Today, Faircamp 2.0.0 was released. If you’re an independent musician and want to own your own web presence, Faircamp is an incredible way to do it, and 2.0 in particular adds a _lot_ of cool stuff, particularly a desktop application which makes it much easier to set up and maintain your site. I don’t use Faircamp personally (since I already have my own tools for running my site) but it is an _incredible_ piece of software that probably covers all of your needs and then some. Also, with Faircamp you can integrate with Fairplayer, to take part in fully-independent, distributed/federated streaming; at some point I will also get around to writing a plugin for Faircamp to integrate directly with Chorus to enable even more opportunities. In any case, many congratulations to Simon for this huge milestone! I hope you’ll take a well-deserved rest.

I recently updated the firmware on my Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 3rd Gen to run Focusrite Control and was surprised to find that the input mappings changed on me, which was pretty annoying. Previously ADAT 1-8 happened to map to inputs 11-18, which was easy enough to remember, but now they map to 13-20 because the loopback interface moved to 9-10, pushing all of the digital inputs down by two. After a brief conversation with Focusrite support, they pointed me to a feature of Logic I didn’t know about (even though I’ve been a Logic user for over 20 years now): I/O labels! This lets you set custom names for your audio inputs and outputs. However, managing the preferences can be really annoying (and it’s very easy for the mappings to get lost, for example if Logic crashes), but fortunately there’s Logic I/O Labels Utility which lets you save and restore label sets pretty easily. Anyway, learning about this has been quite helpful because now I can just permanently label my drum kit’s microphone channels instead of having to consult easily-lost notes or figuring it out on the fly every time, and of course I can also now properly label my various other mics and inputs which makes it easier to keep track of everything. I guess even after using a piece of software for over two decades you can still be surprised about functionality that’s been there the whole time! (Or at least since version 7, which is where I started using it full-time.)

NHAMFest ‘26 was a huge success this year, and was great for bringing together two of my favorite spaces: the VRChat music community and the Fediverse music community. Here’s some stuff about the specifics that went into producing this show on my end! Note: I may earn a commission on affiliated product links in this article. I’ve already described my general performance setup, and that should be read as a prerequisite. ### Multi-streaming setup A big part of this particular show is that I had two streams running simultaneously: one in VRChat and one on my Owncast instance. Each of these came from a separate OBS instance; the VRChat one showed my Owncast live chat (so that people in VR could follow the chat), and the Owncast one had my live camera as an inset so that people on the outside could see what was actually happening in my physical space; as much as I love the whole “virtual critter” thing I also want to make it clear that I am actually performing the music live, at least to an extent. For the VRChat side of the stream I used VRCDN, while the Owncast side used my self-hosted setup, with the Owncast server hosted on my home network and then fronted by my Linode as a caching proxy. As part of maintaining continuity with the rest of the festival, I streamed the previous and next participant into the VRChat world using a scene that just embedded their respective players and chat. Originally I used the HLS m3u8 but it was much too unreliable, and switched to using the player embed as a browser source. For the chatbox I used a browser source with some custom CSS: body { background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5); margin: 0px auto; overflow: hidden; } html { font-size: 36px; } #chat-container { background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0.5); font-size: 200%; text-shadow: -2px -2px 1px black, -2px 2px 1px black, 2px -2px 1px black, 2px 2px 1px black; } .ChatActionmessage_chatAction__SaAM1 { background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0.5); font-size: 24px; } .ChatSocialMessage_follower__yYsqi { text-shadow: none; } .ChatModeratorNotification_chatModerationNotification__BNHEb { display: none; } ### Gear loadout Here was my pedal setup for the show: As usual I was using my lunchbox amp primarily as a power source for my pedal chain. The signal chain is a Boss RC-20XL loop pedal, a Hotone Soul Press II wah pedal, a cheap alphabet-soup-name distortion pedal, and a TC Electronic POLYTUNE 3 tuner. The “loose” pedal in front of the loop pedal is the control switch for my reverb unit. I also have a couple of other effect pedals in that image that aren’t in the signal chain; the blue one is a cheap shimmer reverb that I’ve been playing with but haven’t found useful for any of my typical live stuff, and the pink one is a cheap reverb+delay+loop pedal which I’ve found adds way too much saturation to the signal. For this show I used my Epiphone Sheraton II guitar (the blonde one on the left): For electric sets like this one, I only use the loop pedal as a convenient way to lift my guitar signal to line level. I also have a dynamic mic (on the round-base mic stand) connected to the looper, which is nice for adding hand percussion and glockenspiel to loop pedal performances, but I didn’t use it for this show. ### Hand tracking A bit over a year ago I wrote about my quest for VR hand tracking on my main blog1. At the time the EOZ Immersive Gloves were not yet available, but since then I have gotten into their early adopter beta program and have been part of their group of testers, which has been a hugely helpful opportunity. The way the EOZ gloves work is that they install an alternate controller profile to a pair of Tundra trackers, which makes them appear as SteamVR hand input when no regular controllers are connected. They also connect to an external circuit that puts a bunch of IMUs on each finger (rather than using more traditional strain sensors). I have found that the gloves themselves in their current prototype stage are a bit uncomfortable and constraining, and not great for my grip when playing guitar. But, the alternate controller profile happens to work perfectly with my 3D printed wrist mounts, and while I don’t get finger tracking, getting the general position down is all that I really care about. It would be nice if there were a way to have the hand trackers just work by overriding the position of my controllers and then otherwise use the controllers for the finger sensors and buttons, but this setup works well enough that I can compromise on the slight annoyance of having to turn my controllers on and off when I need the buttons. ### Clothing The fun with the camera gimmick is that I like to have my physical body dressed more or less the same as my avatar. For that I have leggings and a tunic top (which is what I modeled my in-game clothing after in the first place). And of course I’m wearing some plaid socks (which I think I got on clearance at Target). ### Body tracking I’m just using EOZ VR straps, specifically their belt and their foot straps. ### Backing tracks I maintain a library of backing tracks for my non-acoustic performances. Some of them are just album versions with the lead vocals and guitar omitted, and some of them are all-new versions that I’ve produced specifically for live shows. Many of these I intend to eventually use for an album where I revisit many of my songs in new styles. When I set up a set list I put the backing tracks onto a timeline and order them for flow and musical progression, add in a couple of strategic drink and banter breaks, and then add little title cards to let me know what song is coming up next and any pertinent banter notes (typically things to call out like “second last song” or “shout out Chorus”). I play the video file in VLC, with the window set to float in my VR playspace. The plus side to this approach is that it keeps my show timing down pat and lets me make sure that I fit in all the songs I mean to fit in. The minus side is I have no flexibility in case of technical difficulties and I cannot take requests on the fly (although I don’t think I’d really be able to accommodate requests in these shows anyway; that’s a lot easier on my totally-live acoustic sets). This was the set list and the origin of each backing track: * Behind a Mask: This is the album version with lead vocals muted, and the lead guitar removed past the intro. * A Long Plastic Hallway: This is just the album version with lead vocals muted; when performing it live I’ll add in more guitar for texture that wasn’t in the original. This is also the only track where I make use of my reverb unit’s switch. This track also has a lyric cue sheet for reference, as I’ve had a hard time getting “off-book” on this song. * Run Faster: This is a funk version I created specifically for VR performances. * tw3rp: This is a funk version I created specifically for VR performances. I really should add visual cues because I _always_ forget my auditory cues for when to come in. * Sometimes It’s Hard to Keep Yourself Moving: This is the album version but with the drums replaced with something with a more “live” sound. This track was new to this show. * Baby, Be Quiet: This is a funk version I created specifically for VR performances. It also adds an outro that was not in the original song (but which I have been adding into my live performances for ages). This has a few visual cues for when the different sections start so I don’t lose track of the solo. * Change Is Coming: This is just the album version with lead vocals muted. I perform additional guitars on top of the synthesized guitar in the album track. I tend to mess them up pretty badly. This one also has visual lyric cues because I have a hard time remembering all of the lyrics. * Material Change: This is a disco-funk version I made specifically for VR performances. * Bipolar Bear: This is the upcoming album version sans guitar and vocals. This show was the debut of this track. It has visual lyric cues out of an abundance of caution (since the song is so new) but I don’t seem to actually need them. * Strangers: This is a piano pop version I made for VR performances, although the piano arpeggio is taken from one of the synths in the original track in places (used as a specific leitmotif of sorts). * Freak Flag: This is the album version. I play guitar on top which wasn’t part of the original. Someday I’m going to make a version based on the 2020 jazz rendition, because I love its energy for a live performance. I also have visual lyric cues on this because I tend to forget verses, which is ridiculous considering how short this song is. * The War Machine: This is the released single version. I try to play guitar on top of it but I have a really hard time remembering the chords while actually performing for some reason (it always goes well in practice). It also has visual lyric cues but I don’t really need them anymore. * Space Cadet: This is just the album version, which I play additional guitar on top of. * No Brakes: This is a grunge-funk fusion version that I produced specifically for VR performances. * The Difference: This is the upcoming album version sans guitar and vocals. This track debuted at this show. It also has visual lyric cues which I probably don’t need but I still use them out of an abundance of caution. * Safety in Numbers: This is a disco-ska fusion version that I made specific for VR performances. The reason I’ve done so many disco/funk versions of things is because one of the Moonlit Academy shows had a city pop/funk theme, so I decided to adapt a couple of my songs to it, and I found that it brought a great energy to the performance. I ended up liking it so much that I’ve used that as my preferred style for my live adaptations going forward. ### Show post mortem I think that things went pretty well, all things considered. I did mess up a few of my lyrics (which I don’t think anyone else noticed), and I definitely had trouble with the guitar chords on both Change Is Coming and The War Machine. I was also sweaty and fatigued and in a bit more pain than usual. Hour-long sets always take a lot out of me, but I also feel like it’s very worth it in the end, even if I can’t do them as often as I can do 30-minute sets. I loved reviewing the chat transcript afterward and seeing all of the kind comments, and I’ll similarly enjoy editing the video and listening to the background chatter that I couldn’t hear over my own performing. I find it very funny that at every show since Furality I’ll have people requesting my Furality jingle, which is not something I’m going to ever do on a backing track set (the Furality song specifically, but also taking requests generally). But it’s something I can accommodate in an acoustic show (time permitting, of course), and I am always happy to do it while busking. Anyway. NHAMFest was super good and I hope this is a tradition that keeps going! It’s a huge amount of work for everyone involved and I think we’re all going to be taking a _very_ well-deserved nap. Thanks to everyone who attended, both on the Fediverse side and in VRChat, and thanks _especially_ to the folks who ran the show and kept it going so smoothly, as well as to Noxi and Tune Together for knocking it out of the park with hosting and promoting the show on the VRChat side. 1. I notice that on that blog post I was talking about the Leapmotion as the next thing I was going to try. It ended up not working at all well; it drew too much power for the BigScreen Beyond to handle, and even if I connected it to a USB port directly on my computer the tracking quality was pretty abysmal. ↩

Sockpuppet may or may not have been selected to perform in this upcoming charity show. More details to come!

You might recall that I was pretty positive about elasticStage since they allow small musicians to do one-off or small-run vinyl record production and their quality was pretty good given the price. But there’s a few reasons I cannot currently recommend them and have taken my various links and reviews down: * Even though they have difficulty keeping up with the manufacturing demand for actual musicians, they’ve gone into supporting AI musicians, and are (as far as I can tell) the manufacturing partner behind Suno Vinyl * They have had a huge uptick in quality assurance problems and miscuts; I’ve had to get some of my personal copies recut and the process for getting them replaced was pretty difficult, and I cannot in any good conscience require that listeners have to deal with them in case things go south * They’re heavily leaning into Boy George and his awful, culturally-appropriative, anti-Palestinian AI slop “music” and I cannot in any good conscience support any company who would make that decision Other folks might be willing to still work with this company but I personally am not. If there are other short-run vinyl manufacturers who have a better track record and a reasonable price, I’d welcome suggestions. (I already know about Kunaki. They’re a bit expensive and their reviews for vinyl are pretty bad, unfortunately.) Of course also the way they manage payments means there’s no way for me to withdraw my meager earnings from them, either, but what else is new with these indie-exploiting music companies…

Doing a set at Gilly’s Cave of Music! Come see me and a bunch of other musicians do our things.

The 2026 annual live show for Song Fight! is tentatively scheduled to take place at Fast Fashion Brewing in the SODO district of Seattle. Come see fluffy in the significantly-less-plaid flesh! Further details will be posted as they become available.

I’ll be performing at Full Moon Festival. Further details TBD.

Over on Reddit, someone asked about TooLost, and I mentioned that I used to use them and to avoid them like the plague and I said that I’ve been using Symphonic. They had some followup questions for me and I felt that my answer was detailed enough that I should also post it as a blog post here for future reference. This is sort of a followup to my previous review about them; nothing has really changed but I’ve had more encounters with their support side of things that I have a more detailed picture on what it’s like to work with them day-to-day. Note: I may earn a commission on affiliated product links in this article. Anyway, here is my comment, verbatim: > I’ve been with Symphonic since March of this year, and I currently have 19 releases managed by them (and one release each on Soundrop and CDBaby). > > I’ve had plenty of support tickets with Symphonic and they usually get back to me quickly, although often the response is clearly AI-written. When that’s been insufficient I’ve been able to escalate to an actual human, though, and the answer I get is honest and straightforward, like either “thanks for the feedback” or “that’s on the roadmap” or “that’s not something we want to support” or the like. > > My big complaint with Symphonic is that their metadata interface is very annoying to work with, and requires a lot of scrolling and clicking to set things like genres and individual credits. They don’t have any way of just setting the same credits for all songs on an album, and the genre selector is super annoying. I’ve given them some feedback on how it can be improved but I think it’ll be a while before any changes happen there. > > I’ve also had them reject releases based on genre or title-related things (for example, they would not accept my release’s original title of “Lo-Fi Beats to Grind Coffee To” because apparently “lo-fi” and “beats” are both blacklisted due to AI slop) but they’ve been straightforward in communicating about issues like that. > > They’re also a lot more strict about the cover art text requirements and, in particular, detecting text that isn’t in the release or artist name. > > I’m not thrilled with their reliance on AI for customer support, and reading between the lines a bit I suspect they also use AI for developing the site itself. They’ve also raised prices and tried to justify it based on providing AI marketing tools that nobody actually wants, but I think that’s just misplaced marketing efforts to try to justify them not operating at a loss. > > My main complaint is just that the UI/UX on the uploader and tagger _really_ sucks to use with my particular set of physical disabilities and I can’t imagine it being a good experience even for people who don’t have chronic pain issues, and I wish they’d provide some sort of API-level access so that I can just script my uploads with the metadata I already have on my own end. But I can also see why they wouldn’t want to do that, since it’d make it way too easy for people to automate AI slop uploads, which they are firmly against, at least for the music and art. > > They have a more detailed explanation of their stance regarding AI. I would say that as far as mainstream distributors go, Symphonic is the least-bad of a lot of bad choices. If I had my choices I’d not be on major streaming at all, but that’s where people want to listen to me. Hopefully Fairplayer and other distributed/indie streaming options take better hold. (I’m certainly trying to do my part to make it happen!) But anyway, in the meantime, if you do want distribution on the major DSPs, Symphonic has been pretty okay for me.

Skyline Festival!

A silly jungle remix of a classic Marcus Brigstocke bit

Just when I was starting to think that Songtradr’s acquisition of Bandcamp was turning out to not be the big problem everyone predicted, they’ve gone and shaken everything back up by laying off the remaining Bandcamp engineering team. This, uh, is not a good sign. So, anyway, while I’m not planning on dropping Bandcamp entirely just yet (and will still be uploading my new releases there for the foreseeable future), here’s some of the other places I sell my music. ### Mirlo Mirlo has been around for a while, but they made some pretty great strides when the original issues with Bandcamp had started to happen. They are, currently, my favorite of the Bandcamp alternatives, for the following reasons: * They actually care about artists and trying to make a better ecosystem for everyone * Their principles are based on socialist collectivism * Their long-term goal is to provide interoperability and a federated world so that they don’t _have_ to be a single point of failure, business-wise, and are being developed as open source * Their uploader is great (especially when paired with Bandcrash) * They give artists a choice of how much of a cut they take * They provide integrated merch sales (albeit with fairly clunky shipping setup), a fully-fledged artist blog (for those who need it), and monthly support options as well * They support pay-what-you-want with both an absolute minimum and a suggested default * They have integration with Fairplayer and also are looking towards other interop things for a larger world of independent streaming Things are still a bit rough with them in some places; for example, I don’t like how their frontend is currently a ReactJS app without any server-side rendering (which is bad for SEO and some forms of interop), and they still don’t currently have the ability to generate discount codes or do per-track artwork, but they’re constantly making progress, and ethically and politically they are about as far left as is possible in the space. I really want to see them do well. ### itch.io itch.io is an independent games, assets, and content store. I actually first learned about them as a place to sell my comics, although they’re primarily used for games and tools. They aren’t designed specifically to be a music store and leave a lot to be desired in the music sales department, but with Bandcrash it isn’t too difficult to manage your albums there. Like Mirlo, they allow you to set whatever platform cut you like, and they also have flexible bundles and discount codes, which puts them a bit above Mirlo. They also let you organize your catalog into categories/sections. They also give you an incredible amount of control over your page layout, with the ability to provide custom CSS on request. And they even provide the ability to sell merch, although it’s pretty clunky to set up. They also support pay-what-you-want with both absolute minimum and suggested default prices. However, there are a few reasons why they don’t earn my top choice; for example: * The company is very small and centralized, and has a very high bus factor * Their interoperability is quite minimal and lacks a robust API for doing things that would be very helpful to do * As they do not have a music focus, there are a lot of places where things could be better, especially with sales reporting and discovery Still, as an independent digital asset shop (with potential merch sales), you could certainly do worse. ### ko-fi Ko-Fi started out as a Patreon alternative with a tip jar and monthly support options, but they also have a commissions platform and sales for both digital and physical items. It’s pretty okay as a shopping cart, although handling physical and digital versions of things is a bit clunky as they have to be separate items (which means uploading the digital version twice, once for each version). Also, the only way to provide an audio preview on the shop itself is via a YouTube embed. To that end it works as a supplement for having your own website, but it’s not a great shopping experience. Also it offers absolutely no discoverability at all. They don’t offer a flexible sales cut option, but the standard cut they take is a mere 5%, and you can choose to pay a small monthly fee to waive that. They also do have discount codes, but they don’t have easily-managed discography bundles. Also, they support pay-what-you-want with absolute minimum prices, although there’s no way of doing a suggested price. Personally I focus on Ko-Fi for selling physical goods that aren’t music-related, but I do have all of my albums available there in digital form. ### Subvert This is a newcomer to the indie sales space. I’ve written a bit about them already. They have some interesting ideas, namely instead of taking a cut they ask for customers to pay a tip to the platform to keep it running (similar to Gofundme), but I personally feel like they are prioritizing style over substance, and the actual upload and metadata editing process is a bit onerous. There’s nothing about them that stands out in particular aside from the co-op business model and the customer-driven cut. Like many other sites, they support pay-what-you-want with an absolute minimum; they also let you offer discounts to other co-op members, which is nice. One notable missing feature is the ability to have hidden tracks on albums. There’s also no means of doing per-track artwork that I can find, which is something supported by both Bandcamp and Bandcrash. I’m not focusing too heavily on Subvert, although I will probably continue to upload new releases there for now. I’m not super confident in their future but hopefully they’ll surprise me. ### Some places I know about but haven’t used myself There’s some more places that are on my radar and which might have the right balance for someone else, even if they don’t suit my particular needs: jam.coop is still in its early days. It has a very minimal design (not necessarily a bad thing) and it’s under a co-op model. They’re also looking towards greater interop, so they’re worth keeping an eye on. bandwagon.fm is a Fediverse-first ActivityPub-based thing. I’ve put some of my music here but it hasn’t really met with how I want to manage my music. But it’s built with interop from the beginning and as such they also have ambitions towards being part of an open music ecosystem. Ampwall takes a somewhat different approach from most of the stores in that they actually charge musicians for hosting, and their rates seem a _little_ high to me, but they make up for it somewhat by also taking a lower cut than most of the other shops, and providing a nice browse experience. I don’t really know a lot about them but the Mirlo folks speak well of them. ### Places I am not interested in and why I used to use Gumroad, but its founder, Sahil Lavingia, has a long history of problematic behavior. Additionally, Gumroad is now primarily AI-coded and supported. I have also been receiving spam from various up-and-coming wannabe services that are being vibe-coded on platforms like zilla.so and so on. My thought on things like that is: if the promise is that you can start up a company based on just a notion that you don’t have to think about, why wouldn’t anyone else just do it themselves and cut out the middleman? ### A note about web presence Personally I think that any musician should have their own website that they run on their own terms, with whatever features make sense to them and with their own web domain and so on. I don’t believe in putting all your eggs in someone else’s basket. I run this site using Publ (and I will someday get around to releasing my site templates to make it easier for someone else to do so). A lot of folks use Faircamp which has a lot going for it. You can also build a site with any number of site generators like 11ty, Hugo, or any number of static site generators. Heck, you could also hand-code it the old-fashioned way. You could even go a step further and provide your own shopping cart and cheeckout flow via PayPal or Stripe or whatever. I don’t feel like dealing with that noise, which is why I just hand off my sales to other platforms. Even if you don’t want to build your own site, I highly recommend getting your own web domain and at least forwarding it to your favorite sales channel, or setting up a Linktree or Carrd to direct people to your preferred sites.

Sockpuppet has been selected as one of the performances for Projekt: Community’s PJKT Fest 2026! Woo! Join group PJKT.3741 for access, and look for a hub world instance. Also don’t forget to check out their events schedule to see the many other amazing acts and activities that will be happening! And, for folks who can’t make it into VRChat, I’ll be streaming it over at the usual place. There’s also an unofficial stream on waterwolf.club being run by codysky!

Ready up players, 'cause this one is a real level-up for MeowMix! We were lucky enough to get to play our second Furality in a row this year, and once we heard that the theme for Ultra was videogames

Totally a real band with a bunch of people in it

Totally a real band with a bunch of people in it

There are so many people in this band! You wouldn't believe how many if we told you. That's why we always have so many different styles and genres of music. Try to figure out who is who! Open for commissions - see https://ko-fi.com/fluffycritter/commissions for details.

YouTube video by Kookie

YouTube video by Trans Academy

There are so many people in this band! You wouldn't believe how many if we told you. That's why we always have so many different styles and genres of music. Try to figure out who is who! Open for co...

ALT: a cat is standing on a purple guitar .

I am happy to be performing with TransPaws in celebration of the third anniversary of the founding of the Transgender Furs Support System. Join the VRChat group in order to join the event. And possibl...

What The Puck! Episode 5 Feat. Studio Penrose and Trans Academy | !gg !merch

YouTube video by Sockpuppet

Album released 2015/06/14

YouTube video by Sockpuppet

Hello! I think it’s been a while since I’ve talked about what’s going on with the band and what sorts of things are happening. So here’s a casual collection of updates along those lines.

My first batch of CDs from Kunaki arrived today, and here’s a brief review of how they turned out.

If you’ve poked around this website you probably know that I wrote and use Bandcrash to build the embedded players for the music previews. You might also be aware of it as the tool that I use to publi...

Today I removed all my music, except The War Machine, from Spotify, for the reasons explained in that song (and also in this lengthy diatribe)​.

Today I had my first gig with the Internet Archive in their mini concerts series. It was a really good experience (and if you’re a musician, especially one who performs online, I urge you to sign up f...