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

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

What is this “social media” you speak of? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tales of a miscellaneous niche 

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

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

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

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

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

Matt’s Interests 

Just for the record, what is Matt Interested in?

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

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

Miscellaneous Niche Strategery

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

A couple days latter:

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

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

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

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

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

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

The difficult feeling of an artist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Music Production Adventures

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

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

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

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

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

A shape forms

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

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

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

Online Music Marketing

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

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

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

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

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

Adobe has announced new versions of there Creative Suits…  You can see video presentations of all there new software at tv.adobe.com. What I’ll be talking about in this post is stuff relating to what I’m sorta evaluating.. which is the Web Premium Bundle.. and After Effects CS4. On that note, lets start with some of the videos…

Adobe Web Premium CS4: 

As you might expect from adobe.. the video lies.. (I say this due to my past bad experience with Adobe… ) The video lies in that it suggests that Indesign is a part of the Web Premium Bundle.. and it is not!

My bad Adobe Experience

I thought I had posted on this.. but haven’t been able to find the post so.. here’s the deal:

I went to buy the web bundle.. but um.. the adobe site wasn’t real clear.. bad usability, and all that.. which is sorta ironic for a company building design tools! So I bought the wrong bundle by accident…  I was on the phone with Adobe on 4 ceperate occasions trying to streighten it all out.. each conversation had me moving between various people to talk to.. each seemed to take upwards of an hour.. an it seemed that nearly everyone was giving me a different story…  the long and the short of it was.. I don’t know if I’ve been refunded yet for the wrong bundle! And if you ask me it’s all about what’s bad with Adobe…. and this video being misleading is just more of the same!

On the Subject of the Bundle 

I wrote this post around the time I bought the bundle.. and provides some reasonably good background on the subject.

Web Standards

The problem with the bundle.. well it feels a little bit like Adobe “doesn’t get it.” One of the biggest revolutions in the world of web design has been Web Standards.. we design sites in such a way to separate out content, presentation, and behavior..  and introduce graceful degradation..  If this is done right.. then whatever you’re using to view the site.. be it IE, FireFox.. your PDA, iPhone.. if you have accessibility issues so there’s a voice synth speaking out the page.. whatever..  it will work on your platform in the most ideal-ish sorta way.

The trouble with the Adobe software has been that it does not enable this sorta industry standard development practices…. The learning curve nessisary to doing this kind of development is great.. and you’d like tools to help with that.. Not only that but.. “designers” tend to think visually.. and so you’d like tools that allow you to think visually.. as a pose to think code.. in terms of working out a design.. from a process perspective.. and blah blah blah.

Adobe has been… about 6 years late to the standards party? And you know.. on the internet things move really really fast.. so I don’t think there’s any reasonable excuse for this.. In any event.. Fireworks.. which is a web graphics orientated program.. will now spit out standards compliant code.. which is a groovy thing.. and Dreamweaver looks like.. they’ve done a number of thing to help with a standards based work flow.. so I am digging that.

Dreamweaver.. as of CS3, introduce the AJAX Spry framework.. This allows you to, via WYWYG, put together AJAX stuff. AJAX is.. how web applications are made, basically.. It’s kind of a way of using XHTML, JavaScript, CSS, XML, and server stuff.. to do certain kinds of stuff.. lets say. AJAX is a groovy technology and all.. but it is not without problems.. though it should be said that, as with most technologies, the problem is not so much the technology as how the technology is used…  and um… the problem with the Spry framework.. is it is much less then best practices… in how it does its things.. 

My feeling is.. I’d like to see the software get better at standards out of the box.. but at least its headed in that direction.. if at an unforgivably slow pace…. and I really need to get my hands on the software before I can really judge these things too well. 

Flash CS4

Flash CS4 is the most compelling part, at least for me personally, to the Web Premium bundle upgrade:

Flash has ALWAYS been the best tool for web based animation.. trouble is.. not a hell of a lot has happened to Flash, as far as animation is concerned.. since like.. Flash 5… we are talking the last tech bubble here! Most of the excitement in the Flash platform, since version 5.. and including version 5… has been all about the developer side of Flash.. and since FLEX is were a serious Flash developer would turn.. you’d hope you’d see better design and animation tools in Flash.. and indeed, we are now seeing them.

The new feature of being able to modify different parameters individually.. be it transparency, scale, its location on the screen.. being able to modify motion curves…  in a rather After Effects-esk way. This will revolutionize how I work with Flash.. and it’ll do this, really, on a process level.. which is a very deep thing. 

But Adobe didn’t stop there! They finally gave us IK (Inverse Kinematics.) Basically we are talking about Bones here.. which is a core feature of character animation in 3D graphics. This is also a very big thing for animation.

If all this isn’t enough.. we get some kind of a new 3D tool..  It didn’t look all that impressive from the presentation.. though I didn’t think the any of the Flash stuff looked all that impressive in the presentations.. unless you kinda knew what was going on…  I mean they were using a very boring project for there examples.. but this could be a very cool thing to.

PhotoShop CS4

There’s a lot of new stuff in Photoshop that looks interesting.. New ways of dealing with camera RAW.. the ability to bring 3D objects into PhotoShop and paint directly on them..  There’s bad news that Photoshop will not be 64-bit on the Mac.. which is a big downer.. but Adobe claims there new way of using your graphics card will more then make up for that.. This, as we say in the biz, is spin…  

Sound Booth CS4

Sound Booth is new to the Web Premium bundle. I do a lot of music production.. and for a lot of what Sound booth does.. I have better apps.. However.. it does have some spectral editing abilities.. which I would really love to play with.. and Sound Booth is more geared to working inside of this kind of media production environment.. as a pose to music production more generally.

I think it’s nice they put Sound Booth in.. for anyone who’s doing Flash.. I think sound in Flash isn’t really good enough.. I mean Flash projects don’t have enough attention paid to sound.. and this ought to help that a little bit.

After Effects CS4

Here’s the After Effects video:

So what do you think of that? Let me take you through it…

Mobile Us 

First we have a tool for creating content for multiple mobile platforms. My first impression was “Why are you putting this into after effects?” I mean.. After Effects isn’t a video editing tool.. it’s a special effects, motion graphics, animation, compositing type tool….  If I’m creating stuff in After Effects… that stuff’s next stop is a video editing program… before it’s final output.

Now ok.. this is a little complicated but..  what are you creating content for? What percentage of content is purely for mobile platforms? What I mean is.. that same content, don’t you probably want to stick it on youtube, or some other online distribution platform? If that’s the case.. you want to render stuff out of After Effects at the resolution of.. well the highest resolution you’re making your stuff for. As a result.. when you render stuff out of After Effects.. you’re not going to be saving on render times.. by aiming at smaller resolution platforms..  

The only thing I will say on behalf of this new feature is.. having guides that tell you when and where stuff in your frame is going to be cut out of on a target platform.. is very important.

Search

This is a very interesting part of the Adobe Suites… Basically.. there’s meta data that follows media through out the system.. and this is a fairly central part of the search. This is quite revolutionary stuff.. but.. if After Effects is you’re only Adobe Video / Production sorta program..  of what use is it to you anyway?

In my studio Final Cut Studio is where I work with video. When it comes to music production, that might have something to do with a scoring video… that’s taking place in Digital Performer, Ableton Live, Reason.. etc. None of this stuff will carry that meta data…  So for folks in this position.. you’re basically waiting a few years to see if Adobe’s stuff.. gets adopted by a wider echo system of developers.

I’m basically working on.. . lets call it the pro side of the DIY spectrum… what this means is I don’t often have an actual production team… and the process of inputting the meta data into this system..  will likely be neglected in most cases.. particularly if the pay off is lost as soon as I start working in one of those non Adobe products! Though apparently some of the Adobe stuff will turn audio speaking into text for the meta data… 

Matt’s Choice

Price 

The Web Premium bundle will now set you back $1700… and the upgrade (which is what I’d be buying) goes for $600. After Effects $1000 for the full, and $300 for the upgrade. That, at least in my world, is not chicken feed.

Economic Considerations 

You know.. there’s a couple things here..

1. The economy is slowing down. What does this mean to the budding entrepreneur / whomever? It means its time to stop spending money on stuff!!! I mean if the great depression 2.0 is just around the corner? Things will hopefully not be that dyer.. but whatever you think about this sorta thing.. one wants to be careful about the choices one makes.
2. On a Personal Level… I have a limited amount of cash to live off of.. until I sell the house.. and I’d like to not sell the house till the housing market / economy is in a better position then what we find today.. So again, I gotta be careful about spending money.

CS4 Bundles thangs

A lot of people you talk to are saying “There’s a new CS4 already?” These are complex tools and its hard to keep up with it all. My situation is even worse.. cause in addition to that bundle.. I’m doing video, music production, and 3D graphics..  photography.. etc..   At $600, am I going to get my money’s worth out of the new versions?  That’s my big question mark.. I mean.. If Firework’s standards support is actually pretty good.. the Dreaweaver stuff turns out to make a difference.. Of course we expect Flash to be all that.. Having sound booth has its advantages…  The photoshop stuff could really mean something..   You know I’m just on the fence about it.

After Effects 

After Effects is another matter. I own After Effects 4.0.. which is like.. pre Mac OSX… and will not run on an Intel Mac.. So I need to drop the money on After Effects just to have an After Effects! If I was getting on After Effects CS3, I think I might be passing on this upgrade.. but as of now, there’s no question that I’m upgrading. 

Other Expenses? 

So here’s some other things I’m thinking of spend money on.. in the relatively short term

1. RAM, probably a couple hundred dollars worth
2. HD Camera, probably around $700
3. Cantor Vocal Synth $400
4. Breverb reverb: $280
5. Binarual microphone set up thing.. I think we are talking about $200
6. Laptop..  more then a grand
7. If I go with such a laptop.. add $500 for time capsule 

 Out side of this.. There’s the possibility of other software upgrades…  and can I afford those?

Day’s latter:

 Hmm.. I think I should just post this as is.

So recently I’ve been reconnecting, a bit, with folks from my college days at Mass Art.. and in the Studio of Interrelated media program.. with an interest in checking out folks work.. Which brings us to todays subject of Mr. Bobby Abate.

I believe I first met Mr. Abate while I was in the August Studio Program at Mass Art.. This is a program for high school students.. where you take a bunch of classes for the month of August.. it was an amazing time, living in the Dorms.. I met him and a girl he was hanging with.. while smoking butts outside the dorm.. just sorta randomly.. and ended up doing something that night.. don’t quite remember what.

Any who.. Bobby was a brilliant Artist.. I mean he just made a lot of really amazing work.. and what do you know.. his work’s still quite great.. and he’s one of the folks from that time who’s still very serious about his artist’s pursuits… 

So here’s a Youtube video of his I really liked:

One of the thing’s that struck me sorta funny about this video is.. he mentions Tony Oursler as  the guy who got the funding he was trying to get.. What I thought was sorta funny about that is that Tony was the video professor at Mass Art while we were there..  Tony is often hailed as one of the top 5 or so video artst’s to come out of the US ever.. so pretty stiff competition, right? But also this video makes me think of Tony’s work.. in that you have this kind of degradation of video in a way that calls attention to it’s video-ness in a way very similar to Tony’s work.. a sort of similar aesthetic..  Though clearly Bobby Abate’s work is.. well I want to say more erotically charged? And um.. has a certain dangerous quality in that and.. well lots of stuff really.

You can see more of his work at his official website.. sweetkitty.com, brilliant stuff. 

I should maybe close on.. in reference to the video.. I don’t actually know a heck of a lot about the art world today. My carrier vision has always been about searching for new existential / asymmetric relationships to the market place.. but.. working out the art world part.. is something to do.. as I tend to want to go down rather serious avant guard -ish paths.. In any event.. you look at how Brilliant his work is.. and… well shouldn’t he be in a very high stratosphere?

Ok, well here it is

The full sized version can be found on flickr over here. You probably want to look at the full size version to properly evaluate it. I myself still don’t know what I think.. when do I ever?

I basically look at it as a first step and exploring a direction that.. well I have another post in draft form.. that talks about it a bit.. but.. ok, screw it, let me give you some of the challenges:

I want to combine fine art and commercial.. a fundamental difference between the two could be described as.. fine art being about expression where as commercial art is about communication… and has to do with.. whatever the goals of the business objectives are… Strangely.. (expression has to do with the goals of the expresser.. if business is an amplification of natural processes.. and social media takes us closer to the humanness, so to speak.. you can see why this sort of approach might make sense in a social media context) the process of this project is one of “we’ll figure out our goals along the way.”

So I suppose it’s like a kind of cubism.. you can view it as art or as commercial art, right? I say cubism in the sense that in cubism you have multiple views of the same object in the same image.. so to speak.

Commercial Objectives 

The goal is to refine our objectives.. At the current state of things.. this is a flyer for a friend.. who’s putting them up around town, so to speak, to help promote my stuff..

My feeling about it is.. that this project…  well you want your campaign efforts to be coordinated and thought out.. and this is kinda thrown together..  but basically we’d like folks to check out the site and down load the music. Beyond that there’s branding… and we are telling people something about our selves.

How I sorta conceptualize it

The first thing I want is for it to be visually compelling. Is it? That’s the first thing I want you to respond to. Why? It’s a brand value… And its a brand value that has a very particular importance in my brand. And so.. I basically want it to act as a painting first.. and then as you get absorbed into the painting.. you start getting the messages. That’s what we hope anyway.

So it operates in a way that’s different from like.. poster design…  although it is somewhat modeled after the psychedelic posters of the 60s.. that’s an influence anyway.. as well as the art around the rave scene of like.. the 90s..  and other strange things..

So.. lets say you’re like “Ok, this is pretty groovy visually.” You get the name of the site pretty quick.. and then you get.. ok.. its free electronic music..  

There’s “the Mystic Prophet Philosopher shtick.” 

Latter, next day:

So I quickly whipped up some stickers:

Again I’m not sure about the one above… It was whipped up so fast..  

I kinda dig this one. 

Feedback

I haven’t been real sure about these designs..  For the flyer design.. I posted a link on flickr with a request for feed back.. here are a couple of the responses I got:

@hbeeinc @MattSearles re:flyet - that’s just about the busiest thing i’ve seen for a long time. also is it supposed to be “world of the know … 

@djcitymaus @MattSearles flyer is cool. but i don’t know about the little matts inside the head of the big matt. uh, does that make sense? 

NewApeV @MattSearles AHHHHHHHH!!! Dude, this is PURE 100% AWESOME!!! Seriously! The text sort of mirrors your musical feel and that pic..

NewApeV @MattSearles …that pic makes you look 10 years younger, too! ;

Many thanks for the feedback..  As you can see, it’s perhaps not real easy to communicate much about a visual work via twitter but…   

Matt Responds to Feedback 

To Paul’s point (hbeeinc).. 

I’m not sure if he was saying it was “too busy” or not.. though I have gotten that comment from other’s..  and others have said it’s not too busy..  so perhaps its busyness is an issue, or at least something to think about? What I will say about the busyness is..  

I think the busyness.. relates to the communications issue.. which is something I think I need to work on.. You have a lot of things competing for your attention.. and as a result I don’t think it works in certain contexts. Another words.. in modern web design ultra clean simplicity is a big trend.. a long term one at that.. and a reason for that is usability.. people fly through websites so fast.. that it really needs to communicate in a kind of billboard kinda way.. quick, fast.. no time to contemplate… 

So.. I think if you’re helping me put these things up..  You probably want that flyer.. or perhaps printed as a sticker.. up in places where people are sitting around and waiting.. have a chance to look at it for a while.. say like at a buss stop or something… As a pose to some place where they’re moving buy quickly.

I’m not sure what Paul was getting at with if it was supposed to be “world of the known,” when I first got his tweet I a looked at it I went “oh shit, I think I fucked up.” When doing these kinds of designs.. / signs.. its incredibly easy to screw up spelling.. or have things where you word it all wrong..  Further.. I’m not 100% on the language.. but.. it is a rush job so..  as we say in the Bush administration “good enough for government work.” … (And we hope Billy Bob Neck doesn’t object to that too much)…

[editors note: After looking things over Matt ws surprised to see that the word “world” is miss spelled in the first sticker.. just where Paul seemed to find the problem in the flyer.. which leaves Matt feeling baffled and.. well creepy mystical feeling] 

>>> [Editor’s note part 2: After posting this, Matt found the issue] 

To DJ City Maus’s point.

This could be one of those subjective things..  I like the little Matt in the big Matt cause I think it’s sorta disturbing looking..  like a screwed up face.. flesh somehow horribly disfigured…  

There’s also a “conceptual continuity” thing going on here… Perhaps we could call it fractal reality? It is eastern philosophy stuff.. the idea that.. who are you really? That the ultimate answer to that mystery is to say.. that in every grain of sand is the universe, in you is the universe…  

To New Ape V / Evan Pew’s Point:

My theory of this whole process is that there’s an organic unity to the whole thing that happens on an “expressive level.” I mean.. the same sorta impulses that are diving the design / painting are driving the music..  so there’s a unity to the whole that you don’t get when Led Zeppelin doesn’t do there own album art… and this is sorta central to what I’m doing and what I think is exciting about what I’m doing, assuming I can meet the challenges of all this.

Ok, this post drags on a little too long I think..  so lets end it here. 

So, a we bit ago.. I was.. well doing my blog entry.. Part 1 of programming Native Instruments Massive Synthesizer.. And it was after publishing that that a fair reader made a suggestion to me… that I do a screen cast… that this kind of information would be better communicated via a screen cast.. and so I set about doing such a thing.

Thanks to Mac Heist.. I now own Snapz Pro.. which is a pretty groovy screen capture program, or so I’m told.. But then Mr. Greg Bond, of Consumer2Business.com, suggested I try a program called Screenflow. And while screen flow looked super awesome.. particularly for what I is up to.. As I explained to Mr. Bond, I indeed am a very cheap person and.. well long story short I haven’t gotten a chance to check out Screenflow.. in terms of actually using it.. but clearly it’s feature set is..  kinda, probably, better for what I is trying to do.. not that I’ve used Snapz enough to have a clue.

I want to say it was Steve Albanese of Tutorial Depot whom turned me on to Snapz.. Tutorial Depot, at least at the moment, focuses in on creating video cast tutorials for various music technology stuff.. I was going to do stuff with Steve on Reason.. till I fell horribly off the… dependability wagon.. which wasn’t helped by my mom’s passing.. 

 A few latter (after doing some grocery shopping):

In any event.. I’ve wanted to do screen casting / make tutorials for.. well probably for more then a decade…  And so this project represents my first experimental swing in that direction.

Unreliable Narration 

If I were to start a company to do this.. it would probably be called something, something, something, unreliable narrations. There’s a few reasons for this:

I value the art more then the technical… consequently the.. lets call it the creative / aesthetic / philosophical / whatever.. part of my work is uber advanced.. where as the technical is.. Well its not even that my work isn’t technically sophisticated.. err, this is probably complex to try and explain but.. well the evolution of my technical sophistication is subordinated to the creative / aesthetic / philosophical.. meaning it drives it.. the “shape” of the technical evolution, in terms of the lines that articulate where we find sophistication versus where we don’t.. is driven by this.. which is different then approaching a tool and seeking a technical mastery as your primary objective?

This gets into a very complex idea in my philosophical system… which I used to call “the order of revelation,” which is an expressive of.. your particular moral order.. in the Nietzschian sense.. Which is to say a kind of hierarchy of wills.. expresses an influence over where our attention is directed.. this has to do with.. the limits of the human mind.. in essence we could say the “order of revelation” is defined by the underlying questions that are driving us.. to put it a certain way.. that is our awareness is driven by these questions.. consciously or not.

The order of revelation is what constructs our awareness of reality.. our framework for understanding reality.. for interacting with reality.. It has lots of psycho-social dynamic implications.. has a huge influence over social hierarchies..

That’s a kind of quick overview of the subject.. what this means in terms of how I approach art making.. and a host of other things is.. the lines that articulate what I view as “the area of stuff I must master” is very individualistic to me… and radically so. So radical that.. from conventional view points.. you could say I’m “ass backwards.” So, if I do a tutorial on sound synthesis with Massive..

Latter that day:

On the Subject of Experimentation

Experimentation is a good way to explore stuff.. It’s often a matter of.. we are more interested in developing our ability to do something, then in making that something great. It’s not quite a total madness of experimentation, it’s experimentation subordinated to goals:

I have a primary goal of.. what sorta screen casts I might like to make.. Here are some basic things:

• Good production values: Screen casts, even by great folks, are sorta notorious for not having groovy production values.. Now just what constitutes “groovy production values” in an interesting subject.. and around this subject I want to experiment.
• Personality: So often screen cast tutorials are.. without personality..  ”You aren’t excited to be here, are you?” you want to say the the person doing it.. Even if there personality is.. if not great, at least not boring you to death… there’s the question of “would I want to be like the person giving the tutorial? I think this is a key nexus point between personal branding and.. well the tutorial.. I mean.. wouldn’t you like to learn from someone who’s coming from some place interesting? Wouldn’t you like to learn X, Y, or Z from someone who’s brilliant on the subject? 

Unreliable Narration revisited

Ok.. allow me to kinda break this up here… Didn’t Matt just say, only a few paragraphs back.. well he was talking about this notion of the “unreliable narrator,” right? A premise of the tutorial I’m doing is “I don’t actually know what I’m doing, and yet I’m making a tutorial on it.” Why in hell would you want to learn from someone who doesn’t know what your teaching? This is not someone who is brilliant at X, Y, and Z!!! Or is he?

Hopefully.. you’d dig me as a sound artist.. you listen to my music..  and you’re like “holy shit, this is amazing.” Even if you don’t actually think my music is amazing.. if you at least respect it enough to go “yeah, that dude is the real thing” then.. I’m not in the category of “those who can’t: teach.” This onto its self puts me on another level. 

What you’re getting in the tutorial is.. “how that crazy guy makes that music.” A part of what you learn from the tutorial is “It’s ok to not know what the hell you’re doing,” and “not knowing what you’re doing does not necessarily have to keep you from making great work.” All of which brings us to a complicated series of philosophical points that.. we wont talk about here today.

Beyond this.. as much as I say “I don’t know what I’m doing” there is, I hope, a sense that you’re still dealing with a heavy weight. The guy doing the tutorial.. he’s like.. an interesting cat..  and though he doesn’t know what he’s doing in the sense that.. the particular technical issues of whatever it is that he’s doing is a mystery to him.. he does know what he’s doing on a number of other levels.. and even if he’s a total… and even if he’s tell you “how to do it the wrong way” we find that this somehow is an adventure worth doing.

Ok, so on with our Goals of experimentation:

• There is the basic question of “how do we make a great screen cast.” I mean what constitutes one? What are the craft issues I need to develop? I have a certain idea about these sorts of things.. but those ideas versus.. what’s it take for me to achieve it.. is another matter.. 
• I want to create something where.. we get both the creative and the technical together.. because this just doesn’t happen enough…   

Next Morning Sometime

Ok, lets end on this:

Business Cases and Potential Implications

As I sit here typing this out I’m hyped on this project. I’m very smart on this social media stuff, and yet at least up until this current moment, haven’t really felt like I’ve quite done anything that would show this…  The screen cast project is text book social media strategy stuff..  I wont go far into this but.. A typical value of creating a blog or a podcast, for the creator, is that it helps establish the creator as an expert. One route to the monetization of social media has to do with leveraging the value of expert status. So if I go out and create a lot of screen casts tutorials.. I could develop a reputation along these lines.

An odd thing about my screen casts is that.. they are all about Matt doing things “his way.” In a certain essential kind of way.. These screen casts a part of showing you how I work.. how I make the stuff I make. In this sense they have a public relations kinda value.. They are all about my work, after all.. and by going through them you’d gain a special appreciation for my work. These screen casts are a kind of advertisement for my work: People will very often go to some place like Youtube to learn how to do X. If I make content that’s valuable to a person wanting to know how to do X.. They then, kinda sorta, meet me and my personal brand. This person is a person who’s perhaps more likely to appreciate my work since they are.. at least in some sense.. a kind of peer in the field.. they are kinda close to a target demographic.. This person, as a part of learning whatever.. learns how I do it.. and about what I do.. and my work.. 

Why I’m feeling excited 

I’ve really only started what’s likely to be a long process of producing my first screen cast.. but already there are a few things becoming obvious to me.

1. I’m very good at teaching.. I’m very good at breaking down complex ideas into simple ideas.. helping you digest stuff.
2. I’m really passionate about what I do.
3. I really want to empower my audience to greatness.. 
4. There is some sense that.. as crazy as I may or may not be.. and as much as I might not even know what I’m doing.. there really is a kind of weight to these presentations.. something you feel.. something kinda brilliant
5. The casts are very much off the cuff.. kinda stream of consciousness stuff.. so there’s a real realness to them.. an energy.. a humanity.. 
6. A lot of the stuff you find for music production.. the screen casts are like “look how cool I am.” They seem, at least to me, to be arrogant dicks.. and you’re like “dude, you’re really not that great, you just understand a particular basic thing.” The casts I make are humble and without pretensions.. they are all about wanting to empower you.. and share passion with you.. They want to show you amazing things.. 
7. In the end, assuming I actually follow through on this project, the casts will cover a lot of territory.. everything from music production to video to animation to interactive to social media to whatever.. Err, I’ll have to dig deeper into this one..

I’ll end on this:

I never know how to describe what I do.. because I do so many different things.. and that’s probably what’s most impressive about me. What I seek to do is to empower you to do something remarkable… which has to do with how I’m re-conceptualizing the future of the arts and media.. business wise. This is the organizing principle, or a significant one.. behind my skill sets.. and what I could likely teach.. if I do so.. it could be revolutionary as a program.. I may blog more on this latter… 

Latter that night 

Im tired… must sleep, will post this as is… not sure how I feel about it, but what the hell

[Editors note, the following was started last saturday]  

Ok.. so so much for back in the saddle action, ha? 

As I write… well it’s a “tax holiday” in Massachusetts… which means no sales tax, which means Matt’s on a shopping spree… of course today is only day one of said weekend.. so lets take a quick look at the fun new stuff.

#1 Electric Bass:

It’s a Fender.. a fretless no less. I was just playing different basses that were vaguely in my price range when this one came up and bit me.. It plays rather well, and the fretless thing didn’t seem that difficult to deal with.. so I was a happy camper.

Getting a bass is resonant with many meanings and implications for me.. but right now it seems to be like my new favorite thing to do.. just play around on it. I’m sure there will be more on this subject in not too much time.

#2 ReCycle:

I think ReCycle is a little over priced, and ought to come with Reason.. Of course I haven’t played with it yet, and playing with it could change my tune. For those not in the know.. what ReCycle is mainly about is slicing and dicing audio files.. turning them into sliced up loops.. the slicing allows the sample to be played at whatever tempo or pitch.. that these things can be handled independently… none of which is really that compelling these days.. but the REX file type.. which is what you create with ReCycle… well that’s the main thing you’re buying it for.. And REX does allow for some creative loop manipulation that’s a good deal of fun.

In practice, as I understand it, ReCycle is a great way to.. kinda mine your record collection.. for loops. I’m.. not big into working that way as.. there’s the copy right issues.. but I do have a lot of work of my own that could be sliced and diced and turned into something new.. and I like the idea of working in that sorta way.

Further.. I’ve been feeling inspired, as of late, to create synthetic drum sounds.. and perhaps make loops out of them.. and the whole notion of spending more time customizing my sounds is very appealing to me.

#3 A DAT: Ok, if you didn’t know, DAT stands for Digital Audio Tape…  So I bought a DAT recorder.. not because I plan to record anything with it.. but because I have old DATs with my music on them.. from College.. and buying a DAT is the only way to get that old work onto disk. The DAT only cost me $90 used.. and I can probably sell it for.. $50 without too much trouble.. or perhaps even a little more.. 

#4 A 24″ HD monitor: This would be my second monitor.. This particular monitor has a swivel to it so you can use it in horizontal or vertical mode.. has HDMI.. and is a bit of a USB hub.. More monitors = greater productivity. I haven’t gotten a chance to try it out yet.. for reasons we won’t go into here.. but OMG does it feel amazing having the two monitors on this desk here.

#5 Art Tablet: Lets face it, drawing with a mouse on a computer blows… When you use an art tablet you start to realize how much of how you use a mouse is a compensation for the failings of the mouse.

All this stuff has been, more or less, on the budget for the last.. 6 or more months.. stuff I’ve planned.. or whatever. To jump out and buy all this stuff all at once is quite a rush.. and I’m sorta feeling like.. well like I wish I wasn’t buying it all at once…. and yet, given that tomorrow is more tax holiday.. I’m thinking of buying more.

More?

• I’m thinking about getting an HD video camera.. 

 [Editors note: Matt didn’t really end up buying anything the next day]

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.

1.  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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

So yeah.. those are some thoughts

[editors note: This is yet another one of them unpublished blog entries.. it’s a long one.. that never real gets to what it aims to get to be about.. this idea for a “new super metal.” Think of it as part one, or like a fragment of a larger idea. ] 

My process, at the moment.. at least in some areas, is more about thinking then doing… and at the moment this involves an awful lot of research related to sound studio tools. As wee speak, in fact, I find myself gong through about 4 or 5 years worth of Sound On Sound magazines.. SOS being a music production orientated mag… and um.. checking out various web sites and just.. doing a lot of poking around.. and I suppose in all of this I’ve only started to do my research.

It’s probably not a good idea to dream too much about what you could do with a tool.. till you actually have the tool.. as.. well dreams and realities in this area can be two very different things.. but none the less, one of the things I’m dreaming about is the notion of creating a new “super metal.” Allow me to try and explain this.

I make a kind of experimental electronic music. At this point in the story of this, I’m interested in exploring different sorts of processes as a part of my productions… That said.. there are certain processes that are sorta like foundational elements of how I work. I call them foundational because.. its as if when ever you do anything.. you develop muscles by which you can do that thing better.. perhaps more efficiently.. perhaps whatever..  

In my production process, one of the strongest muscles I have has to do with programing the performances of various instruments and effects… indeed the mix to. This muscle is very very strong.. but also very limited in the scope of what it can do. A part of exploring new processes is about broadening the scope of this muscle.

It’s looking to me like Melodyne will fit into this process in a rather exquisite sorta way… Allow me to speak of this.

For starters… when the new version comes out.. it looks like you’ll be able to sequence audio in more or less the same way I do with MIDI now…. err, kinda sorta. But to put it simply.. if you can change the pitches, and where the notes fit time wise.. well, I can build guitar performances the same way I can build any other sorta performance.. for any other sort of instrument.

The history of MIDI as a part of the electronic music production environment is one that is dominated by keyboards as you’re controller.. Most people will play a keyboard into there computer, edit there performance.. and that will be how they work. I, on the other hand, program from scratch. While I’d love to work in a process that starts with a keyboard performance.. the truth is that I’m not much of a keyboard player. One can be not much of a keyboard player, and still use ones keyboard playing as the basis of a production.. and so rather effectively.. but this is a process I have yet to really explore.

Now.. if you can take a guitar performance and basically edit it the same as you would a MIDI performance.. well, exploring the possibilities of using my guitar playing as the basis of a production.. starts to make a lot of sense. Further, because you can convert the audio to MIDI, to then control various instruments.. well now we are entering a world where.. in a lot of ways, working this way might make a lot of sense.

As a guitarist I’m.. I have very good technical chops. Indeed I could be a regular guitar hero.. accept that I’m not really a “whole guitar player.” What I mean by this is.. basically I have other things to do then play guitar all the time..  so my guitar playing has a lot of flawed areas, never mind that it’s perhaps not growing as much as I’d like. But the thing is.. if I can compensate via sequencing type editing of my guitar performances? Well now we’ve got some really interesting possibilities.

The commercial issues of metal versus my experimental electronic music

From my point of view there is the issue of commercial potential. The kind of electronic music I made is, basically, a kind of “serious electronic music” which doesn’t fit into a popular form too terribly well. I can imagine it being popular.. but it does carry a lot of challenges with it. A significant part of those challenges is simply that.. it doesn’t fit into any known genera which really complicates marketing…

Heavy metal, on the other hand, is one of the most popular music forms going.. It’s a much larger market, and it’s a much easier market to reach. 

Another interesting element is.. I don’t really know that much about the electronic music market, electronic music genres, the history of it.. or anything really… So I’m at a real disadvantage. Metal, on the other hand, is something I know very well… even if I’m not totally up on what’s new in Metal.

What I’d do with Metal

One of the things that’s really important to me is that my music have a lot of integrity..  The notion of moving to metal because the commercial potential is better might sound a little like selling out…. but there’s no reason that that has to be the case…

Another interesting point is that my interest in electronic music.. started out with a notion of exploring things that might have metal type applications… It was as if there was a certain metal aesthetic behind how I was thinking about electronic music. This was more then 10 years ago.. and I certainly have evolved but… there is this strange way where the structural thinking of my stuff has certain metal kinds of things behind it. How about some examples…

What I want you to take note of in this is..  The way its a kind of heavy metal roller coaster ride.. the technical sophistication / demands of the music.. It might also be worth noting that we see harmonic minor modalism going on in here… both the roller coaster and the harmonic minor modalism I take to further extremes in my music… you could think of my stuff as almost like megadeth on steriods in a certain sense:

 Not that I’m the biggest Metalica fan at this point.. but here’s Metallica at a similar stage.. Note the changes.. again roller coaster ish metal

Of course… what I’m thinking of doing is a little more candy coated…

[editors note: Matt wishes you could hear the line “just who’s mystic am I anyway” a little better.. sorta fits into the conceptual continuity of the blog, ya know?] 

Of course, I plan to be “a little” more creepy… as unlike Manson, I shall be presenting serious philosophical challenges to civilization as we know it. Err, and did I mention I want to be explicit about corrupting you’re children? (too complex a topic to go into here.) The other thing to make me more creepy is I tend to indentify more with God.. which is a hell of a lot more scary then Satan!

Another type of Candy: 

So what do you think, to much compression in there production style? I’ve always thought these fellows where a little too candy coated:

Ok.. so lets cut the BS, ha? Lets see something much closer to where I’m coming from… how about this? (No one does slayer like these guys!)

I think there’s a lot to the Metal genera to be critical of.. cliché’s up the ying yang.. a kind of stupid pose..  A way the form often has more to do with low budget commercial conceptions then anything like “art” or creative possibilities.

I suppose the metal quality to my work might be something like.. a surface glaze?

Much Latter:

Ok, well lets talk about my metal, lets see if we can get to it.. cause I’ve been working on the design for.. geeze, a good 15 years or so?

There’s a kind of starting point.. and then there’s how it stretches out into abstraction. See, as you no doubt know, metal starts in rock, and rock starts in blues and… well metal also starts in Jazz.. but… 

So I start out in minor chord progressions.. the “minor” quality and abstract into synthetic scales.. which is sorta.. well welcome guitar geek-dom, right? Well music theory geek-dom anyway. I’ve mention in the above Megadeth track.. that there was “harmonic minor modalism” going on.. modalism is probably most often associated with Miles Davis.. and harmonic minor comes from classical.. It’s what gives the Megadeth it’s middle eastern flavor.

Modalism, really, is a kind of..  lets call it “a tactical response to the challenges of improvisation.” 

[editors note: So Matt sorta stopped writing around this point, which is probably where things would have likely gotten interesting.. *sigh* and then there was this other fragment that he was going to try to integrate into the flow latter on.. well, lets have the fragment] 

Well it starts with Ozzy actually. When I was first starting to listen to music / explore music.. Ozzy was one the first bit of music I found that was like..  I’d listen to endlessly… and it was also some of the first stuff I started playing on the guitar.

 [editors note: And that’s where it ends, just like that.]