Brendan Vavra
brendanvavra.bsky.social
Brendan Vavra
@brendanvavra.bsky.social
Accordionist, MIDI Accordion creator, VGM Cover Artist, Composer, Software Developer - aka Flake
I've been using Sibelius for over 20 years, and I only just learned today you can press X to auto-flip note and beam directions. I want my hours of tedious engraving tweaks back.
August 23, 2025 at 10:51 AM
Reposted by Brendan Vavra
Hey y'all we are delighted to share with you all our tribute album to Zelda the Wind Waker's music: "Songs of the Great Sea".
It features 30 arrangements made by the members of our community, now on all major streaming platforms :)

fanlink.tv/GreatSea
Songs of the Great Sea - The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
by Pixel Mixers
fanlink.tv
August 3, 2025 at 2:20 PM
New video! This time it's an original tango duet inspired by our cat Opal: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGcy...
Opal's Tango (Original Accordion and Violin Duet)
YouTube video by Brendan Vavra
www.youtube.com
July 29, 2025 at 1:20 AM
Whelp, even at the lowest settings Clair Obscur E33 only runs on my PC at like 10fps. 1050Ti, you've been great these past 8 years, but I think it's finally time for an upgrade...
June 12, 2025 at 10:34 AM
One of these days it will stop raining, and I will be able to do yard work again. (Also I don't know when I started becoming excited about doing yardwork.)
June 11, 2025 at 10:15 AM
For some reason 1 out of 4 of my Switch 1 joycons refuses to pair with the Switch 2, and between how new the Switch 2 is and the naming similarities, it currently feels impossible to search for any meaningful troubleshooting on the matter. 🙃
June 6, 2025 at 10:53 AM
Switch 2: Acquired.
June 5, 2025 at 2:31 PM
I don't know why, but I feel like mowing the lawn is the closest thing I have to meditation. I guess it's because it's one of the few times I can turn my brain off for an extended time while still doing something productive.
June 4, 2025 at 10:39 AM
I thought it'd be fun to share a breakdown of the time spent on my most recent video project:

Arranging: ~3h
Practicing: ~1h
Recording Audio: ~2h
Editing Audio: ~1h
Mixing Audio: ~3h
Recording Video: ~2h
Editing Video: ~4h
Publishing and Sharing: ~1h

Total: ~17h
May 31, 2025 at 11:05 AM
Just played Slippi Unranked for the first time in 3+ years - although I played like hot garbage, I was teamed up with someone chill enough to just mess around with low tiers for a while, so all in all it was one of my better online Melee experiences. ggs
May 29, 2025 at 10:59 AM
This is my entry to the #SoundoleChillOut2025 contest: an accordion duet (+) of Greenpath from #HollowKnight
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG5c...
Hollow Knight - Greenpath (Accordion Duet)
YouTube video by Brendan Vavra
www.youtube.com
May 28, 2025 at 11:00 AM
I fear all my years of accordion playing has dulled my composition senses when it comes to harmony and voice leading. I'm too used to only thinking in block chords with only major/minor/7/dim at my disposal, and there's so much more music to be made beyond that...
April 23, 2025 at 11:28 AM
Reposted by Brendan Vavra
What is next for Pixel Mixers ?
Our next album "Songs of the Great Sea" is a tribute to #Zelda #WindWaker music!
It will features 30 arrangements from that iconic OST.

Art is WIP by @bg87.bsky.social
Album organiser is Dewey Newt
April 19, 2025 at 3:37 PM
Whelp, my Switch fan is dying. Now to figure out: do I try to get it replaced, or can I hold out until Switch 2?
April 17, 2025 at 10:48 AM
I finally pulled myself away from my Home Assistant project enough to do a new video. I had fun learning this on the button accordion: youtu.be/_zM2FcBWekw
Donkey Kong Country 3 - Water World (Accordion Duet)
YouTube video by Brendan Vavra
youtu.be
April 16, 2025 at 10:44 AM
When I first heard of "vibe coding" I thought it was Gen-Z's way of saying they're "in the zone," but I'm sad to have learned the actual meaning is much dumber than that.
April 1, 2025 at 10:44 AM
Reposted by Brendan Vavra
Hey y'all, we are working on the track-list of our 10th anniversary album, and we'd love to get some help :)

If you have time, please do check this poll, you can pick as many tracks as you'd like!

forms.gle/JyyXveXpytEN...
Last Chance Poll
Links to the tracks: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1u_V19uGJqVLzYIExduMqh-OQ3ChHkZPu-zJ0dyrDKGA/edit?usp=sharing
forms.gle
March 13, 2025 at 12:26 PM
Home Assistant Integration, Week 4 - it was only a matter of time before I ended up forking the home-assistant-voice-pe repo...
March 11, 2025 at 11:41 AM
I had a shower thought earlier today that it would be nice if there was a device that could boil water and automatically steep tea for an appropriate time, and dispense when it's ready...

...and then I realized I just described a coffee maker verbatim.
March 9, 2025 at 8:43 PM
I'm pleasantly surprised to find out that connecting two Switch JoyCons to PC/Steam as one controller just _works_ with no additional config. We've come a long way from the tedious manual mappings I've done for PC controller support over the past 25 years...
March 8, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Finally got custom wake words working on my Voice Assistant PE, with much help from the Home Assistant community - it's refreshing to be able to find documentation and other resources so easily (unlike some of my other projects...).
March 6, 2025 at 12:03 PM
Home Assistant Integration, Week 3 - After spending 4 days getting everything set up to use a custom wake word, I discover that the Voice Assistant PE firmware has them disabled by default. 🙃

Now I get to learn how to set up ESPHome to reinstall a forked version of VAPE that supports custom names.
March 5, 2025 at 11:34 AM
Just finished setting up Home Assistant's Voice Assistant, and it only took two hours of Docker configuration to make everything talk to eachother. Now to see if I can fix the problem where it takes over 30 seconds to respond...
March 2, 2025 at 9:24 PM
TFW you're just about ready to install an NVMe SSD cache drive into your NAS, and suddenly you find some fine print saying you actually need TWO of them for read+write mode. Guess I'll have to get another one and wait a bit longer...
March 1, 2025 at 12:58 PM
Thought of the day: I think at the end of the day we're all just people making stuff, and sometimes it can take some time and life experience to learn to become content with doing whatever you want however you want, despite what anyone else may think.
March 1, 2025 at 12:04 AM