I’m sitting here going through old libraries of old sound projects of mine.. Projects that in someway anticipate a project I plan on venturing forth on in the not too distant future: The Fresh Meat Project. Music To Freak Out Stoners, or MTFOS, was created in what we call “The JP years.” This was back in the days when “The Doctor” and “Mr. Sketch” where living off in JP MA… lost years if you will.. lots of chemicals in there brains.. and I’d visit on weekends.. MTFS somehow had to do with the psychology of those circles.. and my reaction to them.
This had to have been in.. the very late 90s… I was still on a G3, had just gotten my MOTU 828 audio interface, and started F-Ing around on it… I’d just kinda Jam out a bit.. didn’t even bother mixing the Jam sessions.. which took place on guitar and synths.. this was total experimentation.. just to enjoy the sound quality of the 828.
Around this time period.. my thought was.. I should like to make music that came out of extended jam sessions. The problem was that these jam sessions where.. I’m not sure how to characterize them. They had a kind of out sider art mentality to them.. there were a lot of levels on which they were probably very flawed.. whatever they were, they were so far out there.. that I wasn’t really sure how to turn them into something interesting..
Well now we enter a very different period in my musical evolution where I’m at least entertaining the notion of going off in radically new directions and I wonder if I could facilitate those older directions now. Today I am both a lot more sophisticated musically / production wise.. and I have a lot more sophisticated tools that allow me to work in very new ways, and I wonder if these new possibilities might facilitate the older zeitgeist.
New to my studio.. in particular, is a fretless bass and ReCycle.. Ableton Live has been in my studio for sometime.. but I haven’t really used in the way I’m thinking now.. And of course there’s Melodyne…
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I pick up my bass and start playing.. kinda all the time. It seems not at all infrequent that I’ll get into a mode where everything I play I think sounds good.. sounds interesting.. these little jam sessions. I think about taking them into my computer, recording them.. composing with them.. where might I be able to take them?.. what could I do musically?
While I have many ideas.. one idea I find quite appealing is the notion of repeating exactly what I did with MTFS.. accept.. when working with a synthesizer.. record only the MIDI.. when working with a guitar.. make sure there’s no transience recorded with it.. Between Melodyne and MIDI I could take the results and sculpt it into something. But what?
Part of the idea is something along the lines of capturing a raw moment.. How differently you think when you’re thinking in real time.. improvising, versus composing my usual ways..
I feel that this is a path I must go down.. a journey I must make.. even as I don’t really have a lot of confidence in it.. It seems like its important for the completion of a musical style I have yet to totally create….
Let me see if I can get serious in talking to you about this stuff.
What do we have thus far?
Electronic Music Composed: I sit in a sequencer and program the sequences and the Mix. This method is the most sophisticated / mature.. of my processes.. I mean I’ve taken this method further then any of my other methods.. thus I tend to want to stick to it simply because its something I can rely on for good results.
Electronic Music Improvised: We are talking about some sort of a process by which.. via tweaking various parameters of some kind of a sound generating device… music results. These results could be further processed, or edited, or whatever.. in order to be used as building blocks of a more programmed music.. we see this sorta thing Starting in Zar Matt A Thustra’s Deep Space Adventures.
Guitar based song writing: I sit down on my guitar, or perhaps now even my bass, and I play, come up with riffs, put riffs together.. create a song idea.. produce it..
I improvise out some sorta performance… on real instruments.. wether we are talking a keyboard to control synths.. or we are talking about guitars and bass.. maybe something going on with a microphone.. and we sorta do something with this.
So these are our basic processes. The question then becomes how do we integrate them.. how do we bring them to some level of maturity.. where there possibilities become great; a sum more then the parts?
The answer lys, no doubt.. in continuing to work on each of these processes, going down each path.. taking it to its logical conclusion… building a library of raw material.. and playing with making stuff out of that raw material.
As near as I can tell this is a long term project.
So, Boston Podcamp 3 is just about here… and in anticipation of that.. I figured I’d at least have to post new episode… So it here it is.
In this podcast we can hear 3 bits of work.
Toshiro Mifune VS John Wayne.. in progress (the last version I made available for a limited time)
Peter’s Hill: This is an old “Fresh Meat” project between the Ev-on, and myself.. It’s sorta representative of a spirit / energy I’m interested in bringing to my work today.. Hopefully Ev-on will play a roll in this..
The New Metal Track… This is very early.. and there’s even a lot of work I’ve done for this that is yet to be a part of the track.. but I wanted to have something to share with you anyway.
Ok, this is a somewhat long-ish story.. the story of Matt’s recent woes.. from anxiety, career, money, banks, and what not to.. well lets say stuff.. which will eventually lead us into my most recent trip to guitar center, the buying of the Liquid Mix 16, and then into the current music production project…
It all started last Sunday. I was in a sleep deprived state, and as is my way, running late to the Boston Media Makers. The Boston Media Makers is now taking place at Doyle’s Cafe in JP.. (Boston).. so it’s new media plus breakfast… and so I needed to go to the bank to get money to fill up my gas tank, buy an energy drink, smokes, and still have enough left over for breakfast.. and then things turned ugly!
The bank tells me I put in the wrong pin number.. a few tries latter and the ATM won’t give me the time of day. WTF I think… but being sleep deprived.. in a somewhat LSD like consciousness.. made even more LSD-ish after watching a documentary on the Beats.. who knows, maybe I did get the pin wrong?
So long story short, got Gas, smokes, and my Monster on credit, breakfast on cash… but it was a stress feast combination of sleep deprivation, running late, and.. the ATM experience. All of which fueled a little extra anxiety over how I presented myself at the media makers.. but that’s another blog entry.
[Editor’s Note: This is a long, sometimes rambling entry.. so brace your self, you hardy souls whom might actually get through it.. also to note is a certain connection between this entry, and the recent social media cool-aid entry.]
More problems:
I was actually planning on buying a computer monitor, at Micro Center in Boston, with cash after the meeting… It’s the closest “good” computer store I know… or at least see if they had the Dell I wanted, what there price was.. and that sorta thing.
The food supply in the house was running low.. so grocery shopping had to be done soon.
My dad had medication that needed to be picked up from the CVS
I should maybe break off from this and explain my anxiety paranoia at this point? When my mom died I was told, by a couple aunts, not to pay the credit card bills that were my mom’s bills. Someone had talked to a lawyer about this.. and something to do with Massachusetts state law.. trouble is, I never actually talked to a lawyer.. and am kind of vague about all this.
[Editors note: Matt wanted to insert this scene from the end of THX 1138, as it seems express of the psycho reality of his situation.
You’d perhaps have to see the full movie to really appreciate the significants of this clip.. and probably need to read the rest of the blog entry to, while you were at it.. but pay attention to a certain subtext of this blog entry.. its all sorta crystalized here..]
In any event… there’s lots of credit card companies calling the house.. I have yet to talk to any of them as.. well until I get the iPhone.. I’m a very difficult person to get in touch with via the phone.
Now the LSD like consciousness of sleep deprivation does have… well you sometimes attribute causality to things that, in reality, don’t have a causal connection. These causal connections are truths of a kind of symbolic nature.. they have something to do what’s going on in you psyche.
So what’s going on in Matt’s psyche?
This is really a subject for another time, I mean to really dig into… I will tell you that since my mom passed things have not been real easy… and that most of the uneasiness of it is not something that expresses its self consciously.. It’s kind of a complicated thing.. and I feel like blogging about it might actually be helpful to me.. or at least talking about it.. but it’s somehow hard to talk about.
All these inward tension.. they expressed them selves in the paranoid dilution that.. well I think the bank might actually be one of the creditors… so the paranoid delusion.. was there was something more to my inability to get into the bank then.. some sorta pin number problem. And with this was the fear that I wouldn’t have access to money to pay bills.. so I shouldn’t write a check till I got to the bottom of this.
On top of all that.. another expression of anxiety is a procrastination of bill paying.. so the bills are.. now in the over due column.. and one expects one’s credit is getting dinged.
Crazy is as Crazy Does
Ok.. so allow me to stop here and try and explain a little of this.. For one thing I’ve been behind on sleep for a little while now… for another I’m being a little operatic in how I’m talking about it.. which is to say I’m amplifying the story a little.. which is not quite to say I’m not crazy.. just that.. I’m turning up the gain of a certain sorta crazy.. or perhaps on the microscope through which we are looking at it…
[editors note: Matt’s operatic-ness, at this point in the entry, is mainly expressed through with language like “paranoid delusions,” which sorta overstates things “a bit.” And what he’s talking about is the casual connections sleep deprivation is facilitating.]
Matt’s Plot
Ok, so lets pull back a little and take a look at my life’s plot, and where this moment fits in it all. I’m trying to do this “artist” shtick thing. I don’t know if you’ve heard the cliche about starving artists? Well.. I don’t believe that being an artist means you have to starve.. but the cliche is at least expressive of the fact that making a living as an artist is no easy feet.. more so when you’re as uncompromising as I am.
Though I march forward in a sorta heroic-ish way.. I don’t think anyone could walk this walk without there being a lot of really huge tension over what the future might bring.. It’s really that I’m crazy enough to not let that keep me from walking this way… [Editors note: This would be part of the significance of the THX reference] but there is still that fear that it might all come to naught.. and that perhaps all my sacrifices are in vain.. and this is a very big tension.. particularly as it interacts in a larger ecology of tensions.
Now.. if you ask me about the “objective real reality” of the situation.. I’ll tell you.. things are probably “A-Ok.” Allow me to give you reasons why things are probably “A-Ok.”
I’m doing the social media shtick. Why would this make things A-Ok? Well.. I’m connected / networked in with a pretty substantial crowd of folks. If you’re reading this, you might be one of said substantial folks? There’s a humanness to.. many of these connections where.. to one degree or another, we really do care about each others well being.. and.. all of us are pretty well connected, one way or another.. and the long and the short of it is.. social media is a powerful tool for finding work.
It is not an infrequent thing that.. I get a job lead.. or some connection leads to something. Of course I don’t put a premium on following this stuff up.. because of how focused I am trying to be on trying to do my own thing.. but the point is there is stuff out there.
Very sweet and wonderful people have actually come out and asked me what they could do to help. Can you dig that? For me that’s down right mind blowing.. but its true.
What I’m doing.. in my own adventures.. has within it’s self the idea.. that I’m putting together a skill set for a job that does not yet exist. And believe it or not I’m actually networking with people who could us those services.. even if they don’t know it yet.
Latter:
There’s more to this story… lots more.. but for the purposes of this blog entry I only want to go so far as to say that tensions can obscure this reality.. so that it doesn’t feel like things are “A-Ok” in the big picture… even if they kinda sorta are. And we could talk about this more but…
Yeah.. so imagine the fear like.. you don’t know if you’re going to be able to take care of your father or your self, that the world could be crumbling down… This kind of stress inevitably leads me into pushing harder in my work.. and my self criticism gets much worse then it sometimes can be anyway.
None of this would have been a big deal if not for.. by that monday.. there was very little food in the house.. and if not for.. I had gotten to the bank that day prior to its closing.. I didn’t realize this.. but our bank likes to close at 4PM.. in order to get there I kinda have to fight my way through my tensions over it.. and so find myself there and.. the bank closed.. and I didn’t even know there hours! And so days passed with this hanging over my head.. all of it.
Add to all this that here I am gearing up on these music projects.. and I need to go out and buy more gear! I was also planning on getting an iPhone.. still needed to buy my Podcamp ticket.. I’m not sure what else.. and all of that was.. at least in my fears, looking like it might not work out.
And the dark clouds reseed.
Well finally I did get into the bank.. did make a with drawl so I have enough cash in my pocket to run for a few weeks.. somehow the pin number.. sorta fixed, accept it still wasn’t able to use it.. so maybe I’ve somehow miss remembered it.. anyway they are sending me the numbers so I’ll have them..
That dark cloud emphasized how fragile I can feel.. way out here in starving artist vill.. and it was a crazy rough week for me.. when the clouds finally did leave.. I finally decided that it was indeed time to make my trip to Guitar Center and pick up Liquid Mix 16. This was a long deliberation.. most of which is documented in this blog..
But wait, there’s more!
I couldn’t find my car keys.. and not only that but I still had grocery shopping yet to do.. I had done a little after the with drawl… but.. now without my keys, how could I do this? It wasn’t till sometime today when I finally found the keys.. and boy do I hate doing grocery shopping on the weekends, when the places are a crowded madness.. screw that!
So I made my way over to Guitar Center, finally. Was I really going to do it?
I wish I knew these guys names more.. I told the sales guy “I’m here for the Liquid Mix 16.” His eyes sorta widened.. “That’s a great little unit.” What? Every sales guy in the pro audio department didn’t even know what it was.. nor did they know much of anything of any of the mix engineer-ish tools I had been looking for.. but this guy new it.. and was thinking of getting one for him self.
I then rattled off a number of things I had been looking for..
Ok, let me explain. Guitar Center has a thing where you pay no interest for 3 months, 6 months, a year.. depending on what mood there marketing department is in.. what this means is you can buy stuff on credit without interest payments.. which is something you can’t easily do over the internet.. and credit card interests rates being what they are.. buying on credit will add a hell of a lot to your bill.. so going to Guitar Center for the big ticket items is what makes the most sense at this point..
So a number of pieces of gear.. gear that other sales folks had never even heard of.. stuff that you often can’t find on the Guitar Center website.. he could find in the computer.. stuff that the other sales folks didn’t think they carried.
So it was pretty awesome.. I mean he could actually answer some of my questions!
Onto the Liquid Mix 16
I had read where people had had problems with instillation.. particularly with Digital Performer.. and boy have I had software problems lately.. so I was a little nervous.. but the instillation was more or less as smooth as they come.. and before you knew it, I was up and running.
Liquid Mix is… well you get a library of 40 compressors and 20 EQs. I’ve explained this ad nauseam else where in this blog.. but basically you’re getting this library of the most high class EQs and Compressors on the planet.. each of which works in slightly different ways… is good for different sorts of applications.. colors sound differently.. etc.
The first problem you run into is.. “which should I use?” To further complicate matters.. its sorta like a hockey video game where they can’t use the names of real NHL teams.. where they can’t give you the names of the real gear you’re using.. not that that would make too much of a difference as I don’t actually know the names of the real gear anyway.. but.. if you read interviews with various mix engineers.. telling you what they use for what.. or articles on these subjects.. you’d kind of like to know what you’re dealing with… Fortunately I found an old Sound On Sound review of Liquid Mix that included the names.
The light in my room is out.. so I couldn’t actually go digging through magazines to find that recent article on mix buss compression… but upon doing the google.. I found this blog entry.. from of all people.. Charles Dye, which covered the subject.. and recommend an SSL compressor for my master buss. (Charles is quite the sophisticated fellow for this sorta thing).
And with that I jumped in
First, you must understand that I usually make crazy music like this (click on the little arrow to hear, and yes, it is a free download.. but it’ll stream for ya fine )
This kind of electronic music has very different sorta mixing requirements from my new experimental electronic metal thing.. I mean.. now I have to try and be “a real” mix engineer. God save us!!! And I was fearful that.. well I hear a lot of stories of the struggles folks go through when they are first starting out..
But strangely.. I felt as if I had discovered that I had a real talent for this… upon reflection
The Start of my Mix Engineering Training: “The JP Years.”
After college I would hang out with.. the man we call “The Doctor” aka Diggity Dave.. and Ev-on, as he sometimes refers to him self in the comments of these blog entries.. Now.. these fine upstanding citizens.. well
They are artists to.. and were struggling to
There was more alcohol and Pot going on then… lol, good times
Crazy adventures were the norm.. one could become quite a fine author with the material our of those times.
Diggity did indeed have a stereo system with the best speakers I had ever heard in my life.. at that point.
We’d throw CDs in there.. just to see what we had been missing all these years.. and I was forever analyzing the mixes. Mind you, at the time.. I wasn’t really all that sophisticated in my mix analytic abilities.. but it was surely something.. Dave and Evan’s music tastes had a whole lot of Hip Hop going on.. classic rock.. metal, electronic stuff.. even Curtis Mayfield.. quite the eclecticism.. and I with my Zappa and assorted strange stuff… and there was Jim whom would sometimes be there.. with his punk and indy rock.. and so.. though we were all rather poor.. we were wealthy in terms of the music we were all able to hear.. and it was quite an education.
I’d just listen to those records and dream of the day I could have a chance to put one together.. and could I ever make one as good as some of the stuff we were hearing? Oh my god, so much amazing stuff!!! Seems like these days I don’t get a chance to listen to too much.. but back then, oh wow!
The production in this track was a little rushed.. so there’s certainly things in there I’m not totally happy with.. but there’s also a lot in there that has me feeling very proud…. that I think is sorta amazing.. the marriage of the mix and the composition.. the experience.. the scenes.. the painting of it.. to put it a certain way.
When you listen to stuff like that.. you can kind of tell I’m really thinking about the mix… even if there are huge problems here and there.. and even the problems.. its sorta like a punk rock school of mixing or something.. where we kinda consider them in a different light.. or something.
So.. my music production is kinda all about the mix, on a certain level… but the mix isn’t static.. nothing stays still. In metal.. things stay still. The guitarist stays over there.. the bass player over there… no ones moving that drum set.. so my electronic music is all about a mix that has a virtual stage that is forever in flux. I regard it much more as being about “Mix Painting” then “Mix Engineering.”
Buckling down into Metal. My god, how am I going to handle this? I didn’t know.. but I knew investing in Liquid mix would be an important step along these lines.
First Impressions on the mix metal path
The first thing you realize is that what you’re really doing, as a mix engineer, is quite subtle. No wonder those guys seem so obsesses over so many little things that I don’t think I can even hear! Being subtle is the first thing you have to get used to… That you’re really thinking in terms of a lot of subtle colorations which, hopefully, eventually lead up to a whole that is more then the sum of the parts..
My recent obsession with effects has been one of… well a kind of obsession with with subtleties.
Next morning (still not really awake):
The metal I have going on right now is.. incredible
The transition from my normal experimental production and composition style.. to a metal sorta song writing thing is a huge jump. In my electronic stuff there are no rules… there certainly isn’t anything like a traditional structure.. and In Metal.. I’m not sure how traditional my structures will turn out to be.. but at least from a starting point sorta perception of things.. I need to figure out how to make my music work inside of the limitations of a popular music format.
The funny thing is.. I’m kind of an amazing heavy metal guitarist from certain perspectives. As a guitarist I’ve never been too terribly big on playing other people’s music.. I’ve maybe learned 3 such songs in my life.. but I’ve certainly learned a lot of riffs.. and what not… The point is that my guitar playing has really always centered around.. being more interested in making original music then replicating other folks stuff.
I would say, generally speaking.. my style draws heavily from the riffs of Black Sabbath.. and a kinda speed-e metal of Metallica and Megadeth… and from there comes an original vision. That vision is largely about a strange interpretation of music theory… and a strange kind of aesthetic vision.
For me, a lot of what you of what you see, in say a John Coultrane.. is like.. just natural and obvious? Let me share with you two videos.. one with Coultrane playing, another with a critic talking about it.
In a certain sorta way you could kinda imagine critics talking about my work this way.. hope that doesn’t sound arrogant but..
Now I’m not sure if Ben Ratliff totally gets it. See… composition is about “organization” of sound, and the framework for how we organize sound.. is the same sorta thing for how we organize facts into a conception of reality… and that’s sorta the implication of what Coltrane is doing… Thus a critics application of the terms of American Transcendentalism is… not really all that far fetched. [Editors note: The second critic quoted.. his “conversion story” has some relation to the earlier THX clip]
So if I tell you that I have a hard time thinking inside of conventual structure, that’s sorta what’s interesting in my work.. So here I am embarking on an adventure to.. think in conventional structure? I’m not totally sure about this, I think maybe its like.. that’s just the starting point.
So I’m obsessing on song writing.. thinking about song writing, or thinking about music making from a “song writers” perspective…..
It’s so hard to know how to bring you in on this.
In a traditional structure there are lots of possibilities. (sub structural interest?)
Lets say you have a chord progression going on.. Now really, that chord progression could be anything.. but what we usually here is sorta limited… I mean were used to a fairly limited number of chord progressions. Once you have your chords progression, there is the question of how it gets voiced by the individual instruments… What’s guitar 1 play, what’s guitar 2 play, what’s the bass playing… Even if what we have going on is a simple riff… that riff can be interpreted different ways.. you could have two guitarists harmonizing the riff… or playing different parts of the chord.. and perhaps they don’t play it the same way twice..
Then you have the matter of how each instrument “interprets” the other instruments.. I mean screw the preconceived chord structure! This where we are in some ways echoing Coultrane.. or Jazz.. This is especially doable in a metal context because… the guitars are generally not playing the 3rds.. So how is the vocal line to relate to the guitars?
Then you have.. well you have things like how one riff relates to the next… how the riffs are moving around.. In the particulars of how I’m working.. the consideration is generally.. where’s one riff starting and ending.. what’s the chord there.. and then if you look at that riff over all.. where is it hanging out most.. and how do these characteristics relate to the riff that came before? There’s also issues of how the energy works in a given riff.. contrasts in energy.. and a number of other things.
So all of this is kind of how I think about music generally.. when making it, but it’s different in that.. It’s like going from free verse poetry to poetry with a structure. What’s interesting about being forced to work inside a structure is.. you find your self spending more time refining things… as I write vocal lines I’m like “oh, no really, what’s the right word to put here?”
There also is structural anarchy going on.. which in a certain way you could call the linguistic framework of the music. Or the anarchical aspects create the linguistic interest…
My Goal
My goal is to make something that is.. as good as anything I’ve ever heard before, at least. Good in the sense of.. how developed the details are, in the sense of the refinements of the song writing.. the composition… the mix. Beneath all of this there is the essential idea of what it is I’m doing.. the core of it.. and that… that I think is amazing.. and that’s one of the first things that hits me…. that’s one thing that is already in it.
I think it must be the anarchy speaking.. It must be my difficulty fitting in, in a certain way.. it must be how strange I am.. that that strangeness has been allowed to evolve for so long.. to have its own depths, its own maturity.. that it managed to escape the forces of socialization.. that we are seeing a kind of new animal before us.. one that lives within us all.. and it is like a call to becoming… a voice we have often heard before.. but perhaps did not have the courage to follow.
Creating the Mix and the Song at the same time:
The process is an experimental one.. one where the composition it’s self, at a certain point, is made to fit the mix, just as the mix is made to fit the music…. and the mix even is the music. So again.. I’m drawing from my experimental electronic music.
A we bit latter:
So let me wrap this up
For starters I’d say that I think this new direction in my music.. will correct certain problems I have with my work.. I’ll leave this at that.
Now I want to talk about Anxiety.
A little while ago I did a post entitled Death by Anxiety. It was a kind of strange post. It was strange in that it painted a picture of myself that was.. raw and naked and.. well what it was. After making that post, and the feedback I got on it.. I started to think of my self in different terms then I normally do. The people in the videos suffered from very bad anxiety.. and I both identified with them, and began to see the roll of anxiety in my life in a way that threatened my self concept. This then lead into a wrestling with the subject.. and it reached it’s worst point when I ran into my ATM trouble.
One of the things you run into thinking, or I did, was.. is anxiety an organic problem? Some sorta genetically inherited issue.. was it a mistake to blame my mom for it? Perhaps heavy metal is nothing but a kind of expression of anxiety? Or I mean about anxiety? What is anxiety?
Well you know I’m kind of a philosopher of the mind… and in my LSD like sleep deprived consciousness… I began to explore my mind in relationship to anxiety. Indeed the anxiety threatened to capsize me!
One of the things I notices was that anxiety seemed to be a “normal psychology” that relates to reality in “interesting ways.” Anxiety seemed to be a situation where the unconscious mind is participating in our organization of the details of life, of reality, and painting a picture for us. Reality is ALWAY this… as we experience it.. detached objectivity, though it is a modern ideal, is an illusion. Reality is ONLY experienced through the lens of consciousness. And so it is that anxiety is an adventure into our own depths.. with our depths expressing its self on the world around us, or through our experience of the world around us.
This is obvious enough stuff.. to any student of depth psychology… medication treatment is never about fundamentally changing the matter, its about living with it.. where as the natural way of the psyche is one of changing the matter. Indeed, it would seem that anxiety is actually a kind of advanced process of self evolution. We are confronted with the question of how do we relate to our own depths.. as this is projected in front of us. Our living in the world becomes about a psychological process / evolution.
I have a long held belief, a kind of presumption, that one’s psychological reality is always as it is for a reason. The existence of a psychological phenomenon is there to serve us, if we can just find the proper relationship to it.
As I stated earlier in this entry… there are things In my life that I’m having a hard time dealing with… It’s hard enough that I’m really only able to deal with so much of it at a time.. in a kind of direct experience. When the pressure of it builds up to a certain point.. it forces a confrontation. It can ether do this via a sorta psychological confrontation, or via reality.. by which I mean that the unfolding events of one’s life are direct manifestations of the inward realities, versus a projection onto our understanding of reality.. we are, after all, talking about the first stage here.
When I talk about composition as being about organizing factors that have a relationship to how we organize our understanding of reality.. and when I say my music is prophetic in the sense that I’m developing new organizational methods.. more advanced, I think, then what has come before.. my music, on a compositional level, is a way of dealing with all of this.
This is really deep and profound stuff..
Latter:
THX 1138 Revisted
THX 1138 is a dystopia… its is a kind of prophetic vision of our modern situation.. A few points
The power relationships relative to mental health, define what is a normal or not normal… and of course proscribe medication.. treatment that, as mentioned above.. is more about coping that dealing with the underlying problems. In THX it is law that we take medication, and when we stop taking it.. we become anxious
Consumption is the enforced behavioral norm in THX.. again leading to the behavior control.. the sense that everything is “A-Ok.” We see this in normative modes of being.. in our modern situation.
It’s really all about the power to define a thing. We are now used to –
Next day
I’m thinking this entry is long enough, and I ought to cut it short.. what I want to suggest is that there are connections between social control, anxiety, human potential, the structure of the psyche, collective evolution, and um.. so the symbolic significance of what I’m trying to do… has to do with how I’m relating to this complex of factors, and how my work does.. and we’ll leave this at this for now.
Ok.. so… according to my stats.. when I was blogging like every day.. sustained for.. however long I sustained it, my stats doubled…. so there is a pragmatic value in at least pumping something out every day.. which.. is pretty well known… but um.. it’s striking to see.. so I’m going to try and do that, put out something at least every day.
You know.. I have this habit of writing sorta long entries.. which.. for various reasons isn’t the greatest blog strategy thing.. I suppose if I’m forced to blog every day.. maybe what happens is I don’t feel the same need for the long stuff..
Still.. the long stuff is so me.. the long kind of think pieces, I guess.. .
Latter that night:
Into the Sound Studio Stuff
I’m debating more studio tools things.. kind of an old story that I’ve probably blogged about too much as it is.. but.. its on my mind, and talking about it sometimes helps me get think it through, so here goes:
I’m looking at Liquid Mix 16.. which is half the power.. plus a little less hardware interface / controller then the full Liquid Mix.. The full is selling for $800 these days, and the 16 is at $500… last I checked… and my thinking is sorta evolving.
This is software that runs on a processor that is a part of what you’re buying when you buy these packages. Basically.. if you’re a sound engineer on a budget.. this is an awesome deal as it puts really good quality emulations of classic EQs and Compressors at your finger tips…. for way less then it feels like these things should cost..
As a point of reference… Waves makes a native software emulation (meaning it runs on your computer’s processor) of the EQ and Compression found on SSL consoles.. the list price for which is a grand, and I think they’re now selling for a little over $700. The SSL console EQs and Compressors are highly prized items… with the exception of dealing with short attack times.. what I’ve hears is the emulation in Liquid Mix is better then what you get in the Waves bundle.. plus you get a boat load of other highly sought after EQs and Compressors and what not..
Ok.. so here’s the deal with 16… You get 16 instances.. an instance counts as being able to apply both the EQ and the Compressor to one mono channel in your mix.. as a plug-in. If your dealing with stereo that number drops down to 8. This is at a 44.1 kHz sample rate.. and it might even include 48 KHz. Without explaining digital audio, 44.1 kHz is the sample rate found on CDs.. It is now considered standard.. when doing music production, to be working at substantially higher sample rates… I wonder bother to bore you with the explanations why.. I’ll just go so far as to explain this much.. . Now the deal is.. as soon as you jump the sample rate up.. with Liquid Mix.. your instant count cuts in half… and if you go really high, a quarter.
So I’m thinking.. $500 for 4 stereo instances (each stereo instance counts as 2 mono instances) versus $800 for 8.. perhaps I should go with 8? There is an expansion card.. I wanna say it’s running at around $250.. that will give you your full instant count at the higher sample rates… In any event, you can see why I’d be leaning for the full version.
But now I’m starting to contemplate this from a different angel. For starters there’s the question of what I need / what is optimal.. which is a difficult to answer question. First off how many channels do I have running in an average mix anyway? The answer is probably less then 8… although that number reflects working on a G4.. which was very limited in how many instruments I could get going at once anyway… So in point of fact we don’t actually know how many instruments I’d be using when I’m in a situation where I basically don’t have limits…
The second question is how many instances of EQ / Compression do I use? The primary reasons for EQ and compression is.. exerting control over the dynamics of your mix, and carving out frequency spaces for the individual components of your mix. The process I have always used, and I’m sure this will sound crazy to many a sound engineer… is one where I don’t actually use any EQ or Compression at all!
That said.. we have about 3 things going on that are changing.
As the number of channels / instruments in your mix expands.. the need to exert control over the frequency space, at least, goes up… Thus if I do start dealing with higher track counts the need for EQ and compression go up.
Besides one’s mind and ears, EQ and the compressor are the most important tools to the mix engineer.. so if I want to really master art and science of mixing.. well, I’m gong to need to start using more of this.
I’m getting into a Heavy Metal production thing.. which is a style of music that needs EQ and Compression in a way that the music I was doing previously didn’t.
So.. Basically how many instances of EQ and Compression we would need is an open question at this point. That said.. between what is currently a part of my studio tool kit, and what I’m imagining will soon be a part of my tool kit.. there are other nice EQs… and perhaps even nice compressors… so, running out of instances doesn’t necessarily have to be a big problem.
When I think about where I’m likely to go with the metal I see a few possibilities:
I could treat my instruments as mono instruments.. guitars and bass and vocals.. The guitars would no doubt be multi tracked.. meaning there would be many component tracks of each guitars, each wanting its own EQ… But we are still probably only talking about around 8 instances.. maybe add 2 for the stereo buss.. 2 for the drums.. another for the bass.. lets say 4 for the vocals.. and assuming I’m working at 44.1 kHz… I’m only ok at only 16 instances.
So clearly there are trade offs.. but it also seems like those trade offs might not always be too significant… and when I then stop to think about what I could do with $400, the price difference between the full version and the 16… It becomes clear that if I were to work with smaller sample rates.. perhaps a limited number of instruments… I’d have a better studio.
Next day sometime:
There are problems with Liquid mix out side of the issue of instance counts.. one of the bigger ones is latency. Latency is the time gap between when you play a sound into your computer and you hear it played back. Latency is a big issue… the way you work with Liquid Mix is.. via your DAW, via production.. in a way where latency no long matters.. You don’t use it in a live setting. I have some mind to work at being a live sound engineer… a context inside of which liquid mix is worthless.. and there are many contexts inside of which I would want an EQ or compressor that didn’t suffer from latency issues.
In the broader mix of my sound work at this moment.. these kinds of applications are at a minimum.. but there is a huge revolution going on in my sound work.. and we don’t really know what its going to look like at the end of the day.
The Road Map
I have a vague sorta schematic of ideas.. which.. may or may not be indicative of what things will look like at the end of the day.. the trouble is.. for most of these ideas.. the cost of the technology is prohibitive. Lets look at some of those ideas… mind you we are not to take them too seriously.. in terms of what they are.. but more if we can see these ideas as manifestations of thoughts in one moment of time.. that are more expressive of a trajectory then what they are at the momment… which is a little hard to explain but..
Live sound engineer: I know a reasonable amount about the mix engineering field.. even if most of that is directed at making records.. the task of bringing those to bare into the live context.. at least to get started, its not so bad. The business reasons for being interested in this are multi fold: Networking inside of the local music scene.. I have packages I could offer bands.. from web design, recording mix engineering, some kind of a studio, photography.. I could do your live mix, and also a record based off that live mix.. social media marketing… video production.. internet and social media strategy more generally… and the list probably goes on.
Electronic Music type DJ: There’s always been the challenge of.. well how making music live fits into how the music business usually works.. doing the live DJ thing is certainly one approach to trying to solve this problem. As with the live sound engineer stuff.. what we need here is a lap top plus a few other software odds and ends. For DJing.. it might make sense to look at hardware controllers.. the digital equivalent to turn tables..
Lets become a street Musician: This is sorta equivalent to the DJ shtick.. again we need a laptop.. some sorta PA system / amp thing that makes sense for this context.. perhaps a controller.. grab the guitar, midi food controller.. You could sell your CD, hand out free postcards / stickers that relate to your web presence.. not to mention the free music from that.. You could do live video streaming on the internet of these performances.. etc.
Lets put together a Band: I suppose I really just need a real guitar amp, right?
I’m going to cut this short.. as this is really something that, to really go into.. it would take a whole other blog entry, at least.. there’s more stuff to list.. but this gives us a broad brush stroke outline of some of where we might be going. It’s enough to bring back to the subject of what sorta gear we ought to be looking at.
Verdicts, I think, where all this leaves us is..
Going with the Liquid Mix 16.. might very well be the best choice. There’s a fairly cheap bundle of effects I’m looking at that runs at $200 that offers various eqs, compressors, and other odds and ends of this sort.. which I think could really offer some good stuff to my mixes for not a lot of money… this would then leave another $200 for other stuff.. I’m thinking digital delays and reverbs.
Of course there’s another part of my brain that’s thinking Max/MSP/Jitter Check out this DIY controller someone mad… working with said software.
I haven’t talked too much about the Max/MSP/Jitter thing in this blog yet. It’s a bundle that costs $700… for electronic music.. its on the geek out side… But it’s also the land of the hard core serious electronic music stuff.. this is where the serious cutting of the edge happens, right? Perhaps this and CSound?
Basically.. this bundle is sorta equivalent to Native Instruments Reaktor… with certain pros and cons…. of which I don’t know as much as I’d like. My understanding is the Max/MSP/Jitter this is better on your processors.. also.. Jitter is a program that does very interesting things with video.. in an interactive way.. which is probably the only solution that makes sense for certain video ideas I’ve been playing with.
