guys guitar doesn't count it's like the doctor who immortal time traveler guy it just shows up everywhere and you're like yup this is normal

ok so the broader thought experiment here is i'm really enjoying learning the mandolin, and i'm really enjoying building and exploring mollytime, and i'm feeling a gap where i'm not really good enough to play music with people but it is nevertheless an unmet need but i could maybe use a sequencer to practice with but mollytime mostly sounds like snes sounds which makes it a somewhat odd pairing so like how do i make that not sound ironic or like i didn't buy enough daw plugins to sound good lol

first idea: mic the mandolin and obliterate the sound with filters so it matches the chiptunes better. I think this is a non-starter though because it's a pretty instrument and it feels wrong to remove that from the sound.

second idea: keep the sound of the instrument the same, but also maybe explore an additive approach involving delay loops and/or granular synthesis stuff. especially if it can put the different voices can sorta bleed into the same conductive media so to speak. maybe worth exploring

third idea: same as the first idea but backwards, leave the mandolin alone, figure out how to mutate the synth sounds into something that feels more acousticy without necessarily trying to emulate any particular traditional instrument. i have no idea how that would work

fourth idea: lie to the audience and say I was just practicing the mandolin next to the hole in reality in the corner of my apartment and hope none of you know that the hole in reality in the corner of my apartment doesn't sound anything like that

fifth idea: use a fun narrative to make it work. maybe do an album where it starts off with a song or two of, say, bluegrass music, but then the mandolinist gets abducted by aliens. main problem here is scope creep

sixth idea: add some basic sampling capabilities to mollytime and build instruments out of field recordings instead of just analog synthesis

ok i think i figured out the heart of the conflict here. to me computer is the thing that lets me graft doc ock arms onto my brain and expand my consciousness in lots of fun ways (see also: mollytime), but i'm also sensitive to the fact that there's another thing that's also called computer and most people are only familiar with the latter concept. when i picked up music as a hobby some 5-10 years ago it was supposed to be a no-computer hobby but well you know how well that went lol