[editor’s note: Matt wrote most of this last night] 

Ok, so the album isn’t done.. but it’s nearly done.. or a rough draft of it will be done by tomorrow.. [tonight] with the need for more work to be done in the coming month. It’s difficult to be too ruthless in one’s self criticism.. when one spent more then a week in bed sick.. Particularly when you consider that to do a solo album in a month is.. no easy matter to begin with!

As it stands.. I’m not real happy with my work… It’s just not quite good enough for me.. Once I finish the rough edges of it.. and maybe throw in some other tracks.. I might like it more.. or be more happy with it..

Not Good Enough?

Well.. I have big ambitions.. what I really want is work to represent myself as a sound artist… work that I could show you and you’d be like “wow,” assuming you were the sorta person who’d go for the sorta thing I do…

What this means.. in practice.. is you really want something that’ll grab someone and make you go “wow.” I don’t think any of this work really does that. That’s not to say the work isn’t strong, or doesn’t have strengths.. but for me, as I look at it now.. the weaknesses keep it on earth…  

The Problem this presents me with.

Well, there is the question of just what my goal might be here.. If I had “wow work” then the work of promoting it.. well I imagine that “wow work” has a potential for catching fire… and developing it’s own momentum.. if you can just get it that spark going strongly enough…  without that.. I think you probably have to fight a good deal harder.. to get a good deal less far.

So…  I feel the need to get some really good work… before I go to crazy trying to promote any it… There’s some chance that I might have that chance in short order.. as I’ll likely find myself working on scoring a documentary soon… which will likely mean yet another album’s worth of new work..

Beyond this.. there have been a few tracks I’ve made over the course of the last year or so.. that ought to be added to the album.. and maybe with all that.. It’ll be that much better…  so we’ll see.

Promising signs

What is promising, at least to me.. is the feeling that.. along the way I found new possibilities for where my work might go…  directions I’m excited to explore. We’ll see how far I get with that.

Stan’s Plan

So… could I maybe formulate a plan at this point? Anything I give here will just be some.. well what might make sense from the point of view of the nights temperament… but lets take a swing at it anyway, shall we?

One way or another I want to steadily continue creating music.. I don’t think I can keep it as front and center as it has been this last month.. But I’d love it if I could keep enough of a focus on it so that.. well I got somewhere with some new music.. that I was happy with.. in not too much time.

I want to do a promotional campaign.. one where I try and get some bloggers / podcasters to talk about what I’m doing.. get a little press here and there, get some radio play somewhere…. at least try and get the ball rolling.

There is the video blog / internet tv show-ish thing to try and get off the ground.

I must, of course, redesign this site…

I really want to make an effort to get on top of some 3D graphics stuff.

Take the rough draft and make it finished. 

Ok.. so that’s a bit of it.. not including collaborations..   

Next Morning:

I just wrote out about an hours wroth of stuff.. only to lose it.. I’m feeling terribly frustrated.. so I guess I’ll just post it as is….  

In the last entry I posted, at least as of me sitting here writing this, I started to talk about this kind of Jazz esk production of mine.. As it stands I think this might be the weakest of the tracks I’m doing for this years NaSoAlMo challenge.. but still, seeing as I’m in the middle of working on it, it seems worth talking about some. 

As stated earlier.. It features an old B4 type organ, an up right bass, violin, trumpet, and drums.. so just from the perspective of sounds.. timbers.. it’s very jazz-e sounding. The real trouble for me.. is that I’m not much used to this kind of production.. the kind of production where you do a lot of MIDI programing in order to create what might sound like an authentic jazz band.

The trouble is not so much in the struggle for making something sound authentic.. and that’s not to say it sounds all that authentic.. the struggle is in finding a way to do something great with these sounds, working in this manner.. I would describe most of the music for this track as a kind of searching… a searching for something that might sound great..

[editor’s note: Matt would like to apologize for his piss pour writing of this post.. he’s been very sick.. crazy sleep patterns, often out of it.. and I’m sure if he worked harder at it, he could come up with a hell of a lot of other excuses] 

How electronically creating “authentic jazz” differs from electronic music more generally (or at least my electronic music more generally) 

When you work with electronic music the way I do, you’re working with something that’s.. very concrete, right there in front of you… a set of sounds. You can do certain things with those sounds.. to combine them in certain ways.. but much of that vocabulary is not at my disposal here.. as that would not result in an authentic sorta Jazz thing…

So it’s a little liking tying one hand behind your back.. and you think “well, time to learn to use these other muscles more, so….”

Relationships to Musical Compositional Theory 

This track’s harmony and melody are more or less par for the course for me.. at least for starters. My normal dealings with harmony and melody are…. abstract.. in someway disembodied from traditional approaches… we are off in the land of the conceptual… and though I suppose what I’m creating is a kind of far out Jazz.. there is still need to kind of sit down and bring this stuff back to earth.. which means.. thinking about these things in more conventional ways.

I can right traditional melody… I can even right traditional melody that is “kinda” good… the basic ideas of music theory exist in me.. not as something I actually think about but just something I know.. as you might know about gravity as you endeavor to go for a walk… I mean you don’t actually have to think about this stuff..  but because so much of my music is… somehow about trying to transcend anything like a conventional thinking… So I don’t normally have to deal with this stuff.

An attitude I sometimes take is “well hell, lets just throw some notes around without bothering to think to much about there implications.” There’s a lot circle of 5th stuff going on.. there’s a lot of.. areas where we are moving through a… framework that isn’t really that out there..  but it’s as if that framework is really just to facilitate utter madness… until such time as the madness overtakes the structure.. and we totally leave the world of the known…

It’s as if the structure was a preconception.. and when reality was confronted it was abandoned for the voice of the muse…  there we go.

So.. I can surely apply, and indeed  am.. those ideas about structure…  but.. without my usual vocabulary… many things become naked.. and don’t work so well.

Orchestration

Orchestration is probably a good example.. Conventionally people learn music buy understanding it in terms of harmony, melody, and orchestration… as these 3 differentiated categories.  The practice of music making is a little bit different.. because they’re not truly so differentiated.. this differentiation is, after all, a projection of the mind..

None the less.. in a traditional compositional process, orchestration is often the final element.. which basically comes down to what instruments should play what.

Now the way I work is usually to use electronic instruments.. and in this context.. we can synthesize the very timbers..  In a certain way.. it’s as if we are approaching issues of orchestration on a kind of pscyho-acoustic kind of level. And indeed.. the process of creating a mix, at least for the sort of work I generally do.. is really about orchestration.

To fully appreciate what I’m trying to talk about might require a history lesson of sorts.. or about the relationship of the concert hall to the orchestra.. how this shapes the sound… and maybe a history of recording..

Well whatever, we won’t get to that here cause I don’t really know it well enough to tell it..

How I normally approach orchestration 

Instrument organizations 

Well let me give an example of how mixing is normally a part of orchestration in my work.. and kinda explain how this works.

I have in my mind certain categories of sounds..

• What is generally referred to as pads.  The term Pad actually comes from mixing.. it’s something you put in your mix to “glue” elements together.. Which is typically something that’s important to stereo mixing.. as a pose to mono.. however, in my work these tend to be more like “ambient pads.” Here we will have long sustained notes.. that possibly evolve over time.. that kind of hang in the air.. 
• Leads: You’d use a lead instrument as a kind of solo instrument.. in my way of thinking these are sounds with short attack times.. that generally play rather quickly.. fast moving passages.
• Pitched percussion: For me, pitched percussion fall into two categories.. the first is one that has both a short attack, and a short release… These are good when you’re music is getting rather aggressive. The second category is pitched percussion that has a longer release.. or perhaps it’s being fed into a delay.. so that it continues to linger in the air.. these basically get treated in a similar way as ambient pads.. accept that they’ll provide more of an accent.. as they have the short attack time
• None pitched percussion: This really functions in a similar way as the pitched percussion, accept that we aren’t really thinking about melody or harmony.. its more like, low, mid, and high… and with some thought to the attack and release times.. and how that will effect the over all mix.

I suppose, that’s more less the story… Or that’s the main categories I’m thinking in.. though in practice these broad ideas become relative to what’s going on.. in terms of what is defined by what.. another words.. something that might normally fit in one category.. now goes into another category as the ecology of the context shifts, if that quite makes sense.

Next comes the issue of mix stuff. 

Thinking about mix basically has just few things to worry about.. which is frequency space and our virtual sound stage.

Frequency Space

All sound is made of fluctuations of amplitude… that sorta follows a pattern.. relative to frequency space.. which is to say “what frequencies are fluctuating.” When you have two instruments where there frequencies overlap.. whichever instrument is the louder.. or whichever frequency is the louder.. is what will be heard. Thus we have the issue of “frequency masking” where by the less loud stuff.. isn’t heard, or is “masked.”

Stuff is always over lapping..  which isn’t necessarily a problem… but sometimes is. When it is a problem.. there are generally 2 solutions.

1. Is to place them at opposite sides of your stereo field.. so if one is coming mainly from the left speaker, and the other from the right.. you ought to be able to hear the details of both.
2. We have EQ… we can isolate different instruments into there own frequency space by.. basically turning up the part of that instrument’s frequency we want to come through.. and turning down those frequencies of the competing sounds.. we don’t want to conflict with… In practice we do this with all our instruments till they all work….

I should say a few other words about EQ…

1. It is almost always better to turn down a frequency then turn up a frequency 
2. There are certain guidelines for how to EQ different instruments.. or how modifying certain frequencies of them.. well effect there sound.. which is one of the things you think about while trying to isolate them into there own frequency space.

Ok.. so that’s the basics.. a conversation on compression would normally fit in right about here.. but we’ll skip on over to the subject of our virtual sound stage.

Virtual Sound Stage 

Basically we are talking about how how close or far a sound seems to be from us, and where it is in relationship… well left to right..

A sense of distance can be achieved via volume level, as well as what proportion of that sound is going into a reverb. Further.. “darker reverbs,” which is to say reverbs with less prominent high frequencies.. will help make the sounds seem further away… as well as reverbs with a longer “pre delay” which is the length of time between the sound hitting the reverb, and us hearing the reverb sound back.

Generally, with reverbs also comes the topic of delay… which can have a similar effect… In any event.. mixing you’re instruments into multiple reverbs, and indeed delays.. perhaps with some other effects like.. well lets say EQ and Compression… is how how we create a sense of depth in our mixes.

How the mix relates to orchestration. 

Reverbs and delays have the power to effect.. to blur.. both frequency space and our attack, decay, and release times… of any of our instruments.. thus.. if you put a lot of reverb and delay on a snare.. it sorta becomes “ambient pad esk.” To the extent to which our categories are “ecologically contextually dependent,” how sounds are mixed can change what sorta category they fit into.

The result is.. my production style, with its “kinetic mixing” aka.. heavy levels of automation of these mix elements.. gives me a lot of flexibility in how I combine my sounds… 

A sorta central idea in my work is the idea of “holistic thinking” or that.. the categories we use to divide up reality, ought to be driven by the questions / challenges we are dealing with at any particular point in time. Also.. we don’t have to deal with them in any particular linear order.. So everything from melody, to harmony, to orchestration, to performance, to recording, to mixing.. 

I’m to tired, as of this writing, to fully go into the virtues of this sort of conceptual frame work.. what I think is sorta amazing about it.. why I work in this manner.. So I’ll just leave it at that.

Back On Earth; how this relates to our Jazz esk production.

Well.. this whole idea of working holistically.. is sorta ripped apart for us. The mix is the first thing that’s done.. the first thing is “and this is where these instruments are in space.” As we compose the music.. we deal with the implications..

Latter:

Ok, this is long and not terribly well written.. I apologize for the latter.. I’m sick and slightly out of it.. but thought I should post something anyway.   

So I want to talk about my progress on this here project to try and make an album in a month… as a part of the NaSoAlMo thing..

In terms of my vision for my work, in terms of where I want to take my work.. The work I’m producing is not on the level I want.. You simply can’t give stuff the love and attention needed to bring this vision to full fruition.. not in a month.. not a whole albums worth of stuff.. 

All that said.. Some of the new work is reaching, at least in certain senses, levels that I don’t believe my work has reached before.. Getting some distance from some of this stuff provides me with a new insight.. on the quality of some of this stuff..  It’s really quite good I think.

I’m at a place where I’m generating about a minutes worth of audio a day.. The goal, the rules of the challenge.. is that you need to make a bit more then 29 minutes worth of stuff.. On my current trajectory I don’t think I’ll make it.. So I’m going to have to try some somewhat radical experiments to get there..  

It certainly hasn’t been helping that I’ve been really sick..  

Waking up sometime the next night: 

What seems to be happening is.. you have this question of “how long does it take to do X.” X generally represents a fairly simple idea.. Lets say we’re part way through making this musical piece and we say “I’d like to have some kind of a shimmering pad come in here like this.”

“Like this” might mean… well.. we’re going to automate pan, 4 reverb sends, volume.. we’ve got to give it some notes to play… there could be some pitch bending going on.. modulation… synth patch parameter tweaking… 

In practice..  The music I’m making does have a very high detail level.. and it is amazingly complex.. There’s lots of places where I was struggling up against one or another thing.. sections I thought were quite problematic at the time.. but then, once I have some distance from it.. wow, it’s actually quite good. 

But.. the detail level I’d like to get to.. for certain things, isn’t totally there.

Let me see if I can begin to explain.. I know this is probably rambling a little bit.. When you have one of those “basic ideas” for how something is to work.. nested in it are.. the considerations.. almost like “best practices” for achieving a given result. We are always trying to push on it.. to make the results better.. but we find that in the interest of time.. we are instead asking “what is good enough?”

So, in your mind.. you have this notion of “a simple idea” and then you have “what needs to be done to achieve this simple idea.” What happens as we get more and more into a project where time is the most important thing.. and now how much work it’s going to take to do a thing.. is going to effect both the choices you make, and how you implement those choices.

In the end, of course, the music is nothing but an end product of a lot of choices.

The tension is.. you want to make it as good as is possible.. what seems to be happening is.. we become less detail orientated..  and we look for “can we repeat that riff over here.” 

Trying to get concrete

Issues of a hacked together a mix 

Right now I’m working on a project that is sorta Jazz esk.. It features a Jazz organ, upright base, violin, drum kit, and trumpet. The organ is via Native Instruments B4, and everything else comes from the Kontakt sample library.

The first issue we run into is.. Well.. this is the one project in our over all project where instruments aren’t moving around.. things stay static.. because they’re real world instruments. The time it takes to set Kontakt up so that all of it’s instruments come out into DP on different channels.. and we automate stuff via those channels.. is more then I feel willing to deal with… thus we have some potentially serious issues.

Kontakt has a built in mixing environment.. so you can mix whatever is made via Kontakt.. into a stereo out and leave it at that.. but we do end up with a couple serious issues.

#1 We’d really like each instrument to be in it’s own place in space.. and we’d like all our instruments to be in roughly the same space.. We’d like to have it sound coherent.. This is easy enough inside of Kontakt.. Kontakt even has convolution reverb.. so it sounds like we’re really in a a convert hall, but what of our organ? We can’t put the organ in the same space as the other instruments!

What I end up doing is creating an aux channel in Digital Performer, with a convolution reverb in it.. and put a little of the Kontakt out into it, and put a bit of the organ into it.. and.. the results are “good enough for government work in the Bush administration.” 

#2 In Digital Performer, though this is a feature I almost never use, when you send an channels audio to an aux send.. you can also set it’s pan position in that send. For most of how I work this is both unnecessary and would create a tun of extra work… But.. if you’re creating a static mix..  and you have an instrument on the left side of that mix.. having its effect go to the opposite side.. helps with symmetry, helps with making the mix sound coherent.. helps in a lot of ways.

Well ether I don’t know how to do this yet, or Kontakt doesn’t have this feature..

So I really have a kind of difficult mix situation..

Sample Instrument Performance Programming 

To further complicate matters.. we’re talking about some fairly sophisticated sample based instruments.. some of which are from the esteemed Vienna Symphonic Orchestra Library..  These are really amazingly expressive sample instruments.. where via the magic of MIDI programming.. you can make sound quite real. But it does mean that you have to spend a lot of time programming key velocities, sample switching, modulation and pitch wheel bends, and sometimes midi volume moves… so that we can control the violin’s bowing, or the trumpets blowing.. in somewhat fine detail…

Conclusions 

So suddenly we end up in a situation where we need to try and be subtle! Where the time it takes to program things is.. a good deal.. even though, by making the mix static, we’ve removed the need to worry about mix automation programming.

As I write this, I question myself as to if I’ll keep working on this the way I’ve described here so far, or if I’ll finally go “yeah, we need to bring all the Kontakt Instruments out onto individual stereo channels so we can mix it properly…  which is probably more crucial for a static mix!

In any event.. this is some of where I’m at.

But anyway.. how it’s feeling:

What is kind of amazing is.. I do have all this new work now.. it is starting to look likely that I’ll have a whole album by the end of this process.. And I do think the album is of a very high quality..  And having that is a kind of amazing feeling. 

Now if I can just finish the damn thing! 

I gots me a little life left in me, till next I dip back into unconsciousness, and I thought I’d a use this time to.. spit out the cantankerous who-b-jew-b knows what-b the matter with whatever I’m not conceiving of, previous to this incantation… 

I’m not one of those fowl fools who puts the non in the sensical: my senses are keen, to that which tongues still do not touch… It was that, standing on the other side you understand, who hired me to do a little PR, so here I R, speaking to you like this.

ERr.. I don’t know.. too much NyQuil perhaps? 

Given the gist of the jizz, that jazz B gentrified from.. in the interest of intercessions… by those who fear mass numinous breakouts.. to speak for that.. I can only say that.. It’s a question of who do you think you are, and pudding style foundations of civilizations that don’t quite qualify as the rock.. but rationalizations have been collectified to such an extent that the emperors clothing be the latest sensation to sweep the nation.. and nations for that matter.. can you feel the draft? And do you really believe in your powers of putting to rock transfigurations?

A screw it, I’ll just post this as this…

As I write this I’m.. super sick, in bed.. nice to have the laptop here with me, wish the internet connection was better… feeling slightly out of my mind.. as a result of it…

Any who… I’m thinking about social media engagement.. It’s sorta like a stupid obvious kind of thing…  but.. that if I were to get super serious about it.. this could be a key piece in getting me where I need to go.

What is this “social media” you speak of? 

I assume that most of my readers aren’t social media people.. so it might be worth explaining a little bit about this…

Basically.. social media, as we know it today.. is mostly about online communications.. perhaps focused around twitter, blogging, podcasting.. this sorta thing.. throw in your face books and your myspaces.. youtube’s, and linked in and.. seesmic and.. many other things.  

All of these things are like communications channels.. ok, so why  is communications important?

Err.. it occurs to me that I’ll never finish this post if I keep on  this trajectory…  But communications, as any good marriage counselor will tell you, is an important element in managing relationships..  put it that way. Business, as it turns out, is all about relationships.. relationship with you peers, relationships with your customers, employers, clients, coworkers.. etc.

So engagement in social media is all about these relationships.. and so obviously enough.. it’s powerful along multiple trajectories..

Basically.. for me.. at this moment.. the idea that I should engage more.. means commenting on people’s blogs, and spending time on twitter. It’s about engaging in the conversations people are having.. and hopefully adding to those conversations.

Tales of a miscellaneous niche 

Now.. off in the land of social media.. and this might not be a totally fair statement.. I think people tend to get focused on there niche’s. You start a blog on subject X, and you engage with other bloggers who are into subject X. I mean this is the way its done.. But what I think is key for who I am, and where I come from.. is to engage along multiple vectors.

I am a “follow you’re passions fundamentalist.” I believe.. we all, to one extent or another, have various interests.. I believe in pursuing all these interests..  That the path to you’re true potential lys in the development of a “whole self,” that the goal ought to be to develop all these interests to a relatively mature and sophisticated form.. in proportion to your level of interest.

Also, I believe that innovation is a synthesis of formally disparate fields of knowledge.. another words..  the more your knowledge and skills are diversified.. the more capable you are of innovation…

This is not entirely an “anti specialization” idea.. The idea is that what is you’re area of specialization is something that you define by you’re passions..  That it is a synthesis of what would traditionally be considered disparate fields.. 

For me.. much of the blog o sphere.. and the world of podcasts.. its a way to explore my interests.. learn from people who are really smart in the various areas I’m interested in…  So I think it makes sense for me to engage along the lines of those interests…  

Matt’s Interests 

Just for the record, what is Matt Interested in?

1. Philosophy
2. Psychology
3. Politics
4. Diplomacy
5. Business Management
6. Marketing
7. Public Relations
8. Technology
9. Music Composition
10. Music Performance
11. Music Production
12. Sound Synthesis
13. Music
14. Film
15. Film making
16. Animation
17. 3D graphics
18. Special Effects
19. Directing
20. Performance Art
21. Painting
22. Graphic Design
23. Web Design
24. Web Strategy
25. Social Media Strategy
26. Photography
27. History
28. The Arts
29. Human Sexuality
30. Social Sciences
31. Poetry
32. Religion
33. Theology
34. Cultural Studies
35. Mythology
36. The Military
37. Computer Graphics
38. Human Potentiality
39. Entrepreneurship 

Well you get the idea, right? I mean the list goes on from there.. 

Miscellaneous Niche Strategery

So, roughly speaking, I describe my self as a “Media Artist:” I work with different medias.. different mediums.. from sound to video to animation to painting to whatever, right?  At the moment I seem most focused on the sound part of that.. lets go make an album… etc. But clearly I see myself in broa —

A couple days latter:

Still feeling super sick, feeling like i should just post, cause I don’t have the energy to finish up this train of thought.. lol, and I don’t know where that last sentence was going! 

I think this is kind of an ongoing theme for this blog anyway.. so..  yeah.. ok, posting..

So I got this kind of crazy comment on a post..  from John…  which I think I could safely characterize as “insensitive” in its criticism…. which I don’t totally understand, accept that sometimes when one interacts with folks online one can forget one is interacting with real humans. In any event.. I don’t think John’s criticism was exactly constructive.. none the less I find myself searching for grains of truth in it.. which is an instinct I find a little dubious….  but it is what it is.

So I thought I’d sorta address his comment in a blog post.. well sorta.

If you have discerning eyes, and you look at this blog, you’d probably come away with an impression that “this cat has no desire to be a social media rock star.” Or to put it another way.. ( picture spoken in a somewhat Frank Zappa esk tone ) “This blog has got no kinda game at all.” 

I’m not really sure why that is, to tell you the honest truth.  I feel as if it’s just sorta indicative of the state my life is in.. which is.. difficult. Somehow, one way or another, I need to ether work this out or just accept it. Maybe.. instead of all my obsessions and whatever.. I should just focus on healing.

The difficult feeling of an artist.

When you go to art school.. coming in the door you realize you’re kind of screwed.. well unless you’re a designer or something. The plight of the fine artist.. is a difficult one.. and often we toil our lives away for little to no material reward.. In fact, just getting your life in such a situation that you can seriously focus on your work.. That’s a pretty substantial accomplishment on its own.

I think its a kind of addiction actually.. an addiction to the state of ecstasy that art making can bring you to… That feeling that you and the Gods are one. For me, I suppose, I really make art more for God then living souls… Or more for that internal spiritual nourishment. I mean it’s just the one place in my life where I feel truly alive. So if there’s anyway that I can make my way through this life, via this art, then I will call my life a success. That’s really all I’m looking for, you know?

I imagine to be a whole human, however, one needs a bit more. How about starting a family? The only way I could ever see that working out is if I found one hell of a women.. cause God knows I can barely take care of my Dad!

I don’t really feel like I have a choice in what I is.  

So the deal is.. if you make art the way I do.. where you’re serious about exploring your own unique creative vision, regardless of what’s up with the market place.. well..  I don’t know.. What can you realistically expect?

I guess I’ll leave this at this — I’m kinda tired.

Haven’t been blogging so much lately..  bad Matt!  But how about a short little post? ( He says realizing short never happens for him )

So there’s basically 2 things worth talking about today.. or thoughts, or things I seem to be up to. #1 Is the music production stuff and #2 Is thinking about promotional efforts.

The Music Production Adventures

Though I didn’t post anything.. I have been writing about a new project I’ve started… inside of Ableton Live.. This project reached new hightes today.  So lets explore a little:

Of all the DAWs in my sonic arsenal, Ableton Live is the one I’m weakest with..  I have certain ways of working.. that I’ve been evolving for the past 15 or so years..  and I’m not sure how Live could fit into that way of working. Usually I think it has the potential to bring my work in new directions.. and so that’s some of what I find myself exploring…

The first stage in the current adventure has been creating loops.. I have a rather large library of audio.. music I’ve made, stuff I’ve recorded…  The process is one of loading up the audio files, and selecting loop points. Live will do the beat matching for you.. so whatever the tempo of the original work… Live will match it to the tempo..  

But the real fun comes from shaping looping envelops that control the parameters of whatever effect you might want to place on your loop.. Via various processing you “design loops” that are often unrecognizable.. from there original. This is, at least for me, a fun and unpredictable creative process… which yields results I wouldn’t other wise be able to achieve. 

Today, however, brought all this stuff to a crazy new level. As I began digging around my hard drives in search of audio files.. I started to find some interesting things….

A shape forms

Some of what I found were recordings made..  Well the podcast episode I recorded hours after my mom had passed… Left phone messages from my therapist and collection agencies.. There’s a collection of sounds that.. as I started putting together an arrangement of this stuff..

Well it was probably some of the most emotional sound art I’ve ever heard in my life.. It was powerful as hell..  It was also emotional draining, to the point that I felt on the verge of an emotional breakdown from going there.. but I think it was also therapeutic.. and I have this feeling that I really do need to go there.

So that’s basically that on the music production side of things..

Online Music Marketing

While running a few errins, I was seduced by the evil Barns and Nobel.. in to buying “Web Marketing for the Music Business” by a Mr. Tom Hutchison.. brought to us by Focal Press… 

Well I think this is about the best book on the subject I’ve come across. As a “social media peep” I’m hyper up on how marketing and communications are changing in this new media space.. Even if I’m not executing on it, I am an expert on social media strategy…  or something of one.. ( seeing as most of the people I look up to as mentors / experts in this area claim not to be experts these days )… In any event… this puts me in a unique place to evaluate such a book.. never mind all the music marketing type books I’ve read in the past.. and I’m here to tell you that this book is totally top notch.. from what I’ve been able to gather thus far.

So reading a book like this brings me to rethinking my strategy / shtick..  

So I’ll kinda leave this post short.. with just a couple finishing comments:

I’m feeling inspired by the promotional adventures ahead.. but also somewhat in awe of the challenges of it..  so wish me luck… 

I figure.. even if I’m totally consumed by other things.. I ought to try and at least get up a post a week or so.. so here goes

These posts might be getting repetitive on this point.. but allow me to describe for you the first track.. as it stands

Lyrics

It’s based on some lyrics I tweeted.. I don’t have them handy.. but I’ll probably post them in good time.. kind of surreal / dada-distic, so to speak.. a strange style of writing.. pretty out there.. extraordinarally deep.. though there depth lys in a place that makes them difficult to understand.. seems almost like gibberish in places.. 

If I were to try and put it in a sound bit.. its as if it’s blaming our current economic problem as an effect of extroversion in the modern situation..  but I’m not sure if that’s what it’s really doing.

Vocal Performance

The performance is to be realized via VirSyn’s Cantor.. which is a vocal synthesizer.  I’ve really only fiddled with Cantor thus far.. so I’m not entirely sure about.. well if I’m going to be able to get an acceptable performance out of it.. not sure how it’ll end up working.. not sure if the work flow I’m attempting is realistic.. so this remains the big question mark.

The way I’m working it is to write out a synth line.. that’s the vocal line.. a kind of stand in.. and to take that performance data.. and put it into Cantor.. and basically fine tune it from there.

The frequency space of Cantor, versus the synth that’s doing the mock up.. will be different.. so.. a part of the process will be trying to make Cantor intelligible with all the other stuff going on in the mix..  well its actually slightly more complex then even this.. Basically.. we have a tun of instruments.. that I’ve brought down into a few groups.. the plan is the put EQ and Compression on the different groups individually.. via Liquid Mix 16.. also put something on the master buss.. and kinda automate the EQs as needed.. 

I also expect that.. once the performance data gets brought into Cantor.. I might start messing around with it.. and possibly there’ll be stuff like backing vocals.. and who knows what.

The Music

The music is pretty insane actually.. I’d say it’s sorta Indra’s Net-esk.. only more so.. taken to a whole new level. 

What goes into it

So far the production features about 30 instruments.. and about 8 auxiliary effects.. We’re talking 2 instances of Digital Performer’s convolution reverb.. 2 delay orientated Guitar Rig Patches, one EVerb from Digital Performer.. 2 reverbs from Kore 2… and I’m not sure what else.. 

To appreciate the insanity of this.. For each instrument.. besides simply telling it what notes to play when, and how hard to play those notes.. you have the automation of Pan position, volume, 8 auxiliary sends.. very often pitch bend and modulation.. and some of the instruments have other performance parameters that I might play with over the course of a track. So.. that’s what..  12 times 30? So that’s 360 parameters you’re programing.. never mind the notes.. So the production is very time consuming.. And though I’ve put in a lot of labor.. it’s currently only about two thirds of the way through… and only a little more then 3 minutes long.

Results thus far

As I was saying before.. It reminds me quite a bit of my Indra’s Net stuff.. only more so. The things I felt critical of in Indra’s Net.. well.. it overcomes those problems and limitations.. There’s more instruments, more effects.. more advanced software, way more powerful computer.. What all this means to the music is… well I’m not really sure.. but I think it’s something kind of big.

While we’re at it, I might as well share with you one of the question marks it presents me with…  Because the amount of instruments, and what not, are so much higher.. things are way more complex. Structurally, my music is not big on repetition…  at least not in a conventional sense..  One of the reasons repetition is important to.. say pop music, is it assists the digestion of the music… it is, after all, “the hook.” When my music was a few order of magnitude less complex then the current project.. I think the simplicity made it easier to digest.. So one of the things I worry about is.. well.. how difficult it might be to appreciate / digest / whatever… So… that’s like a design consideration question.

If we just listen to the music and try and appreciate what it is..  

Well its like a first step into a new world. I think it might be some of the best stuff I’ve ever done. It is full of amazing moments.. flying between a kind of symphonic like aggression kind of LSD trip.. to adventures in ambient space.. where we feel the contraction of space its self.. beneath our feet.. Along the way we travel through so many different sonic spaces and environments.. experience so many different sonic phenomenon.. From classical to all out electronica..  I just think its amazing.

On Lyrics and Music

Now.. beyond all that.. the music is actually a kind of score to the lyrics.. so the music moves through space in such a way that.. it in some way comments on the lyrics.. There’s a line “to creep the reaper out” and we feel the darkening of the space around us…. 

It seems, in a certain way, that both my lyrics and my music are like “adventures in run on sentences.”  It’s all stream of consciousness stuff..  we can go anywhere at anytime.. for any reason.. but..

The spirit of the lyrics is playfully subversive.. seeking to express truths that.. are somehow how in our collective shadow.. My lyrics are very often dark.. living in the abyss.. some of there darkness has to do with there.. transcendence of conventional.. limitations.. which is it’s self an expression of freedom.. all be it free to give satan a bare hug, or something.. freedom  to be monstrous… 

The music is another matter.. A music that is programmed.. note by note… where we’re probably programing something like.. well how many parameters per note? A lot…  That’s a slow a methodical process… It’s not really free as the breeze in quite the same way the lyrics are.. It’s more “free to exert influence over the momentum of the flux in question.” 

So the free as a bird lyrics becomes the central axis point of the whole production.. It’s like a stream of consciousness construction that’s.. somehow taken to this very extreme point of being realized.. via a slow and methodical process? The slow and methodical process is stream of consciousness to.. just that it’s a stream that takes place for days.. as a pose to a couple of tweets on twitter.. 

Going Deeper Into It.

It may sound like I’m just throwing a lot of random inane facts at you… that’s because I’m fumbling in the dark to try and express something I’ve yet to articulate… ok.. read onward for the break through.. or stop here.

We have streams of consciousness that happen at different time scales, what does that mean? Look at your self..  at some point.. and try to become mindful of all the thoughts as they stream past your consciousness.. We could be talking about.. “lets smell this flower” to “I think I shall now turn my head to find out what that dog is barking about.” 

You can look at it in such a way so as to see many thoughts as being made up of smaller thoughts.. and.. if you could imagine your thoughts as grains.. that made this kind of gass.. that filled a space.. you could say “show me all the grains that correspond to this theme” and you would start to see patterns in how various smaller thoughts where components of multiple larger thoughts.. 

I have a kind of pscyho-philosophy that has explored the dynamics underlying how all this works.. Why we think of what when.. what drives our attention.. and how this related to our concepts of reality and life, and what not.. And as it turns out.. this psycho-philosophical blah blah blah.. underlies my thoughts on aesthetics.. and is a major part of my the conceptual framework I use in making my art and music.. 

The idea that we’d be, essentially.. scoring streams of consciousness.. with streams of consciousness.. in a rather operatic way.. The idea that its sorta all on a lark.. that we then become committed to.. if for no other reason then to.. see what might happen.. that in a sense the whole production is nothing but a little experiment to see where all these thoughts lead…

Well that’s my problem with trying to articulate something.. how do you articulate an intuition? 

Well I guess that’s all I’ll write about on that track for now…  lol, but wait.. there’s more.. there’s also a Reason project in the works

The Reason Project

I was starting to feel a little burned out on the huge sound project.. so I thought I’d go take a stroll through Reason..  This project had me starting out via programming a couple Thor patches.. 

I don’t think of myself as terribly talented in the field of sound synthesis.. but.. sound synthesis is.. well I’ll end up with something.. and that something will probably give me something unique to try and go explore as a part of the larger production.

This project also had me loading up REX files..  Ages ago I blogged about how I had invested in ReCycle.. and used cheese open source voice synths to realize some lyrics.. and how I’d processed the hell out of those lyrics.. and then chopped them up into REX files.  Well.. I decided to take one line from that project.

This gets into another whole set of ideas I was playing with.. at the current stage… The idea is that we could eventually put together a track that would be.. that whole song.. with all the lyrics to it.. but for now we have one sentence.. going into this new project.. or one sentence.. cut up.. distorted.. processed.. rendered FUBAR.. played for it’s textures.. not even meant to be recognized as the sentence it is..

Here the vocals become.. a strange texture explored.. we emphasize a few words.. out of context.. as it turns out.. the word we are emphasizing in this project is the word “context.”

In any event.. there will be more to be talked about latter.. I’m over tired here.. what I will say is there’s some very interesting things coming into play with how I’m starting to play with lyrics and how they relate to the structure of the music I’m making….  leave it at that…

I’ve been meaning to sorta write some film reviews, or start talking about film.. in this blog, since I started it.. but I haven’t done much of that.. I should confess, before I get on with it, that the way I relate to film is somewhat idiosyncratic.. and so my reviews / talking about it will be.. I probably won’t tell you what a film was about in a literal sense.. cause I’m not sure if that even matters to me.. we’ll.. you’ll see for your self if you read on.

So Micheal Clayton is a film… features George Clooney… who’s one of those few actors whom.. the chix seem to dig, and yet I dig as well..  My favorite performances of his probably being his stuff with the Coen Brothers.. and perhaps them heist films of his.

Anyway..

So the first thing that impressed me about Micheal Clayton was the cinematography.. the photography. There’s a kind of subtle beauty going on here.. 

Structurally.. things are not the usual, which I like.. no, we were in good hands here.. directorially speaking.. and how freaking rare that seems these days?!  You know.. modern Hollywood films.. what can we say of them? These are films that are.. so much more about commerce then art that.. well box office returns are more important then if the film is any good.. it’s not about artist concerns.. it’s about market concerns.. and the results are usually crap.. and at best a good pop corn film.. 

Well Michael Clayton doesn’t suffer from these sorts of things..  it’s a mature film, made by mature film makers, for a mature film going audience.. as a pose to… err.. I’m not even going to get into it.

So the structure is a deviation.. not a big deviation, but enough of one so that you don’t feel like…  Ok, I like my films to be a bit of an adventure.. where we don’t really know where we are going..  a film could be anything, and yet we are always sorta getting the same thing.. at least if we’re talking about the big Hollywood stuff.. I mean its as if they have a few emotional arches they feel the need to recycle endlessly…

I’m sorry.. this isn’t so hot of a film comment..   but..

I’m reminded of the first time I saw George Lucas’s THX1138.. Here’s a film who’s idea was to make a film that felt like a foreign film.. in the sense that we are being taken into a world that doesn’t even seem like it’s totally the product of our culture..  so its awesome in the adventure of it.. and its wonderful graphic style… cinematic conception.. lots of things.. we’re hanging with artists whom are inventing and creating…. Wonder why this doesn’t happen more..

I’m not meaning to put Michael Clayton on the same level as THX, or anything like that.. but just to say it has at least some of that kinda mojo going for it..  I mean yeah.. it does have the weakness of George Cloony…. the weakness of us having seen his work before.. we know what to expect from him.. so the adventure isn’t so.. far out, or anything but..  

Anyway.. so this is a film to see.. I recommend it as being…. drum roll please… not total crap