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. 

Ok, this is a somewhat long-ish story.. the story of Matt’s recent woes.. from anxiety, career, money, banks, and what not to.. well lets say stuff..  which will eventually lead us into my most recent trip to guitar center, the buying of the Liquid Mix 16, and then into the current music production project… 

It all started last Sunday. I was in a sleep deprived state, and as is my way, running late to the Boston Media Makers. The Boston Media Makers is now taking place at Doyle’s Cafe in JP.. (Boston).. so it’s new media plus breakfast…  and so I needed to go to the bank to get money to fill up my gas tank, buy an energy drink, smokes, and still have enough left over for breakfast.. and then things turned ugly! 

The bank tells me I put in the wrong pin number.. a few tries latter and the ATM won’t give me the time of day. WTF I think… but being sleep deprived.. in a somewhat LSD like consciousness.. made even more LSD-ish after watching a documentary on the Beats.. who knows, maybe I did get the pin wrong?

So long story short, got Gas, smokes, and my Monster on credit, breakfast on cash… but it was a stress feast combination of sleep deprivation, running late, and.. the ATM experience. All of which fueled a little extra anxiety over how I presented myself at the media makers..  but that’s another blog entry.

[Editor’s Note: This is a long, sometimes rambling entry.. so brace your self, you hardy souls whom might actually get through it.. also to note is a certain connection between this entry, and the recent social media cool-aid entry.] 

More problems:

1. I was actually planning on buying a computer monitor, at Micro Center in Boston, with cash after the meeting… It’s the closest “good” computer store I know… or at least see if they had the Dell I wanted, what there price was.. and that sorta thing.
2. The food supply in the house was running low.. so grocery shopping had to be done soon.
3. My dad had medication that needed to be picked up from the CVS

I should maybe break off from this and explain my anxiety paranoia at this point? When my mom died I was told, by a couple aunts, not to pay the credit card bills that were my mom’s bills. Someone had talked to a lawyer about this.. and something to do with Massachusetts state law.. trouble is, I never actually talked to a lawyer.. and am kind of vague about all this.

[Editors note: Matt wanted to insert this scene from the end of THX 1138, as it seems express of the psycho reality of his situation.

You’d perhaps have to see the full movie to really appreciate the significants of this clip.. and probably need to read the rest of the blog entry to, while you were at it.. but pay attention to a certain subtext of this blog entry.. its all sorta crystalized here..] 

In any event… there’s lots of credit card companies calling the house.. I have yet to talk to any of them as.. well until I get the iPhone.. I’m a very difficult person to get in touch with via the phone.

Now the LSD like consciousness of sleep deprivation does have… well you sometimes attribute causality to things that, in reality, don’t have a causal connection. These causal connections are truths of a kind of symbolic nature.. they have something to do what’s going on in you psyche.

So what’s going on in Matt’s psyche?

This is really a subject for another time, I mean to really dig into… I will tell you that since my mom passed things have not been real easy… and that most of the uneasiness of it is not something that expresses its self consciously.. It’s kind of a complicated thing.. and I feel like blogging about it might actually be helpful to me.. or at least talking about it.. but it’s somehow hard to talk about.

All these inward tension.. they expressed them selves in the paranoid dilution that.. well I think the bank might actually be one of the creditors… so the paranoid delusion.. was there was something more to my inability to get into the bank then.. some sorta pin number problem. And with this was the fear that I wouldn’t have access to money to pay bills.. so I shouldn’t write a check till I got to the bottom of this.

On top of all that.. another expression of anxiety is a procrastination of bill paying.. so the bills are.. now in the over due column.. and one expects one’s credit is getting dinged.

Crazy is as Crazy Does 

Ok.. so allow me to stop here and try and explain a little of this.. For one thing I’ve been behind on sleep for a little while now… for another I’m being a little operatic in how I’m talking about it.. which is to say I’m amplifying the story a little.. which is not quite to say I’m not crazy.. just that.. I’m turning up the gain of a certain sorta crazy.. or perhaps on the microscope through which we are looking at it… 

[editors note: Matt’s operatic-ness, at this point in the entry, is mainly expressed through with language like “paranoid delusions,” which sorta overstates things “a bit.” And what he’s talking about is the casual connections sleep deprivation is facilitating.] 

Matt’s Plot 

Ok, so lets pull back a little and take a look at my life’s plot, and where this moment fits in it all. I’m trying to do this “artist” shtick thing. I don’t know if you’ve heard the cliche about starving artists? Well.. I don’t believe that being an artist means you have to starve.. but the cliche is at least expressive of the fact that making a living as an artist is no easy feet.. more so when you’re as uncompromising as I am.

Though I march forward in a sorta heroic-ish way.. I don’t think anyone could walk this walk without there being a lot of really huge tension over what the future might bring.. It’s really that I’m crazy enough to not let that keep me from walking this way…  [Editors note: This would be part of the significance of the THX reference] but there is still that fear that it might all come to naught.. and that perhaps all my sacrifices are in vain..  and this is a very big tension.. particularly as it interacts in a larger ecology of tensions.

Now.. if you ask me about the “objective real reality” of the situation.. I’ll tell you.. things are probably “A-Ok.” Allow me to give you reasons why things are probably “A-Ok.”

1. I’m doing the social media shtick. Why would this make things A-Ok? Well.. I’m connected / networked in with a pretty substantial crowd of folks. If you’re reading this, you might be one of said substantial folks? There’s a humanness to.. many of these connections where.. to one degree or another, we really do care about each others well being.. and.. all of us are pretty well connected, one way or another.. and the long and the short of it is.. social media is a powerful tool for finding work.
2. It is not an infrequent thing that.. I get a job lead.. or some connection leads to something. Of course I don’t put a premium on following this stuff up.. because of how focused I am trying to be on trying to do my own thing.. but the point is there is stuff out there.
3. Very sweet and wonderful people have actually come out and asked me what they could do to help. Can you dig that? For me that’s down right mind blowing.. but its true.
4. What I’m doing.. in my own adventures.. has within it’s self the idea.. that I’m putting together a skill set for a job that does not yet exist. And believe it or not I’m actually networking with people who could us those services.. even if they don’t know it yet.

Latter:

There’s more to this story… lots more.. but for the purposes of this blog entry I only want to go so far as to say that tensions can obscure this reality.. so that it doesn’t feel like things are “A-Ok” in the big picture… even if they kinda sorta are. And we could talk about this more but…

Yeah.. so imagine the fear like.. you don’t know if you’re going to be able to take care of your father or your self, that the world could be crumbling down… This kind of stress inevitably leads me into pushing harder in my work.. and my self criticism gets much worse then it sometimes can be anyway.

None of this would have been a big deal if not for.. by that monday.. there was very little food in the house.. and if not for.. I had gotten to the bank that day prior to its closing.. I didn’t realize this.. but our bank likes to close at 4PM.. in order to get there I kinda have to fight my way through my tensions over it.. and so find myself there and.. the bank closed.. and I didn’t even know there hours! And so days passed with this hanging over my head.. all of it.

Add to all this that here I am gearing up on these music projects.. and I need to go out and buy more gear! I was also planning on getting an iPhone.. still needed to buy my Podcamp ticket.. I’m not sure what else.. and all of that was.. at least in my fears, looking like it might not work out.

And the dark clouds reseed.

Well finally I did get into the bank.. did make a with drawl so I have enough cash in my pocket to run for a few weeks.. somehow the pin number.. sorta fixed, accept it still wasn’t able to use it.. so maybe I’ve somehow miss remembered it.. anyway they are sending me the numbers so I’ll have them..

That dark cloud emphasized how fragile I can feel.. way out here in starving artist vill.. and it was a crazy rough week for me.. when the clouds finally did leave.. I finally decided that it was indeed time to make my trip to Guitar Center and pick up Liquid Mix 16. This was a long deliberation.. most of which is documented in this blog.. 

But wait, there’s more! 

I couldn’t find my car keys.. and not only that but I still had grocery shopping yet to do.. I had done a little after the with drawl…  but.. now without my keys, how could I do this? It wasn’t till sometime today when I finally found the keys.. and boy do I hate doing grocery shopping on the weekends, when the places are a crowded madness.. screw that!

So I made my way over to Guitar Center, finally. Was I really going to do it?

I wish I knew these guys names more.. I told the sales guy “I’m here for the Liquid Mix 16.” His eyes sorta widened.. “That’s a great little unit.” What? Every sales guy in the pro audio department didn’t even know what it was.. nor did they know much of anything of any of the mix engineer-ish tools I had been looking for.. but this guy new it.. and was thinking of getting one for him self.

I then rattled off a number of things I had been looking for..

Ok, let me explain. Guitar Center has a thing where you pay no interest for 3 months, 6 months, a year.. depending on what mood there marketing department is in.. what this means is you can buy stuff on credit without interest payments.. which is something you can’t easily do over the internet.. and credit card interests rates being what they are.. buying on credit will add a hell of a lot to your bill.. so going to Guitar Center for the big ticket items is what makes the most sense at this point..

So a number of pieces of gear.. gear that other sales folks had never even heard of.. stuff that you often can’t find on the Guitar Center website.. he could find in the computer.. stuff that the other sales folks didn’t think they carried.

So it was pretty awesome.. I mean he could actually answer some of my questions!

Onto the Liquid Mix 16

I had read where people had had problems with instillation.. particularly with Digital Performer.. and boy have I had software problems lately..  so I was a little nervous.. but the instillation was more or less as smooth as they come.. and before you knew it, I was up and running.

Liquid Mix is… well you get a library of 40 compressors and 20 EQs. I’ve explained this ad nauseam else where in this blog.. but basically you’re getting this library of the most high class EQs and Compressors on the planet.. each of which works in slightly different ways… is good for different sorts of applications.. colors sound differently.. etc. 

The first problem you run into is.. “which should I use?” To further complicate matters.. its sorta like a hockey video game where they can’t use the names of real NHL teams.. where they can’t give you the names of the real gear you’re using.. not that that would make too much of a difference as I don’t actually know the names of the real gear anyway.. but.. if you read interviews with various mix engineers.. telling you what they use for what.. or articles on these subjects..  you’d kind of like to know what you’re dealing with… Fortunately I found an old Sound On Sound review of Liquid Mix that included the names.

The light in my room is out.. so I couldn’t actually go digging through magazines to find that recent article on mix buss compression…  but upon doing the google.. I found this blog entry.. from of all people.. Charles Dye, which covered the subject.. and recommend an SSL compressor for my master buss. (Charles is quite the sophisticated fellow for this sorta thing).

And with that I jumped in

First, you must understand that I usually make crazy music like this (click on the little arrow to hear, and yes, it is a free download.. but it’ll stream for ya fine )

Matt Searles – Offering A Hand To The Ghost

This kind of electronic music has very different sorta mixing requirements from my new experimental electronic metal thing.. I mean.. now I have to try and be “a real” mix engineer. God save us!!! And I was fearful that.. well I hear a lot of stories of the struggles folks go through when they are first starting out..

But strangely.. I felt as if I had discovered that I had a real talent for this…  upon reflection

The Start of my Mix Engineering Training: “The JP Years.” 

After college I would hang out with.. the man we call “The Doctor” aka Diggity Dave.. and Ev-on, as he sometimes refers to him self in the comments of these blog entries.. Now.. these fine upstanding citizens..  well

1. They are artists to.. and were struggling to
2. There was more alcohol and Pot going on then…  lol, good times
3. Crazy adventures were the norm.. one could become quite a fine author with the material our of those times.
4. Diggity did indeed have a stereo system with the best speakers I had ever heard in my life.. at that point.

We’d throw CDs in there.. just to see what we had been missing all these years.. and I was forever analyzing the mixes. Mind you, at the time.. I wasn’t really all that sophisticated in my mix analytic abilities.. but it was surely something.. Dave and Evan’s music tastes had a whole lot of Hip Hop going on.. classic rock.. metal, electronic stuff..  even Curtis Mayfield.. quite the eclecticism.. and I with my Zappa and assorted strange stuff… and there was Jim whom would sometimes be there.. with his punk and indy rock.. and so.. though we were all rather poor.. we were wealthy in terms of the music we were all able to hear.. and it was quite an education.

I’d just listen to those records and dream of the day I could have a chance to put one together.. and could I ever make one as good as some of the stuff we were hearing? Oh my god, so much amazing stuff!!! Seems like these days I don’t get a chance to listen to too much.. but back then, oh wow!

The electronic music Mix training:  

Ok, how about another one of my tracks?

Matt Searles – Vasperian Blogocombat

The production in this track was a little rushed.. so there’s certainly things in there I’m not totally happy with.. but there’s also a lot in there that has me feeling very proud…. that I think is sorta amazing.. the marriage of the mix and the composition.. the experience.. the scenes.. the painting of it.. to put it a certain way.

When you listen to stuff like that.. you can kind of tell I’m really thinking about the mix… even if there are huge problems here and there.. and even the problems.. its sorta like a punk rock school of mixing or something.. where we kinda consider them in a different light.. or something.

So.. my music production is kinda all about the mix, on a certain level… but the mix isn’t static.. nothing stays still. In metal.. things stay still. The guitarist stays over there.. the bass player over there… no ones moving that drum set.. so my electronic music is all about a mix that has a virtual stage that is forever in flux. I regard it much more as being about “Mix Painting” then “Mix Engineering.”

Buckling down into Metal. My god, how am I going to handle this? I didn’t know.. but I knew investing in Liquid mix would be an important step along these lines.

First Impressions on the mix metal path

The first thing you realize is that what you’re really doing, as a mix engineer, is quite subtle. No wonder those guys seem so obsesses over so many little things that I don’t think I can even hear! Being subtle is the first thing you have to get used to… That you’re really thinking in terms of a lot of subtle colorations which, hopefully, eventually lead up to a whole that is more then the sum of the parts.. 

My recent obsession with effects has been one of… well a kind of obsession with with subtleties. 

Next morning (still not really awake):

The metal I have going on right now is.. incredible

The transition from my normal experimental production and composition style.. to a metal sorta song writing thing is a huge jump. In my electronic stuff there are no rules… there certainly isn’t anything like a traditional structure.. and In Metal.. I’m not sure how traditional my structures will turn out to be.. but at least from a starting point sorta perception of things.. I need to figure out how to make my music work inside of the limitations of a popular music format.

The funny thing is.. I’m kind of an amazing heavy metal guitarist from certain perspectives. As a guitarist I’ve never been too terribly big on playing other people’s music.. I’ve maybe learned 3 such songs in my life.. but I’ve certainly learned a lot of riffs.. and what not…   The point is that my guitar playing has really always centered around.. being more interested in making original music then replicating other folks stuff. 

I would say, generally speaking.. my style draws heavily from the riffs of Black Sabbath.. and a kinda speed-e metal of Metallica and Megadeth… and from there comes an original vision. That vision is largely about a strange interpretation of music theory… and a strange kind of aesthetic vision.

For me, a lot of what you of what you see, in say a John Coultrane.. is like.. just natural and obvious? Let me share with you two videos.. one with Coultrane playing, another with a critic talking about it.

In a certain sorta way you could kinda imagine critics talking about my work this way.. hope that doesn’t sound arrogant but..  

Now I’m not sure if Ben Ratliff totally gets it. See… composition is about “organization” of sound, and the framework for how we organize sound.. is the same sorta thing for how we organize facts into a conception of reality… and that’s sorta the implication of what Coltrane is doing… Thus a critics application of the terms of American Transcendentalism is… not really all that far fetched. [Editors note: The second critic quoted.. his “conversion story” has some relation to the earlier THX clip]

So if I tell you that I have a hard time thinking inside of conventual structure, that’s sorta what’s interesting in my work.. So here I am embarking on an adventure to.. think in conventional structure? I’m not totally sure about this, I think maybe its like.. that’s just the starting point.

So I’m obsessing on song writing.. thinking about song writing, or thinking about music making from a “song writers” perspective…..  

It’s so hard to know how to bring you in on this.

In a traditional structure there are lots of possibilities. (sub structural interest?)

Lets say you have a chord progression going on..  Now really, that chord progression could be anything.. but what we usually here is sorta limited… I mean were used to a fairly limited number of chord progressions. Once you have your chords progression, there is the question of how it gets voiced by the individual instruments… What’s guitar 1 play, what’s guitar 2 play, what’s the bass playing… Even if what we have going on is a simple riff… that riff can be interpreted different ways.. you could have two guitarists harmonizing the riff… or playing different parts of the chord.. and perhaps they don’t play it the same way twice.. 

Then you have the matter of how each instrument “interprets” the other instruments.. I mean screw the preconceived chord structure!  This where we are in some ways echoing Coultrane.. or Jazz..  This is especially doable in a metal context because… the guitars are generally not playing the 3rds.. So how is the vocal line to relate to the guitars?

Then you have.. well you have things like how one riff relates to the next… how the riffs are moving around.. In the particulars of how I’m working.. the consideration is generally.. where’s one riff starting and ending.. what’s the chord there.. and then if you look at that riff over all.. where is it hanging out most.. and how do these characteristics relate to the riff that came before? There’s also issues of how the energy works in a given riff.. contrasts in energy.. and a number of other things.

So all of this is kind of how I think about music generally.. when making it, but it’s different in that.. It’s like going from free verse poetry to poetry with a structure. What’s interesting about being forced to work inside a structure is.. you find your self spending more time refining things… as I write vocal lines I’m like “oh, no really, what’s the right word to put here?” 

There also is structural anarchy going on.. which in a certain way you could call the linguistic framework of the music. Or the anarchical aspects create the linguistic interest…

My Goal

My goal is to make something that is.. as good as anything I’ve ever heard before, at least. Good in the sense of.. how developed the details are, in the sense of the refinements of the song writing.. the composition… the mix. Beneath all of this there is the essential idea of what it is I’m doing.. the core of it.. and that… that I think is amazing.. and that’s one of the first things that hits me…. that’s one thing that is already in it.

I think it must be the anarchy speaking.. It must be my difficulty fitting in, in a certain way.. it must be how strange I am.. that that strangeness has been allowed to evolve for so long.. to have its own depths, its own maturity.. that it managed to escape the forces of socialization.. that we are seeing a kind of new animal before us.. one that lives within us all.. and it is like a call to becoming… a voice we have often heard before.. but perhaps did not have the courage to follow.

Creating the Mix and the Song at the same time:

The process is an experimental one.. one where the composition it’s self, at a certain point, is made to fit the mix, just as the mix is made to fit the music…. and the mix even is the music. So again.. I’m drawing from my experimental electronic music.

A we bit latter:

So let me wrap this up

For starters I’d say that I think this new direction in my music.. will correct certain problems I have with my work.. I’ll leave this at that.

Now I want to talk about Anxiety.

A little while ago I did a post entitled Death by Anxiety. It was a kind of strange post. It was strange in that it painted a picture of myself that was.. raw and naked and.. well what it was. After making that post, and the feedback I got on it.. I started to think of my self in different terms then I normally do. The people in the videos suffered from very bad anxiety.. and I both identified with them, and began to see the roll of anxiety in my life in a way that threatened my self concept. This then lead into a wrestling with the subject.. and it reached it’s worst point when I ran into my ATM trouble.

One of the things you run into thinking, or I did, was.. is anxiety an organic problem? Some sorta genetically inherited issue.. was it a mistake to blame my mom for it? Perhaps heavy metal is nothing but a kind of expression of anxiety? Or I mean about anxiety? What is anxiety?

Well you know I’m kind of a philosopher of the mind… and in my LSD like sleep deprived consciousness… I began to explore my mind in relationship to anxiety. Indeed the anxiety threatened to capsize me!

One of the things I notices was that anxiety seemed to be a “normal psychology” that relates to reality in “interesting ways.” Anxiety seemed to be a situation where the unconscious mind is participating in our organization of the details of life, of reality, and painting a picture for us. Reality is ALWAY this… as we experience it.. detached objectivity, though it is a modern ideal, is an illusion. Reality is ONLY experienced through the lens of consciousness. And so it is that anxiety is an adventure into our own depths.. with our depths expressing its self on the world around us, or through our experience of the world around us.

This is obvious enough stuff.. to any student of depth psychology… medication treatment is never about fundamentally changing the matter, its about living with it..  where as the natural way of the psyche is one of changing the matter. Indeed, it would seem that anxiety is actually a kind of advanced process of self evolution. We are confronted with the question of how do we relate to our own depths.. as this is projected in front of us. Our living in the world becomes about a psychological process / evolution.

I have a long held belief, a kind of presumption, that one’s psychological reality is always as it is for a reason. The existence of a psychological phenomenon is there to serve us, if we can just find the proper relationship to it.

As I stated earlier in this entry… there are things In my life that I’m having a hard time dealing with… It’s hard enough that I’m really only able to deal with so much of it at a time.. in a kind of direct experience. When the pressure of it builds up to a certain point.. it forces a confrontation. It can ether do this via a sorta psychological confrontation, or via reality.. by which I mean that the unfolding events of one’s life are direct manifestations of the inward realities, versus a projection onto our understanding of reality.. we are, after all, talking about the first stage here.

When I talk about composition as being about organizing factors that have a relationship to how we organize our understanding of reality.. and when I say my music is prophetic in the sense that I’m developing new organizational methods.. more advanced, I think, then what has come before.. my music, on a compositional level, is a way of dealing with all of this.

This is really deep and profound stuff.. 

Latter:

THX 1138 Revisted

THX 1138 is a dystopia… its is a kind of prophetic vision of our modern situation.. A few points

1. The power relationships relative to mental health, define what is a normal or not normal… and of course proscribe medication.. treatment that, as mentioned above.. is more about coping that dealing with the underlying problems. In THX it is law that we take medication, and when we stop taking it.. we become anxious
2. Consumption is the enforced behavioral norm in THX.. again leading to the behavior control.. the sense that everything is “A-Ok.” We see this in normative modes of being.. in our modern situation.

It’s really all about the power to define a thing. We are now used to –

Next day

I’m thinking this entry is long enough, and I ought to cut it short.. what I want to suggest is that there are connections between social control, anxiety, human potential, the structure of the psyche, collective evolution, and um.. so the symbolic significance of what I’m trying to do… has to do with how I’m relating to this complex of factors, and how my work does..  and we’ll leave this at this for now.

Ok.. so… according to my stats.. when I was blogging like every day.. sustained for.. however long I sustained it, my stats doubled…. so there is a pragmatic value in at least pumping something out every day.. which.. is pretty well known… but um.. it’s striking to see.. so I’m going to try and do that, put out something at least every day.

You know.. I have this habit of writing sorta long entries.. which.. for various reasons isn’t the greatest blog strategy thing.. I suppose if I’m forced to blog every day.. maybe what happens is I don’t feel the same need for the long stuff..

Still.. the long stuff is so me.. the long kind of think pieces, I guess.. .

Latter that night:

Into the Sound Studio Stuff

I’m debating more studio tools things.. kind of an old story that I’ve probably blogged about too much as it is.. but.. its on my mind, and talking about it sometimes helps me get think it through, so here goes:

I’m looking at Liquid Mix 16.. which is half the power.. plus a little less hardware interface / controller then the full Liquid Mix..  The full is selling for $800 these days, and the 16 is at $500… last I checked… and my thinking is sorta evolving.

This is software that runs on a processor that is a part of what you’re buying when you buy these packages. Basically.. if you’re a sound engineer on a budget.. this is an awesome deal as it puts really good quality emulations of classic EQs and Compressors at your finger tips…. for way less then it feels like these things should cost..

As a point of reference… Waves makes a native software emulation (meaning it runs on your computer’s processor) of the EQ and Compression found on SSL consoles.. the list price for which is a grand, and I think they’re now selling for a little over $700. The SSL console EQs and Compressors are highly prized items…  with the exception of dealing with short attack times.. what I’ve hears is the emulation in Liquid Mix is better then what you get in the Waves bundle.. plus you get a boat load of other highly sought after EQs and Compressors and what not..

Ok.. so here’s the deal with 16… You get 16 instances.. an instance counts as being able to apply both the EQ and the Compressor to one mono channel in your mix.. as a plug-in. If your dealing with stereo that number drops down to 8. This is at a 44.1 kHz sample rate.. and it might even include 48 KHz. Without explaining digital audio, 44.1 kHz is the sample rate found on CDs.. It is now considered standard.. when doing music production, to be working at substantially higher sample rates… I wonder bother to bore you with the explanations why.. I’ll just go so far as to explain this much.. . Now the deal is.. as soon as you jump the sample rate up.. with Liquid Mix.. your instant count cuts in half… and if you go really high, a quarter.

So I’m thinking.. $500 for 4 stereo instances (each stereo instance counts as 2 mono instances) versus $800 for 8..  perhaps I should go with 8? There is an expansion card.. I wanna say it’s running at around $250.. that will give you your full instant count at the higher sample rates… In any event, you can see why I’d be leaning for the full version.

But now I’m starting to contemplate this from a different angel. For starters there’s the question of what I need / what is optimal.. which is a difficult to answer question. First off how many channels do I have running in an average mix anyway? The answer is probably less then 8… although that number reflects working on a G4.. which was very limited in how many instruments I could get going at once anyway…  So in point of fact we don’t actually know how many instruments I’d be using when I’m in a situation where I basically don’t have limits…

The second question is how many instances of EQ / Compression do I use? The primary reasons for EQ and compression is.. exerting control over the dynamics of your mix, and carving out frequency spaces for the individual components of your mix. The process I have always used, and I’m sure this will sound crazy to many a sound engineer… is one where I don’t actually use any EQ or Compression at all!

That said.. we have about 3 things going on that are changing.

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

Troubles 

I’m in software hell, or so it seems. Perhaps computer hell would be a better way of putting it? I mean.. just the amount of issues I’ve had since I bought this computer.. between Apple doing a shitty job of getting this computer to me in a reasonable time frame.. issues with, I suppose, guitar center and native instruments.. with both Komplete and Kore… Issues with Adobe.. and now onto the issues with Melodyne.

So I don’t think I’ve mentioned it in this blog yet, but I ran out and bought Celemony’s Melodyne Studio. My hope is this could revolutionize the way I work, but that still remains to be seen…  cause I’ve had a hell of a time getting the software to run on my machine properly.

First it wouldn’t install.. tech support got back to me pretty quickly.. and we got it installed.. only with a number of snags.

1. ReWire isn’t working.. which is fairly crucial to me. 
2. Now both Ableton Live and Reason aren’t working.. again pretty crucial.
3. Molodyne will not run as a plug-in.. which is pretty crucial to me…. haven’t tried to get it in ReWire mode yet.

Then tech support started to slack off a bit, I suppose you could say.. and I was only getting about one email a day… and then yesterday I didn’t hear anything from them.. so I emailed today, wondering what was up.. and explaining that this problem had sorta stopped my work, and all that.. and they tell me it is definitely not a known problem…. and gave me some instructions on how to.. I guess uninstall and then reinstall the software, and hopefully clear up whatever the issue is.

I haven’t bothered to go through the hassle of trying to follow those instructions yet.. only just got in the door a little while ago after all… Think I might jump in the shower, get something to eat, and see what happens. Mean while it’s about 12:15 am…

Some first impressions of the new possibilities 

I will give you something of my first impressions.. first impressions based off playing with some of the tutorials: I think melodyne could absolutely revolutionize the way I work.. and could be what I’ve been looking for for years…. I’m very excited about it, but we’ll have to see if can live up to that kind of excitement and expectation.

Still, even with the questions marks hanging over the situation.. dreams do flow. If, with the help of a little software, I can kinda sorta sing… that seems like an amazing possibility. I could write songs about anything! It’s not even that I have a lot of confidence in my song writing ability.. it’s more like.. well maybe confidence in my imagination.. I feel like I could do some freaking amazing stuff.

You add to that that you’re supposed to be able to sequence audio like I can sequence midi / program performances for electronic instruments? Dude, I could make metal like no one has ever heard before!!!

The combination of these two things has me dreaming in ways I’ve never really dreamed before. It has me feeling like a sound artist in a way I haven’t felt before.

And if dreams can become reality?  Well… lets just say I have a lot more confidence in the possibility of making a living from my work then I had a month or two ago.

So, how does this change our plot?

Next night:

Back to the tech woes 

It’s about 1:20 AM, I followed the tech supports advice.. and now Melodyn is installed, and Reason and Live are working.. The only snag is DP is not recognizing the Audio Units plug-in.

Let me see if I can sorta explain this a little bit: Melodyne studio has a plug-in called “Melodyne Bridge.” What you do is put the plug-in on the first insert effects slot of the channel you’re working on, and it streams the audio out of your DAW and into Melodyne Studio.. or something like this? Maybe it just puts it in Melodyne studio? In any event, if you want to do the serious audio sequencing of your stuff.. you do that in Melodyne Studio… and you do that via Melodyne Bridge.

Melodyne Studio will also allow you to work with Melodyn via ReWire, but as near as I can tell this means that whatever audio you’re working with has to start out in Melodyne. For the project I’m working in now.. I have audio in Live that I’d like to, one way or another, be able to mess with in Melodyne. This would be the crazy processed vocal tracks… It might be nice to control there pitches.. to whatever extent I could.. [editors note: the “crazy processed vocals” references a post I have yet to post.]

They are so processed that it is likely that Melodyne won’t work well with them.. Melodyne like’s signals that are as dry as possible, which is why you put the plug-in in the first insert slot of the channel who’s audio you want to work with.

Seeing as I haven’t actually worked with Melodyn yet.. not in these kinds of contexts.. I’ve only done a few tutorials and skimmed through the manual, I don’t know how all this works in practice… So what I’m saying here is not as reliable as it could be. 

The fear I have is… one of work flow. Ideally I’d like to be able to see what’s going on with what in an integrated fashion..  So if I’m sequencing audio.. I’d like to see those pitches in the same place that I see my MIDI notes, and as far as I can see, this is an impossibility. The best solution I can think of is to finally go ahead and take a look at getting a second monitor. I’ll likely do this sunday after the Boston Media Makers meeting.

The Second Monitor

I’m looking at Dells.. Dell offers 2 24″ HD monitors.. one is a bit more econo class then the other.. Origionally my plan was to go all econo class.. though I ended up running out and bying an acer, which is sorta super econo class. This isn’t really a problem.. I mean I still love the monitor and it’s amazing to me that you could get a 24″ HD monitor for so cheap.. but..

I really want my second monitor to be capable of playing movies from some sort of a Blue Ray type DVD drive.. or perhaps from cable.. and the higher end Dell has a much higher contrast ratio and.. well if you’re serious about color, which as a visual artist you can’t help but be, you really need the better monitor. Another feature I like of it is the built in card reader plus the USB hub. If that weren’t enough it’s rotatable.. so it can be a horizontal wide screen sorta thing.. or a vertical tall sorta thing. This latter option would be absolutely awesome for working with Reason.. among other things.

How’d the tech support leave ya? 

So, how do my technical challenges, and experiences with there tech support, reflect on Celemony? 

I think the problem came down to some sorta corruption on the installer DVD.. which is why, as the tech support guy said “this is anything but a known problem.” While it would be possible for the tech support experience to be better.. having to wait around to hear back.. and then having to email back to hear back.. and all that.. I have to say that.. I don’t feel that it was that bad.

How many times do you feel like it’s not really a human interaction with the tech person you’re dealing with? How many tech support people will treat you like a moron?  If anything they might have assumed I was more sophisticated then I am.. He told me I had to repair disk permission as a part of the process.. but didn’t explain that you do that through Apple’s hard disk utility.. I sorta knew that, but I wouldn’t necessarily imagine the average user would.

I think it was a stump the experts sorta situation… and that these kinds of things happen.. well that’s just the way things are.. so it doesn’t bother me too much. So over all it was a positive sorta thing.. my first interaction with company.. or I certainly don’t feel pissy about it.

So if the software works great.. yeah, I’ll be recommending it a good deal.. 

Back to how all this effects our Plot:

I dream of a creative process…  a process that is very different from my current process: My current process is very much a slave to technical considerations..  I see the possibility, at least, of leaving those shackles behind. I could sit down, write out some lyrics, see what I think..  sit down on my guitar, riff away.. come up with something here, something there.. and just sorta put it together in the computer.

Conventionally, if I want to put guitar playing into my music.. just a simple riff, it’ll take me about a day, between the conception and getting the performance up to par.. When you’re dealing with integrating guitar based music into an electronic context.. the beat of the electronic stuff is robot on perfect, which is different from how real humans play… this robot on perfect then highlights the imperfection of your playing, calling you to a higher standard. This isn’t always ideal.. there’s value in human imperfection..

In any event.. when I work on the electronic music side of things, I tend to work very very fast.. my compositional process is one of reacting to what I’m producing.. so if the process has to get slowed down to the point that it takes a day just to put in one guitar part… that kinda throws a monkey wrench into the process.. it disturbs your perception of your musics ecology.. 

If, on the other hand, I could sit down at my guitar, come up with a riff, record it, fix it, and go.. the process will not be disturbed.. If my guitar playing is more like.. a basis for something.. that I can then transmute into something else again… we’re really talking about limitless possibilities.. I mean the music I make will not be limited by the limitations of my musicianship.. which is really why I got into electronic music in the first place.

Video’s to End on

This is mildly off topic, but fits into the larger conversation, and I thought it was real interesting to take a look at.. from the 1980s

How about that.. a compact disk or “cd” using laser beams? Pretty sci fi ha?

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

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

Examples:

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

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

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

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

iPhone 

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

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

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

Kore 2 

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

2 Days latter:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  

I’m trying to work on communicating what I’m up to.. so I thought I’d try and fill in the artist statement section of my website. This is kind of a rough draft I guess, so I’m looking for feed back.

Matt’s Manifesto 

The arts, as I see it, are key to the health of culture and society. Big media influence on the collective consciousness of our times is at the root of what’s wrong with the world today. The solution to this is to develop new models for the business of art, media, and culture. There is a digital revolution, often referred to as “new media” or “social media” which to one extent or another addresses this problem. My podcast, The Asymmetric Biz Cult, talks about this and the deep systemic forces at play… along with how artist and media folks might engage with these forces, and how this could lead us collectively.. as well as the issues of our individual careers, to a new kind of world worth creating.

My arts project is one that tries to utilize this new existential relationship to the markets in order to facilitate a deeper more radical art. In my art and thought I am wrestling with the foundations of modernity and our collective shadow sides, and I try and throw light on where there might be cause for hope.

Central to my work is a exploration of consciousness and the depths of the human soul.. This journey takes us through Jungian psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, the world’s various religious traditions, history, politics, and business: We see everything in a radical new light, for so much of our understanding of all these things fails to appreciate the influence of what is often thought of as the irrational mind, and both our individual and collective unconscious.

Principle to to my art and thought is the idea that we must get beyond our inherited ideas on the nature of reality, to see what reality really is, and then build from there.

It is ultimately a journey towards wholeness and human potential.

So what do you think? Does it work, or not or I don’t what.. any thoughts? 

My last blog post featured some of my best pictures so far.. given, I’ve only been at it since Monday.. and as someone who’s barely ever handled a camera before.. I’m feeling pretty proud about those pics.. Though at the same time my honest assessment of my photography is not so high.. and I think this series will sorta show this off a little bit.. I like how these pictures function as a series, but if you look at them individually.. they are less then red hot..

Ok.. moving right along….

I love taking pics of my dad “for some reason.”  One of the things I’m learning about photography is that it’s “all about observation.” It’s in large measure a process of looking. You take once slice of time.. framed.. what have you.. and you can look at it for eons..

This amplifies that one moment beyond its significants in the flow of time.. to put it a certain sorta way. Significants, in this sense, meaning.. well what underlies… well how you remember things.. how things stick out in the mind. Another words.. I have an image of my father that is produced through a process of interactions.. let’s say.. and those interactions define the production of that image.. they define what stays in mind and what slips away.. which often might has more to do with my own interior.. whatever is driving me, then it has to do with my father. Taking pictures takes me out of that.. to one extent or another.. and now we are studying my father as a subject.

My relationship to my parents is a complex one.. psycho-socially speaking. Perhaps this is true for all of us? At this moment in my life.. shortly after my mom’s passing, in a situation of taking care of my father.. still feeling dependent on the money that is whatever wealth they managed to amass in there life times.. all this, along with other life issues.. puts me in a strange psychological situation.. which basically amounts to feeling like the challenges of trying to grow up.

A few latter: 

I’ve been reading some essays by Carl Jung recently.. which have re-lead me into a certain way of thinking about my own psychology. A somewhat simple way of saying it is that beneath the surface of waking life, and all our “reasonableness,” lys a “psychological reality.” Reality is, after all, never experienced outside the context of consciousness or our “psychological reality.” The empiricism of science, among other things, has lead us into a spirit of missing this underlying psychological reality.

I’m not blaming science.. Its simply that the scientific age, to put it a certain way, has lead us into a kind of psychological makeup that’s.. somewhat one sided and materialistic. Materialistic in the sense that we search for answers in the material world.. and understanding psychology from a material perspective is.. at the very least complicated from the stand point of our current understanding.. which is to say neuroscience is in it’s very very early days. 

Bug I digress…

So what of this underlying psychological reality? My sense is that it’s through a kind of dialectical relationship with this that I’ll make it through my current life challenges.. Though photography, at least as I’m exploring it at the moment, is slavishly tied to the material world, it has become a tool for exploring this sorta dialectical process.

So lets see if I can kind of wrap this up into a nice little bow: In a certain sense, photography is giving me an experience of reality that is out side the context of a certain psycho-social drama.. This is to say we are looking at the subject / object… err, how do I put this? Well in the case of the following series of photographs, I’m moving out side of “my idea” of my father, to my father. “Idea” here being a psychological idea that is out side of a purely conscious idea.. or one that is beyond conscious will. In so doing we shape the psycho-social drama in new ways.

I’ll conclude this part of the blog entry by telling you that what I’m saying is an over simplification of the matter.

Some background on these pictures:

There’s a couple things you might like to know.. #1 The cat in these pictures is named “Kitty.” Well actually he’s named Ginger.. or thats the name my mom and father use.. This would be our second cat to have a feminine name..  so that’s where I draw the line, and thus we shall refer to him as Kitty.

Kitty is an indoor cat who does not like being indoors.. All he wants in life is to go outside.. trouble is that our last cat probably got eaten by a coyote and thus… well my mom just couldn’t see letting Kitty go out after that. Personally, I believe in living dangerously.. so I side with letting kitty go out.. but at least for now.. the household continues to, kinda sorta, run as it did when my mom was living.

Anyway.. so Kitty is always trying to get out.. and no one accidently lets the cat out more then dad! 

#2 My dad has dementia. His dementia has not lead him to being totally unfunctional.. and he still has some short term memory.. but for the most part he’s not very capable of remember much from 30 minutes ago, to put it a certain sorta way. So a lot of really basic things can be very difficult for him.. and I think you can kind of see this in the pictures.

#3 My dad has a habit of sleeping too late.. so its my job to wake him up.. and thus we begin.

On with the Pics! 

 

 

 

Ok, so dad is more or less up.. but how can he start his day without getting the news paper or getting the mail? Hope he doesn’t let the cat out!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aww, the taste of victory! 

 

So making a series like this was surely a lot of fun… And you know.. each picture, on it’s own.. the quality varies.. but as a group.. it’s kinda cool.

A final note / what we can look forward to in the future. 

These picts took about half of my monthly flickr upload allotment… they are, if you view them in flickr, about half the size of the originals.. So what I’m thinking of doing, in the future, is generally uploaded pictures that are a good deal smaller then this.. at least the ones for this blog.. 

I’m planning on releasing these kinda virtual photography books, in pdf form.. which will give you full the sized pics.. which you could even print out at full size if you liked.. 

I suppose the other thing worth mentioning is the pics are still not going through much of a digital work flow.. which is to say “photo post production” which involved working with them in Aperture and Photoshop..  which I of course hope to do for the books.. 

Finally, I’m hoping on putting Google Addsents in them.. so with any luck.. I could even make some money from the books! My ambition here being to pay for the cost of web hosting! 

So that all ought to be fun to do and play with.

I wanted to give an update on the podcasting adventures.. just in case anyone’s interested.

I have 2 podcasts… which I update pretty infrequently these days..  

The first one to note is the Asymmetric Biz Cult Podcast… For this one I team up with Mark Hanser, and Evan Pew.. where we talk about “the new asymmetric business of culture creation.”  Umm.. this is a somewhat complex subject.. but basically it’s about how modern technology is changing business, and what this means for artists.. or at least that’s sorta what it aims to be. Beyond this I have my own personal take on convergence.. a kind of complex evolving philosophy.. which I regard as having some value.. I think in someways I have a very unique take on what’s going on in these departments.. and if I can ever get the podcast so that its “actually good,” it may just become a must listen.

I think the Asymmetric Biz Cult podcast has faded for a few reasons.. One of which is just the events in our lives.. my mom died, Evan had a baby, and Marks life has grown its own complications. The other reason, I think, is because I’ve been obsessed with this area for a few years now.. and Mark and Evan are sorta new to this stuff to such an extent that.. that I don’t know if they’ve even known quite how they could contribute..

The Matt Searles podcast is another matter. Again, loosing my mom has turned my life upside down in a lot of ways.. and I’m still just sorta struggling to maintain sanity in the wake of it…

My mom’s passing, and the sorta of shifting realities that go along with that.. have really put me in a position where, at least for a little while, I can focus on what I think I need to be focusing on.. in a way I haven’t been able to do for years.. This includes upgrading my studio.. and putting together a tool set that is appropriate for what it is I see myself as all about.

There’s been some real questions for me.. as to what the hell this blog, and the podcast, ought to be about. I think if you want to be successful, and of course it depends on your definition of success, you can’t think of your blog or podcast as being about you.. it’s about your readers / listeners / community. Of course I’m not at a stage where I have an active community.. so its hard to know what a community would want.. so if you have any wants.. do communicate them to me! 

But the point is, I feel like I’m a little to focused on me. I suppose I’m an artist, and my art is what I tend to spend my time thinking about..  and I’m basically just blogging about whatever might be on my mind on any given day.. which, you know, is fine.. but…

Next day sometime:

Well I guess my point is that I want to create a blog / podcast / whatever.. that has value. It’s an odd sorta thing though..  and maybe I’m just speaking from the vantage point of my own anxieties.. It’s almost as if there