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…

After quite a hassle.. Digital Performer 6 is finally running on my system. The first thing you noticed about DP6, versus 5, is you got a new interface.. This new interface has 3 main implications:

1. How do you make a wheel again?: You have a new interface to learn… you must learn new ways of doing whatever it was you were doing before.. 
2. There is a Psycho Acoustic principle via which software with new shiny interfaces always sounds better then the old ugly ones: More then anyone ever wants to admit.. our perception of audio is influenced by suggestion.. and so it is that if the software you’re using looks pretty.. well you think it sounds a whole lot better. From the point of view of someone producing music.. this is a nice feature.. as it inspires you on your adventure..
3. Stuff is Streamlines, or at least that’s what MOTU would have you believe: For the period in which you can’t figure out how to do what you used to take for granted.. stuff isn’t streamlined…. But I must say.. there’s a lot of stuff about Digital Performer that I really thought was.. well ways in which DP wasn’t exactly making sense in a modern production context.. and what do you know.. they’ve worked out much of that.

Beyond this grooviness.. we got other new grooviness.. but none of this is what’s really striking me at the moment.

Matt, what is really striking you? 

What’s really striking me is a sense of Awe of what I’m able to do in my studio now. On the sonic software side of things we got Digital Performer 6, Ableton Live, Reason, Native Instruments Komplete, Kore 2, and Liquid Mix 16… plus a couple other odds and ends. There are gaps that still need filling, which I could go on about ad nauseam… some of which I’m looking to rectify in the short term, others more long term.. but however you want to slice it.. there’s a lot of power under the hood.

Why are you struck by this now?

This is a complex topic but.. There is this sense that “software tools are not as good as hardware tools,” or at least that would be a simple way of putting it. It’s quite a bit like some people feeling that vinyl records are better then CDs… That vinyl is somehow “warmer” then CDs. This is a complex topic that can go into subjects of sample rates, ramifications of particular mastering issues for vinyl… and on and on and on. In the world of music production technology the topic is even more complex as that the technology of production is much less static then the issues of Vinyl and CDs.. which, lets face it.. people are choosing low quality MP3s anyway…  so what does it really matter?

My production tools acquisition process has always been one where issues of “price versus performance” plays the key roll.. If hardware tools are 1o% better then software tools, but cost 40% more.. I’m probably going with the software.. But in the world of serious sound engineering.. it’s the finally 10 or 5 percent that separates the men from the boys.. Most of what makes a good record are the people making it, not the tools.. but tools are very important.. and if you don’t have the right tools.. you’re probably not going to get there.. 

All of this talk is somewhat abstract.. until you actually start listening to the gear… In the last few months I’ve been going through a few years of Sound on Sound magazine.. reading reviews, interviews, and whatever.. trying to get a better picture of what gear is out there.. production techniques.. and all sorts of related things.. as well as scouring the internet.. and listening to all kinds of samples of all sorts of tools.

Somewhere in this process I began to think “hmm, maybe my tools aren’t so great?” But then DP6’s new look and feel came to the rescue.. and I started to perceive differently.. and started to discover how amazing some of the tools I have really are.

So I mean it was a kind of subjective shift that brought a new perspective.

Where the Artist Plays

As I tried to get to before.. the most important thing is not your tools.. it’s you. And it’s not even really your skills so much as your spirit.. for it is, after all, the spirit who employs said skills.. and even said tools!

There is something to be said for habit.. I find myself approaching my music making in more or less the same way as I always have.. In the last 9 months or so.. I’ve gone on all manner of fun little experimental adventures.. exploration of process alternatives.. and what not… But even with all that.. as I approach the music making today.. I do so in the hum drum of habit.

Habit?

For many, habit is a state inside of which growth doesn’t really happen. However.. if there is sufficient anarchy in your habits.. that anarchy is always going to be putting you in varying positions which you will have to wrestle your way out of.. and that’s often where the interest in my work comes. Or that’s one way of putting it.

Still.. I’m not without desire to get out of my usual habits.. it’s just that.. such ambitions are not really the most important thing.. the most important thing is getting the damn ball rolling.. and if that means playing to your preexistent strengths, so bit it. 

Getting the ball rolling? 

Yeah.. getting the ball rolling is the most important thing. As we speak the ball is in motion.. Wether I’m working a way on music, screwing around with photography, working with video, computer graphics, web design, whatever.. at the very least.. each day.. I do something.

The end goal is to have as much of your energy as possible pouring into this work.  The more of you you can put into it.. the better the work will be… By which I don’t necessarily mean that you should “be in your work” but.. well thats complicated.

Next Day Sometime

My work is a strange beast!  In someways, going about what I’m going about.. I feel like I’m working on Indra’s Net version 2.. Indra’s Net was a project I worked on sometime in 2004… and at the time the laptop I was using.. well the screen was freaking small.. which effected things in a number of ways.. the processor, even for the time.. was very much on the budget side.. I never had enough RAM.. some of my software wouldn’t even run! And we didn’t even have enough hard disk room to save what we were doing in anything other then MP3 files!

Now of course.. we’re using 2 24″ HD displays.. We only have about 2GB of RAM but that hasn’t been a real issue in the music production department.. We have software that’s 2 generations beyond what I was using on Indra’s Net.. We have ridiculous amounts of processing power…  and we have more disk space then we’d ever use for music production. Finally, instead of Cubase we are now using Digital Performer.

Beyond all that we are 4 years in the future.. 4 Years more mature.. whatever I’ve learned about music production since then.. and 4 years evolution in my work. 

So.. The implications of all this.. are actually kind of big.

Implications on habit

I don’t think I spoke elegantly about this last night.. and now that I’m a little further along in my production.. new things are growing clear.

Habit, in a certain way.. is like a path you’re walking down.. habit being an act that keeps you on that path.. and so it is that we see our selves evolving further down a path.. There are certain things we add to our bag of tricks.. certain things that change things a little bit.. lets explore in the context of the current production.

New to the new studio.. is a lot of new Reverbs. Digital Performer gives us a convolution Reverb.. and Kore 2 gives us a whole number of other sorts of new reverbs.. besides new reverbs there is, for me.. new ways of thinking about how to use reverbs.. varying .. and how I might EQ them… all of which has to do with creating a sense of space inside of which our music is happening.

My music, of course, is about space.. moving through space.. more psychic space then real space.. and music production in general.. creating a sense of space is important..

project specifics 

I think of the music as something like a buddhist meditation.. it is something like thoughts flowing through consciousness.. consciousness is our stage.

The use of Reverb and delay, and how I’m mixing stuff.. can transform.. or contextualize something that would normally be thought of as aggressive or rocking.. into something more ambient.. something we don’t think of as aggressive or rocking.. and in a fluid sorta evolving mix.. with respect to our sense of space.. the context can give us different shades.. where the aggressive bits can be more like textures.. to being.. something to rock out to.

This production is very much like this.. about this..  We have this rather industrial type percussion.. which rises in intensity over several measures.. and also moves from very far away to closer.. It repeats.. with gaps between repeats.. and it isn’t until it’s second repeat that it ever gets close enough to us that we feel it as heavy in anyway.

The sound elements that start off far away, and move in closer to us.. are all simply repeating the same lines.. no variations at this point.. accept in how they play against the other repeating parts.. and with respect to there location in the mix.

Everything has this ambient like feeling to it.. Until part way through.. We have a rather lead synth sound.. it repeats twice.. but then.. when it might repeat.. in comes a church organ.. which though it does start of a little ways away from us.. it doesn’t start off in audible.. and it’s repetitions are variations.. and it becomes as if the repetitions of the different instruments are now kind of.. playing against each other in a new kind of way.

It’s during this stage of the music’s evolution that I’m now bringing in a string section. The string section will not be playing a repetitive part.. but will instead be playing in ways the plays off the harmonic ecology of the mix.. repetitions we do find in it.. will be to echo other instruments.. and to create a move clear coherence.. in the material.

For now the music is moving into a place where it could be quite a bit more aggressive.. to be heavy and rocking.. but where we are at now is still a bit of a dream. 

How this Compares to Indra’s Net 

What I failed to mention about the Indra’s Net Project was that.. I had just bought Komplete 2.. (5 is my current version).. and I was really just started to explore the tools.. and a new version of Cubase.. Now I actually know the tools..

What we are seeing now is subtleties.. between the new reverbs, the larger sound pallets… and the mix has a much greater kind of.. quality to it.

I seem to be inside of strange place where instead of actually producing music I’m… kinda like designing the building blocks of music production projects…. Or I’m programing synthesizers anyway.

I’m in Absynth 4.. Seems like the last time I sat around programing Absynth.. it must have been a couple versions back.. In any event, I find myself digging down deeper.

Because all my programing is now “Synthesizer X + Kore” there’s a kind of.. strangely different way of thinking about synthesizers. I’m a software synth guy, you must understand.. so I’m not used to having a lot of hardware controls via which I can get expressive with a synthesizer.. So I’ve never programmed a synth with the notion of “if you move these 8 knobs, and 8 buttons you’ll find this groovy expressive potential in this sound.”

Absynth.. Is interesting in that.. It’s one of the first synthesizers I ever kind of fell in love with programming. Absynth’s expressive potential for ambient music.. for evolving sound scapes.. is just awesome. And there’s something about programming it that gets my imagination going like no other..  It’s all a bit more like creating a sonic puppet then a conventional synth patch.. In the sense that you’re going in and finding different ways it could be expressive.. as a part of how you program it.

Latter that night

The patch I’m currently working on, as I write this post, is one that I’m not real sure if it’s usefulness as an instrument.. I mean I have no idea how it could fit into my work.. but I will say.. its fun as hell playing with… perhaps I can take a swing at trying to express what I mean by this….

Conventionally.. I don’t really use compressors or EQs.. or I didn’t until recently.. and I’m still at an early stage of learning how to integrate them into my work. Now conventionally EQs and Compressors are… well like the most important tools of mix engineers. EQs and compressors help you to shape various aspects of your mix.. But how I usually do it is.. in the choice of what instruments I use.. Another words.. how I shape the things EQ and Compressors shape.. I shape by things like what instruments I use.. which is.. in a lot of ways.. kinda better.   

A day or so latter:

You used to be able to just embed these.. but I can’t work out how to do that since they changed last.fm a little bit.. in any event.. here’s a direct link to a track called A Short Trip To Another Day. (clicking on it will open it in a new window.) The reason I link to this track is.. is it’s an example of something created based off.. well the same sorta spirit I’m working in now..  

I’m jumping around in this post a little.. so try and bare with me..

A Short Trip To Another Day was one of my first attempts at programming Absynth.. The program I created was.. one that I didn’t really know how I would be expressive with it.. or how it would work in my music.. So the process of creating A Short Trip to Another Day was one of exploring how it might fit into my work..

Working in this sorta way.. I think it pushes you in different directions then you might other wise work in.. which can result in more interesting work.. and I have to say that this might be one of my favorite tracks.. and so it illustrates what I’m talking about in this entry. 

Ok.. so…  

As I was saying before.. I never used to use EQs or Compressors in my productions.. and um.. EQs and Compressors are tools via which to craft a mix.. and they indeed are tools that I could use in order to exert some control over the sounds created by my synth programs..

So.. looking forward from where I’m at at this moment.. I see growth potential in my music, along a few different lines..  

1. There’s the process of learning to program various synthesizers and the power of custom sound libraries.. and all there implications… This isn’t a totally new concept.. but we are learning to program new synths / new versions of synths.. ad exploring new possibilities along these lines.
2. There is the issue of the hardware / software control.. thinking about sounds as puppets.. with various ways of getting expressive with our sounds.. that are much more complex in how they might be expressive.. then normally found in my work.
3. There is the subject of how to use EQs and Compressors in my work.. where they might make my work better, or perhaps make my work not soo much better.. but it is about the exploration of what there roll can be.. which is in large measure a more artistic thing then a conventional technical thing of.. the way things are conventionally done by people.
4. There is the possibility of using Kore 2 for “Super Instruments,” which is to say.. You create a patch.. that combines any number or synthesizers and effects into one giant “super instrument” and what that could bring to the table.

In talking about these possible directions..  for growth.. We are talking about how this work could become enriched. 

Latter that night, over tired (after a synth programing catastrophe)  

I started in on a new Absynth program today. What happened is.. I figured out how to have the.. well performance sliders, lets call them.. things I’d probably control via the Kore 2 controller.. modify envelopes. This would be a fairly simple thing.. but it’s enough to get me excited… With envelopes you can create rhythms… and you know.. these rhythms could evolve over time.. but also you could have different parts of your synth program playing different rhythms of different lengths.. that loop.. So its like.. well lets just say that’s pretty cool for the way I like to work..  (though I don’t normally use synth patches that include rhythms)… but the polymeric possibilities are very exciting to me..   

Anyway…..  So you can take one of these rhythms.. and you can make it so that one or another performance control alters the tempo of the rhythms… and in one patch.. you could have a lot of rhythms… So what I wanted to do is build in some way of controlling the relative amplitude of different rhythms, as well as there tempos… and also just kind of throw some fun stuff on the fire. Now.. .

Ok, groovy enough.. But allow me to attempt to explain what’s exciting to me about this..  out side of just the usual “and these are the reasons polymeric stuff is good for ambient music styles.” We’re actually not just talking poly-metric… where talking poly-tempi…  Another words.. we’re have multiple tempos going on inside of a single synth patch… I guess it’s like you have the main tempo.. that’s the tempo of the project  your working on.. and everything is synched to that tempo.. and you can shift that tempo around if you like.. but that’s like “the conductor tempo.” But.. you could have.. various instruments that… while being able to start out with an obvious relationship to that tempo.. can go off the rails in one way or another.

The difference between music and noise is probably your ability to recognize a pattern… And for patterns to be interesting.. they probably need to reach an optimal state between simple and complex, with respect to ones ability to recognize them… 

A few days latter 

Ok, I’m going to leave it off right here.. without finishing this, cause other wise it probably wont get posted.. but at least its an interesting look at what I’m up to. 

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!

Indra’s Net, is of course some music I made some years ago.  I find myself showing it to people, listening to it, and reflecting on it.  It’s not my latest work, that would be Zar Matt A Thustra’s Deep Space Adventures.  Indra’s net is probably more representative of things to come inso far as ZarMattAThustra’s Deep Space Adventures was rushed to be put together..  and is..  more experimental, and made with different tools on a weaker computer.  Though I imagine my next work will be something of a combination of the positives of these things.

Of course you can find both CD’s for free by clicking here.  And I invite you to comment back here your thoughts on it.

Indra’s Net is a crazy piece of work.  It’s ambient electronic music of a sort unlike anything you’ve heard before.  (Which is not to say that it is without aggressive moments.)  It takes you into these alien worlds.. places unlike any place you’ve ever been to before.  It is a hypnotic trip of the mind.   

In the story of my work it represents a huge step forward from my Viveka project (which you can currently only hear parts of, for free online) in that it is a quantum leap forward in terms of the tools I was using.  At least in terms of the digital instruments, Indra’s Net is uncompromising.  But the full breadth of what they are capable of was not realizable on the system I was using.  

And this is what brings me to the day dreams about a new project:

1.  On the old system you had limited processor power.. and one of the places this effects is your ability to create an ambient space inside of which the music happens.  Reverb tends to be a computationally expensive effect, especially convolution reverb.  A part of making a mix, that sounds like it has a lot of depth, will involve creating multiple layers of reverb, sometimes EQ’d and compressed in different ways.. where instruments are placed into those spaces in varying degrees.  For the sort of work I’m doing you’d see these instruments and sounds moving in and out of those spaces.  Some of the tracks on Indra’s Net have very little of this going on due to how much power the instruments took up.
2.  Because you have a very limited amount of power you tend to be very judicious in how you place effects on instruments..  I suppose this goes with #1.  The implication is that stuff doesn’t always get crafted as much as you might like.
3.  I have a lot of new tools.  I think most of Indra’s Net was done with Komplete 2, and I’m at least on 3 now, plus Kore.   Some of the software of Komplete 3 wouldn’t even run on the old system, never mind run well.  In addition to this I’m now working with new versions of Reason (Reason wasn’t even used on Indra’s Net) and Ableton Live.  So this represents a huge kind of technological leap forward.. particularly when used on a system that can handle all this.

So all of this represents an evolution in the production tools.  Beyond this we also have me at a much more sophisticated place in terms of my production and mixing skills, and there are certain point in the Indra’s mix that I’m not 100% happy with.

Latter that day:

As I sit here writing this, I wonder what is likely to come.  We are days away from MacWorld where new equipment is likely to be unveiled.  If the Mac Pro line gets a bump I will surely buy that, other wise there’s at least some chance I might go with the new Mac Pro.  I’m currently in the process of doing research into the various tools I’m working with to see what sorta multi core support they might have, to get a feel for what difference a Mac Pro might mean to my work.  Is a Mac Book Pro “good enough?” What’s the power difference between a Mac Book Pro and a Mac Pro look like?

In my mind Mac Pro = uncompromising power.  Uncompromising power = Amazing possibilities.  But what’s in my mind, and what exactly might be real are probably two distinct things.  I have a will to ‘kinda sorta over do it.’  What I’d like to do is plop down another $450 for the Komplete 5 upgrade, and then another $700 or so for Liquid mix, and go from there.  But spending that sorta money isn’t sanity, even if it would do wonders for my work.  It would make sense if some label came up to me and offered me some sorta contract that including some sort of an advance, or it would make sense if I had some kind of income going on, but for the moment, we must hold back.

It’s ok though, because we are talking about something amazing without even going that far, so let us try to explore some this:

Conventionally I have a limited number of instruments I’m able to work with at anyone time, as well as a limited number of effects.  While this is still to be the case, the limitations are no where near so stringent..  Which means we can enter into more complex soundscapes.  Imagine if you will..  a complex arsenal of sounds.  This is a production process that would take a good deal more labor per second of audio then Indra’s Net..  But imagine you have all these sounds.  Just because it leaps into my mind, imagine you have an orchestra.  Given, this is a somewhat limited orchestra, but imagine its there.  Our orchestra is playing something..  The composition has complex interrelationships of performance dynamics, to such an extent that it can remind you of a real orchestra playing the great classical music of a great composer.   Not only this but our orchestra is a microtonal orchestra.  There is an expressive quality to the music, that as a result of the microtonalism, simply makes us feel as if we are in a world with a greater tonal fidelity then anything we’ve heard before.

Ok great..  Now imagine it really sounds like we are in a real concert hall.  But that’s not all.. Imagine the music is a 5.1 Surround Sound Mix, and we are in the middle of the sound.  The orchestra is, in mix engineer language, on a virtual sound stage in front of us.  It sounds more or less real, and we are captivated by it.  This until the reality goes too far:

Somewhere behind us, somewhat faintly in the background, we being to hear the whispers of a conversation.  Out of this conversation emerges a fight.  All the people around the fight are great disturbed by the fight, by it getting in the way of hearing the performance, and then before we know it, security is called in.  Imagine, if you will, that this was something like an audio play.. something you weren’t really expecting.  We, after all, thought we came to listen to the music!

The next thing you know we are following our fighting couple as they get thrown out of the hall.  So that the 5.1 Mix takes us through the crowd, and out side..  As we travel out, the orchestra moves further away from us..  and the acoustic space of the where we are, changes to suit where we are..  And there’s a suitable level of sound design to reinforce all this.  The sound design is a kind of composition.  A composition that plays with the ambiguity as to wether we should interpret it as noise, sound design, or composition… but tries to be read, if you’re reading superficially, as the sound of the environment.

Now what of these characters we are following, what’s there story?  Hell, what’s our story, why are we following them?  

Out side on the street we can hear cars driving buy, often with stereos blaring.  Each one represents a different sonic cluster, should we call it.  Another words the stereos superficially mimmic different styles of music..  metal, hip hop, whatever. And in a Charles Ives sorta way, as they move around in space.. there music links up with each other..  so that we might hear as a kind of whole.. Wizing around the streets… as we move through the streets.

Ok, lets stop this right hear.  I don’t know that I would ever try to make music like this.. It at least sounds interesting on the level of an idea, but who knows what happens when we try and execute it.  One of the ideas I think of as I write about it is the idea that we could have a range between realism and formalism.  Another words, at what point do the sounds sound real, the space sound real, like we are really in it..  And then at what point is, as if on some sorta acid trip, melt into some other reality?  The other reality was there all along after all, just masquerading as a more conventional reality.  Perhaps the music is an investigation of metaphysical presumptions, or perhaps the unconscious in everyday life?

What I’m describing to you is sorta how my music works..  Though we are not normally in settings that sound so… specific or like a known reality.

One thought I had while imagining this was “what if we scored the story?”  Another words, ok, you have an orchestra over there, and then you have this fight over there, and then we are over here, and all around us are the people of the audience.  What if we scored these stories.  How might the orchestra react to this going on in its midst?   

A few latter:

I don’t know that that story really describes where I really see my music going.  Technology is really only one small part of it..  And in the end its more about creativity and ideas.

Do you mind if I speak with some arrogance?  If you’re reading this you probably fall into one of two camps:

1. You never heard of me in your life.
2. You’ve met me, but don’t really know too much about me, or about what sorta work I might do.

Depending on the camp you fit into..  Well I have no idea…  and you might not be coming from a place where what I’m doing makes any sense..  I mean I think there are some people for whom my work clicks, and others for whom it doesn’t.  I’m afraid that what I’m about to say might sound terribly arrogant to the first group..  

I think this music kicks ass.  I think it kicks ass on a level that is far beyond conventional ass kicking.. I mean I think we have a certain set of expectations that we have of work we find in our culture.. a range if you will.. at the top of which is “kick ass” and I think this stuff is a little off the charts. 

So far I’ve blogged very little about my music..  Not really enough so that you’d really get deep into what its really all about..  Hell I haven’t blogged too much at all yet.  I’m just trying to get used to blogging via wordpress..  out in the open.  But I promise you this.. if you stick with me..  I’ll show you some serious ass kicking like you never saw before.  I know from the surface it might not look like that at all.. like you could expect such a thing.. but trust me..  beneath the surface, tucked away in a secret compartment somewhere.. are the tools of ass kicking.  Right now I’m just sorta fooling around..  but soon… shit will fly!

LOL which still doesn’t get at it, ha?  But to really get to it is going to take a lot of blogging on my part. We are going to have to explore a lot of different subjects together.  I have some idea.. a kind of philosophy.. lots of people have there philosophies.. and I don’t know if I can really call my self a philosopher or not..  but I have some amazing ideas.  I have ideas that could change the way you think.  I have ideas that could open you to whole new worlds.. whole new ways of experiencing life.  These are my gold.  And with them I hope to knock your socks off.  

So I guess we should start by talking about what Indra’s Net is.   You can hear this music by going to mattsearles.com/music or, at least in the short run, on my Virb.com/mattsearles profile.  It’s also worth mentioning that it’s both free, pod safe, and creative commons 3.1 share alike with attribution.. so use it for whatever, just give me attribution.. and if you want to use it for some sort of commercial thing, shoot me an email so we can talk about.  

A New Kind of Music 

Indra’s Net is my attempt at making a new kind of music, or it’s one such attempt.  I think of my music as a kind of radicle leap out of the worlds of conventional music, or any sort of music I’ve encountered anywhere else, and its that leap that I find most exciting about it.

Indra’s Net is ambient electronic music, I think its safe to say.  Or if it fits into any genera, that’s probably where it fits. But that doesn’t really get to it.

In many ways music bares the mark of the process that creates it: electronic music and working on a computer can have a big effect on process.  I think of my process of composition and production as being a combination of painting and film making:  A moment in the composition is like creating a painting, and the mix is like moving a camera through a painting..  a painting that it’s self is a living moving thing.

The ambience is like the atmosphere of a space, of a world.  The composition operates on on principles of.. well this deep sort of psychology / philosophy framework of understanding reality.  It’s a little like looking beyond or beneath reality’s surface. 

On top of this you have a kind of surrealistic like process.  You make a mark on a canvass, and like staring up at a cloud, you ask “what am I seeing.”  From here the process becomes a kind of dialog between artist and an emerging dream:  The artist is a facilitator.  So the result is a kind of investigation of the unconscious.  Its an inward exploration. 

To make things even more interesting there is the issue of the relationship between composition and production:  The mix is a part of the composition.  In mix engineering you create a virtual sound stage where in each sound or instrument has a specific location in space, and along with this different instruments are isolated into there own frequency space which has some effect on where you place those instruments / sounds in space.  In my work the location of sounds and instruments, as well as there frequency space, tends to be in a constant state of flux.  So even as we have this experience of a point of view moving through a sonic space, we have the experience of elements of that space moving around..

This is interesting from a traditional compositional point of view:  The harmonic make up of a moment has to do with the sum of all sounds.. but here harmony gets spacialized.  We have harmony that comes out of a kind of modalism, as in Jazz, where parts move in and out of key, in such a way to suggest alternative harmonic structures.  When this takes place in space our notion of harmony is shifted.

Another thing that might be worth touching on is microtonalism.  Conventionally 99.9% of all the music you ever heard in your life is based on a 12 tone equal temperament system.  Working with microtonalism means that we leave conventional harmonic / melodic stuff behind.  Where this is perhaps most interesting comes at the subject of tonal and atonal music.  Atonalism and tonalism are like these two monsters movements in music history.  One of the ways I use microtonalism is to create a music that has a kind of figure ground ambiguity in relationship to tonalism and atonalism.

So this is how it works:  Serial atonalism is sorta an atonal convention, where you could avoid creating a tonal center via not repeating a note until the other 11 notes have played, as well as not emphasizing a note over the others.  From a process perspective composing atonal music this way can feel a little like a mathematical exercise.  But one could interpret this pattern as “maximizing the length of time before a note is repeated.”  If you are working in a microtonal tone space, where perhaps you’re dealing with 72 or more notes, one can maximize the time before repeating a note without bothering to think about it too much. Further, you could compose traditional tonal music.. diatonic harmony style… but then bend the pitches around microtonal wise, so that what you would hear is like tonal music on acid.. ultimately atonal.. but in such a way that you could perceive it as ether tonal or atonal.  In this way you are exploring where certain traditional ideas about music, musical composition, and music theory, break down.

The notion of figure ground ambiguity is another theme we pick up.  In part we are saying that context provides meaning, both in terms of time, and in terms of harmony..  reality is in some sense a constructed thing, and we are exploring how reality gets constructed.  We have multiple pathways through the music, each with moments that can be interpreted in one or another way, so that one could listen to the same track multiple times and hear it differently each time.. 

The problems with Indra’s net

Indra’s Net was produce on a cheap / free laptop.  Yuck!  Which adversely effects things.  The bigger issue is the head phones I was working with:  The head phones give you a full dynamic range, plus they make higher frequency noises sound louder then they are.  This latter point has the advantage of giving a more acute sense of spacial location while mixing, but there’s also a down side:  You tend to mix sounds in such a way that they are not as loud as you might other make them, since you are living in a fuller dynamic range, and because certain things sound louder then they are.  The results was certain elements of the production endoing up sounding too quite / you are not able to hear them on certain systems.  The last problem of Indra’s Net is, because the lap top I created it on had no disk space, all the track got rendered out as MP3 files.  Latter I’d try to render the tracks out of Cubase as uncompressed files, but some of the renderings didn’t work since different versions of Cubase where used and some of the effects of older versions where not present in newer version of Cubase.

So to correct these problems I loaded the files into audio programs and rendered them out louder and with more dynamic compression.. making them finally loud enough.  The trouble was that the origional files I was working from where MP3 files, making them sound a little crummy in some places.

Further Reading on Indra’s Net

Around the time I created Indra’s Net (a long long time ago) I blogged about its creation and ideas.  Here are some links to those old entries:

• Thinkers and Indra’s Net: Arthor Schopenhaur

• Inventing a New Music

• A Most Terrible Happening (More Stuff on the Net of Indra Project)

• More Future Thinking in the (Sound?) Work of Matt

• A Modest Evolution in the Indra’s Net Project

• Indra’s Net Notes Part 2: Electric Metal

• Indra’s Net Essay (part 1)

• Indra’s Net.. to come out in SACD format (someday)

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

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

So some notes about Reason 4:

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

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

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

Well I think Jeffry puts it best:

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

Latter that night:

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

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

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