I felt I needed to get this out of my chest as a sort of unburdening to the musicians among us, for this has been on my mind over the past few days.

From my pictures and videos here on NG as well as on YouTube, I think you can all deduce that I am at least "ambiguously brown," and certainly not white. That's fine by me. : ) I happen to be of Indian descent.

Now, let me make it clear that I'm not the least bit bothered about ethnicities, or even taking pride in ethnic origins. I was raised a second (possibly third?) culture kid, partly by the choice of my parents and partly by my own preference. I have next to no attachment to my ancestry... I've long seen myself as my own person.

Some of you will have at least heard or seen me play the bodhrán -- that Irish frame drum -- and at least attempt to play it well. I'll still admit this is my favourite drum, and trad music from along this side of the world tends to really beckon to me.

Okay, you may say, no problem! We've had unlikely people playing unlikely instruments. We've had taiko drummers of all ethnicities. We've had Norah Jones, the daughter of Ravi Shankar, excel as a jazz singer. Where's the problem in that?

Well I recently had someone remind me to take pride in being Indian, like how he took pride in his own cultural heritage. He asked (probably out of curiosity) if I never took interest in traditional Indian music.

I said no, I never did (and truth be told, I never will. It's just not my thing, at all.) My heart isn't in it at all. My mother once asked out of curiosity if I would be interested in this kind of stuff; I said no.

To which he replied, just because you study one music form in your childhood doesn't mean you would wind up in it forever.

Honestly speaking, if I had not received the musical education I had received -- which was classical piano under the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music -- I wouldn't even have the musical skill I have today, let alone the style or the ethereal vocals. I wanted music that could be practical for me at all times. I sing in church, and I am an organist and percussionist whenever needed -- which basically doubles as the reason why I would want a classical education. As for my leaning towards British and Irish folk music... well, that comes with the territory, really. Plus the rules of tonality are almost similar, if not completely similar, to that which I had been taught. I picked up the bodhrán because a close friend of mine encouraged me to pick it up, in response to my complaints that I had urges to beat out a rhythm, but had no access to a drum.

As an artist, one expresses what is in one's heart. Yes, I'm probably going to raise a number of eyebrows coming out there with a bodhrán in a trad session in a pub, or a céilidh (a dance gathering), or somewhere else, just by being who I am. But I cannot let that hold me down. I'll never be English or Scottish or Irish or Breton by descent -- but in many ways I have gone against the grain of what I am expected to be, both musically and with regards to my ethnicity. Heaven knows if there are any dark-skinned bodhrán players out there. There are none on YouTube, at least none that I can see, apart from myself. Correct me if I'm wrong. But if I am correct, then let me be the first: there always has to be a first for everything.

Fact still remains that in my heart, I will always know that I'm not doing it for brownie points (pardon the pun!), or to attract people along the lines of "OH HEY LOOK AT HER SHE'S NOT IRISH BUT SHE CAN CERTAINLY ROCK IT" -- no, none of that. I do it because it's my passion, I love the mere sound of it, and I've been able to play and/or record personal stuff with it -- improvisations, hymns etc. A musician has to be passionate about what he plays in order to reach out to others in the deepest possible manner. This is my passion; I lean towards musical forms which are in no way associated with my presumed native culture at all.

I once confided in @Krash17 about the fact that I'm an unlikely bodhrán player, as well as my influences.

His response was simply: "Fight the power. Music is for everyone."

Tsukikanade is finally complete.

Oh it feels good to have an original submission actually dating to 2014 in my feeds. The loop started as a scribbling on a piece of paper just a few months ago. I thoroughly enjoyed making this, from sequencing to recording.

So can I say I'm out of my drought yet? I don't know. I hope this dry period will have an end in sight. This might just be the start.

There is a background story associated with Tsukikanade which I wrote a week or two back, contemplating what I was aiming to get across. You may download and read it here.

Hope you enjoy the music!

Tsukikanade and another secret audio submission are in progress. I am stoked to hear both of them.

It seems that I am now not short of instruments to use. On Saturday Seán and I travelled to York. For the Yanks among us, this is the original York, in East Yorkshire, England -- just making it clear.

Our last stop was a music shop (because there are no good music shops in Preston *grumble*). Seán had been planning to get a djembe for a few months now, and we collected it Saturday. We were pretty excited over the new drum that he had it slung under his arm, and was jamming on it through the streets of York, among the throngs of people there, and continued even atop the city walls! -- and without a care to what people thought too. I did keep telling him to tone it down...

I had a go on it myself when I was on the city walls.

At some point, I don't know when, I'd like to do a recording of it. Just an improvisation, much like the one I uploaded last year.

I haven't yet been able to put the full instrument family in one picture, but I've at least taken the drums. This is all of them, right here --

Between us, we have four bodhráns (18" standard, 18" tunable, 20" standard and 8") -- and the one on the right with the triquetra on it, which you often see in my user image, is mine. The rest are Seán's. Then there's the djembe and the bongos -- and I can safely say that I've had a go on all of them now.

Just the bodhráns. The 20" one in the centre is on the upper end of the scale -- and anyone getting a bodhrán these days would struggle to even find one above 18". The 20" belonged to Seán's late father. For a while it lay around with a broken skin, but Seán managed to reskin it in January. (And I am privy to the process; this is not at all easy.)

The other addition to the instrument collection is one that we got last month. Seán bought it for me as a present. I did mention over the Audio Forums and in an interview that I play the organ... well, we've now got an electric organ.

I have access to a pipe organ as well........ naturally, I don't have one of these at home. There's one in the church nearby, and I do play it on and off. I hope to post a photo of it soon.

So in total, what have we.... 4 bodhráns, 2 violins, 2 keyboards, 1 accordion, 1 concertina, 1 guitar, 2 tin whistles, 1 djembe, 1 pair of bongos, 1 organ... crikey that's a lot. And there probably will be more to come!

--------

On a side note, I have been working on a song, Tsukikanade (月奏) -- that's Japanese for "Chanting the Moon." The instrumental for it is nearly finished, and it's progressing really fast. The Writers' Guild is (and/or will soon be privy to) quite a detailed back story. I will leave it until the song is ready to be posted. Keep your eyes peeled.

I've recently been seeing to the formation of the NG Writers' Guild (or as I should properly call it, Writers of Newgrounds, or WNG).

In the interview by Asandir I wrote saying that I wasn't ready to contribute to the Writing Forums yet -- but something compelled me to start contributing to writing projects all of a sudden. My abstinence from actively seeking out the forums still applies until the end of June -- but it's still wonderful to be able to work with others on literature projects. It's been a while since I did stuff like this.

So what am I doing in the WNG you ask? I last wrote part of a horror story project hosted by Krash17. There are five of us working on it. With it I decided to not only rehash some story ideas I previously had, but also put it open for scrutiny and see how others would interpret them. Partly inspired by one of my previous songs, I wrote. There will likely be other pieces of lit coming from me in future... mostly along the lines of lyrics, as usual, but also prose, since I tend to enjoy spending my time writing long paragraphs about things.

If you're a writer of any kind -- poetry, prose, song lyrics -- and you would like to give any creative input, or reviews, or any other help possible, do join us here at the WNG.

(And I can honestly say that in keeping with my abstinence from the forums, I haven't visited that thread yet. But I have visited the profiles of the members involved, especially those of @Tremax and @Krash17. But there is one writer whom my eyes are set on for a project like this, someone who can bring some much-needed whimsical flair to this site. You know who you are.)

Friends, pardon me from posting ever so constantly over the last few days, but I have momentous news to share with all of you.

You see, Seán has a tradition of going down to Liverpool around his birthday, and so this year, he did the same, and he took me along.

Today while in Liverpool, at about 11:50, when we were out by the Albert Dock watching the river Mersey, I felt this unexpected agitation and a voice saying "I have never done this before......." And he got down on his knee and pulled out this ring and said, "Will you marry me?"

Let's just say it was a bit of a shock, but I was overcome with joy.

So now I am happily engaged.

We had a bit of a celebration not too long ago, and I still cannot fully describe this joy.

This is the first photo of us together, and it certainly is not particularly emotionally brilliant. But at the risk of sounding horribly corny, look how far we've come.

Being on the forums has made me a bit high-strung of late. Perhaps I ought to take a break and just concentrate on the art-making?

I understand that there are many of us who are passionate about what we stand for, some perhaps more than others. That can often manifest itself in highly-strung behaviour, often through the choice of words in responses. And I will openly and gladly admit that I haven't had the most clement choice of words either. This highly-strung nature is one of many things I'm trying to curb, and I really, really think I need to give the forums a break, say until June is over.

A quick note to Audio Forum regulars: when the auditions for this year's Audio Deathmatch or any other contest start, please do let me know -- I'll gladly post then. Until then, I'll only be responding to direct replies, or not responding at all. And I won't actively browse the forums either -- I think it best for my own good, and for others' good as well.

I do not mean this in offense towards any specific forum user -- in fact I think whichever side we're on, many of us are susceptible to this kind of nature.

Also, some of you may be wondering when the Sacred Moon cover will be out. I can't really give a date, I'm afraid. In fact, I can safely call the music 2/3 done, but the lyrics may need revisiting. Who knows, they may be entirely scrapped over and rewritten. Regardless, I'm slowly chipping away at it. Some of you have been seeing more drawings filling the gaps in my lack of audio submissions -- I do hope you enjoy them.

1) Because there are no .exe files for FL Studio 10 available on the Net that I can download, except on file sharing sites, which I do not want to go to.

2) Because I have recently had PC troubles: my Windows 7 has recently become corrupt, I've lost the product key, and I've recently downgraded to Vista, and I've had to reinstall the darned software.

3) Because it's been four months since I last posted a song on Newgrounds or even YouTube, and I've tarried on this next song for yonks. Sacred Moon and two other Zelda covers are in the works, in addition to loads of other original stuff I've had to put on the backburner for quite a while.

I'll be pretty blunt and say: this is my first day on FL Studio 11 and I haven't noticed many differences apart from aesthetic changes. But hopefully, with a little more exploration, they'll be made apparent to me.

The title says pretty much everything I need to say. At the time of writing, the interview is on NG's front page. Regardless, here is the link to said interview.

Enjoy. And I hope that this interview may strike a chord in many a heart, somehow.

First off, I just wanna say that it's a nice touch to see Tank Girl, Nene, Caxx (?) and other NG females on the background. They look awesome, by the way.

Second, I have nothing to offer on this particular Pico Day, but I have something in preparation for next year's Pico Day? possibly even 2016's or 2018's? The only reason why I am not sure about this is because we have to determine which year can be properly called Newgrounds' 20th anniversary. Yeah, I know right? Many of us haven't been on this site for that long, and NG is soon going to turn twenty.

This is something I've been meaning to share with all of you, and it's a work in progress at the moment.

It doesn't look anywhere near finished at the moment.

I and a few others at least are envisioning some sort of massive audio, art and animation collab for whenever that day comes, because it is going to be explosively awesome. There. The plans are out in the open; I'm not keeping my thoughts on the 20th anniversary secret anymore.

Tell me what you're thinking.