Jess LevineInterview
Writer, musician, game designer
Adapted from Jess Levine's interview on Uses This, published 8 July 2022. The kit is drawn from their answers and each reason is an excerpt, lightly edited. Shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the full interview ↗
Is this you? Claim this kit →Hardware
I use a MacBook Pro for most writing and programming, while music production happens on my custom built Windows machine.
I also adore my Das Keyboard 4 - I've never owned a better keyboard.
I received a set of AirPods because my wife got them for free and decided they didn't want them.
Music: I produce music using an AKAI MPK249 MIDI controller.
On the go, I instead carry an AKAI MPKmini II.
For one album, I ran digitally-synthesized guitar audio out into a TC HALL OF FAME reverb pedal, because I couldn't find any reverb VST that sounded exactly that good when applied to a guitar.
Communication
The most spontaneous notes get entered into Telegram's Saved Messages feature, usually as either voice messages or text generated through iPhone voice dictation.
In Gmail, I use manually applied tags like "Action Needed" to remind myself to revisit emails.
Productivity
When notes graduate to a draft, they are migrated to Google Docs - which also acts as a version control system and distribution platform for drafts of my written work.
Reference links and my reading queue are indexed and tagged in Zotero.
Google Calendar determines what I'm doing in a given moment and Google Keep also tracks my todo lists.
In my political organizing work as an arbiter for Philly Socialists, we use Trello to coordinate everything that the arbiter team needs to do.
Miscellaneous: I cannot use macOS without immediately installing Alfred for convenient search functionality and navigation through files, windows, applications, and more.
Browser
I use Firefox as my browser.
Notes
From there, more permanent and organized notes are moved to or written in Google Keep lists.
Security
Coding & Development
My editor and terminal both use Solarized Dark for colors.
Occasionally, I use Sublime Text for quick editing and search capabilities.
I use git for version control.
Design
Media
When it comes to softsynths, I use SubLab for bass.
Storage
Final products are converted to relevant formats and stored along with the rest of my life in Dropbox.