I’ve been doing a hell of a lot of audio work lately.. I’ve written, without posting, extensive blog entries on the subject.. So.. this is sorta like somewhere mid stream in all of this and I’m not sure if it makes full sense out of context, but what the hell.

Ok.. so what is Aurtria Storm? In the past people have called it Reason Lite, but it’s really a totally other sort of beast. Storm has a legacy of being on the consumer side of sound production.. and then sorta swerving into the pro side.. I’ve had it for years but never really bothered to learn how to use it as I bought it at a time when I didn’t think I’d be able to afford Reason, shortly after words I actually was able to afford it, and so Storm has just sorta fell by the way side. Consequently my description will be a little on the unreliable narrator side of things.

Recently I’ve been doing a lot of work with Reaktor.. with various sound generating devices that you can basically tweak parameters of while recording to create evolving sound scapes… basically. Well Storm allows you to record and edit your tweaking.. and then, at the end of the process.. export the audio..

I was over tired as I headed into Storm.. and not really in the mood to figure much of anything out.. and having forgotten whatever I had figured out in the past.. So I basically auditioned a few devices and just started to play around. .throwing a few effects on a few things.. and eventually crafting something out of it.

The trouble is.. from my point of view.. I didn’t actually create anything that could be thought of as anything other then crap. That said.. I did sorta find a direction to walk in.. and headed down that path a few steps anyway. My feeling is “so what if it’s crap, we can process the hell out of it until it turns into something of some value somewhere.” This strikes me as a fairly reasonable attitude to take in these matters… I mean there really is something to be said for screwing around with your process.. going in directions where you don’t have so much control over results.. So I feel that there’s some value in this.. It’s just that that value hasn’t materialized for me yet.

My impression of Storm at this point? Well… I feel that I’m too damn ignorant to have a real opinion of the matter.. but that’s not to say I’m without fear. My fear is that it’s just total junk. I mean who are those Aurtria folks kidding anyway? You call that a synthesizer, you call that an effect? I mean you get these really ugly sounding devices.. and not ugly in the good sense of the word.. ugly in some cheesy 80s pop synth sounding sense that’s not anything I’d ever want to be associated with.

Aurtria has a reputation for making some pretty outstanding emulations of classic synthesizers.. On the box, that I still have.. it features ringing endorsements from the likes of DJ Spooky.. I’ve read some killer reviews of Storm as one of the most underrated programs out there.. On the box it says things like: 14 instruments, 10 effects, 11 composition assistance.. what the hell is a composition assistant? It goes on…

My feeling is it’s probably a pretty good piece of gear once you learn it.. or in my case.. maybe remember it.. But until that point it’s pretty much rubbish.

What a strange blog entry from me, ha?

A few latter: I just navigated my browser on over to Aurtuia’s Storm Product page. I can’t believe there still on version 3.. Which was around how many years ago? Um.. guys, I think its time for an upgrade..

Anyway here’s a video that shows you a little of what its all about:

Kinda makes it look pretty cool, ha?

Here’s a video they got “on the history of Storm.”

I object to the description “cutting edge.” Sure.. if you go back 3 or 4 years.. maybe.. But today there are lots of tools out there that comes with lots of instruments and lots of effects.. A lot more then what Storm has on offer.. and with greater depth.. Of course Storm is now listing for $150 which is a hell of a lot less money then my precious Reason but…

Well it doesn’t help that my computer doesn’t even meet Storms minimum system specs.. There’s a certain point at which I just have to stop and accept that I can’t really push things much further..

What I plan to do is use my Storm creations as raw building blocks for further adventures.. And we’ll just see what happens.

This is kind of a strange episode.. Me going off into experimental land.. Talking about music production, composition, my work, and stuff related to my struggle to make my art happen.. inside of the social media space. The whole talk happens while experimental electronic music plays in the background.. creating certain strange resonances inside the talk. Perhaps I’ve been listening to too much John Cage?

The electronic music elements mixed beneath the dialog track are all taken from my Zarmattathustra’s Deep Space Adventures CD’s raw materials.. its sorta remixed if you will.. This is a CD I’m working to finish by the end of this month. Also there’s two actual tracks from the Deep Space Adventures in this episode.. one called Red Rum which starts off the podcast.. and another, not yet titled, that ends the epsidoe. For the latter I’m looking for suggestion for track names.. If I use a name you suggest to me, I’ll attribute you for that name.. You can email me at ZarMattAThustra [ at ] Gmail.com with name ideas.

 

 Matt Searles Podcast Episode 9: Red Rum Re Drummed [41:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I’ve jumped off into the land of Reaktor. I’m off in a process of music creation that is totally unknown to me. I’ve been a Reaktor user for years and years.. but that doesn’t mean I have a clue. In part this is because I’m embarking in a direction Reaktor has always suggested to me but that I’ve never explored in any great depth. At this moment my library of tools.. out side of Reaktor, has grown and matured in such a way that it can facilitate these sorts of directions in ways it couldn’t in the past.

Ableton Live, a program that is centered around the idea of “loop sequencing” is a big part of this. With Live you can take an audio file.. take a part of that file, and make a loop out of it… and manipulate it in a variety of different ways. So if you find your self generating huge amounts of raw audio material, from whatever sort of process you might engage your self with.. you can go on a kind of creative editorial process.. I guess.. and sorta take things some place.

I say I guess because I really have no idea where I’m going with all this: I’m just engaged in the process. There’s any number of directions I could see myself going in.. from where I’m at now, with respect to what I’m doing now.. but it’s all fairly unknown territory for me.. so the ratio of success to failure is probably not very high… depending on how you measure success.

There’s a growing feeling that I have a lot to learn out here. When I listen to the products of this process, as early on as I am in exploring it, there’s certain things it suggests to me in relationship to the sort of work that I normally do. It’s as if there’s some sort of a continuity, that what I’m looking at are two ends of a world of creative possibilities.. and it seems to me that learning to bridge the gaps between these two ends.. these two worlds really, is an objective that would be important to explore.

As it strikes me now, there are a few principle elements who’s exploration will bridge these gaps. #1 Is music theory, #2 is sound synthesis, #3 at least to my current mind set is linguistics, and #4 is probably audio engineering.. kinda sorta broadly. If there is a #5 It must have something to do with my own creative process.. my own ideas about composition and music creation, and artistic what have you…

Music theory is a strange sort of world that I haven’t explored very deeply at all. In a sense, spending years making music is an exploration of music theory in a practical sort of way. By creating music you develop a feel for what works and what doesn’t.. What grasping of traditional theory I have operates as a conceptual framework for how I interact with sound.. though this grasping is a rather surreal sort of grasping. What strikes me as important about exploring theory in greater depth is that it could yield any number of insights into what I’m doing.. and allow me to travel in directions that I haven’t really traveled all that much in, and to do so with greater ease. Though as I write these words I’m, in the back of my mind, thinking “screw theory, we’ll just explore melody in new ways.”

Sound synthesis is a different ball of wax altogether. Sound synthesis is basically about how synthesizers synthesize sound: What are the different methods of sound synthesis, how do they work, how do we use them for creative expression?

Linguistics is a strange curve ball in all this. I’m reading Leonard Bernstein talking about a connection between music theory and linguistics. It’s suggestive to me of a different way of thinking about composition then ether traditional music theory or my own approaches to composition. It brings you into thinking that musical language is somehow innate in our beings… It’s innateness, among other things, suggests that there might be other fruitful approaches for thinking about and creating music. Lets leave it at that for now.

Audio engineering brings us into a very large space that extends the subject of sound synthesis into other areas. We must think about things like psycho acoustics… yes, developing a mastery of mix engineering is a project that I’ve now been engaged in for sometime. The subject of recording engineering is probably important in here somewhere.. and the full subject of digital manipulation of sound is to.

The creative process is one where we look at all this stuff we hope to learn.. the core principles.. and try and find ways of breathing creative life into them.

I don’t know if any of this makes sense.. but its what I find myself thinking about tonight. This is sorta like a journal of my adventure into Reaktor land.. my reaction to these new processes I’m starting to explore.

If you’d like to get a sense for what sorta music I make.. and clearly this would help make these words a good deal more comprehensible, here’s a link to Indra’s Net.. which would be a CDs worth of music I’ve recently made freely available to anyone who might like to hear.

This month.. that is the month of november, I’m working to put make and put out a new CDs worth of material.. its in this new material that we hear these new experiments mixed with my older processes… though taken to new highs… Here’s a link to the november CD, Zar Matt A Thustra’s Deep Space Adventures.

There’s a challenge to create a CD in the month of november, aimed at us music creators types by NaNoWriMo. It’s a reaction to “National Novel Writing Month” where novelists attempt to write a novel during the same 30 days. I heard about this challenge a couple of days ago from the Project Studio Network podcast, and seeing as I’ve already done a good deal of sound work this month, it seemed like a reasonable challenge to try and meet, even if the month is already half over.

But to meet this challenge I have to go down some creative / process / methodological directions that are not my standard fair. The result is a project that’s a lot more experimental then my work normally is.

The process:

The process I’m taking starts with a “sound generation phase.” For the most part this involves recording sessions that are real time improvisations… involving ether strange electronic music tools.. usually Reaktor orientated, or they involve picking up a guitar.. and just jamming away.

The material thus generated becomes basic building blocks of compositions. The compositions are basically the product of audio sequencing in Ableton Live, mixed with what might be called a creative application of sound engineering trade skills… And in between, and even after all this, there can be a lot of processing of audio.. which may then lead to further iterations…

So I’ll probably be blogging on my progress for the rest of the month.. and maybe I’ll throw samples of the process into the podcast. So stay tuned..

So I thought I should start posting whatever I could push out on the subject of what I’m up to. This is a saga chronicled on my old myspace blog, so you can go there for the back story… Now for the today story:

Boston PodCamp 2 Was incredible all the way around. On a personal note, one of the more exciting things I got from Podcamp was a chance at a job creating tutorials on an electronic music production environment known as Reason 4. This leads me into a period where learning Reason 4, by working on sound projects in Reason 4, becomes a chief priority and thus I’m creating a loto f new sound work.

So some notes about Reason 4:

For the uninitiated: Reason has matured into a must have tool for those serious about making electronic music. Reason’s list price $500, the upgrade $129. Where as people who don’t do serious music production may look at that as a lot of money, for people whom are more or less professionals work in sound production, this is considered a reasonable price… Built into Reason are 3 samplers, 3 synthesizers, A Dr. REX Loop player, about 17 effects processors, a maturing sequencer, and any number of other things. Reason is a very powerful tool, and the experience I’ve had with version 4 has been one of falling in love…

Here’s a video in 2 parts, produced by Propellorhead, that can give you a reasonably good overview of Reason in it’s uber 101 form:

My goal with my various blogs and podcasts, and lets say social media presence in general, is to explore things like marketing and public relations in the digital space, and what this can do for the business side of art and in particularly my art. The music that I create is not something that easily fits into any pre existing genera, and thus provides special challenges for figuring out how to eek out a living from. As an artist I fundamentally believing in taking radicle paths because those are the paths that yield worth while results from an aesthetics perspective, but from a business perspective radical paths are ill enough advised that the shit you hear on the radio…..

Well I think Jeffry puts it best:

So what I’m doing is about the fate of our culture, the system, etc..

Latter that night:

I need to cut this short if I’m going to post this tonight!

I’ve made Indra’s Net, about a CDs worth of my music, available for a free download. My goal is to get as many people to hear it as possible, so definitely check that out. It’s been sometime since the Indra’s Net project was more or less finished (It’s not really finished but) and I’m now working on follow up material in the Form of G.G. Moe Cow Gay. I haven’t really decided if I want to give away G.G., or how much of it I might want to.. But.. I am making some of the tracks I’m working on available in for a limited time.. and if you want to get that music.. I suppose the best thing you can do is follow me on Twitter, because I’ll be putting links in my twitter feed that will only work for a limited period of time.

But this is still sorta back story, isn’t it? Well I’m afraid that’ll have to be it for today. Stay Tunes for more in depth stuff.