So I’m looking at lots of new tools for my studio.. It’s kinda scary… to spend this kind of money on stuff.. but I feel as though.. if I’m really serious about what I pretend to be serious about.. then what should be most important is realizing a vision I only dimly understand. The question is how to get there.. and so this entry talks a bit about the research I’ve been doing…

Melodyne is it’s name.. the inventor of which gets Steve Job’s like responses when he gives his presentations.. not because he’s a master presenter.. but because of what is software his able to do. Take a look at the video’s here, and see for you’re self the reasons why. 

Why?

There are a number of applications to this sort of technology that I’m interested in

1.  Audio to MIDI conversion: You play an instrument.. and you derive MIDI data from the recording. In the main, I’m interested in this because I could take a section of improvised guitar playing, and say “I want to use this part” and I could then build scores / the production around those notes, around what the guitar playing is doing.
2. I can’t sing… but, as readers know, I’m looking to bring words / vocals to my music. Even if I can’t sing.. I can correct the pitch of my terrible singing.. and perhaps mutate it into.. “he can almost sing.” And then, with enough effects and whatever.. I could perhaps mask the god awfulness of it all!
3. The notion of taking any sorta recording.. and reshaping it in this Melodyne sorta way.. including loop libraries.. is just awesome… and opens up all sorts of new doors.
4. Did I mention I was a microtonalist? The notion of taking music performed in a traditional temperament / tuning system, and retuning it.. or making it microtonal.. shaping it to the context of a microtonal composition.. opens all sorts of new doors.

The biggest issue I’m finding is.. The Melodyne program I’m now looking at (Melodyne Studio, see comparison chart here) is listening at $700… which is what we like to call in the biz “a hunk of change.” This would bring my over budget budget up to… drum roll please… well.. depending on various variables.. hmm.. around $3000.

Time to get on the ball on responding to that recruiter, ha? 

If you follow me on twitter, there is at least some probability that you would have ran into me talking about.. a voice synth. Now if you like, you can follow that voice synth link and play with the voice synth right there on the web page… You type something in, hit play, it speaks it back for you… and you can try out different voices.

Also on that page is a download link.. which allows you to down load the program to your computer.. and you can throw text files into it.. and save the results as MP3s… 

Latter:

So what I did today was.. I just sorta randomly attempted to write lyrics in the voice synth’s text field.. ”hmm, what does this sound like?” And the results where… the make the hairs stands on the back of your neck sort!

I think what it is is.. the feeling that.. well you know.. my music is conventionally instrumental.. of an experimental electronic sorta sort. It’s stuff that is kinda out there.. or its like.. lets say conceptualized from a point of view that is radically different from.. any thing you’ve heard before. What’s impressive about that is simply that..

I don’t think most sound artists are as comfortable going out on a limb like that..  What I mean is we all give lip service to innovation and.. originality.. but I think there are certain things that…  create certain norms.. and so.. I don’t know..

There’s a lot of norms in music.. There’s a lot of norms in everything.. and… hmm.. I don’t know how to totally describe this.. but it does have something to do with the core of who I am as a human.. as well as as an artist..

The more outside of the norms you go.. the harder it is for people to understand you.. things often take a little more explination.. its consumption is a little more challenging then the same old same old.

So one of the things lyrics could potentially do for my work is.. give you something to hold onto.

I’m feeling, as I write this, that I have sooo much in common with Frank Zappa.. he’d make this music that was outrageous.. I mean really interesting stuff.. and then he’d kinda put this cultural satire on top.. in part to try to give his work some commercial potential…

Latter:

It took me a while.. I was looking for a good example here.. where you get both.. his lyrical thing… and the interesting musical thing… I think this is pretty good…

What I’m digging about this is.. On the one hand the music is a very.. well a particular sorta Zappa Jazz thing… it’s crazy and fun..  and then you have the whole lyrical thing.. and the performance. What I’m digging about this performance is.. where is the narrator coming from? He’s very blasé about the whole thing..

Next day sometime:

I think what’s strong here is… look, listen to the music.. Is that Jazzy thing.. I don’t know, how broad is the appeal of that kinda thing? Lets face it, if you’re in a Jazz band.. you’re probably struggling.. I mean assuming you haven any ambitions that don’t involve day jobs.. Throw those lyrics on it.. now how broad is the appeal? Suddenly we are in a position where folks who would normally not listen to that kinda Jazz-y music.. well they’ll kinda dig into this a little.

I don’t want to get too side tracked by this Zappa tangent.. but take a look at this video… It really shows of some his musical sophistication:

I wish there was more music like this going on today.. in the sense of guitar solos that are worth listening to.. hell, there aren’t even that many guitar solos, are there? To say nothing of that kinda complex crazy stuff..

Ok.. here’s a video that’s essentially an advertisement for the Berklee College of Music… I’m not big on Berklee.. took a class there, and blah blah blah, but.. Well the thing to may be appreciate here is that Steve Vai is like.. a technically amazing musician.. Many folks who are serious about guitar will tell you he’s the best guitar player ever… I’m not sure I’d go that far but.. yeah, he belongs in the pantheon of guitar heros.. so lets take a look at what he has to say about his experience with Zappa

Ok.. so enough of this craziness… I’m starting to loose the impulse of what I wanted to get with this entry!

Back to the Music of Matt: 

So what kinda blew me away about “lets go play with the voice synth..” It’s a cheesy kinda voice synth, right? But that’s sorta not the point. The point is.. you throw in some lyrics, and out pops a rendering of it.. 

My lyrics.. there’s a kind of dark mystical bent to them… There’s a kind of depth to them that’s.. well they can potentially be mind bending.. This particular bit of lyrics.. it was as if it were being sung by a serial killer.. though we aren’t totally sure that he / she is a serial killer.. clearly the person speaking wants to be our lover.. and it sounds like this somehow involves killing us..

Ok.. but there’s the connection between love and death.. that the love potion is a poison.. symbolically.. the person speaks of how all life is suffering, and how this person wants to save us from our suffering.. There is the symbolic idea that through death comes life.. You have to die to your self, in a certain sense, to reach that next spiritual step.. a message of Christ’s, certainly, is that life is not something to be clung onto.. The love potion is a poison because we have to die to our former life in order to take on this kinda love..

So the lyrics are sorta playing around with all this stuff in a very edgy sorta way.. and this is really just the kinda thing that… comes off the top of my head.

So…  well the lyrics of Zappa’s Jazz Discharge Party Hats is speaking to.. a couple of things… It’s speaking to a kind of adolescent male’s take on sex… lets say.. but with a detached blasé quality of it.. is on the one hand sorta making fun of the whole thing.. and on the other hand its sorta.. sympathetic to it.

You can also get into the banality of it.. and the way Zappa’s stuff is sorta echoing, in some senses, certain qualities of pop art.. Zappa deals with issues of high and low brow art.. and the issues of art in the market place..

What I’m doing is… much much much more about this kind of transcendent mystical experience.. but dark and edgy to a kind of extreme… 

Next day some time:

I loaded up the vice synth renderings into Ableton Live. I figured Live was probably the place to go when it comes tempo matching and all that.. but I’m not totally sure I’m getting it all right… Or how to make it really work.. The solution, of course, is to wrestle with all this stuff…

A thought, I’m having, is one I had with my Deep Space Adventures track.. which was early ideas on the relationship between linguistics and music.. with DJ style productions:

You create content.. Now this content is in now way a “finished work” or even “something good.” This content is more like “research and development.” What I mean is that the content is made out of a kind of experimental adventure process… and it’s not work that actually has to stand on its own in anyway.

Generally, the result is… well lets say it’s an audio file.. that audio file will have its own continuity… Whatever trip you were on when you made it.. well who knows, but its somehow about that, right? And.. just as you can see things in the clouds when you stare up at them.. it is as if there’s some kind of a meaning and story associated with these audio files… some kind of a perspective on stuff.. some kind of a take on stuff.. a kind of voice, if you will.

You then, eventually, move onto a process where those audio files can be like the raw building blocks of a production. What happens is.. in a rather strange sorta way.. those elements.. behave in a kind of language like way..

So lets look at this in more concrete terms.. with the vocals…

Screwing around in Live.. I have the words “I don’t know what the future holds.” That is one fragment of the lyrics I wrote. It’s almost as if you  wrote a paragraph and thats about the first half of the first sentence. What I’m now starting to think about is.. take the whole set of lyrics.. and chop them up into little fragments… where we experiment with the little fragments..

So far.. the experimentation consists of.. lets take that clip.. from one of the voices renderings.. and lets copy and past it across 3 channels.. and put various filters and effects on the 3 channels.. have them panned around.. automate the mix a little…  make those lines repeat…

The voice synths have a kind of archetypal feel to them… Every time you’ve heard someone who couldn’t speak, using a voice synthesizer.. it sounded like this.. so these are sounds we’ve all heard a million times before.. so in some ways its a bit like “sampling stuff from our culture.” You might not even realize you’ve been listening to voice synths all this time.. but hey look, you have..

So what I’m thinking is.. have these little experiments that are like.. parts of a whole… where we do.. who knows what with them.. then, latter on.. we reassemble the lyrics… into the song, so to speak.. inside the context of a larger production.

What also interests me is.. we could have clips from these vocals.. coming in and out all over an album. 

Process wise.. this is very much like some kind of abstract painting..  

My goal is to really try and make a kind of huge giant jump into the darkness…  To jump way the hell out of the universe that’s known to me.. to try and create a work that is.. somehow way better then I could do… 

Latter that day:

I’m really processing the hell out of these vocal tracks.. and trying to make the automation of the processing parameters interesting. I imagine possibilities.. 

I’m looking to various effects that I might add to my rig.. I’ve blogged about these in the past… or most of them anyway. I have this kind of “old school” set of ideas.. of ways to mutate sounds. For instance.. I take what I’m working on now, render it to an audio file, put it on my iPod, and record the sound of it playing back in my car.. or in any number of other places.. or through a guitar amplifier.. or who knows what kind of craziness. Well, I’m not actually doing any of that.. It’s much easier to just twist a few virtual knobs in your software.. and half of what I’m thinking is the effects I’m adding to my rig would allow me to achieve whatever.. just via knob twisting…. basically.

The real challenge, in all this.. is to maximize the amount of energy I have going into these projects. 

Err… this is probably a long enough blog entry to kinda.. cut it off here..  so to be continued! 

I’ve been having a rough time blogging much of anything lately.. principle because my computer keeps on crashing…. resulting in my loosing whatever it was I was blogging about.. So today I guess we’ll blog somewhat randomly.. and this will be our little chance to catch up a little.

First off there’s the blog strategy stuff.. which in this case amounts to the “why you should bother reading this” stuff. Good question.. I must say I’m an unreliable narrator in this department.. and.. Well.. I’m really just trying to work all this stuff out..

Generally speaking.. I think.. hmm.. I think this blog could have value to.. a kind of wide variety of types. When I write on any subject, no matter how deep I go.. how much I geek out.. or.. just whatever.. I do my best to try and make it so.. if you didn’t know anything about what I was talking about.. you could still follow along.. you could still be a part of the conversation.. And I try to do this in such a way that.. it doesn’t cause me to have to water stuff down.. or simplify things too too much.. That is the person who’s the expert on the subject wouldn’t be bored… Hell, the expert is probably laughing at how poorly I’m treating the subject.

The philosophy of this is.. maybe kind of strange. See, I believe that I can basically do anything.. if I just take the time to learn how to do it: to cultivate within myself whatever aptitudes or capacities are required for the task at hand. My feeling is that we are all capable of this.. but I think…

Well I think we have these notions of Identity inside of which we say “I’m good at this” and “I suck at that,” and somehow we believe that’s the last word on the subject.. as if the reality to that thought wasn’t it’s self a kind of artifice of our own creation… an expression of a static moment that lacks the ability to see the potential trajectory of.. well I suppose the moment.. through space and time, to put it a certain sorta way.

So.. you know.. one of the things that I think is sorta special about me.. is that I’ve transcended that kind of thing.. and that’s something you pick up fast if you follow this blog for any period of time.. that I’ll jump from subject to subject.. where the breadth and depth covered is.. well it might be one of the most impressive things about this blog… so I guess I’m a kind of an exemplar of the idea.. but the thing is.. I think we can all be such exemplars in our own way.. and perhaps we even are but simply fail to recognize it.

Beyond this I think we are all experts in some areas and novices in others…. and there is more area that we are novices in then we are experts in. Frankly, I don’t even really think of my self as an expert in much of anything I write on.. in all of them I’m struggling to climb the mountain.. to be a master of the subject.. I don’t want to be the jack of all trades, master of none.. I want to be the master of all! (I know, I have issues)

I think, on some level, some place in us.. I think we all kind would like that.. but generally don’t have the opportunity. Perhaps we simply don’t know where to begin, or perhaps didn’t even know such a thing was possible at all… or even more likely.. we probably have bigger fish to fry… or what I mean is life has given us other things to concern our selves with.

In any event.. what I figure is I can kind of take you on a little ride.. and you can kind of peer over my shoulder.. to see from a vantage point where you can benefit from whatever understanding I’ve managed to gain from my climb… and perhaps in some way I can cast the light on how one can do this sorta thing.

So that’s kind of one dimension to my thinking about what this blog is.. and why someone might find value in it.

Another dimension is.. I might be blogging on subjects that you might want to learn something about.. and maybe I can help you learn about that stuff. Hell, maybe we can climb together? (What I’d give for a little comradery on with this sorta thing).

Now there are also times where I talk about things from a very personal perspective… You could maybe even argue I’m always doing that. At the very least you could say “now this blogger does not have a detached objective point of view to his narratives.”

Well.. I’ll tell you what.. I think objectivity is in large measure illusory. Even if we take a position of believing in objectivity.. ultimately what you want to do is assimilate that objective stuff into your own thing.. in which case it’s not going to be so objective anymore..

Err, I think I’m doing a crappy job explaining this one.. What I mean is you want to assimilate knowledge, synthesize it with what you already got.. by giving you this stuff in the context of a personal narrative you’re not experiencing it as if it where in a vacume.. further I think there is something known as ’subjective knowledge,’ which for complex reasons isn’t terribly valued today.. but I think there’s something to be gained from it.. particularly when your getting this stuff in that context.

If only I was explaining this stuff better!

The final thing I want to say.. on this dimension of the story is.. there is a kind of personal and collective level to all our stories.. there is a dimension to our suffering that is a universal suffering.. It is a suffering of.. well what is grave and constant in the human experience.. to sorta echo Joseph Campbell.. and even if I’ve gone off in some direction where I don’t have the faintest idea of what value it could have to you…. well what the hell, I’m not really the judge of that anyway, am I?

Beyond all this.. I imagine that some of what I have to say could be of value to you.. and some less so…

Ok.. so I think that more or less covers it? I mean it covers my rational… how I rationalize this blog in relationship to.. blog strategy stuff.. The whole.. know you’re community.. that what you blog about ought to be for that community.. what is it that they want?

But I’ll tell you what.. you tell me what you want.. cause I haven’t the faintest idea.. I’d love to help yeah.. . just give a little yelp in the comments every now and then.. or contact me one way or another.. If this was the sorta blog that had lots of comments.. well.. that surely would help… And I suppose that’s one metric that tells me I’m not doing the greatest job with this blog… but I also know that there’s, generally speaking.. not a high percentage of blog readers who actually comment.. Further more, different blogs elicit different behaviors in readers in relationship to comments..

I have a friend.. lol, he’s kinda crazy.. and I suppose that’s one of the things I love about him… He’s a rather successful fellow.. in the world of PR.. and he does have a hand full of personal blogs.. one of which is a porn blog.. His porn blog has lots and lots of readers.. but guess what? Nearly no one comments..

So.. I guess the note is.. what do you think? I mean do you have any sense of who this blog might be for? Do you think I’m self dilluding in my rational? I don’t know…

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Has to share this with yea, thought it was really cool. A tip of the hat must go to @HbeeInc of hbeeinc.com for finding this.

It reminds me of some work I saw at the ICA in Boston… way when I tried to go see John Zorn.. but alas it was sold out… so I just wandered around the galleries for a few hours… and there was an artist who had works that were very much of this vain.. 

In any event, I’m kind of interested in exploring something like this..  

[editors note, this isn’t one of my better written entries.. hopefully you can forgive those transgressions] 

Who is the real John McCain?

Ok, allow me to explain my self here.. I am politically on the left… I think.  John McCain is politically on the right. Are you following all this so far? I’m probably voting for Obama..  but all that said..  I do tend to like McCain..  and frankly.. it pisses me off to get these emails from my leftist activist brothern with there whole “Who is the real John McCain” shtick.

Listen.. I HATE, is that even a strong enough word? George Bush. I sometimes have a hard time choosing which I hate more.. the stupidity, or raw evil of the manipulations.. in there communications. And lets face it.. I really want the republican party to pay a price… because they where the enablers of George.. and hell, I get pissed at the Democratic party for being such giant wusses in this battle! 

But John McCain.. he escapes much of my anger at the Republicans because.. though he has consistently voted in conservative manners.. he didn’t just do whatever the party was doing.. the man thought for him self.. so he wasn’t the terrible enabler that the rest of his party was.

Now we got this war in Iraq.. you’ve heard of this one right? My view of McCain’s position is.. though I’m not sure that I can agree with his position.. I do respect it. He’s critisized the utter stupidity of the stupid parts.. and got behind the smart parts… and frankly I’m a little on the fence as to wether I should embrace him on this..

Hmm..  to understand this you really want to understand that larger geopolitical subtext, and.. I suppose, it might help to know something of what the Neo-Cons where thinking.. the folks whom.. prior to the invasion of Iraq, talked a lot about the notion of going there..  

Ok.. so.. you know the middle east has a reputation for.. not always being the nicest neighborhood, right? It probably doesn’t help that we are dependent on this unpleasant neighborhood for our fuel supply..  You know, we’re going crazy as the cost of fuel goes above $4 a gallon…  depending on what goes on over there.. our economy, I dare say, could grind to a halt.. . I mean $4 is nothing.. . 

The fuel issue.. at the very least, keeps us focused on the middle east.. because keeping that fuel supply in order.. well that’s probably in American interest, right?

Ok.. so the other deal is the middle eastern terrorist organizations.. you’ve heard of this one right? I mentioned it was a bad neighborhood, right?

So.. its complex… but there are complex interrelationship….

err… This is complex.. let me give you the Thomas Barnett’s take on.. well, war.. He gives a killer power point presentation.. I disagree with him in places.. but he is an amazing guy with respect to the framework he gives us for thinking about National Grand Strategy.

a shorter one:

And finally: 

Ok, I know that was long, but I need to give comments!

First off, yeah.. I love his military humor.. and yeah, I disagree with him in a number of places.. but I think his stuff is so important to think about.. and while I know that many a reader might… well.. I’ll hopefully get to this.. in any event, you can follow Thomas Barnett’s blog here.

So there’s a number of interesting things germane to our conversation… relative to John McCain… This presentation throws the Iraq conflict in a radicle new light… and when viewed from this vantage point, McCain doesn’t look so bad on Iraq…

Here’s the trouble.. as I said earlier, Bush screwed things up.. Should we be in Iraq? How could he be so stupid about how we went there, and how we have stayed here? I sorta feel like.. if we can do this right.. lets stay, if not lets cut our losses and leave….  A big part of the political realities surround the war are.. well the stupidity of Bush’s public relations:

Bush did not prepare us for a prelonged occupation.. His PR surrounding Iraq was.. short sighted.. how do we get in there…  All of Bushes PR, no matter what the subject, has been short sided in this way.. which is why for a short time he didn’t look soooo bad, and why he now looks even worse then that. Frankly we don’t believe in the Iraq war.. largely because of the Bush pr catastrophe… Frankly, there’s a political dimension to war.. we pulled out of Vietnam, not because we had lost the war militarily.. but because we had lost the political will. The Vietcong’s moves that lead to us loosing the political will was a set of actions that was very bad for them militarily.. the reason this was a decisive blow to our political will was because our political will was based on a PR strategy that.. was not aligned with reality.. another words, its the same stupidity we see with George Bush.

Frankly.. which is the bigger sin, the stupidity or the dishonesty?

You know I’m not arguing that we should have stuck it out in Vietnam…  I’m just telling you what the people who think we should have… say, people like Henry Kissinger, say. I dare say that it was the dishonesty of the US’s PR surrounding Vietnam.. that has a lot to do with the success that period’s anti war movement. Another words… the Hawks are creating Doves.

The trouble with talking about this stuff is that we are going so far beyond the public debates of now.. so it strikes me as very likely that the lens through which you read these words is the lens of these debates.. and to really get what I’m saying we need to try and move beyond that.

So back to McCain.. we’ve now talked about the stupidity of Bush and Vietnam.. what we can say about McCain is that authenticity and honesty are core to the McCain brand… And I believe these are the core values people are looking for in this political season… and its George Bush who’s made this the most important thing.. because we are all so sick of the bull… and this is why I’m saying that people on the left need to be careful in how they attack McCain.. because if those attacks misrepresent the reality… well then you’re in danger of associating the left with the sort of values that.. value power over truth or honesty or good government.. which is exactly what is driving the political realities against Bush.

What we need now is strong leadership.. a leadership that has the maturity to tell us things we might not want to hear. 

One of the things that’s astounded me about McCain is his willingness to stay with the Iraq war.. even when it seemed to mean political devastation for him. He’s now taking heat for what amounts to PR missteps:

Will we stay in Iraq for 100 years if McCain has his way? That’s not really what McCain is saying.. McCain is saying.. we need to be committed to victory in Iraq.. that failure would suck really really bad.. and blah blah blah.. and he’s also saying that.. a long term commitment to staying in Iraq is.. not the same thing as a long term commitment to war in Iraq; its a long term commitment to peace in Iraq.

The political situation surrounding Iraq has a big problem.. basically, we the people don’t understand Iraq.. the situation there.. I don’t think you can sell us on staying in Iraq unless you can really educate folks about what’s really going on in there.. how it really works, etc.. Otherwise fears are very likely what will drive the political realities.. and of course McCain’s political problems, relative to Iraq, are all about fears.

So, if we bare all this in mind.. I also think it’s safe to say that Obama need’s to be careful in how he takes on McCain on this front… Because there’s more merit to McCain’s stances then if commonly understood..

Still.. I don’t think Obama is as bad on Foreign Policy is McCain would have you believe..  and at the same time.. we have an increasingly complex foreign policy situation… And clearly McCain is the stronger candidate, with regard to sophistication in Foreign policy.

Out of the Weeds, back to Barnett 

My issues with what Barnett is saying: 

1. I think its a mistake to be too pro globalization… this is an area where I’m not real comfortable with Barnett.. but it takes a complex and nuanced conversation to really get at this.
2. He’s using a systems approach to thinking about this stuff (much as I use with social media).. which is groovy and all.. but I think its easy to feel like things are safer then they potentially are.. see Bill Ward Video after this list.
3. He did work under Rumsfield.. (though he voted for Kerry).. so that some of his political analysis seems.. well its worth treating critically.
4. I still think we need to listen to voices like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn..  Barnett is, after all, the product of a Harvard education.. is a bit of an elite.. and I don’t really think has, at least for my taste, quite enough sensitivity to wrestle with the dark sides of all this stuff.
5. He’s basically saying.. economic / network / whatever.. integration leads to piece.. which I think is true enough.. the trouble is that the challenges between here and there are freaking huge… and that could be enough to sorta blow up the systems.. to put it a certain sorta way.
6. As wonderful as globalization can be.. there is a greater concentration of power happening in this context then ever before.. which has huge ramifications of which we don’t fully understand.. which represents a danger he’s not addressing..  Indeed this sorta message, about the problem of power concentration in globalization, has come from a guy who used to be a part of Henry Kissinger’s consultancy group! He wrote a book on the subject called Super Class.. which I still haven’t gotten around to reading… but I’ll recommend it to you anyway!

Bill Ward Video  (fellow who used to play drums for Black Sabbath) 

And finally, because I just couldn’t help myself, a video a to end on:

There I feel better, don’t you?

I only just got the news, of Tim Russert’s death. I’m still in shock. Tim was.. God, he was just one of the best, you know? It seems sorta strange to morn the loss of someone you never met, but I’ve been on the verge of tears since I heard.

We need more good one’s like Tim, not less, you know?

 I’m just feeling so crazy moved by this..  

On YouTube, it says this is a BBC documentary, but I don’t believe it is.. In any event it’s the documentary on Carl Jung.. This is the sorta thing that gets pulled from YouTube fairly regularly.. though this one’s been up for a while now.. so maybe it’s worth sharing this way.. Just thought I’d put them all together for an easier way of viewing… (that is that it won’t get pulled anytime too soon)

But first, some words about Jung’s Influence on me and my work: 

The funny truth of the matter is.. the biggest influence on my work.. from thought, to visual arts.. to my sound art.. It’s really the influence of an inward journey more then it is any artist or thinker or whatever..

When I talk about influences it might be best to regard this as a somewhat unreliable narration.. of the significants of the influence is more that they relate, in at least some sort of symbolic way, to something I’ve found on in my own inward journey.. and what they really provide for me is a way of talking about it.. that can at least be a touch point.. where we can have a common starting point for talking about.

Carl Jung, on the other hand, might be the single biggest influence on me for thinking about that inward journey… well maybe him and Joseph Campbell.. throw in Nietzsche somewhere.. and blah blah blah.. The influence is so big that I often don’t know where Jung starts, and I end, or vice versa..

Oddly enough.. its Jung’s conceptual framework, that underlies my music, underlies how I think about marketing and  communications, how I think about business, how I think about aesthetics, how I think about being human, how I think about social media.. So it seems to me important for me to share with you.

On with the Documentary

For some reason this one seems to lag a lil:

So yeah.. it’s kind of a crazy group, ha? I feel the need to give you some back story.. but…  well, seems like this entry’s long enough.. and who would have made it through the whole thing!? So, go.. do you’re other things! 

It’s late at night.. super late actually.. sun’s starting to come up.. I should be in bed sleeping.. but it’s just one of those late night howling kind of moments.. a need to howl from this blog.. or via this blog.. out into that there internet.. and blah blah blah.

Seems like there’s a million things I want to say, and as time passes.. they slip through my fingers.. those sands of time I’ll tell you!

So I just wanted to write something random.. in the hopes that I might touch upon some of this stuff.

I’ll tell you a big thing I want to say.. Thank you.. you as in the universe.. you as in..  err… God, I do need to explain myself here, ha? And if I do that, I’ll never finish this damn post.. never get to much of anything I might like to touch on.

Well.. what the hell, who cares, it’ll be what it’ll be!

I feel a real need to thank social media….

I believe it was last night.. well, lets back up a little..  Yesterday I made my way to a book store.. aww, the temptations for Bad Matt! But Bad Matt was good, and didn’t give into any of said temptations.. but none the less.. I spent some time in that there magazine section, and in electronic musician monthly there was an article on vocal synthesis… which is to say using a computers to generate a vocal track. This particular article focused on how to do it for free.. It was rather avant guard in its aims… but it got me to thinking.. and reunited me with some old ideas..

I write poetry, or song lyrics or.. not sure how to describe them really. I haven’t written too many lately, but I’ve been keeping note books since highs school…. so I’ve amassed quite a bit of stuff… and one figures, just statistically speaking, there must be something in there, somewhere, of value.

I’m a crappy judge of myself and my work. I really am! I often need to take a good deal of time away from my stuff in order to come back to it, without emotional ties to it, in order to see what’s really there.

So I was having this conversation with someone online.. while trying to figure out what kind of sound synthesizers where out there.. and how much they are running these days.. and um.. well the person I was talking to is a fan, I guess you could say.. a fan of my music, a fan of this blog, a fan of me..

It’s so nice to have such people in our lives.. particularly when you’re struggling to believe.. well this wasn’t really a night of struggle.. but as I was showing said person some of what I was finding.. the subject came to these lyrics / poems / whatever.. that I had.. and could this person see.

Well it just so happens that I was on my pc lap top at the time.. which happens to have folder full of stuff.. dating back to when I got the lap top.. which I’m guessing was sometime in 2004.. simply because that was the date of my Indra’s Net Project… which was done on said laptop.

Matt Searles – Archaic Rejuvination for the Post Modern Male and Female

And um… So the deal is.. I tend to not like showing this stuff… mainly cause I figure it sucks, you know? Like who am I kidding? I’d be embarrassed to show that trash… but ok, what the hell, why not?

Well.. my fan friend was blown away buy it and I was like “you really like that stuff?” Before you know it.. I had sent something like 20 or more of them through the IM.. and I think we were both a little astonished.. this person had, after all, put me in the right mood to see the virtue of it..

Oh my God! This stuff was insane! I almost want to describe it as the words of “a bad boy saint.” It’s stuff that just screws with your head.. It has an intense kind of darkness to it, that almost kinda scares you.. and..

Oh my God, you know how I’m given to talking about Jesus and God and all that sorta thing in this blog? I always feel like.. when you bring up those kinds of subjects.. people kinda want to run away..  run from the Jesus freak.. like talking about religion is just not a safe topic.. its more dangerous then politics.. Well what was crazy about the treatment of the subject was.. it was mystical.. and it was like.. well it was twisted.. just in how it played with it. It was as if it was this crazy heretical sorta thing.. kinda like South Park playing with Jesus and all that stuff.. accept this was like.. way more dangerous. It was more dangerous because it seemed to be speaking truths.. speaking truths that most folks wouldn’t have the balls to say..  I mean it was just crazy.

It had this kind of earthy feel to it.. made me think of Muddy Waters.. but like crazy intellectual.. which is part of how it would mess with your head.. It’s as if there’s the prejudices of our modern time and of authority.. prejudices that produce the mental cages we are all living in.. and it’s tearing the hell out of them…  to the point where it all most hurts.. 

Ok, how about another track from yours truly.. again from Indra’s Net:

Matt Searles – A Short Trip To Another Day

The words called back to me the psychology I had at the time.. I was reminded of the darkness of those days.. of the struggle.. of the darkness. The struggle to just hold on to hope. The pain…  The blood that was just dripping from me.. psychologically.. from the wounds of life.. all the ways life can be cruel.. and how it felt like that then.. and that deep struggle of not knowing if I’d ever make it in life to where I needed to make it. Feeling like… life could get worse then I could really handle.. and that it might not be too long till that reality would be confronting me..

This is the subtext… beneath how I was driven to make this work.. driving to try and make something of me.. get to where ever I needed to get to.

Funny thing is I haven’t gotten there yet! Funny thing is I’m still struggling…  And though, in my current struggle.. though I do struggle with faith, in what I’m doing or trying to do, on a daily basis… I must say there are moments of overflowing hope. That over flowing hope comes through the vehicle of social media.

I’ve had this feeling in my head for sometime.. that in the end it will be social media that saves me. To really explain how this works.. well it would take more then I have to give tonight….

A couple things though.. You meet so many great people. I can’t really tell you how thankful I am. I don’t know how to tell you how moved I’ve been…  I mean like when my mom died and people reached out to me via blog comments, twitter, emails.. At a moment I had anticipated as being the loneliest moment of my life..  I felt the least alone of any moment in my life.

So one of the things that’s giving me this need to Howl.. is just the want to give thanks.. which I am sometimes so bad at.. If you’re reading this.. and we’ve had some sorta social media type.. I don’t know.. we’ve met, had a conversation.. or maybe not even that much… you’re probably someone I feel somehow thankful about…  So.. if I don’t get around to.. doing something that would properly express my gratitude.. I just want to tell you thanks here.

It is the little things that count, isn’t it?

How about another track:

Matt Searles – Offering A Hand To The Ghost

That’s actually one of the few Indra’s Net tracks that was done on my Mac.. With like Reaktor and Cubase SX.. maybe SX2? Maybe 3? I don’t remember.

So back to the story of vocal synthesis and these lyrics:

Well a few years ago there were a bunch of vocal synths that hit the market, and so immediately I was interested. I think people need lyrics to kinda.. “get it.” Or what I mean is.. instrumental music isn’t the most sorta commercially viable thing out there. So….

Well I can’t sing…. I don’t really have a vocalist I can easily call on any old time.. have yet to really invest in the proper microphones.. or learned the proper recording engineer stuff.. and not only that.. even if all that was a go.. It wouldn’t easily fit into my process. So, how to I get there from here?

As it turns out there’s a number of possible directions:

1.  Vocal Synthesis
2. “Vocal Tuning software:” There’s lots of software out there that can make an out of tune vocal in tune.. if you just get the phrasing right… 
3. Integration of found-ish elements.

Category 3 is where I would fit this track for Zar Matt A Thsutra’s Deep Space Adventures:  

Matt Searles – Hanser Show HerStory With Mark

Here we have a field recording type thing, of Mark talking on a train with his then girl friend.. It’s rather crazy experimental.. but I still sorta like it.

Any who, so I’m over tired.. and should prolly post here..

Oh wait.. can post without posting this here clip!

Great, just lost a post I had spent the day writing.. in a computer crash. Fun.. 

So what the hell, why not regress to talking about Apple’s new 3G iPhone that Steve Jobs announced in his Key Note at this here WWDC 08.  I figure I can do apple analysis just as good as the next guy anyway.. so why not?

So, what’s new and exciting in the land of the Apples iPhone platform? For those of us inclined to follow such things, including the surrounding rumor mill.. not much really… Thing’s are more or less going as expected, though perhaps not as exciting as expected, and perhaps that might have something to do with Apple’s less then amazing stock price around the event? Aww, but what the speculator’s missed.. which is the most important thing for Apple’s iPhone business would be the price cut of the new iPhones… price cut in half!

Why is this exciting to Apple’s business? Well the old iPhone price forced it to compete with other “smart phones.” Smart phones being a kind of ultra portable / mobile computing platform.. In this market.. smart phones do a lot that the iPhone doesn’t.. where the iPhone kicks the but on conventional smart phones is in the user interface / design / experience department.. which is literally revolutionizing the cell phone business today. The trouble is, I think it’s safe to say, if you’re serious about your smart phone, you probably won’t give it up for an iPhone because there’s a smart phone feature or two you live by.. Of course Apple will have a robust ecosystem of apps running on the iPhone shortly.. and when that happens the balance of power will shift, to one degree or another, in Apple’s favor.. but lets face it boys and girls, the smart phone is probably not the largest area of the cell phone market.

Cutting the iPhone’s price in half means it’s now competing against phones that are, to put it a certain sorta way, “much less smart,” and when you now consider what you get for $200 or $300… things have gone a little crazy. So, what do you get?

1.  A mobile gaming platform: I don’t know how good or bad the iPhone, is in practice, as a gaming platform.. Apple doesn’t exactly have a great reputation among gamers.. but the novelty of being able to play games that rely on a touch screen interface / the iPhone’s ability to sense how it’s being moved through space.. you at least have something interesting going on.. It would seem to be the wii of portable gaming. Getting this for $200.. if it turns out to indeed be a killer game platform.. well that would be reason enough to buy it, wouldn’t it?
2. You get an iPod.. Boys and girls, do you realize that the iPod Nano costs $200 for the 8 GB version, and the 8GB iPhone costs $200? The iPhone, if you just thought of it as an iPod.. is a MUCH better iPod.. I mean you get a big old wide screen on that there iPhone.. a very very nice one at that! Not to mention that the user interface of the iPhone is a good deal better!
3. You get a kind of mobile internet platform.. and in my view, this is probably where the iPhone outshines everything out there the most.. The mobile internet, as anyone who’s interested in the mobile web will tell you, is a world with amazing possibilities.. and realities that truly suck. Developing websites for the mobile web sucks because there’s a zillion web browsers on a zillion different phones.. and for you’re site to work well on any of them.. well you’re going to have to specially develop for each particular browser.. which is expensive!  Consequently.. nothing too amazing is happening on the mobile web today.. but on the iPhone we have safari which, as it happens, is a pretty good web standards compliant browser.. which means it can view all current well designed websites… and it really doesn’t take that much to optimize a site for the iPhone.. I mean we are mainly just talking css here, right?
4. Yes boys and girls, we finally got our GPS? GPS, if you don’t know, is a groovy little technology that.. via the magic of global positioning.. can tell you where you are at any given moment. Now why would you want something like that? Well the obvious application is if you’re lost, as I often am, it can give you directions.. another sorta obvious advantage is location based search “show me the closes gas station, I’m on E” But wait, the fun doesn’t stop here.. there’s mobile social networking.. “hey look, my friend is just down the street!  Hey friend, wanna do lunch?” Aww.. stalkers have never had it so good! But wait, there’s more.. there’s games like Geo Cashing.. which I wont go into here.. and.. my favorite.. it probably wouldn’t take too much work to develop a program where by you.. press a button every time you take a picture with your camera [in my case I’m not talking about the iPhone camera] and your iphone generates an XML file with those times, and a “Geo Tag” which contains your GPS coordinates with the time you pressed that button with where u was.. and you have another little program that looks at the time code in you’re comera’s picture’s meta tags, matches the two.. and automatically puts geo tags in your pictures.. how cool is that? Of course I won’t go into that here ether, and thought it might sound like a whole other language from the one you know.. you’re just going to have to trust me, its cool.
5. Organizational apps stuff: You got you’re calendar, you’re address book.. your etc.. synching with your computer.. I’m not real big on this sorta thing.. but if I ever get my act together and get organized.. I’m sure this’ll be uber groovy.
6. Did I mention it’s a kind of mobile computing platform? Time will tell what this looks like.. but its exciting.. 
7. Did I mention it’s 3G? Well the deal here is you have a MUCH faster internet experience.. but at the cost of battery life. My understanding is you might be able to turn the 3G on and off.. which will help.

Latter that day:

So, will Matt buy one?

The big thing I wanted was a video camera.. I real want the ability to stream live from anywhere.. and for the moment, to do that, you need one of them “really smart smart phones.” [which costs around 4 or 5 hundred dollars] An this is the big thing causing me to want to kind of hold off on an iPhone.. 

On the other hand.. though I’d probably want the $300 16GB model.. the part about what you get for $200.. has me getting ready to make the jump.

Top reasons why I’ll probably get one: 

1. I would have had a lot easier of a time getting to last nights tweet up.. where I spent a lot of time walking around because I couldn’t remember the name of the place the meet up was at.. and went to the wrong places.. if I had an iPhone.. I could have found it pretty quick… 
2. I go to lots of meet ups as a part of the local social media scene.. these often involve going to places I’ve never been before, and thus often involve getting lost.
3. Being able to have email on the go is huge. I’m just not a phone person.. the idea that I can still be connected to the world via email, while on the go..  solves a lot of issues.
4. Being connected….  being able to tweet on the go.. hell, being able to blog on the go.. being connected to my social networks on the go.. that has huge value to me.
5. Just the idea of having a cell phone, that I actually use, actually own.. has great value to me.

Is There anything else to be considered? 

Surely different people will have different things to consider differently.. but I think the only real thing I’ve left out in all this is the topic of calling plans. I don’t know what the the story is here.. I read, on friendfeed, a friends twitter..  which talked about the 3G data plan as being $10 a month more then it was for the previous iPhone.. perhaps this has something to do with how cheap the new iPhone is? Well, that friendfeed twitter seemed a little suspect for reasons I won’t go into here.. but yeah, I think it’s reasonable that we might see calling plans, including unlimited data.. starting somewhere around.. I want to say $60 or $70 a month? It doesn’t strike me as too unreasonable a price.. but it’s surely something you need to figure into all of this.

Yeah.. so I don’t know, what do yo think of this iPhone business? Did I mention that I don’t really know anything about smart phones, or any of this stuff I’m talking about? [editors note, always beware the unreliable narrator!]

Ok, so maybe this is old news.. but it’s sorta new: However many months ago.. I started the process of upgrading the studio. The trouble is.. I perhaps believe too much in spending lots of money on such things.. I’m willing to go pretty close to starvation, if I can just get that next piece of gear. Knowing that I have this kind of temperament.. I try to compensate by.. if nothing else.. impersonating someone who’s a little on the conservative side.. err.. let me try and explain this a little bit:

I started off by putting together a studio budget saying “I must work inside of these limitations.” At this point I began to look at various tools and try to make the best sorta decisions for working inside that budget.. but wouldn’t you know.. there’s that little matter of mice and men.. where I ended up spending money on things that were not in that budget.. Bad Matt!!! 

Examples:

1. I spent $500 for an upgrade from Macromedia Studio 8 to Adobe CS3 Web Premium. But can you really blame me? $500 for the higher end Photoshop, plus illustrator, acrobat.. oh and the must have upgrade to Flash… plus an upgrade to Dreamweaver and Fireworks? Not to mention that I had an actual Flash Job.. and needed something that would actually run on this computer! 
2. Something like $1500 for Cinema 4D. You know I don’t actually remember what my 3D budget was looking like.. I think I found Lightwave for some ridiculously low price.. and was debating Modo… but.. the Cinema 4D bundle I got was about half off the going rate.. so its sorta like.. “here are some tools you have no business being able to afford,” and I just couldn’t pass that up!
3. Getting ripped off on the Camera.. my memory isn’t serving me well here, but.. there’s one of two possibilities: #1 I simply spent more then I had budgeted, thanks to being ripped off.. #2 I spent all I had budgeted.. when I had planned to spend less, because I wanted to wait to see what I’d need lens wise.. so now I might very well need to invest in more stuff.. which will then bring me over budget.

There are other odds and ends.. I suppose my budget was more about a meditation and a discipline then it was about something I should tyrannically stick to.. but here are the things I’m thinking I  should like to spend more money then originally budgeted.

1. Video / Chroma Key stuff…  this is still somewhat up in the air for me.. I’ve done research into cameras and what I need.. and talked to some people.. and between lights and the actual camera.. it maybe that I should spend a bit more then I’ve planned.
2. Effects for the sound studio.. I don’t know what I budgeted… beyond what I’ve already spent.. perhaps I’ve already spent it all? But there’s a real feeling that what I need is.. well a range of effects really.. mostly for mixing.. I’ve talked about this endlessly in past entries.. so I shant go into it too much here.. accept to go so far as to say there’s been some interesting new stuff announced that… in some cases makes what I want to do more affordable.. and in other cases.. well I could end up seduced into spending more.
3. Microphones: I have mixed feelings on the microphone front.. I frankly don’t do a lot of recording, and don’t really know a lot about recording engineering.. so I certainly can’t claim to be smart about what to buy for what…  A “good microphone” can be up in the $1000 range.. and I’m just not sure if I’d do enough of that sorta thing to make it worth spending that kind of money… but.. to make matters just a little more complicated… there are maybe different types of microphones I might want to invest in for video, and the podcasting stuff.. and field recording.. versus studio stuff.
4. Sound proofing and Monitors: My guesstimate is I’m looking at about $1000 for sound treatment.. this is to turn your studio space into a good space for critical listening while mixing.. in addition to that cost.. there’s the cost of getting good quality audio monitors.. which again can take you upwards of $1000.. 

Besides all that madness.. there is the sense that I might want to invest in a laptop in the not too distant future.. frankly my preference would be to wait another year or two… there is the little issue that much of my software I might want to upgrade over time.. and blah blah blah.. lots of stuff.

iPhone 

One last thing, on this front, that seems worth mentioning is.. I’m thinking about getting an iPhone: I’ve wanted an iPhone since Steve Jobs announced the iPhone.. But.. it seemed a little too on the expensive side.. between the cost of the iPhone and the cost of the data plans. But now my perspective has shifted: For one thing, I’ve inherited my mom’s cell phone and calling plan. I don’t actually use the thing all that much.. I think of it as more her phone then mine, but seeing as I’m spending about $30 a month for that.. plus whatever extras might impact me, should I do any text messaging or talk on it too much.. It seems like the iPhone’s data plan is just not that much more money..  

Anyway, there’s a number of reasons why I think the iPhone would make a lot of sense to me: #1 I never answer the phone as it is.. and it would be great if people had a way to get in touch with me. For instance I have a cousin whom I may collaborating with on some online marketing with.. wouldn’t it be nice if I had a good way for him to get in touch with me? Another thing is I’m a big social media person. Being a social media person I’m forever going to meet ups.. and often getting lost on my way there.. wouldn’t it be nice to have google maps on the go? And besides that, I must say I’m jealous of folks who are able to twitter on the go… and often times, at social media conferences and what not.. twitter can be an important way to know what’s going on. 

There are rummers that a new iPhone is just around the corner… and that it might have faster internet and a video camera. If this is all true, I don’t think I’ll be able to resist it! I’m jealous of folks like Steve Garfield who are able to stream live.. doing there Qik thing! Qik may rely on Flash, which the iPhone still doesn’t do.. but one imagines that some sort of a live streaming platform could arrive shortly, should the iPhone get a video camera.. just do to the power of the iPhone platform…

Kore 2 

So all of this is just a preamble to the new news… which is sorta old news.. I just got an email from Native Instruments telling me that the Kore 2 update has been sent to me, and ought to arrive in about 8 days. 

Ok.. so what’s this Kore business all about? Well if you follow this link and scroll down to the bottom of the page you’ll have a sense of it.. or of my blogging on the subject anyway.

 [editor’s note, I thought this demonstration from NAMM might help]

Kore is really a combination of things. You have a hardware controller, which in my case includes an audio interface.. and this controller is married to Komplete, basically..  If you’ve ever used Reason.. Kore is a bit like the “combiner instrument” in Reason. You can load up any number off effects and instruments.. and have patches that are combinations of patches and instruments.. 

Let me see if I can explain this concept a little bit: In a fairly recent blog entry entries on Kontakt, I explained the concept of “sample maps.” Basically, a sample map tells a sampler what sample to play.. depending on what note you’re playing, and how hard you’re playing it… Well, Kore’s combiner like qualities make it a bit like being able to program a sample map for all your instruments and effects.. You can have one “instrument” that contains multiple other instruments and effects.. You can say “as you play up the keyboard.. fade in this instrument.. as you hit the keys harder.. fade in this instrument..” and you can have this with all these layers of sub instruments, lets call them..  

So Kore does a lot of different things… of which I’m only explaining a tiny fraction here. At the moment I’m on Kore 1, and shortly I’ll be in Kore 2.. there’s a lot of differences between these two versions.. but with regard to the preamble to this subject, what’s most important is we have 32 effects, of which 12 are new, and many more updated.  

Back where I was talking about investing in effects… I was thinking about spending around $1000 on effects.. maybe a good deal more then that…. 

Ok, let me interrupt this flow, and regress to an earlier thread.. Because I’m going over budget.. I’ve basically stopped spending money.. that is there’s lots of stuff in my budget I haven’t spent any money on yet.. thus I’m actually not over budget.. (I know, I’m a tricky bastard that way).  

Part of the situation is like.. you have allllll this software / hardware / new tools / whatever.. The sheer amount of stuff I’m trying to learn is… well unrealistic…. depending on how long I want to give myself to learn this stuff.. and at what level I want to be at when.. Plus I’m a lazy bastard that will sometimes spend too much time twittering, social networking, playing endless games of command and conquer..  and what have you.. so there’s something of a feeling like “perhaps we should hold off spending more money till we are more in command of what we’ve already got.”

2 Days latter:

To give a sense of the insanity: I’m trying to learn Komplete 5, which is to say everything that’s new in Komplete since Komplete 3, not to mention the stuff that my computers weren’t ever powerful enough to deal with prior to getting the Mac Pro.. which is not at all insignificant. Add to this Digital Performer, Final Cut Studio, Cinema 4D, What ever is new / upgrades / I never got around to learn with respect to / Adobe CS3… Oh did I forget what is to be learned about Ableton Live?

There’s more on my plate then all that.. but the point is that just this much, to really master, could probably take a few years!  The problem with technology is.. once a new piece of gear is released it’s effective value starts to diminish.. as it drifts towards obsoleteness. To the extent you don’t use that gear.. you’re loosing money / getting less value from it.

The effect is.. the broader the range of stuff you’re trying to learn, the more dispersed your time and energy is… So you really want to limit the range as much as possible.. at least when considered from this angle.

The other angle to consider is you’re own creative impulse and where you feel your self drawn… In the last week or two I’ve been doing a lot of music production / composition stuff with my Toshiro Mifune VS John Wayne project, and as a result I’m feeling the need to think about my sound tools more then I might other wise.

As a part of that, I know there’s a number of directions I want to travel in.. These directions have to do with what sorts of skills I want to develop as well as where I want to take my work. There’s a certain amount I can do given where my studio is currently at.. but there is also the question of how acceptable the required compromises might be.

An example idea, which I may go into in a future blog entry… is I want to start playing with stereo buss compression… or with ideas that are slightly abstracted from that. An issue with respect to stereo buss compression is “what kinda compressors you got?” Digital Performer has a couple of compressors.. but I don’t actually know how applicable they are to doing the stereo buss compression. One of the effects packages I’m looking at is.. perhaps the best compressor library on the planet.. going today.. Well the best you could do if you’re not spending crazy money.. has.. well all sorts of compressors to choose from.. many of which are good for different sorts of stereo buss compression…

Another package I’m looking at has “a good compressor,” along with a number of other effects that would help my studio get to be a little more well rounded..

To draw all this to a conclusion.. Kore 2 is coming.. and it will greatly extent my effects library, making things a good deal more well rounded… Of course it brings lots of other advantages… and it really isn’t all that well geared to a lot of the sorts of effects / applications I’m looking at.. but.. it is something.. And.. to the extent that one of my current needs is simply to have a more well rounded studio situation.. it is perhaps possible that I could drop some items from the list of things I’m looking at.. and just use Kore 2, and wait for the next version of DP.. and maybe throw in the compressor library for good measure