Hello Newgrounds!

Welcome to my first recap post :)

If youre here to hear about my journey thus far, youre in the right place! If youre just clicking around and its your first time seeing anything about me, welcome! I encourage you to check out some of my recent music, or maybe even reading about me here! My more recent stuff and what I'm planning for 2024 are at the bottom of the post!

Whatever you do, have fun!

Here's a quick summary of what I did this year!

- I made 38 songs

- I gained 50 fans

- I participated in writers jam 1

- I got scouted

- My music got whitelisted in Geometry Dash

- I got my first frontpage

- and finally I got to know some AMAZING people!

Very very detailed explanation of everything I did this year is below, including my achievements, milestones, events, etc (this is my longest post ever):

2023 was a wild year for me, I got more than I ever wanted and couldve ever expected in the short time that I've been on newgrounds. When I made my first serious song back on july 4th, I fully expected it to take WAY longer than it took for me to get here now, and I'm forever grateful for the support that you guys have given me.

With that out of the way, here's what went down this year!

JULY:

This was the month I started taking music seriously. The experience was new and exciting and I was so motivated to improve because everyone was so supportive and I had so many people to look up to. Namely, @voidprophecy. Being friends with voidprophecy before I even started making music gave me such a huge boost in motivation and inspiration. I wanted to make music far before I ever met him, but seeing him make music was what finally pushed me to give it a shot for the first time.

Throughout the month, I would release many songs. 10 to be exact, these are some of my favorites from July:

Down in the valley was my best song from this month in my opinion

These aren't great songs of course, and I've made much better stuff since then, but they are the first few songs that I was SUPER proud of. I still occasionally go back and listen to them!

Down in the valley was MONUMENTAL for me, because it was the song that got me scouted to the audio portal. Thank you so much @Casporb for being the person to scout me. You gave me so much more motivation to continue making music, and it gave me so much confidence to see that someone saw potential in me.

The month also came to an amazing end because I got to 10 fans IN THE SAME DAY that I got scouted. All in all july was an amazing month for me.

AUGUST:

For august, I started to experiment way more, taking on a more fusion-y kind of sound. Since I had gotten scouted a few days prior, I decided I would ease up on the songs a little bit, and then proceeded to release 9 of them LOL

Still though, I made sure to take my time and was extra careful to ensure that I was proud of them. Here's some of the notable songs from August:

Winds embrace was my best song from this month in my opinion

On the 13th, I celebrated the 10th anniversary of Geometry Dash with a short news post!

August was a great month of progression for me. I even got to 20 fans right before the month ended! Closing it off with a few words in an expression of gratitude on the 29th.

SEPTEMBER:

This was the month that I REALLY slowed down and took my time on my music. However this was also the month that I began branching out and involving myself a little more in the community!

My style in music really evolved in this month and I found the kind of music that I love making. I started to drift away from the fusion style and moved into SPACE! This would prove to be quite the influential change in my music lol

I kicked off the month with an entry into writers jam 1!

Read it here if you would like:

https://charlmot.newgrounds.com/news/post/1384820

Participating in it was SO MUCH FUN and while I wasn't able to participate in the recent one I can still say I participated in one of them this year! If you are also a writer and would like to join a discord server full of very cool people such as @JAMRIOT and @Durinde then I would love to meet you there :)

Join the discord server here:

https://discord.gg/g5v2MQzncJ

Now for the music I released this month! I only released 5 songs this month, but as I said, I really took my time and started to find my style!

Here's the highlight songs from the month of September:

Caught in solar currents was by far my best song from september

I didn't hit 30 followers this month, however I did hit it on the 2nd of October, so close enough LOL

OCTOBER:

As I said, I hit 30 followers in the beginning of this month!

October was the month that I feel like I really started to improve. However, unfortunately my activity was a little lackluster. I released many songs, but I didn't celebrate halloween so nothing much happened for me.

All good though! These are the highlights for October:

For me personally, picking the best song from October is tough. However between poor mans hope and forever open skies, I think forever open skies takes it by the tiniest little bit.

Forever open skies was such a joy to make, and while it took a long time to make, I promised something that would top all of my other songs, and I delivered. For that, I'm really proud of myself. However, that wouldn't be the only time I've done that! (Foreshadowing)

NOVEMBER:

This was a BIG month for me! I only released 3 songs, but I got my first ever frontpage!!!!!

I wanted to very briefly mention Thanksgiving, as I said in the news post that I made around that time, it was a whole lot of fun! And I really hope that if you also celebrated thay you happened to have a lot of fun as well!

Now for the music!!!!!!

These are the highlights for November:

Space dust dance was obviously the best song I made this month come on now lol. The first 11 days were spent making it, I really wanted it to be perfect.

I remember I released the song on sunday early in the morning. I continued on like normal and went to bed. Surprisingly, I actually DREAMED about the song getting frontpaged. I then woke up the next day and went to school (which only lasted until 11:30 pm).

When I came home, I checked newgrounds and saw that I had some notifications. Turns out, my song was frontpaged, and ironically the way I found out was through a review that Casporb left on my song! Thanks again Casporb for scouting me I cant give enough thanks!

Unfortunately, I never made a news post celebrating 40 followers, although I totally shouldve. BUT, it was very likely during november.

DECEMBER:

Finally, the most recent. It took a long time to get here didn't it LOL

December was filled with experimentation, coming out of November with confidence and pride, I've been really trying to just have fun with it like I always have.

A few things outside of newgrounds happened this month, so here those are real quick:

I had a fantastic birthday on the 9th

Geometry dash 2.2 also released, throughout christmas break I have been playing it a LOT!

Christmas was beautiful as always! If you celebrated christmas, I really hope you had a ton of fun and got everything you wanted!

Now for the song highlights for December!:

My best song from this month is tough, but I think I'll go with pulsar wave!

And finally to end off the year, I hit 50 fans 30 minutes before the new year and I've been writing this ever since!

THE NOW AND MY FUTURE PLANS:

Now that we're all caught up, I'd like to talk a little bit about 2024 and what I want to do for it!

First of all, I'm participating in JAMUARY!!!!! I'm going to attempt to release a song every day for each day in January. Of course, I will likely miss a few days, but I'm gonna try my best. This will be my first time participating in Jamuary, but I have high hopes! Since I wont have much time, expect songs throughout january to be on the shorter side, since I won't have much time. I hope to come out of this challenge with even more confidence, knowledge, speed, and quality!

Throughout 2024 I would like to participate in some audio collabs. I don't know in what way, maybe I'll get in some of the big ones. Maybe it'll be a collab with a friend. But I want to do some kind of collabs this year!

Outside of music, I would LOVE to expand into some art. This is farfetched, it may never happen, but I wanna give it a shot!

Stay tuned

Im so happy to be here!!!

I had an incredible year, here's to newgrounds, lets make 2024 a phenomenal year!

- charl

Some shoutouts and thank you's!:

(I'll try and keep it short so I dont bother too many people lol)

Thank you @THEINKBOY and @CalamityGanon for listening and reviewing like every song I release, I appreciate yall so much!

Thank you @Xorberax, @voidprophecy, and @wilidacious for being such big inspirations to me!

Thank you @JAMRIOT for hosting writers jams and keeping together an organized place for people who love to write!

Shoutouts:

@theWixboy and @l0vemurd3rz

@Sheik13LoZ for supporting me and being a great writer!

@SunSmog for posting BEAUTIFUL art!

@G2961 for always posting banger music!