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 I’m participating in this project called So Me Election 2008..  This is a project started as a part of the Boston Social Media Club.. and I guess the idea is like.. politics shouldn’t be a spectator sport.. and this like.. lets document this thing.. but perhaps even more important is like.. a participatory / collaborate project… 

Any who..  Mr. Adam Zand did a talk shoe kinda podcast today.. talking about it.. A thing where we could all just kinda call in… and participate in the podcast. This was happening at 12 PM today.. and.. shit.. I wasn’t awake yet.. but here it is, wanted to share: 

I should perhaps add that I love those guys?

I’ve been thinking for a long time that there should be more of these kinds of things.. social media collaborative projects..  So I think its really cool that we’re doing it.

Oh, and here’s a link to the site: someelection08.ning.com

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

 

Blip is like Twitter.. accept.. its all music.. great for discovering new music.. and here’s a link to I on there, where you can hear what I’m listening to. You can hear.. start on one song and work your way through a play list.. . it’s madness.. and fun.. so check it out.

Well I’m still very much under the weather.. but wanted to blog something.. mainly just for the purposes of blogging something… but its hard when I’m feeling this weak. Blogging for me is often about focusing on something so tightly that eventually you have this kind of breakthrough moment.. where something interesting pops through.. or at least that’s how I’m conceptualizing it.. in practice it might be different from that but…

My head is full of madness as I right.. so much stuff flying around that I want to share.. stuff from podcamp, pre podcamp, even post podcamp.. seems I’ve been so busy meeting people, learning things, having random adventures..  just with little to no time to out put much of anything.

Ok.. lets focus Matt.. .how about..

Matt Gets a new iPhone?

This is my first cell phone.. first one I’ve owned..  never mind a smart phone….

If you’re a social media type.. having a smart phone of some sort is a real game changer.. or that’s what I’m learning… Just being able to email from where ever.. twitter from where ever.. always being connected.. it really changes your perception. And its brought my to think about life streaming again.

Life Streaming

Terminology is.. fuzzy.. but basically life streaming is like.. you’re living.. and the stream just goes on.. like having a web cam attached to your forehead as you ago about your daily living..  I’m not much of a consumer of this sorta media.. I sorta wonder why the hell I’d want to follow around someone’s forehead as they live there lives.. but, that’s not to say I don’t see amazing possibilities here.

Social Media / New Media.. you must understand.. in this world there’s a whole lot of stuff that’s like.. predefined boxes… “this is a podcast,” “this is a blog,” “this is a wikki,” these are known quantities..  but what’s real is not something that’s confined to a box.. boxes are conceptual frameworks that allow us to be lazy.. or perhaps efficient.. a method of cognitive compression, if you will.. or “optimization” as we say in the biz…

But you’d do well to hold your horses… because one of the most awesome things about social media / new media is that it is anything but a known quantity. If you seek to be a practitioner of any merit.. my advice to you is to look for the potential in the landscape.. where who you is, and where it is, somehow overlaps: go there, do that thing.

I used to dream of doing life streams when I was a little kid… No, seriously, I did!

A few latter:

Life streaming presents a number interesting aesthetic issues… by aesthetic I mean “philosophy of art.” Broadly I’d say you have the line between realism and formalism.. realism being that which brings us closest to.. shall we call it “empirical reality?” Formalism is.. something that is the opposite of that.. calling our attention to the medium its self.. it is a sorta different sorta reality that it brings us to.. perhaps a surreal reality? Surreal reality might be linked to subjective reality.. the object as a pose to the subject.. “real reality” is after all both subject and object.. both subjective and objective.. Life streaming gets rid of time compression.. and thus brings us closer to objective reality.. in interesting ways.

In my own work there is always a dialog between realism and formalism.. I generally prefer formalism.. the truths I want to express are often best expressed in what one might consider surreal manners..

In any event.. while all of this sorta philosophical mumbo jumbo has its place in a critical analysis of the matter.. and while I think we ought to be thinking of such things.. it’s a long way from this to the pragmatic analysis..

The Pragmatic Analysis

What is it that you want to do? I suppose what I’m looking at is the subject of “story telling.” Story telling.. in the live stream.. how does one go about that?

A few latter

The answer that floats through my mind is a complex one.. One that’s frankly too complex for this blog entry.. particularly given how sick and weak I’m feeling… and lets just face it.. its mostly presumptive stuff given that I haven’t actually spent too much time following any live streams.. never mind making them.

A few latter still 

But.. as this line goes.. one can start one’s thinking with what’s already been done / is out there.. or by sorta thinking about the possibilities.. and the structure of the medium.

In social media we have a range of communication formats that range from.. roughly speaking.. the synchronous to the asynchronous..  What are the implications of any point in that range?

Obvious stuff

 

•  Synchronous / live stuff.. it is difficult to have the same sorta production values as what you would have for stuff on the opposite extreme.. time / energy / money put in, per moment, of communications.. One can develop strategies for dealing with this sorta thing…. but.. 
• The more live / synchronous you go, the less control you generally have
• The more live / synchronous you go.. probably.. the more the context of what your doing is important. 

A few latter:

Some of these points strike my as somewhat dubious… at least from a serious philosophical perspective. Another thing to think about is that we are talking about “social media” which is to say it’s social.. or at the very least interactive… So the live stream is.. not really a one way affair..  necessarily. What this means is that an understanding of pscyho-social dynamics is helpful in approaching the medium..  The approach most of the successful folks in social media.. at least the ones I know.. seem to take is something like a game theory esk solution..  What game strategy would be most successful? If you’re dealing with a “merit based social hierarchy” which.. as it turns out.. is to say a “female social hierarchy” then.. status bares a relationship to your contribution to the collective..  

So the place to start is to ask your self “what has thou to contribute?” There is a sort of “invisible market place” which.. in a rather supply and demand esk way.. influences the value of various sorts of contributions.. What drives this market place is the various challenges folks are dealing with. (Chris Brogan has a recent interesting post on “content marketing” and the future of marketing, that supports this claim.)

An anarchical institutional theory of value? 

Each of us is a unique individual.. with unique qualities / virtues as well as vices.. what constitutes virtue or vice has to do with this ecosystem.. how the “crowds wisdom” defines you, so to speak. So.. for this reason.. I think it helps if you get in there and play.. before you really develop a serious hard lined sorta strategy.. or to put it another way.. always experiment with an eye open for magical possibilities.

Now listen.. I know this sounds a little creepy.. this notion that the crowd shalt define you.. for the artist’s in the audience, it’s a bit like Arthur Danto’s institutional theory of art.. accept not quite so exclusive.. For you who feel uncomfortable with this notion.. I understand.. and for you I ask you to hold on till such time that I can give this notion more attention.. at which point I’d imagine it would become a good deal less creepy.. for now I ask simply that you indulge me this one.

So there’s this kind of interrelationship between who you is, what the collective is, and this sorta dialectical relationship inside of which you evolve… and its somewhere in here that you build your personal brand..  

Next day sometime:

Well, hmm.. lets see.. so I guess what I’m saying is that there’s a certain sorta strategic subtext to the life stream..  That might not be the best way of putting it but.. Well I guess I should just post this and return to the subject latter.. seems like I never really got to anything too interesting here.

Ok.. so I’m back.. back in the satle again, or perhaps that’s wishful thinking?

Well I do always ware black?

Anyway.. yeah, so I’m back.. sorta feeling refreshed.. though also very sick.. so I guess its a mixture. Still, even with all of this, I have mad inspiration.

What’s Matt madly inspired about? The project of making a new metal, of course. 

Next morning:

Well maybe I’m not really back.. I’m feeling real sick and in need of just going back to bed… lol, but I’ll be back shortly…

Topics likely to be covered in upcoming posts:

• Podcamp Boston, and my adventures there
• some social media strategy stuff
• social networking stuff
• cheap / free music creation software
• my experiences with the new iPhone
• recent adventures with the P-Corn-Queen.. 
• Super duper top secret projects
• My new metal project stfuff

There’s probably more to list.. of course, but that’s the top of mind stuff anyway.Anyway, Matt seeks rest 

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.

[Editor’s note: It turns out that “The Dr”. Has been hanging out with Carl Sullivan.. somewhere in rock port.. and via a secret under ground army (yes some people in the government know about this, but you know how conspiracy’s go) message got back to Matt, and it was Matt’s Job to publish this report… This accounts for the madness of it all ] 

First a video  

Ok, did you happen to catch that? I mean the symbolic significance, it didn’t get past you did it? Yes indeed-e, the fellow for whom the term “cool-aid” comes from.. more or less… he would seem to be… *gasp* making some sorta social media thing. I mean is he not talking about social media? Danger will Robenson.. how could this be?

Ok… Ok… Ok, dig it.. I’m not a bid Dead head, or anything like that.. and I’m not someone who ever made a life style out of LSD… so don’t chew be thinking I’m coming at you from quite that angle! Lets curve, and swerve.. around a bit.. so I can speak to you about what it tis… 

Yes, Beware that Cool-Aid! 

Well.. it’s not that there’s anything wrong with cool-aid per-say.. the question has more to do with from where the cool-aid came.. something to do with the brewing.. a kind of DNA like imprinting…I’m now given to calling myself a social media philosopher.. that seems like the best kind of language.. at least of what I’ve found thus far, to talking about where I is a come-in from..

Err.. perhaps I should shift my manner of speaking.. so that my tonality might not confuse.. the some..I have developed a systematic, you might say schematic, of the underlying dynamics which influence the evolution of social media. That’s probably not saying quite strong enough.. We aren’t talking about influence, we are talking about “is.” Another words.. I’ve cracked the code.

As near as I can tell.. nobody’s cracked the code yet.. but much like Darwin, I’m not actually talking about it too much.

[Editors note: The Dr.” is getting a little esoteric on your but-ox, Darwin worked out his theory of Evolution long before he actually published it.. he just sorta sat on it for years.] 

[Note to self: Thy readers proll-e think I’m nuts now.] 

Ok.. lets scoot-a-dew on over to some of this here top secret schematical stuff..  

[Note to self: I should probably make people buy ticks before I show them into my top secret Hanger 18 type laboratory.. well as long as the don’t spot my top secret world domination plot, I’m sure I’ll be ok]

Um.. so what I’m trying to get at is.. the DNA… hmm… did I mention information was a virus?   

Take it Away Laurie

So language.. that’s a way of encoding information, isn’t it? So is it language or information that’s the true virus? Language.. at best can point to the truth.. its always somehow removed from the actual reality.. can only take you part way there.. This would be a kind of Kantian thang.. 

So.. When I’m talking about cool-aid, I’m not actually talking about reality it’s self.. I’m talking about something to do with something that can influence our understanding of reality. The reality, in my view.. and the cool aid.. there’s some overlapping truth..  here…

[Editor’s note: Word in the underground was there was some king a crazy banging going on in that there cell block.. just after we lost the transmission, so you’re going to have to make of this what you will.] 

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, yeah.. this was written a day or so before posting] 

Laura Fitton, aka @pistachio, was having a small cook out today for Scott Stead, so he could meet Boston area media makers… I got to the area late, as seems to be my bad habit / curse… and then had a kind of heart breaking anxiety attack that lead me to… well driving back home.

It is heart breaking.. I spent about an hour in a parking lot, drove by the house about 5 times (though a few of those were just trying to figure out which house it was).. but wasn’t able to overcome…. and eventually drove home..

Next day sometime:

Anxiety has always been an issue for me. It seems to stem from my mom.. though I love(d) her very much, even all this time after her passing, my rage can run hot.

I’ve missed out on a lot of what life has had to offer thanks to anxiety… Indeed my life need not be as hard as it has been.. and I think, when in the heart of the of the anxiety related issues, about what life could look like if I could just overcome it.

Truth is.. I’ve been feeling like I have been over coming it.. The last 8 or so years of.. unemployment has been a great help.. finally able to take the path of self becoming… the becoming over comes.

Social Media has been a great help to..  So much talk about Social Media’s ROI seems to miss the point.. social media is saving me.. hell, its even helping me to develop some social skills. My point being that social media has more to it then is often understood in the land of “the experts.”

It used to be that I was too shy to comment on people’s blogs really.. but I forced myself. I felt a little bit like a drunk dialer.. like a phone call you’d get late some night from a drunk x lover.. me with my crazy comments!

Around this time I left a crazy comment on Laura’s blog.. at this point I don’t think she was yet the web celebrity she is today… The next time I saw her was at a Boston Social Media Club thing.. I wanted to cringe and hide.. but oh no.. apparently she REALLY liked my crazy mad comment..  and so she brought me into whatever conversation was going on.. which lead me into a conversation with Bryan Person about the New England Podcaster group.. but that’s nether her nor there… though still a thought on my mind.

I suppose the point is that Larua’s someone I have a lot of affection for… She’s someone whom I think, in a certain kind of way, embodies the spiritual core of what social media is really all about.. and I guess its a mix of her kindness and this feeling, that made last night an especially heart breaking sorta anxiety night.

When I got home.. I had this kind of defeated feeling.. I was just so sad.. which was a strange and mysterious sorta reaction..

It had taken me 3 or 4 months before I got up the courage to actually attend a New England Podcaster Meet Up… down in Quinsy. (The first social media group I started going to) The social media club was harder in the early days.. Boston Media makers wasn’t so hard.. but I still have a hard time telling them what “I really do.” I’ve only just started going to the Havard Berkman “blogger” group… that took a little while.

Yeah, so anxiety is killing me… 

Found this video, thought I’d share:

I don’t think I have it that bad? Though I have had it pretty bad in the past. 

I kinda liked this one to:

And how about we leave on a cover on of that great Ramones track:

 Ok, I’m done