barryvan

Author: Barry van Oudtshoorn

  • Everything you do

    Everything you do

  • Unresolved

    Unresolved

  • Anticipate

    Anticipate

  • Where are you

    Where are you

  • This is the end

    This is the end

  • The stars above him

    The stars above him

    I can’t really pinpoint the inspiration for this song. The lyrics seemed to come almost fully-formed to me once I’d written the main verse melody. It’s not autobiographical, or even biographical; rather, it’s an exploration of my own understanding of how people can be driven to take extreme actions.

  • Intertwined

    Intertwined

    Fourteen years ago, I married the most wonderful woman in the world. And fourteen years later, I have finally (finally!) written a love song for her — and published it! 😍

  • Tribulation

    Tribulation

    A lot of my songs recently have been about mental health, anxiety, and depression. This song explores what it feels like to be “trapped by your own mind” — when you feel as though you’re your own enemy, and have to fight against yourself to just get through the day.

  • Key MacOS software

    I recently started at Wonde, and for the first time I’m now using a MacBook as my daily driver. The experience is fairly mundane — it’s just a computer! But there are a few tweaks and adjustments that I’ve made to make it more comfortable for myself. This post is more a reference for my future self than a set of explicit recommendations.

    I’ll doubtless add more apps to this list as I go forward!

    AltTab.app

    Gives you a Windows-like alt–tab experience — that is, the ability to tab through windows, not just applications.

    CopyClip.app

    Clipboard history. I’m surprised that this isn’t baked into the OS!

    Karabiner.app

    Probably the most significant workhorse app that I’ve installed. Allows you to remap individual keys, or pull down (or build) more complex adjustments. I use it to make changes like cmd–backspace deleting a word (rather than a line), home and end actually working, and various other Windows-like shortcuts. It’s particularly useful when you’re using an external (Windows) keyboard.

    I find myself reaching for the config on this app almost daily at present — normally when I use a muscle-memory keyboard shortcut that doesn’t quite do the right thing (like cmd–left or cmd–right moving in lines, not words — something I found while writing this post!).

    Pock.app

    Allows you to move the dock into the touchbar. (Yep, I’m using the only MacBook Pro still with a touchbar!). This lets you free up more desktop space.

    Rectangle.app

    Gives you about 60% of the functionality of Aero snap in Windows. Unfortunately it doesn’t let you resize windows that are side-by-side simultaneously, and it doesn’t include the Win11 22H2 placement functionality, but it’s still an absolute necessity. I really would love for Apple to copy Windows directly here!

    Vanilla.app

    With all these hundreds of “fixer” apps, you end up with a menubar full of cruft. Vanilla lets you hide icons in the menubar (like the system tray in Windows!). The free version needs to be manually set to open on login, and doesn’t automatically re-hide, but it’s still really key.

    Out of the box positive things

    There are some great little features out-of-the-box on the Mac. In no particular order:

    • It’s great that you can add background blur to the camera at a system level (although I’d love a higher resolution camera!).
    • I appreciate being able to choose microphone voice-focussing modes at a system level.
    • When moving the mouse across displays, even unmatched non-retina ones, the cursor never “disappears” from one and reappears on another. This is a (super minor) niggle that’s been around forever on Windows.
    • It’s fast! The M2 processor really does fly. I’ve not noticed any slowdowns or significant issues, and the machine I’m using only has 8GB of RAM. (Yes, really!)
    • The speakers are great. Really great. Surprisingly great, especially for Meet and Zoom calls.

  • Autumn Heart

    Autumn Heart

    This is really my first track with actual singing. 😱 (Yes, that’s what I look like when I sing…)

    I wrote this song to explore depression and anxiety. When you have a depressive episode, it feels like a pit you’ll never be able to climb out of — even though you know from past experience that it will pass. It helps to have someone who’s always on your side, no matter what.

    For more places to listen, try your favourite streaming service, or check out https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/barryvan/autumn-heart.

  • Light comes down

    Light comes down

    This was a fun little piece to write! It started out as I was playing with building out a drum rhythm, and then grew from there into a semi-breakbeat type of hybrid piece. I mixed to mono and applied a pretty aggressive bandpass filter at the start so that when it opens up, it opens all the way up.

    Let me know what you think!

  • More music on Bandcamp!

    I haven’t updated my Bandcamp page in several years… But that’s just changed! I’ve uploaded music from the last year or so there. So now you can download it in super-high fidelity, store it on your hard drive, record it to tape for your Walkman sessions… The sky’s the limit!