely that ill move the system into actually solid programming with a DAW that has exposed data parameters etc.
actually what im mostly interested in at the moment with the input system is just using randomizers... so having loads of different randomizer functions with parameters that can be input. i think this is one of the more interesting aspects of input system. so having a few keyboard presses that select a random snare drum sample to use, then a few presses to generate a random pre-selected chord progression midi is inputted on e.g. a melodic instrument track, then you can react to whatever the computer generates and edit that, then add some more random stuff... mostly just adding random instruments from pre-selected banks seems good.... it is kind of a chore to manually select instruments every time and the randomness can allow happy accidents. im not talking about randomly generating entire melodies... that seems kind of boring to me. just small randomizer things to get a track started off. randomize bpm, random key selector... i guess just those things
i wrote an actually good melody the other day (rarely happens). dont know what to do with it. i like the song 'avril 14' by aphex twin. maybe i could try and turn it into something like that. or turn it into a EDM song. i dont rlly know how to write edm almost all my music work is pointless noodling on piano. i fucking hate songwriting so enjoy this melody caus its bout as good as i get.
dont know if audio is in accepted of this streak. 40 second audio, open to roast
loop from remixing around with NSYNC - Bye Bye Bye. muted vocals for copyright.
so many good quality acapellas on youtube. any pop song some dude has stripped the vocal with AI and uploaded the acapella to youtube in the last couple years. looks like pop artists are starting to upload the acapellas themselves now as well. probably because of the AI stripping. and caus ppl upload 5 different versions of a song these days for more content
.7mm rollerball pen
Lil Nas X - STAR WALKIN' (Lyrics)
Егор Крид - We Gotta Get Love (Премьера клипа, 2022)
Егор Крид & The Limba - Coco L'Eau (Премьера клипа 2020)
1mm thick rollerball pen
music TEARZ - DIGITAL PA.IN
sliding hand across page more; using more arm to draw. want to learn more patience. also keep wanting to draw halo vidgame shapes, rectangles cutting into each other with diagonal lines cutting across etc. maybe ill draw more of that sort
David Guetta & Bebe Rexha - I'm Good (Blue) [Official Music Video]
guetta and rexha always got the bangerz
joined 387 days ago
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edit5: i dont speak any languages but english so do all this at your own risk. but pretty sure people are already onboard with the efficacy of duolingo... and i can anecdotally vouch for the drops app. take the other bits of advice with salt if u want
edit4:
method for finding video podcast interviews in language (similar to finding harry potter audiobooks):
paste the above 2 things into youtube search bar. scroll down this list for an hour or 2 and you should find a few interview video podcasts that you enjoy.
video podcast interviews are good because its a) natural language conversation, if a little formalized language b) sometimes has subtitles c) you get the addition of body language and facial movement which im sure must help memorization in at least some small way... also you can zone out and not pay attention or be drawing while listening and not watching at all if wanted
i wanna take this opportunity to spout conspiracy theories. every citizen carries a microphone in their pocket every day of their life. every citizen has a personal screen that their eyes stare into all day. the technology to interact with computers faster than a typewriter and moveable brick (mouse and keyboard) has probably existed for decades. there is too much data about all of us already. almost all social movements and wars from now on will be fabricated and only benefit the squid people who start them. there may also be mice people, separate thing. and then there may be the forces that no one has ever understood. that doesnt sound like that much conspiracy theory... oh and big data combined with machine learning means the population is easy to control and almost all wars and social movements will be fabricated... already said that one... and existential risk is bad lol... and if none of this is true, every day the power of the individual grows so we all end up with each of our hands hovering over a big red planet-nuke button. something about drones. something about self driving cars being no different to autonomous weaponry. cant think of any more at the moment. everything is computer systems so if power grids go down we all go into dark ages. soemthing else about squid people. neuralink type systems are our destiny and could be used to create hell in the mind. nanobots could be bad. the sun could explode for no reason. could stub my toe tomorrow and fall on the ground. need to eat healthier. gotta lower my cholestrol . need to focus on the breath leaving and entering the nostrils. not hungry atm
edit3: i havent checked if anythings competing with duolingo or drops app in the last 6 months. i doubt it. theyre pretty much the only option atm... with memrise then being a kind of suck option.
theres a shitty duolingo clone with more languages but its a poor implementation, i remember thinking its not even worth checking out if it can be avoided. the monkey one. eh its probably fine if the language isnt on duolingo or drops but id probably go with memrise... dunno i just remember it completely missing the point of the good parts of duolingo that actually help you memorize things
edit2: oh duolingo on phone is great... just for the 0 crown and 1 crown level. after that you have to start typing things in with your thumb so it becomes complete trash.... so duolingo on phone only for things that are 0 or 1 crown is pretty much the way to go. i think theyve actually updated their shit and it might not be crowns anymore. hopefully something similar could still be done. duolingo might be going down the toilet slowly but surely. probably. dont know. its definitely wasnt a 'free learning for everyone app' a year ago... if u got 3 mistakes you had to wait like 12 hours lol... dunno how that qualifies as free education. go to school until u get 3 mistakes. then fucking leave and come back tomorrow
duolingo on PC has always been solid so far for me though. they kept the 3 wrong answer thing off PC
anyway there might be ways to emulate old versions of duolingo. not sure if this works on phone though
edit: ehhh drops app has a bunch of words like it has 20-40 words just for fruit or vegetables that you prob dont really wanna memorise but what you gonna do... they are adding more words every month or so so i think its fine. 2500 words is good and the memorization technique of the app is unparalleled to all other shite out there so far
this concludes the 3part series of discussions on manufacture of salt and pepper squid, discussion on drawing, discussion of drops language app