It’s late at night.. super late actually.. sun’s starting to come up.. I should be in bed sleeping.. but it’s just one of those late night howling kind of moments.. a need to howl from this blog.. or via this blog.. out into that there internet.. and blah blah blah.

Seems like there’s a million things I want to say, and as time passes.. they slip through my fingers.. those sands of time I’ll tell you!

So I just wanted to write something random.. in the hopes that I might touch upon some of this stuff.

I’ll tell you a big thing I want to say.. Thank you.. you as in the universe.. you as in..  err… God, I do need to explain myself here, ha? And if I do that, I’ll never finish this damn post.. never get to much of anything I might like to touch on.

Well.. what the hell, who cares, it’ll be what it’ll be!

I feel a real need to thank social media….

I believe it was last night.. well, lets back up a little..  Yesterday I made my way to a book store.. aww, the temptations for Bad Matt! But Bad Matt was good, and didn’t give into any of said temptations.. but none the less.. I spent some time in that there magazine section, and in electronic musician monthly there was an article on vocal synthesis… which is to say using a computers to generate a vocal track. This particular article focused on how to do it for free.. It was rather avant guard in its aims… but it got me to thinking.. and reunited me with some old ideas..

I write poetry, or song lyrics or.. not sure how to describe them really. I haven’t written too many lately, but I’ve been keeping note books since highs school…. so I’ve amassed quite a bit of stuff… and one figures, just statistically speaking, there must be something in there, somewhere, of value.

I’m a crappy judge of myself and my work. I really am! I often need to take a good deal of time away from my stuff in order to come back to it, without emotional ties to it, in order to see what’s really there.

So I was having this conversation with someone online.. while trying to figure out what kind of sound synthesizers where out there.. and how much they are running these days.. and um.. well the person I was talking to is a fan, I guess you could say.. a fan of my music, a fan of this blog, a fan of me..

It’s so nice to have such people in our lives.. particularly when you’re struggling to believe.. well this wasn’t really a night of struggle.. but as I was showing said person some of what I was finding.. the subject came to these lyrics / poems / whatever.. that I had.. and could this person see.

Well it just so happens that I was on my pc lap top at the time.. which happens to have folder full of stuff.. dating back to when I got the lap top.. which I’m guessing was sometime in 2004.. simply because that was the date of my Indra’s Net Project… which was done on said laptop.

Matt Searles – Archaic Rejuvination for the Post Modern Male and Female

And um… So the deal is.. I tend to not like showing this stuff… mainly cause I figure it sucks, you know? Like who am I kidding? I’d be embarrassed to show that trash… but ok, what the hell, why not?

Well.. my fan friend was blown away buy it and I was like “you really like that stuff?” Before you know it.. I had sent something like 20 or more of them through the IM.. and I think we were both a little astonished.. this person had, after all, put me in the right mood to see the virtue of it..

Oh my God! This stuff was insane! I almost want to describe it as the words of “a bad boy saint.” It’s stuff that just screws with your head.. It has an intense kind of darkness to it, that almost kinda scares you.. and..

Oh my God, you know how I’m given to talking about Jesus and God and all that sorta thing in this blog? I always feel like.. when you bring up those kinds of subjects.. people kinda want to run away..  run from the Jesus freak.. like talking about religion is just not a safe topic.. its more dangerous then politics.. Well what was crazy about the treatment of the subject was.. it was mystical.. and it was like.. well it was twisted.. just in how it played with it. It was as if it was this crazy heretical sorta thing.. kinda like South Park playing with Jesus and all that stuff.. accept this was like.. way more dangerous. It was more dangerous because it seemed to be speaking truths.. speaking truths that most folks wouldn’t have the balls to say..  I mean it was just crazy.

It had this kind of earthy feel to it.. made me think of Muddy Waters.. but like crazy intellectual.. which is part of how it would mess with your head.. It’s as if there’s the prejudices of our modern time and of authority.. prejudices that produce the mental cages we are all living in.. and it’s tearing the hell out of them…  to the point where it all most hurts.. 

Ok, how about another track from yours truly.. again from Indra’s Net:

Matt Searles – A Short Trip To Another Day

The words called back to me the psychology I had at the time.. I was reminded of the darkness of those days.. of the struggle.. of the darkness. The struggle to just hold on to hope. The pain…  The blood that was just dripping from me.. psychologically.. from the wounds of life.. all the ways life can be cruel.. and how it felt like that then.. and that deep struggle of not knowing if I’d ever make it in life to where I needed to make it. Feeling like… life could get worse then I could really handle.. and that it might not be too long till that reality would be confronting me..

This is the subtext… beneath how I was driven to make this work.. driving to try and make something of me.. get to where ever I needed to get to.

Funny thing is I haven’t gotten there yet! Funny thing is I’m still struggling…  And though, in my current struggle.. though I do struggle with faith, in what I’m doing or trying to do, on a daily basis… I must say there are moments of overflowing hope. That over flowing hope comes through the vehicle of social media.

I’ve had this feeling in my head for sometime.. that in the end it will be social media that saves me. To really explain how this works.. well it would take more then I have to give tonight….

A couple things though.. You meet so many great people. I can’t really tell you how thankful I am. I don’t know how to tell you how moved I’ve been…  I mean like when my mom died and people reached out to me via blog comments, twitter, emails.. At a moment I had anticipated as being the loneliest moment of my life..  I felt the least alone of any moment in my life.

So one of the things that’s giving me this need to Howl.. is just the want to give thanks.. which I am sometimes so bad at.. If you’re reading this.. and we’ve had some sorta social media type.. I don’t know.. we’ve met, had a conversation.. or maybe not even that much… you’re probably someone I feel somehow thankful about…  So.. if I don’t get around to.. doing something that would properly express my gratitude.. I just want to tell you thanks here.

It is the little things that count, isn’t it?

How about another track:

Matt Searles – Offering A Hand To The Ghost

That’s actually one of the few Indra’s Net tracks that was done on my Mac.. With like Reaktor and Cubase SX.. maybe SX2? Maybe 3? I don’t remember.

So back to the story of vocal synthesis and these lyrics:

Well a few years ago there were a bunch of vocal synths that hit the market, and so immediately I was interested. I think people need lyrics to kinda.. “get it.” Or what I mean is.. instrumental music isn’t the most sorta commercially viable thing out there. So….

Well I can’t sing…. I don’t really have a vocalist I can easily call on any old time.. have yet to really invest in the proper microphones.. or learned the proper recording engineer stuff.. and not only that.. even if all that was a go.. It wouldn’t easily fit into my process. So, how to I get there from here?

As it turns out there’s a number of possible directions:

1.  Vocal Synthesis
2. “Vocal Tuning software:” There’s lots of software out there that can make an out of tune vocal in tune.. if you just get the phrasing right… 
3. Integration of found-ish elements.

Category 3 is where I would fit this track for Zar Matt A Thsutra’s Deep Space Adventures:  

Matt Searles – Hanser Show HerStory With Mark

Here we have a field recording type thing, of Mark talking on a train with his then girl friend.. It’s rather crazy experimental.. but I still sorta like it.

Any who, so I’m over tired.. and should prolly post here..

Oh wait.. can post without posting this here clip!

Long time readers… if I ever posted that post I meant to post.. will know all about “Bad Matt.” Bad Matt, as you might well imagine, is an evil bastard! What is the unspeakable evil that Matt is giving to partaking in? Well Matt has been known to spend large sums of money on books, music, DVDs and.. of course.. computer and studio related stuff. And today my fine friends… bad matt has struck again!

That’s right..  well you see it all started when I went to a little Boston Media Maker tech thing, MediaTechTonic. This was a little workshop sorta thing, led by David Tames, that explored WordPress. WordPress is a “blog engine” that’s very popular… In the circles I run in, it is the most popular. Indeed my podcasts, and this blog, run on WordPress. A long standing problem I’ve had is not really knowing how to do “theme design.” Theme design is.. well its like web design with a content management system… so you want to know  your xhtml, css, dom, and what have you.. and then you probably would like to know a little php… and um.. a bit about how WordPress works. 

Theme design has proven, at least for me, to be a major pain in the butt.. in part because I’ve had such a difficult time finding one source of information that sorta pulls it all together. David’s presentation..  gave an overview of some of the issues..  and was enough to really open my eye’s to the power of WordPress. Further, though he didn’t totally recommend it.. he sorta did: WordPress for Dummies.. which is so far the only good source I’ve found that brings all that together in one place.

Next Day:

So of course on my trip to the book store.. I made my way over to the WordPress for Dummies.. but…  Well the badness of bad Matt was such that I didn’t even stop there! Oh no, I went over to the music section! In the music section I found my copy of “The Indie Bible.”

If you’re an independent music person, the Indie Bible is a must have.. It’s basically a giant directory of resources for the independent sound person. It lists, as a for instance, radio stations, podcasts, periodicals, and what not.. that will play / review the work of independent sound people… and it does this by genera and location…

I suppose its worth saying something about where I’m at as it relates to this? As we speak the main thing I’m working on.. if I’m working on anything at all.. It’s at least the preamble to a project of some sort.. that I’d actually ask people to spend there hard earned money on… and of course I don’t know what the project will look like.. even what it will be actually… just that this is roughly my goal..  (which is not to say there aren’t a zillion ideas, much of which can be found scattered around this blog)

To be successful in the commercial aspects of this project… It would make a hell of a lot of sense if I did something to promote the works I’m currently giving away for free. This way.. you can just go check it out you’re self, and if you dig it, maybe you’d be interested in the project I’m now embarked on. So.. if I were able to sorta run a publicity type campaign while I’m working on what I have to work on.. to sorta get the word out.. then I could potentially build a fan base for the upcoming projects product cycle. So that’s the thinking anyway.

If you’d like to check out some of my music you can, of course, go to mattsearles.com/music where you can find 2CDs worth of free music. 

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 were certain “strategic considerations” that I’m.. aquatinted with to one level or another.. that have to do with how you gain some success in social media.. but… you know, you gotta be you.. and who I am is in someways antithetical to the strategic stuff.. 

I suppose, in someways, this is the point I mean to get to, and even why I’m here.. in this space. It’s this feeling that we need to harmonize our own internal nature with the external demands of life.. That this is important for our mental health.. and social media might be a way of going about this.. and certainly from the point of view of the artist and the arts.. what a true artist does.. you don’t start from questions of commercial viability.

Here’s the way I would describe it.. and it is perhaps somewhat radical, at least in some ways: You can literally go in any direction you like.. and if you can bring that direction to a certain state of evolution.. of maturation.. you’ll eventually get some place of value.. some place of interest.

A mass media market place has different views on this problem..  and tends to dictate, to one degree or another, what directions could be considered commercially viable, and what directions might not. I tend to believe that if you have something that’s “good art,” wether it’s commercially viable or not has more to do with how we approach the markets then it does the art its self. This might not be 100% realistic, but it’s an idea with some merit. The merit is made more true by the shifting economic realities brought about by our current technological disruptions… This is a shift who’s implications are still only faintly understood today.

This blog, I suppose, is like a journal of an artist trying to explore these new realities.. or at least these ideas of new realities.. as is the podcast. It’s the chronicles of his experience..  often in a very introspective sorta way. That onto its self is interesting, it seems to me… and gives this blog, and the podcast, some value.

Further, I think the challenges I face are not challenges unique to myself. I suppose if I’m looking to nurture a community around this blog.. around these efforts.. what would likely bring us together is the commonality of the challenges we face.

At one in the same time we have both the common and the individual: I’m at this exciting, and somewhat scary, moment.. where I have all this new technology to try and learn.. DP, Kore, Komplete, Adobe CS3, Final Cut Studio, Cinema 4D, and the list goes on… and on and on. My guess is.. when I talk about these technologies.. I’m not sure to what degree we hold these in common.. 

Well I mean I want to write in such a way that a general reader can follow me, even into the most technically challenging of subject matters.. I mean if you want to follow me in there. Sure, it’ll probably be challenging in that you’ll have to learn a good deal in order to follow me so far in there..

See, I read the collected works of Freud and Jung when I was in high school.. And it was wonderful as, in a certain way, I felt like I got to hang out with those guys.. and wrestle with there challenges. I loved that experience.. and I’d love to give you that experience.. to sorta bring you to the challenges I’m facing.. wether or not you’re an artist or not.. or wherever you might be coming from.. I mean if this is something you might find interesting.

Well anyway.. you can subscribe to the Matt Searles podcast via iTunes via clicking on this link, if you like. 

The last bit I want to talk about is the technical challenges..  I have a Zoom H4 that I usually use for podcasting.. its a portable recorder.. with which you can record right onto these SD cards.. trouble is, and I don’t know why, I’m not able to get the files of the Zoom and into my Computer.. so I’ve recorded stuff for the podcast that way, and it hasn’t wanted to work.

Secondly.. I seem to be having some trouble with Digital Performer.. which doesn’t want to export my audio… I finished another podcast episode last night.. but DP doesn’t seem to want to let it out.. 

It’s late at night, got lots to talk about, but probably won’t talk about a 10th of it.

One of the thoughts I’m thinking about.. is, “the magic.” I’ve written a rather long blog entry on this subject, not published.. and what’s worse is I now feel inspire to extent those ideas in new directions, but how can I do that without posting that last entry?  God, I got a lot of stuff I should post….  

So this subject of magic. This is a complex subject, but.. when I talk about magic, what I’m really talking about is something going on in my music right now.

It’s a strange thing.. you go out there and start hacking away.. and eventually things start coming together, but it doesn’t really feel like the coming together is really something you’re dong… its more like you’re a vessel of something.. you’re channeling it. If you were to take a very deep look at the creative process, you’d find that the artist is actually creating the work.. (I know, surprising, right?) but I mean.. the artist is creating “the magic.” 

All this talk is like back story… because I don’t really care to layout before you a psychology of the creative process at this time.. though this is no doubt a very interesting subject.. It’s more like there’s something going on in my work that compels me to write, and I should somehow find a way to speak to this…. so lets talk abut this from the angle of the music.

I have some kind of a system of composition. It’s a system from another planet, as I don’t really understand “how you’re supposed to make music.” It’s a system that is rich with my own inventions. I think most of the music we hear.. I don’t want to say it’s soo derivative.. but it is more conventional. My music is a kind of giant leap into the unknown.. and I think that’s the most compelling part of it.

It’s an attempt at invention.  You have a lot conceptual frameworks.. These frameworks are ways of thinking about various aspects of music making. This could be ideas about harmony, orchestration, counter point, melody, rhythm, mixing, process, sound synthesis, um.. a lot of different things.. These frameworks question the presumptions of the inherited views on these subjects… and they provide alternative answers to certain fundamental questions.

Why I tell you I don’t really understand the conventions.. I’m in part saying.. look, I rebelled very early in my artistic development.. So I never really listened to the conventions of tradition enough to really have a deep understanding of what all that is about. 

I don’t really take my frameworks too seriously.. or I should say that they are just ideas to get you part way there.. They are like a starting place. I suppose its like this idea that.. language has certain limitations for what it can say, what it can point to.. and what is really important is something beyond language… but of course language has it’s utility.. and it will take us part way there.

Eventually you have to put down all our ideas and simply have a direct experience..

I feel like I’m speaking in  such abstract terms..

Hmm.. some time ago I wrote a blog entry on “my process of philosophy,” which I think speaks to what I’m trying to get at here. For all intensive purposes, we are talking about a philosophy of music here.. all be it in a way that’s really.. kind of about process, and pragmatic issues of the artist.. It might not sound like there’s anything pragmatic about it.. but.. in my process of philosophy, though I don’t recall talking about “magic” does in fact talk about something that.. if I were talking about magic.. I’d eventually have to get to this…

Magic.. in part.. well here’s what you gotta do.. pay attention to details beyond the degree to which reason would suggest it as important. Pay attention to details for the purpose of the psychological process.. not just from the perspective of the logic of the physical universe.

Ok, here’s a quicky on “who God is.” (are you impressed by my balls yet? I mean to bring up God here?) God is a symbol for the unknown..  The deal is.. that the ratio of the known to the unknown is a ratio of 1 to infinity.. Our conception of reality is.. sorta ridiculous in relationship to “the real thing.” The meaning of anything has to do with context, and when you realize that the ultimate context of anything and everything is mystery.. my gosh.. interesting..  

So you see here,… my talk of mystery management.. is um.. perhaps a deeper idea then it might often seem.

Anyway.. so the point is.. paying attention to details beyond what rational ideas would suggest, in part.. is saying “listen I recognize that mystery has more to do with what makes the world go round then my conceptions.. and so for the sake of that, I should try to work beyond my understanding.”

So when I say something like “I feel like there’s something going on in my music,” what I mean is that there is something going on beyond my understanding.. that’s going on a level that is beyond what my conscious mind has consciously been creating.. my efforts to go beyond are starting to pay dividends.

It’s an effect of the interrelationships of the details I’ve been paying attention to. It’s the implications. 

Let see if I can explain how this works in a more tangible way:

At a certain point in the project I’m working on (as of this writing, you might be able to hear it here, though it shant be there for long).. at a certain point I start playing with microtonalism. I’m writing monophonic lines.. inside of a diatonic framework.. Each instrument is playing around with various chord tones.. but the microtonalism is abstracting it from there.. so that the actual harmonies, and counter point stuff, is not something you would find in your text books.. 

I understand that for the average reader.. what I’m talking about… it’s as if it were in a foreign language.. What I’m saying is something “a little technical” which has interesting implications.. which I’ve probably gone into in past blog entries somewhere.. for now I just want to say.. this is an example of a sort of crazy attention to details.

At the same time as this going on..  you have various blocks… where different instruments seem to be taking on different rolls, and what instrument performs what roll.. or how the the different instruments come together to divide of the labor of the rolls.. is in a constant state of flux.

Ok, hold up right here.. If you’ve been reading me for any length of time.. you’ll no doubt realize that that the “organizational principles” of the music I’m creating are following ideas I have concerning the organizational principles of social media..  my answers to “the technological disruption we are in the middle of.” So in a very interesting way.. the music is exploring social media / new media disruption..  This is something I’d like to go into more detail with but.. I’ll leave it here for now.

 Another aspect to all this that seems to me worth talking about is.. that I sorta approach the music making process from the stand point of a painter.. Or it seems more like the work of a painter then a music person. One are we this being realized is in the mix, and how the mix integrates into with the composition.. The instruments in our mix are in motion.. They are in motion in relationship to our listener.. the are close to us, they are far away from us, moving from one speaker to the next.. 

This is a sorta tricky juggling act..

Latter still:

well I must run.. got a Boston Media Makers thing to run off to.. so I’ll have to finish this up latter.

[editors note, this was started yesterday] 

I’m not doing real good on my effort to write short blog entries today..  I’ve written parts of two really long ones.. for some reason these never seem to want to get published.. oh the pain and suffering of it all!

As we speak, I’m preparing food.. just chicken, I’m starving.. 

Today I watched some internet TV which has me thinking a little differently about what I’m doing. I’m thinking I might want to think more seriously about Qik. Qik is a website that allows you to stream video live, via a cell phone, out to the internet, where anyone could watch. Of course you need a special sort of Nokia smart phone sort of cell phone, and a special sorta internet connection.. to make it happen… but the more I think about it, the more I find myself thinking “wow, this could be cool.”

The question, of course, is how much it costs. You need a phone.. they seem to be more then $500… you need an unlimited data plan.. I have no idea how much these are going for.. Apple’s is what, $60 a month for the basic plan? So basically, I have to look at my budget and fiscal situation, and try and figure out just what my priorities ought be..  

So here’s sorta what I’m thinking: Pseudo Life Casting. What I mean is that it’s a means by which you can bring an audience into your world…….

I haven’t quite figured this all out yet.. But the way I see it is.. I’m creating a story.. between the blogs and podcasts and media work. There’s what we might consider “a total story” and then there’s “particular narrative threads.” This is perhaps terrible terminology, but bare with me.. Any particular consumer of my story may only be interested in particular threads.. For instance.. perhaps you’re interested in music production.. so only the blog entries in the music production subject of this blog are of interest to you.. you really don’t care what my cat had for lunch! But then there are other people.. perhaps friends, who might actually be interested in what my cat had for lunch… or at least they are interested in pretending to be interested…

So.. can you create a granularity… where someone can tune into a grain.. and only get that grain’s content.. and not have to suffer the rest of it? I doubt it.. or.. I’m sure there’s ways of achieving this..  but I don’t think the technological ecosystem of the moment is capable of doing this out of the box, put it that way.

It might make sense to not go a qik route.. as I think of it.  What is the meaning of Live? How important is live content? As I ask this question multiple thoughts come to me. For one thing… Live can mean user interactivity.. where you can comment on the live feed, and the person in the video can in someway react to what your saying..

Also.. imagine Live as one part of a larger whole. Lets say you’re life is the narrative. You have twitter, which is pretty close to real time.. lets call them grains of thought. You have a blog which is.. well ideally I’d like to think of it as a daily thing.. A podcast, which ideally is probably a weekly thing.. In someways, doesn’t it sorta seem like.. the closer to real time you go, the closer to the person you go?

I’m almost thinking.. forget about the audience.. in terms of thinking what might be interesting. I mean who knows, right? Lets just do our thing and see if anyone tunes into it..  Imagine you’re just constantly creating content.. almost like breathing. Would the constant flow of content, almost on it’s own, generate an audience? Sorta like.. I could type out anything here… and Google, and other search engines.. will see this text, and it’ll show up in searches.. so that it probably doesn’t even matter what I say.. if I just keep talking, an audience will develop.

Well no, not really.. who wants to read crap, right? Sure, you’ll see it, you’ll read a couple lines.. and then you’ll go “wow, this is stupid” and run away… so sure.. I can get zillions of people to take that first look, maybe.. just as an effect of creating lots of content.. but that’s not really what we want to do.. what we really want to do is to have folks who actively follow us.

I suppose we could look at these followers in terms of various segments.. There are people who might know who you are and casually follow you.. say if you connect with someone in a particular context.. they might be curious enough to sorta visit your stream…  That person is a consumer.. but you know.. not a big consumer.. Then you have someone who’s.. lets say a fan.. or better yet, we are talking about a hard core fan! The hard core fan, depending on how hard the core is.. that person is likely to consume a lot more content then the person who’s only occasionally bumping into things.

Ok.. so look at that.. Isn’t that interesting! What I mean is… the hard core and the casual consumer want different things. The way I would look at it is like this.. the casual consumer hears your music on the radio, the hard core consumer buys your CD. When you only know a band by there TV and Radio appearances.. that you happen into by chance.. versus someone who actively seeks this band out.. you have qualitatively different experiences..  When communicating with the casual consumer… you speak in sound bites, when speaking to the hard core fellow, you speak in paragraphs.

I guess my point is.. you can see why a social media strategy would want both.. and perhaps the full spectrum in between. 

In marketing, the subject of “conversion” is not insignificant.. of how to convert someone from a casual consumer, lets say, and a hard core consumer.. or even from a non consumer to a hard core consumer. 

Next day:

Good enough, lets post 

I’ve been thinking a bit about this blog, this site, projects, strategy, and blah blah blah… about where thing’s be at, and where I should like to take them…  Seems worthy of a little blogging, don’t cha think?

You know, social media.. a big part of it is “you should be your self:” Success in personal branding has something to do with authenticity. Mitch Joel talks about “the snow flake theory” in relationship to personal branding.. that we are all snow flakes, each individual, and thus we differentiate our selves via nature, as a pose to via consciouses will.. Ok, maybe Mitch doesn’t use anything like those words, but if he had my background he’d say it like that!

Yeah… so like.. I’ve been thinking about this sorta thing and thinking.. hmm.. sometimes I go into this super duper intellectual mode.. which is something I dig, to be sure..  but folks who have a different sort of insanity from my own… I think that kinda talk can produce certain digestive challenges. And it occurs to me, I have a whole lot of what we call in the biz “personality.” And that personality ain’t coming through so much… Or maybe it’s not that… maybe it’s just like.. I want to speak more freely.. or I want to do something.. I’m not even sure what it is.. It’s just that I feel it in my bones, do you know what I mean?

Anyway, I figure I need to blog more..  I’m thinking I’d like to have more blog entries.. probably shorter.. just like snippets of thoughts… Just little things. I also think there are certain “blog strategery” reasons for doing this.. 

I suppose a lot of what I’ve been doing with this blog is.. just getting my feet wet a bit. I mean I haven’t even been keeping this blog for that long.. since sometime around Boston Podcamp 2… so in so many ways I still feel the need to find my voice…

I mean.. how much of this should just be my personal voice? “And this is what I had for lunch today.” Can what a person had for lunch today be interesting? I tend to believe anything “could” be interesting.. depending where the beholder is coming from.. and I’m fascinated by consciousness.. as well as streams there of.. and I don’t mean to go so far as to talk about life casting.. but… there’s something in there of value to me.

A few latter:

So would you like to hear some thoughts about new things on the drawing boards? I’m thinking about creating some new podcasts…  The master podcast feed, for these, which would include them all, you can subscribe through iTunes by clicking here. Right now that’s a somewhat faded podcast.. But one idea I had was to have several things you subscribe to.. that would all be sorta “they come out when they come out,” which is to say producing regular content wouldn’t be on the agenda but…  One idea is to show works in progress.. as we speak I’m working on some new Reason content, and I’d love to be able to take you into the studio with me.. lets check this out.. Where I’d share these projects I’m working on.. and sorta talk about what they are all about..  

A whole lot latter:

In keeping with the notion of posting more often, and making them short, how about I post this now? 

You ever have an arrogant moment? Maybe arrogant is the wrong word.. maybe its more of an ego thing? Or maybe it’s.. a recognition of your strengths. Perhaps its just my fighting with my own internal scripts: that which is programed into us in early youth. In any event.. I feel like I have something to say about social media.. a take on it, that’s a little more sophisticated, and perhaps a little more optimistic, then the conventional understanding of the subject.

My rational for the reason runs something like this: people have areas of interest which they are cultivating.. if you’re in social media as a result of profession.. the interests of the profession are defining your understanding. You are seeing it from the vantage point of those interests. The result, on a collective level, seems to be that conventional wisdom and understanding of social media is largely driven by those professions that are most engaged in social media. A further problem is.. it’s “a fish bowl.” This is to say that its really only a small part of the total population that is currently in the social media space.. which has an effect of lessoning diversity and increasing group think. I could go on, but lets leave it at this.

One of the first things to excite me about social media is: the forces that define how information propagates through social media space, is different from how information propagates through mass media space. Information in this sense could mean anything from beliefs, ideas, data, information in the usual sense, or association complexes. Perhaps it could mean other things to.

For this I’m given to thinking about psychoanalysis. In psychoanalysis there is the question of the channels thoughts have to travel before they dawn on the conscious mind. These channels have a lot to do, to put it mildly, with what thoughts are in your head (as well as there shape and form). These channels shape consciousness. The question of how information propagates through mass media versus social media.. has huge ramifications on our consciousness.. on how we think.. on our very concept of reality.

This could then lead into a very deep conversation…. about how this will change the world on a systemic level. But what I want to get to first is.. the level on which what the disruption asks of us, is different then what the world we grew up in asks of us. That to best take advantage of this emerging new world.. we need a new mode of being.

It starts, I believe, with the notion of push and pull media. Push media is what is pushed on you, pull media is what you pull towards you. In social media the world is much broader then the world of mass media.. there is of course the question of “how do we find the good stuff.”

Perhaps a good metaphor is if you go to Barns and Noble, or a really big library. There’s so many books there.. what do you want to read? In an unfragmented market place in the mass media world.. lets say old school TV with 3 main networks and UHF, there wasn’t much choice.. this is the world we were all brought up on. What we were all exposed to was content that needed to have “a mass appeal” in order to be commercially viable.. which had the effect of homogenizing the content. (we are talking about the roll of “market morality” in how information propagates) 

Well the point I want to get to is that we are used to a world were we are all spoon fed information. In school, what we study is what our teachers tell us is important to study, what music we listen to is what the radio stations play.. etc, etc, etc..  Which is not say we are satisfied, which is not say we don’t go off the reservation to some sort of strange content.. or that we don’t have personal taste in this.. The point is it’s a very different landscape from one where you go “I’m interested in X, let me go find out about X.” My point being that what is motivating you is more external then internal.

This can lead us to another problem: the extroversion of western society. I suppose you think it’s ok to be an extrovert? Ok, I’m not going to argue with that, but I do want to take you into a 101 of psychology types.. and how this plays into our subject.

We each spend half our lives getting to know the world outside of our selves, and the other half getting to know the world within. Each of us, to one extent or another, tends to be more orientated to one or the other areas.. Someone more orientated to the inner world.. that’s an introvert..  more orientated to the outer world.. that’s an extrovert.

From a Jungian perspective.. the psychology of the extrovert can be understood via Freud’s psychoanalysis, the psychology of an introvert can be understood by Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology.

Basically, what this resolves down to is the the underlying drama of introverted psychology has to do with power dynamics, where as the underlying drama of extroverted psychology has to do with the dynamics of the pleasure principle.

Ok.. so again we are in some very deep waters. We can’t fully explore these waters here.. but I should advise you against prejudice: We are speaking about technical terminology that often has specific meanings that are different from how the terms sounds on the surface.. Ok, I’ll leave it at that.

So there’s specific psychological ramifications to your orientations with regards to external and internal worlds. Western society, being more orientated to the out world, to the material world..  

Ok, lets lighten things up a bit, how about a music video that exemplifies this notion:

Yeah.. I didn’t like this song or video too much back in the day.. so how about an introvert’s counterpoint?

Now, (not to overly put down extroversion) do you note the superiority of what the introvert is saying, with respect to social media? We are rebelling a bit from “what we are supposed to be doing” and being driven more via our own internal needs, so to speak.

This will have to be explored more in future blog entries.. But.. the material world of business.. is driven by metrics.. Metrics, or “the numbers,” have everything to do with how business operates. The trouble with numbers is.. the question of what is difficult to quantize…. what is difficult to understand in terms of numbers: This then effects the channels by which information comes to the consciousness of business.. (seems like we have a repeating theme on our hands).

The point here is.. there are certain problems with the consciousness of business. Business’s consciousness has certain prejudices… which have now evolved so far as to be a modern “thou shalts.” You could say it is our highest idea of God, getting in the way of an actual experience of God. As Jung would say “religion is a defense against religious experience.” These prejudices have, in no small measure, become our prejudices. And my brothers and sisters, all this lays in the foundation of our concept of reality.

This prejudice, this reality concept, this consciousness, effects how we react to our own internal being. It defines what we think of as good and bad. It defines what kind of human beings we evolve into, and it defines much of how we raise our children. 

Ok.. boy could I say a lot of things here!

There’s so many tangental themes swarming around our main driving thrust.. that is this blog entries narrative… that I just want to take a moment to speak of it: The swarming themes have there own narrative.. which is evolving in what you could call a subliminal way: I am speaking to you on multiple levels.. the other narratives being something like “self evolving.” Ok, enough said.

So… the matrix is about going beyond our inherited notions of reality.. we are speaking about our discontents..  we are speaking about the entropy in our metrics.. the problem of the channels.. we are speaking about something that is difficult to put a name to.. to articulate..  something beneath realities surface. It is something that modernity devalues.. and yet it still exerts an influence over us.

It’s important to understand this influence.. I hate going into this because its such a long story, but basically: those areas which we do not cultivate.. behave like children.. have an immaturity to them.. that is produced as a result of our reality concept.. There immaturity, as we pear inward at our selves, and judge them from the stand point of our reality concept, reinforces our reality concept: Hey, this part of me.. that doesn’t want to go to work today… it’s an immature childish response to the demands of life…. and if I were to stay home, what would it then do to my career? 

Ahh… but what would really happen? Sure, your world will probably fall apart, but what happens after that? What would happen if that part of you that wanted to stay home grew up and matured into an adult form? What would happen if you lived your life “the way you wanted to live your life” as a posed to how you were supposed to?

Well.. you would surely escape from the Matrix, that much is certain. What would drive your forward evolution would be your own internal will.. You would cultivate, not just certain parts of your beings potential, but the whole of it.. perhaps not as finely as you could a specialized part.. but you would, indeed, have a very different conception of reality.

Well this isn’t really the point I want to drive to, more to say something about the mystery beyond where we are standing today, and to point out some of the forces at work in us. That this force is present.. that it exerts a roll… must be thought of.

I suppose it’s worth saying.. that if what is needed, as a result of the force of the disruption, is different then the world we came from.. that there is need to cultivate some of this other stuff. That there is this need, will.. like supply and demand in the market place, cause this cultivation to happen. So what I’m saying is the disruption cause this kind of transformation.

I’m not sure how well I’ve made the case.. but at least its food for thought… and good enough for one blog entry.

[Editors note, this entry was started last Sunday]

As we speak, I’m just groggily awakening from my post Media Makers nap. You see Boston Media makers is a group that meets the first Sunday, of every month, from 10AM (roughly) to 12 (roughly) in Jamaica Plain Mass (think Boston). Making it for me often involves mass sleep deprivation.. which then takes some time to recover from.  But, it’s generally worth it.

I wouldn’t know the best way to describe the group. On a basic level, do to modern computing and the internet, all digital media comes down to ones and zeros.. so photography, sound, video, whatever.. its kinda all the same at some point. So the group is filled with folks whom, one way or another, make media and put it on the net. Some of what’s so exciting about our times is the new kind of democracy technology is bringing us, where literally anyone can become a content producer, where you can do something not that dissimilar from becoming your own TV station on the net… only for a lot less money and without having to worry about distribution. So it’s a pretty groovy revolution.

When you find your self in the position of being an independent content producer, of the net making sort, it helps to find other folks whom are dealing with the same sorts of challenges as you are, enter the Boston Media Makers.

Should you be interested in this sorta thing, and in the general area, you might want to stop by.. here’s a link to the group’s blog were more information can be found. 

Our tradition is to go around the room and have people talking about what they are doing.. here’s some of that:

Steve Garfield 

Steve Garfield, a pretty famous video blogger, introduce a couple of things to the group:

• Qik: Software, that when paired with an apparently expensive phone with a video camera attached to it, allows you to stream live over the internet from anywhere.
• A Live In America, from the folks who brought us A Live In Baghdad, is coming soon, and is looking for contributers. I’m thinking about participating.
• There’s a tweet up at Boston Beer Works at 7PM this Tuesday (tomorrow as of my writing this) Which looks interesting. Steve will be live casting it via Qik…  I forget the other details.. which make it sound even more interesting.

I’m fascinated by technologies like Qik: You wonder “what could be some interesting applications for this?” Or you wonder how you might use this kind of technology as a part of whatever it is you’re doing. As I put my budgets together, I don’t see where a seven or eight hundred dollar cell phone could fit into my shtick, particularly as Qik is still in an early phase of development, which roughly translates into “integration is less then perfect.”

That said, I was on Twitter the other day when Steve put a link to a live cast he was doing, interviewing some folks from the Obama campaign whom where, I guess, doing door to door.. which proved fascinating. From the Qik site, you could type in questions, that Steve could then ask the people he was talking to. You can find Steve’s Qik page here, along with archives of past casts.

Another interesting application for Qik, and I’m not sure if this worked out or whatever, but Steve was talking about a group who would do a live show, not through Qik mind you, where different people at there computer web cams.. would be talking, and it would be like “and now to George in Austin Texas.” So sorta like a live news show.. where you could cover whatever.. and of course what Steve wanted to do was to have it passed to him.. not in front of a computer, but off in the field somewhere.. fascinating stuff! 

Rebecca Herman 

Rebecca, is involved in a documentary project, having some connection to Duke university. This project involves documenting undocumented migrants in the hispanic community. This would be a video project. The project is inspired by, or of a similar vain as, 6millionothers.org. (what a great Flash project.)

I messaged her a while back in response for a call for help… as far as getting her blog / web design / social media strategy stuff together. We were going to get together to talk a bit, at one of these Boston Media makers, but that didn’t come to pass.

Well now she’s looking to do a kind of instillation project, using video. Made me think of some classes I took with this guy:

 And check out this clip from one of his instillations:

Pretty groovy, ha? 

And then, why just a week or to ago, I went to a bfpug meeting on “Interactive Design and Physical Computing with Flash.” Basically, you plug a circuit board into your laptop.. the circuit board has “ins and outs.” You can set up various types of “switches” as inputs into the circuit board.. and you can plug these small “engines” / whatever into the board’s out puts, which the computer can then control. The “engines” can work like robotics.. or you could use the board to turn on and of lights, and what not.  

Here’s an example..  Here, if someone stands between the TV on the bed, and the other TV, a switch makes the TV on the bed play the clip where the bed person says “move it, common, move.”

Think “Tony Oursler does Warhol 2.0?”

It’s kind of amazing, isn’t it? So this isn’t about technology, this is about.. well other things..  that the technology makes sort of magical. From an artist’s process perspective.. well, in this case it’s a little conceptual.. they way it interacts with the audience.. you see those themes from the earlier clip of Tony talking about personal and impersonal.. etc, etc.. how this plays with personal space / gallery space, in a certain way… or..  well you get the idea.

How this would translate to an instillation about immigrants is another question. Further, Flash is primarily a web app, so how might you take advantage of what Flash has to offer on that front? Would there be a way you could integrate that with a technology like Qik?

Rebecca has a blog at RegardingRebecca.Com.

Jason Stevens

Jason Stevens does Beyond Event Marketing and Advertising. He’s looking for people with media design type skills for work.. so I messaged him.

Jessica Burko 

Jessica Burko of JessickaBurko.com…. She’s an artist.. she does marketing and promotional type stuff for artists, and is just starting to explore some of this social media stuff. She’s associated with Boston Hand Made, a group of Boston area artists, who meet up on the first Thursday of every month. Ok, now here’s a group I need to explore!

Rick Burnes

I keep running into Rick..  He does 9neighbors.com. 9 Neighbors aggregates local news blog content, local to Boston, to one place. It uses a Digg like system, where in, community voting / ranking, impacts a stories prominence on the site.

Usually, when we think internet we think Global.. but.. perhaps particularly when your thinking mobile web, the importance of local is on the rise.

Tom Beach

This is where my notes gets a little shaky.. There’s supposed to be a blog, but I get an error message on the page. Anyway.. seems web design orientated.  Find out more at TRBDesign.com.

John Herman

Check out JohnHerman.org, he does great stuff. He’s an artist / writer / media maker / performer. He’s doing a web video series you can checkout at gravityland.com. This will involve user interaction, where users will effect elements of the series…  So you know, go participate. It’s still early, not officially.. well official yet.. so there may not be too much going on there at the moment.. indeed there’s not.. but stay tuned, or bookmarked / rss-ed if you will.

Jack Hodgson

Jack is clearly a very smart guy. I haven’t had to many opportunities to interact with him, but I’ve been seeing him around these circles since I started entering these circles. He’s doing a podcast called Uncontrolled Airspace. Uncontrolled Airspace is a podcast on general aviation.. in the “hanger flying tradition,” which is to say when pilots get together in the hanger, and talk flying.. in a colorful sort of way I understand, and I hear it’s a very good podcast.

Brain Christiansen

Brian works at User Interface Engineering. Jared Spool (his boss at UIE) was on episode 77 of Mitch Joel’s 6 Pixels of Separation a few months back. (a great episode on web strategy) I met Jared at PodCamp Boston 2, and he came, virtually, to a New England Podcaster meet up some time ago… Brian has a site at briandigital.com. He does the UIE podcast, and various other things.

Linda Shah

Linda’s involved with Beanywood.com, soon to be New Film Nation. Beanywood is a social networking site for people working in Film, and related stuff. This is some amazingly cool stuff.

BJ Hill 

BJ is doing a project called Walk Across America. During the Massachusetts gobernatorial race that elected Deval Patrick, BJ walked across Mass filling a note book with things people might want to say to whomever might win the election. This project had a social media component.  He won a lot of press attention for the project, which lead to an opportunity to meet Deval Patrick, and hand him the note book. Walk Across America is essentially the same idea, but on a national level.

Cool stuff.

Amanda Van Scoyoc

Amanda is an artist: photographer, documentarian, writer, and painter… Indeed she even has a BA in psychology. (you know me, how can I not bring a thing like that up?) She’s got some nice looking work, and a blog, that you can check out at Amandavs.com.

Steve Albanese

Steve runs Tutorial Depot, which provides video tutorials on how to use… well various sorts of technology. Currently he’s focused on music production tools like Pro Tools, Logic, Digital Performer, etc.. He’s looking for people to author tutorials. 

At Podcamp Boston, Steve asked me if I’d like to be a Reason Tutorial author. Can I get a Hell yea? I had planned to get right to work on it.. but life got a little crazy.

My mom was sick, and got really sick. I had to learn the new version of Reason, and as a part of this I worked on my Zar Matt A Thustra Deep Space Adventures project.  I’ve blogged about this here, you can find links to the actual music at mattsearles.com/music/. 

This was a part of NaSoAlMo, which was a challenge to make a solo album in the month of November. My participation was, at least in part, a tactic to hold myself together while my mom was as sick as she was.  Shortly after, in December, my mom died. 

More Links

After this, my notes break down a bit, but here are some more links:

• Project Think Different
• Left Ahead
• FloPrompter
• Boston Biker
• Bicycle Film Festival 

So you see, its sorta an amazing group. I mean it’s amazing what people are doing… what’s going on in this space.. and the potential of this space. It can be hard to go to one of these meetings without feeling inspired. 

I feel almost like Jesse Jackson, with my tittle’s rhyming.

Joseph and New Marketing 

Today I’m going to tell you a tiny bit about about Joseph Jaffe. Joseph is a kind of mentor to me. He does a “new marketing podcast” now known as Jaffe Juice, formally Across The Sound. New marketing would be marketing in, basically, the interactive / digital / social media space. Why is this subject important? To big business and brands, they way consumers interact with brands is changing. The world is changing at an amazingly fast pace, the disruption is huge, and the question of what this might mean to the marketing profession, and business in general, is an important question. In marketing, Joseph is one of the folks leading the charge.

Why Joseph Jaffe and New Marketing Matters to Us 

Now why is it important to us? I suppose there’s the question of “who exactly is us?” I have no real idea, of who my readers are at this point… so “us” will be an imaginary idea, having more to do with my idea of what I’m doing here, then what you’re actually doing here, reading me.

I’m interested in, among other things, the future of culture. I’m particularly interest in culture from the artists / content creator’s perspective. The relationship between the way markets operate, and the culture they help drive, is a long story in media criticism. It seems to me that new marketing offers us something new. Artists have a new opportunity for thinking about new existential relationships between content and markets. This is, in my view, insainly exciting for the future of culture.

A kind of 101 of it runs something like this: Social media marketing’s biggest expense is the time and energy it takes to do it. Anyone can do it, with barely any budget at all. Consequently social media marketing is very well suited to the guerrilla. If you’re an artist, and you learn to do this well, the implications could be great: In music as a mass media art form, it #1 costs about a million dollars to bring a band to market, which is to say to build there brand. #2 In order to recoup the expense of bringing the band to market, the record label/artists have to sell a hell of a lot of cd’s  to recoup there investment. This has many effects like the subtext of the question “does this music have commercial potential” and what that means to what sorta music we we hear on the radio.  Are you bored with what’s on the radio today?

If you do your own social media marketing and, as a solo artist, are able to sell the equivalent of 6,000 CDs per product cycle, you are now eking out a living. Of course most revenue is probably not coming from CD or download sales, and of course selling 6,000 CDs is not an easy thing, but it does “change everything.”  Also, let us not forget that we are still in the early days of this transformation.

So, my suggestion to artists and content creators is to tune into the conversation, that’s going on in podcasts and blogs like Joseph Jaffe’s Jaffe Juice.

More Places to Turn for Information on Marketing and Communications In New Media 

Here’s a quick list of other podcasts I highly recommend you check out:

• Six Pixels of Separation
• Managing the Gray
• For Immediate Release
• New Comm Road
• Marketing over Coffee

And that’s just for starters

My Participation in the Join the Conversation Project 

So why am I talking about Joseph Jaffe today? Well Joseph has a new book out called “Join the Conversation” which would have something to do with “conversational marketing.” There is a somewhat new-ish idea, in the world of marketing and business, that markets “are conversations.” I’m not saying everyone buys into this idea, but it is something worth thinking about, though I’m not going to go exploring that rabbit hole today..

As a part of promoting his book, Joseph is giving away books to anyone who has a business / marketing / media related blog or podcast, if you agree to write a review on it.  I forget how many copies he’s giving away, I want to say 150? (click here to find out more)

I want to get my butt in gear, as far as executing my own social media strategy, on multiple fronts, and for working with other people in the social media space. For this reason, reading a book on the subject, is something I want to do. Being a fan of Joseph makes we want to read his book in particular, and being an artist of limited means… well how could I pass up an opportunity to participate in Joseph’s efforts?

No Really, I’m a Truth Teller 

At this point you may well ask, “just what sort of objectivity can we realistically expect from Matt on this subject.” My first answer is “I have no idea,” a more considered answer runs as follows… or better yet, this is what I plan to do:

This blog is dedicated to meditations on whatever subject I’m meditating on, at the time I write and post stuff. I expect that as I read Join the Conversation, I will be reacting to it, in one way or another. I am not an uncritical consumer of information, as a cursory review of this blog will no doubt show, so I suspect what you’ll get from this blog will be nothing but my honest, authentic, reactions. Even if they should be colored one way or another, I want to be transparent enough so as to provide to you, what you need in order to be critical, in your consumption of what I have to say.

Ok, so that’s about it for this post, lists end on some related links:

• Join The Conversation (The Book) on Amazon
• JoinTheConversation.us (The books blog) 

I’ve expressed some uncertainty about this blog, and then last night I read some of the entries, found it to be much better then I thought it to be: it would seem my powers of self criticism are limited.

A little while ago I read a blog entry, as a result of a tweet link from Chip Griffin, on the subject of writing and public relations.  The gist of it was on the importance of writing simply, the complexity of the task, and how to do it.

I feel as though I’m lucky if I can write at all.  Lots of people tell me, wether its a blog or podcast of mine, that I’m talking over there heads.  This would seem to be a bad sign.  This is particularly true if I’m viewing blogging and podcasting as communications tools.

On the other hand, when we are talking about blogging and podcasting, there is the importance of speaking in your own voice.  (This would be a slightly different challenge then if we are writing a press releases.)  My voice is, I think we can all agree, a rather intellectual voice.   Still, I don’t want to be unaccessible.

All this is made a little more challenging if we are talking about a kind of developmental stage, where in experimentation is key.  Experimentation is something you don’t usually manage from a user centric perspective.  The experimentation, in my case, is at least partly about finding my voice.  There’s also self exploration:  How do you build a personal brand when your notion of who you are is in flux?

In many ways what I think I’m trying to do is to create something, and then see what it is. For the thing I’m creating, I have no idea who the audience is.  The process is more one where you listen to your inner voice, and see where that takes you. The voice is leading you in the direction of becoming, the process is one of exploring an inward mystery.  So, this would all seem to bring certain challenges to the communications process.

Then a few days back, I was listening to some of my older podcast episodes, and tweeted on them.  I don’t remember what episode it was, but essential the sound was awesome and my talking was terrible.  My friend Greg PC, who also happens to be in public relations, commented on my tweet.  His comment was something to the effect of “scripts can be a good thing, though sometimes unnatural.”  I only picked up on his comment, do to Google Alerts, today. I suppose here’s my response:

Listening to some of my podcasts, there’s clearly problems, and something needs to be done if I’m to take my podcast projects seriously.  I’ll give you my basic thinking, and process, and then go from there:

Process 

What I’m trying to do is “capture the magic.”  If there’s no magic to be captured, as is frankly the case in some of my episodes, this process wont work so well. The idea is, I have a portable recorder that I take with me most everywhere, and if I have a thought, I record it.  The recordings then reside on a hard drive.  When it comes time to put together an episode, I go through the recordings, and do a kind of production where in those recordings are regarded as elements of the episode.  The elements are bought in, along with music, and whatever else.. and a certain amount of creative mixing, editing, and general production, happens.

This kind of a production is a lot more labor intensive then that of most podcasts. In many ways, I would regard it as a kind of exploratory process: Interesting things can happen in various places: #1 The actual recording, #2 The editorial process of selecting clips from the recordings, #3 The other sonic elements that are selected to be a part of the episode, #4 musical elements that are custom composed / produced for that episode, and #5: the way all of these elements are mixed together.

Theoretically, you could have a recording that was kind of bad, lets say in terms of content, and via the rest of the process, it could be turned into something good.  So, the exploration comes in how all of these parts of the process interplay:  It’s really about both the parts and the ecology.

Aesthetics

Now there’s the matter of my aesthetic thinking.  For better or worse, I have some strange ideas.  I’m interested in a recording aesthetic that basically makes the microphone a kind of stand in for Freud, with the idea that we can pear into the soul of whomever is talking.  (This is a complex matter I deal with else where)

Another part of this aesthetic thinking, borrowed from Andre Bazin (an important film critic in post WWII france), is to preserve the “spacial temporal integrity of the event.”  In terms of sound, the idea is that sound production is largely a manipulation of reality, which has large effects on how we interpret what we are hearing.  If you listen to a 1940’s Jazz recording, you know those guys are really playing, but in modern music you may be listening to “a good take,” or perhaps what you were listening to has the performances digitally “fixed,” so everyone is playing perfectly on the beat.  There is also the fact that the sound you are hearing is not one you’d ever hear in reality, everything has been miced in such a way so as to produce an “ideal sound.”

Deeper in my philosophical thinking, there’s no such thing as an ideal.. or all things are ideals.  Ideals have to do with underlying questions, they are ideal resolutions to questions or conflicts, so that an ideal is a part of a relationship, and not an independent thing or idea.  So it’s somewhat of a Buddhist idea to go explore what a thing is, and find its inherent perfection.

Without going into it here, this ties into bigger cultural criticism.  To get to the point, how music is produced effects how we appreciate the music.  This having to do with age old philosophical questions like “how do we know what we know.”  

This then becomes a central subject of my art.  Wether we are talking Andre Bazin, or microphone as stand in for Freud, we are really talking about a kind of ultra realism.  In my work we have, on the one hand, ultra realism, and on the other extreme manipulations..  and so my work explores these interrelationships.

Production Values Problems 

The trouble, from the point of view of sound production, is the further something gets away from the microphone “the worse it sounds.”  Some of this has to do with distinctions between the way we listen to natural events, versus what the recording and production process does to sound, and how we hear this. This all being a part of psychoacoustics.  The result then, of a naturalistic approach to the problem, of having sound sources far away from a microphone so as to preserve a spacial integrity of an event, is that you’re sound quality suffers.

Yet another issue is that I’m interested in capturing both the sound of the people speaking, and the sound of the space the people are speaking in.  The latter part greatly complicates how you can manipulate the sounds.

Strategic Considerations

We have a lot of ideas on the table here, and while these ideas are all well and good, we also have the demands of “the market place.”  Even if content is free, we are still talking about “economies of attention,” and how media aesthetics plays into people’s consumption patterns.  How do we balance the deeper ideas of the work with our strategic considerations?

It seems to me that these are the questions I must explore moving forward. Allow me to give you some examples:

Dynamic compression compresses the dynamic range (variations from loud to soft) of sounds into a smaller range then we were originally at.  You can then turn up the volume of your compressed audio in the mix, and it will sound louder then the original.  To our mind and ears, louder equals better, a result being that modern music if often over compressed.

You will no doubt notice that dynamic compression manipulates the dynamic range of the original recording, and thus removes us one step from the original event.  If reality is what you’re after, then dynamic compression might carry some problems with it.  

On the other hand, if a podcast listeners is listening to your podcast while riding a bike through traffic, any sound that is lower then the sound of the traffic will not be heard.  So, if you look at your episode, you can ask the following question: “structurally, what must be heard in order for this episode to work?”  You could then compress, and pump up those parts, while allowing the other elements to exist in a fuller dynamic range.

Scripts

I have an inner anarchist that’s not much in favor of scripts, and then there’s the problems scripts present to my aesthetic ideas.  That said, just as there are many ways to skin your cat, there are many types of scripts:

One type of script is one where you write out, word for word, everything you are going to say.  Particularly if you’re a podcaster, the trick here is to write as you speak, so it might all sound natural.  The next trick is in how you read and perform that script.  The challenge is to both be in the moment, and really feel everything you are saying.  (It probably wouldn’t hurt if you committed it to memory to.)

Another type of script involves bullet points:  These are the topics we are going to talk about, and we’ll just improvise on each topic. An advantage this has over fully scripting every word is that it’s much easier to be in the moment.  

The next type of script, I’d like to tell you about, I call “the avant guard script.” Generally, these scripts are more like “strategies for interesting results,” then they are traditional scripts.  I take this idea from people like John Cage, whom composed with chance and indeterminacy.  

How about a short 2 part thing on Cage, to help give you a sense of where I’m coming from?

There are two things I should like this video to drive home here:  #1 Cage is, one way or another, dealing with many of the same questions, problems, and issues I’m dealing with, and #2: Cage is a very different artist then I am.  A third thing you might note, is his untraditional looking scores.  A score is, after all, a script.

Besides all of the above types of script, there is also the subject of improvisation. Sure, improvisation is making things up as you go along, but it is also true that improvisation can happen inside a limited set of parameters, which could then allow for certain types of structural ideas to be work out on a compositional or “script” level.

For instance, one approach to acting involves a strict adherence to a script, but free improvisation as to how you deliver that script.  This can both be a means to explore the possibilities in that script, and of delivering a performance.

Beyond Scripts 

Ok, enough about scripts.  Do you remember how I was talking about “trying to capture the magic?”  This is a documentary process, which is to say, one where we are documenting the unfolding of life / reality / something or other.  My inner anarchist, the same one who doesn’t like scripts, is again making rules against scripts, even if that would seem to be incompatible with a documentary process.

Still, I can tell you how I think some of my most successful episodes were created:  Before the episode was made I would mediate on it’s subject.  When I went to record the episode, the subject would be fully thoughts out, and I would just take you through my thinking.  The episodes were often powerful, simply because my thoughts would take you to a whole new way of thinking about the subject.

I guess where all this leaves me is with one question “where should I go from here?”   Hmm.. well before we address this, how about we get to broader subject of communications:

Communications 

I don’t have a communications background.  I don’t really regard myself as too great a writer, though with the help of a really good editor, there could be some hope for me. If I put my mind to it, I’m sure I could write a decent press release.

This blog is about complex ideas.  This is it’s virtue.  The virtue is in trying to illuminate subjects in new ways:  I provide a take on this that is unique..  It’s a take that is hopefully thought provoking.  Even in this entry, where I discuss the various issues of my social media aesthetics, and what not, as backwards as my positions may or may not be, they are hopefully at least interesting to think about.  

There is, of course, the question of intended audiences.  I don’t think my intention is really to communicate to an 8th grade level, as is the case with so much modern communications.  I mean, anyone who’s interested in what I have to say, you’re probably pretty smart / well educated to begin with.  If you were not, why would you be interested?  And of course, when philosophy takes such a prominent roll in things, I believe there’s got to be some license for my going off the deep end here and there.

Still I do want to try and break down, my more complex ideas, into simple bite sized chunks that anyone can understand.  The trouble is, understanding some of my more complex ideas is contingent on understanding lots of other ideas.  

For this reason it seems that each entry of mine is full of various puzzle pieces. The puzzle pieces, at least to me, sometimes look to be full of loose ends, or at least unestablished points.  These unestablished points are a problem, when they outline positions that are contrary to the readers position, at least in some cases. I’m specifically thinking of times when, from the surface, it could look like this or that part of my thought isn’t well thought out.  The way the puzzle piece system works is..  sooner or latter I’ll get into that point, and properly establish it.  Of course, while this might be a grand process for artifice building, it’s probably not ideal for communications.

Ok, now to the “where do we go from here” problem:

I think I basically just need to put more energy into my podcasts.  It may very well be that my process is too labor and energy intensive, given all the directions my energies seems to be going, in which case there’s a need to economize, which means different strategies.   

Latter still:

I’m just now attempting to edit this entry.  Dear lord is it long!  Too long I think! And how much of it was really self criticism anyway?  Ahh, screw it.  It’s something.