Welcome to the Weekly Pull Request!
Welcome to the Weekly Pull Request, where I share some cool music, tech, and other interesting things I come across throughout the week.
If You’re New Here
👋 Hey What’s up! My name is Shawn, but you can call me “Paps”. I am a Software Dev and Creative writing to you from Tampa, Florida. This newsletter is all about bridging the gap between tech & creativity, and helping you build your creative life and/or career. If you’re new here, thanks for looking. Consider subscribing if you like this week’s article!
🎸 Riffs
No Escape - Cold Steel
Recently signed to Spinefarm Records, Tampa’s own Cold Steel are making serious waves. With two singles already out and a full album on the horizon, this metallic hardcore outfit delivers thrashy energy with an old-school flavor that hits hard in a modern context.
“No Escape” is a perfect example. Opening with a chunky palm-muted riff, ripping through aggressive vocals and relentless riffage, and closing with a breakdown that appears to nod to Pantera’s classic “Domination.”
Keep Cold Steel on your radar. They’re just getting started, and they’re already a force to be reckoned with.
Heathens Nest EP - Heathens Nest
Back in February, I had the chance to work with Heathens Nest in my studio on what became their debut EP and I couldn’t be more proud of the result.
Their sound balances on the razor’s edge between modern heavy hardcore/metalcore (think Knocked Loose or Spite) and the sheer brutality of deathcore heavyweights like Lorna Shore, Black Tongue, and Brand of Sacrifice.
The record has everything: crushing riffs, br00tal breakdowns, slam sections, and just enough twists to keep things fresh: piano, choir layers, and…catchy hooks?!!!
It was a blast to produce and engineer this one, and I’m grateful I got to be part of it. Definitely give it a spin and let me know what you think!
</> Code
Model Context Protocol
As a developer, I am always trying to keep my skills sharp. This past week, I dove into the power of MCP’s, which are the lifeblood behind agentic AI solutions.
But wtf is an AI agent? Honestly, it’s a fancy buzzword for automated actions triggered by Claude, ChatGPT, etc. usually to give the AI access to business logic to do certain things.
For example, I’ve had this idea about a simple mix assistant in my DAW, where I could tell it to do certain things like “take some 2.3k out of my rhythm guitar bus” or “sweeten that snare a little bit”, it would understand the context of the question, and then call the automation tool necessary to do that job.
This is where Model Context Protocol comes in. This is where you expose the business logic to the AI. In the case of our example, I might have a tool that Claude would have access to. A tool is some code that gets executed when it is called, usually involving an API or something to pull in outside data, potentially manipulate it in some way, and then present it to the user.
So given our example, I might have a tool on my MCP server that is called eqChannel( ), which may accept a couple values like:
Channel Name (so it knows which channel to affect)
Frequency (so it knows what frequency in the eq to affect)
dB (how much to boost or cut)
And in theory, Claude would call our tool, and it would execute the script necessary to make that change.
I do realize that this is a bit of a nerdy deep dive and this might not be your thing. This is just something I’m working on. I’m also trying to do more “learning in public” to give you a look into my creative process.
The method behind the madness 😅
Audio Plugin Technology
Learning how to build plugins anyways. Took another dive into C++ over the weekend to mess around with plugin development. I’m finding that my studio is leaning more and more into audio technology, and honestly, that’s kind of exciting.
I still record, produce, mix, and master artist work, but I think that my background lends itself pretty well to this avenue. Very curious to see how this pans out. Got a few ideas that I want to explore once Tourpass is up and running, so we’ll see.
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