Porter Facts Learned During His Twitch Streams

I often felt that during Porter’s Twitch livestreams, I would find myself learning these interesting facts about him or his approach to his art that I felt should be documented and shared. Porter unselfishly provided lots of insight into his creative direction and about himself. I went back and rewatched most of the archived streams and I felt I would compile a list of these interesting things for readers to enjoy on here. I think most information might be repetitive or something you’ve heard before, but hopefully you learn something new about him! Feel free to add anything you’ve learned below.

porter's half-life alyx stream: day 3 (March 26, 2020)

  • The “Something Comforting” video was shot in chronological order, the scene where Porter is suspended was the last scene filmed
  • There was a snake wrangler present during filming the “Something Comforting” video for the outdoor shots because the sight was “notorious for having snakes.”
    • No snakes were encountered during filming
  • The scene where Porter is floating in the “Something Comforting” video was denounced as a reference to the “She Heals Everything” live visuals from the ‘Worlds’ era, he said it's more of a “subconscious motif and not intentional”
  • Elements in the “Something Comforting” song were written in 2015
  • Porter worked with creative director Samuel Burgess Johnson for the video of “Get Your Wish,” who is also notorious for working with The 1975.
  • Porter started the Malawi Fund at Second Sky for his younger brother, Mark, who was diagnosed with Burkitt lymphoma. The donations contributed at Second Sky were matched by Porter in an effort to help patient care in Malawi, where the disease is commonly known to affect people.
  • Porter has amblyopia - mostly sees out of one eye

porter VR stream (day 4...) Part 1 (March 28, 2020)

  • The “Ghost Voices” hook was accidentally created. Porter was experimenting with sound fonts and randomly played notes on the piano until he played what would be cemented as the opening hook heard in the song today.
    • Starting a song with a hook is very Porter-esque and not Virtual Self, but it was too good to pass up so he kept it
  • “Angel Voices” was actually its own Virtual Self demo before creating “Ghost Voices” and the original title of the song was going to be called “Orbit” because it sounded spacey
    • “Angel Voices” came to fruition when the drum ‘n’ bass artist Netsky sent Porter a d’n’b version of the song, but Porter felt the chord progression of the song should be half time, so he instead went with his own approach and created the happy hardcore remix to “Ghost Voices”
  • Porter’s favorite Virtual Self edit that he loves to play live the most is Igor’s “Game Tight” (Virtual Self Edit)

porter VR stream (day 4...) Part 2 (April 1, 2020)

  • Porter dyed his hair blonde because he liked how he looked in a face app
  • The “Get Your Wish” and “Something Comforting” video were not filmed in the same warehouse
  • The company Active Theory is responsible for making the nurtu.re and Virtual Self websites
  • Porter’s approach to his lyric writing process:
    • Porter keeps a text file in his phone where he stores some of his favorite lyrics that come to mind
    • He’ll sing melodies from the aforementioned text file into really heavy autotune over an instrumental he's produced
    • He states that he records roughly 500 takes of random melodies and applies heavy effects to obscure what he’s saying and as a result it sort of “loses the lyrics”
    • Finally, he will listen through until he finds something interesting or different then what he originally intended

porter robinson VR stream - the story continues (Part 1) (July 29,2020)

  • Favorite DDR songs musically:
    • “So Deep” - Silvertear (Perfect Sphere Remix)
    • “Graduation” - BeForU
    • “Maxx Unlimited” - Z
    • “PARANOiA” - 180
    • “Trip Machine” - DE-SIRE

porter robinson VR stream - the story continues (Part 2) (July 30, 2020)

  • Porter co-wrote a small section in Anamanaguchi’s “Air Online”
  • Music production tip: Porter has found that when he gets inspired by a sound or lyric he becomes laser focused and doesn’t allow him freedom to move forward with doing something else until he's finalized the idea. This approach has led him to feel counterproductive, so instead he has recently started scheduling time slots throughout the day to work on music, (i.e., 1 hour on for first track, 1 hour for a second track), to give him the notion that there is an endpoint in sight and look forward to doing other things throughout his day (i.e., the twitch streams).
  • For the Second Sky Stream line up, Porter had this dream team of artists he wanted to participate and of the 15 artists he reached out to, 14 responded and he felt genuine of the response.
  • Porter views ‘Spitfire’ as his least favorite era of music but enjoys ‘Vandalism and ‘The Seconds’ while “100% In The Bitch” is his favorite track on the EP
  • “Sad Machine” was the very last song written for ‘Worlds’
  • Porter confirmed on stream that one of the IDs played during his Virtual Self sets originally perceived as titled “Draw Your Knives” is actually called “Dry Your Eyes”
  • At the time of the recording, Porter is 100% sober and stopped drinking caffeine. He used to drink before shows but found it hindered his performance. He stopped drinking caffeine because there were moments where he only felt happy when he was ‘high’ on caffeine and would feel ‘lows’ when not caffeinated
  • Playing baseball was Porter’s obsession growing up and he really wanted to succeed in it. He wore jerseys, collected baseball cards, it was everything that he thought about. At the time, he was undiagnosed with OCD/anxiety and on one unfortunate day, he got hit by a pitch and the event traumatized him to the point where he would be sitting in the dugout nervously counting the number of people in the batting order before it was his turn to bat. This anxiety inevitably caused him to quit a sport he loved. The trauma lingered into his career as an artist as well, he thought that those emotions would re-emerge during his process and wouldn’t allow him to create music he was happy with and the memory of him quitting and the anxiety that came with it would again be the reason he would stop doing what he loved.

Secret Porter streams for the real ones only (Sep 5, 2020)

  • “Mirror” is not Porter’s favorite song from ‘Nurture’
  • “Language” and “Easy” were originally intended to be put into ‘Worlds’ but Porter felt the songs were too “EDM-y” and “Club-y” for the album
  • Porter put “Shepherdess” on the B-side of the “Lionhearted” vinyl in 2013. Originally he intended to put “Shepherdess” out on ‘Worlds’ but fell out of love with the 128 BPM EDM style and was feeling angst about the scene at the time, so he decided against putting it in. Instead, “Shepherdess”, was released on a whim because he saw people’s reaction to the 6th Anniversary of ‘Worlds’ and said “why am I stopping myself this would be meaningful to certain people”, so he mastered it quickly and posted it on SoundCloud as a thank you for the generous reaction and continuous support to “Worlds”
  • Porter Robinson music will never be played in a Virtual Self set.
  • “Lionhearted” is Porter’s least favorite track on ‘Worlds’ because it assimilates with EDM and club style tracks, which was not the flavor of the motif for the album.
  • Shooting the “Get Your Wish” music video was the most fun he had on set

secret porter VR stream - COMIN FOR THAT TOP 100 WORLDWIDE RECORD STRIDE VR LETS GOOOO (Sep 13, 2020)

  • “Angel Voices” is Porter Robinson’s favorite Virtual Self track
  • Porter has not released his favorite track on “Nurture”
  • The first ever ‘Worlds’ live show in Sydney Australia the show went catastrophically. Halfway through the show, two things happened to his AKAI, a tech he often uses in live shows to play certain instruments of a song live (i.e., the cute piano in ‘Sad Machine’), first, the wrong patches were loaded into the AKAI and second they were transposed incorrectly (i.e., would play out of key). It was the most bummed he ever felt after ending a show.

secret porter VR stream - WORST STREAM EVER (Sep 15, 2020)

  • Porter’s been a fan of Lil B since 2013
  • The cryptic text seen during Virtual Self live visuals was partially created by Porter, but also randomly generated using Markov Chain which is a process that takes texts and translates it into, for example, Russian then back into English.