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.] 

I’m in a crazy sleep deprived state, mind full of beats.. Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burrough’s beats… Passions and revolts drive madly through me.. I thought of a part to a poem earlier.. when I was less sleep deprived deranged… I wonder if I could remember it.

 

God is not man made

Not even  man is man made

perhaps this is why he is so miserable

in his modern world 

 

So what do you think? It’s just a fragment of something. There was other stuff I was thinking of putting with it, but those memories have faded.

I wonder what you could do with those words, can you imagine? You could have those lines repeating over and over again… drenched in effects; an ambient timber.. some sound painting.

Perhaps its just a fragment, just a couple riffs looking for more riffs, to be come a whole.

Perhaps these are words that should be surrounding by still silence.. little movement.

Perhaps these words are no good at all. 

My mind has gone off in so many tangents in this state… I’ve had so many dreams to write about.. reflections, attempts at self awareness… feeling like a moth who bangs his head upon the glass in search for the flame… Even if I and the fire are one. 

On YouTube, it says this is a BBC documentary, but I don’t believe it is.. In any event it’s the documentary on Carl Jung.. This is the sorta thing that gets pulled from YouTube fairly regularly.. though this one’s been up for a while now.. so maybe it’s worth sharing this way.. Just thought I’d put them all together for an easier way of viewing… (that is that it won’t get pulled anytime too soon)

But first, some words about Jung’s Influence on me and my work: 

The funny truth of the matter is.. the biggest influence on my work.. from thought, to visual arts.. to my sound art.. It’s really the influence of an inward journey more then it is any artist or thinker or whatever..

When I talk about influences it might be best to regard this as a somewhat unreliable narration.. of the significants of the influence is more that they relate, in at least some sort of symbolic way, to something I’ve found on in my own inward journey.. and what they really provide for me is a way of talking about it.. that can at least be a touch point.. where we can have a common starting point for talking about.

Carl Jung, on the other hand, might be the single biggest influence on me for thinking about that inward journey… well maybe him and Joseph Campbell.. throw in Nietzsche somewhere.. and blah blah blah.. The influence is so big that I often don’t know where Jung starts, and I end, or vice versa..

Oddly enough.. its Jung’s conceptual framework, that underlies my music, underlies how I think about marketing and  communications, how I think about business, how I think about aesthetics, how I think about being human, how I think about social media.. So it seems to me important for me to share with you.

On with the Documentary

 

For some reason this one seems to lag a lil:

So yeah.. it’s kind of a crazy group, ha? I feel the need to give you some back story.. but…  well, seems like this entry’s long enough.. and who would have made it through the whole thing!? So, go.. do you’re other things! 

[editors note: Matt is trying to go off the deep end.. linking a change management orientated business strategy… where you don’t actually tell folks what to do so much as you think about the ecological context of there work.. with his own creative process.. so this becomes a kind of first person narrative… somewhat unreliable narrator style perhaps.. (though this is perhaps for certain existential reasons)… case study: Another words this blog entry is really about how business might operate in the future.. but um.. you probably have to think pretty deeply to work all that out..  for the rest of us it’s just him talking about his process.. and dealing with various technical challenges.. while plotting out his future.. or like.. the future of his process… or something like that…

yeah.. so its a long winding rant of a post.. hope you can dig that sorta thing]

So.. I just posted an entry on some of what I’ve been sorta exploring in my music production adventures.. I have yet another post in rough draft form, to add to that.. and then there is yet something beyond that I’d like to post.. on process and the finely tuned human instrument.. or something like that. But all of that seems like old news to me today.. Indeed my last post on the subject was largely written about a week ago.. so lets get to the now moment of it, shall we?

What started off as a somber impressionistic piano piece has evolved into… well it makes me think of a fight between Toshiro Mifune, and John Wayne… if you can imagine that. It’s gone into a full orchestral type production (with some asian percussion)… and it’s now sounding very much like music made by yours truly.. which is something had I wanted to hold off from..

You know.. maybe we could go into that bit about the fine tuned human instrument stuff?:

This is a somewhat complex idea.. But basically we are complex ecologies.. we humans. What is it that causes us to crave ice cream one day and nachos the next… that’s the ecology. Every moment, just where you’re awareness is.. that’s the ecology. This is profoundly important if you want to understand the mysteries of you’re own being.. and I dare say it can lead into a direct experience of God. Ok, that’s probably a controversial statement, but what the hell! 

For an artist this means.. what colors you’re attracted to; what color relationships.. what ideas.. the whole of you’re consciousness..  this is the subtext of process, to put it a certain way.. and if you look at art.. its kind of like a window to the soul… Or at least lets say it can be.

My process is one of embracing this kind of idea… There are different approaches you could make to the artistic process.. which can influence what sort of an effect your underlying ecology has on your work. Still, the ecology will effect performance, thus the value of industrial psychology to business…. to say nothing of a companies culture.

In this blog I’m starting to talk about this subject.. under the guise of “mystery management.” What I’m talking about is ecological optimization.. management not through direct control, but by influencing the ecology.

Ok.. so that’s like a quick overview that idea… Now another thing I’ve been thinking about blogging on is.. my studio change’s impact on process…

Today is the first time in my life where I felt like I had a sound studio that doesn’t really compromise… That’s not to say that this studio isn’t a budget studio.. or that there aren’t things I should think seriously about investing in.. Only that.. I don’t feel like I have to compromise with my work… or any compromises I make, its not because of studio limitations really. The implications are dramatic.. When you’re used to living in an unrealistic situation.. with unrealistic limitations.. you don’t have uber high expectations. When I look back at my old work now.. there’s a lot of places where I think “gee, I wish I had done something about that.” The truth is.. this is common even among grammy awarding wining sound engineers… whom are normally not working under the same kind of limitations.  But lets face it, everyone’s working under some kind of limitations.. you know.. we have x amount of time to get this thing done.. we have y amount of money to spend.. None the less I now feel like I don’t need to compromise….

Next day:

My strategy has always been.. lets work in a circumstance where we minimize our burn rates: If I find a way of working where the cost of working is minimal.. the cost fo time.. energy, whatever… so that I can maximize how much I put into my work.. if I make that one of my differentiators.. I could potentially create work of a higher production value then someone going through the conventional process. So… the notion of time limitations is not one that I really want to deal with in my “personal work.”

Ok, enough said on that for now..  lets get to the implications, of my studio shift, on process… in light of the “finely tuned human instrument concept.”

My strongest background is probably that of a visual artist.. even if this isn’t a muscle I exercise as much as I’d. If you’re a painter.. you have the subject of “how you apply paint to the canvas.” You could do the Jackson Pollock painting dripping thing… you could drop water ballon full of paint on your canvas.. you could use an air brush, you could attack the canvas with a brush so that the brush gestures are a part of the energy of the painting.. you could pain in such a way that the brush strokes seem hidden.. where we perhaps have a realistic depiction of whatever it is you’re painting…

The attack the canvas thing tends to be a very aggressive sort of thing.. it’s about emotion and perhaps intuition.. perhaps about sensation. All this is expressive of your ecology.. It, at least on the canvas attack part of it.. tends not to be highly analytical… Though I confess I’m a highly analytic painter.. but as you well might imagine from reading this blog.. my analytic process integrates this kind of attach process.. integrates chance, integrates accidents.. integrates all of this.. in an analytic sorta way.. or perhaps in other ways.. The analytics of it is a juggler of sorts.

So… when it comes to music production, composition, mix engineering… I will often just attach the sonic canvas… which of course produces expressive results just as it would with a visual arts process.

But here comes the contrast between the old studio and the new: In the old studio there were a limited number of instruments you could use at once, and a limited number of effects. The positive effects of this limitations were.. it didn’t take long to set up a project.. because you weren’t juggling too many elements you could move through a project quickly… I mean if you look at my Zar Matt A Thustra’s Deep Space Adventures project, there’s a solo album created in a month, where speed was a principle value.

The project I’m working on now, at this stage in the process, has 11 instruments in it.. All those instruments, I’m pretty sure, have one insert effect on them, and beyond that, as described else where.. they all have some of there sound going off to an auxiliary reverb. Beyond this.. this project has been one where I’ve had to program, to one extent or another, many of those instruments.. and I’ve had to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to program / configure stuff to get the results I want.

Out side of this, the programing of the instruments performances.. as a part of the composition, has been more elaborate then projects past…

What all this seems to mean is it’s like you go from working in a small sand box to working on some vast beach somewhere.. The scale is all different…  It’s not a project you can just jump into.. you have to take your time with it.. so what does this mean when it comes to the subject of ecology and the finely tuned human?

A few latter, while working on said project:

So we now have 11 instruments. Normally I’d control the mix via mixer automation, and now I’m controlling the mix more via the individual key velocity of each individual note…. (meaning stuff is controlled more by “performance” then “mix.”) The result is that it takes much much longer to write a section, but the expressiveness of the section is many orders of magnitude more. In addition to key velocity, I’m often programing pitch bend and modulation to the instruments.. and there’s a number of other things I could be controlling, but haven’t yet gotten around to figuring out.

If this were not enough, in some cases I’m also controlling elements of the mix via mixer automation.. As stated in an earlier blog entry, I’m don’t want the mixing to call attention to its self too much. For this reason I tend to set the pan position in one place, and leave it there.. but for some instruments.. ones whom I can only control the dynamic range to a limited extent via key velocity and automation.. I now control them via volume automation and there effect send.. which means there’s elements of the virtual stage.. which is to say where the instruments are positioned in space.. that would seem to be moving.

This is a project where I don’t know where it’s going. I have a preconception that as it goes along, at a certain point.. I’ll start moving it away from a traditional orchestral production.. We’ll see the introduction of electronic elements to make us think of electronic classical, and perhaps I’ll start dealing with the mix in a manner I might normally control the mix.. which is to say having your sense of where the instruments are coming from spatially… in a constant state of flux.. This evolution will then be a central thematic element of the production / composition.

Latter that day:

I’ve done this sorta thing before.. In a composition known as “Information Theory: Plight of The Complex.” Which you can find as a free download as a part of my Indra’s Net project.  However.. that project was more of a budget orchestra then this one.. 

Back to the subject of ecology:

Lets call it my psychological ecology, it’s effect on my taste guides me in my interactions with the production.. in the projects forward evolution. Any art project can be thought of as a product of a series of decisions..  You’re staring at a canvas and how you interact with that canvas is you’re reaction to that canvas: It is you’re “aesthetic response.” If you attack the canvas.. you’re throwing at it a lot of energy in a concentrated period of time.. so it’s a bit like the ecology of a moment.. when you work for days straight on a project, well, the ecology of that longer period gets imprinted on the work.

In you’re reaction to the canvas…  over time.. certain things happen: If you’ve ever gotten sick of a song because the radio played it too often.. the artist’s reaction to the canvas can be many times worse…. as he / she is looking at it / listening to it many more times

An interesting quality to my work is that repetition often does not happen in the same sorta way as it might in conventional music. There is no verse chorus verse thing going on..  In conventional music this sorta thing aids the process by which you recognize order in it.. Aesthetic sense.. our notions of beauty… they are very much tied to our ability to recognize order.

Order is, to me, very important. Our concept of reality is a cognitive ordering of.. lets say sense impressions into.. perhaps a rationalistic framework.. though in practice it’s much more complex the this.. but basically. Order is a projection, it is not really the order of the universe. Or.. our framework for organizing reality has implications on how we experience and understand reality. The organization is a kind of lens… that magnifies certain things..  and also has the effect of making other things less visible.

The organizational principles of my music is a kind of critique of our conception of reality.. It’s, in a certain sense, about the organization. Part of what I find exciting about.. say in this particular piece.. is that it’s kind of a cognitive roller coaster ride. It’s in a sense saying “look, this is how you could look at things.” The vision I’m departing is one that produces a kind of cognitive vertigo.. It’s as if you suddenly looked around you’re world through the eyes of an alien. To the extent to which.. we were earlier saying ecology effects one’s notion of reality.. It’s a little like saying “what if we changed your ecology.” It’s like bending reality before your eyes… Could there be an “ideal ecology” that would produce the sorts of results in our lives that we might like to have?

At its best, I would argue, religion is about creating an ideal ecology.

So the point is.. if we explode our concepts of reality..  

A couple days latter:

What the hell was I talking about anyway? Jesus, I’m trying to tie too many themes together here… and you just can’t develop all the ideas, fully enough, in one blog entry.. so screw it.. lets end here. 

Well, as it stands, my last published blog entry should provide the back story, so let us go on with the front story. [editors note, this was actually written a little while ago, so its still back story]

I finally came around to “Ok, lets try this quarter tone thing.” Quarter tones.. it means you take what used to be the smallest musical interval.. which is to say.. take any instrument.. the notes that are right next to each other.. the different between one note and the next.. now divide that by 4.  That’s quarter tone tuning.

For me, quarter tone tuning is a little like going off the reservation without a map..  or its like all the stuff on the dash board, by which you normally drive the car, or perhaps fly the plane.. they all went and took acid on you without telling you about it: When you look at a keyboard.. its obvious what notes are where, and when you suddenly wack out the tuning..  well God only knows, right?

Yeah, I could sit down and actually figure out what the hell is going on.. make special maps, and move forward that way, but somehow that doesn’t seem quite right to me. One of the thing that really appeals to my sense of adventure is.. being lost. It’s a little like Luke Skywalker turning off his targeting computer when he goes up against the Death Star.. where not going to rely on anything other then… I guess our own sense of things.

A challenge for the artist, always, is that you have a certain sense of taste.. you have habits.. you have all these things..  things you rely on.. and now we are pulling the rug out of all that… to go see what happens.

So I broke out my keyboard.. I’m no keyboard player, but I can noodle around on a keyboard.. and by doing that, I can kind of explore different possibilities as I go along. “What’s this harmony sound like” “how does this sound next to this.” What I find myself doing is just exploring this strange world.

A few latter:

The compositional process, for me, is a kind of dialog between.. myself and the canvas.. which in our case is a kind of sonic sculpture. I frequently call what I do with sound “sound art” as a pose to “making music” as… I think of it as more of an “artistic” process then “a musicians” process: I don’t think of my self as a great musician.. but a great artist I could be.

So what you’re doing is building this.. lets call it a “sound sculpture.” You’re putting stuff onto the sonic canvas, and in the end its what’s going on in the canvas that matters. All your skills, all you’re knowledge, all your musicianship.. all your abilities as a sound engineer, whatever it is.. in the end it comes down to that thing on the canvas.. 

Knowledge and skills amounts to language.. It’s a framework for understanding reality. Your framework for understanding reality.. has implications on the image of reality you behold. So for instance, my journey into quarter tone tuning.. is one of doing funny things with respect to your framework. For me its like “well I’ll just improvise inside of this context” so it’s a search for a context that will make magic happen.

The thing is, its not just about frameworks, its how you relate to that framework. The term “Dogma” comes to mind. I don’t know if religious people think this way.. but you could say.. on the one hand you have “the law” and on the other you have “your way of relating to the law,” and then you have a heretic like Jesus who comes along.. goes to the extreme of saying “yo, it’s just about loving God.” Jesus would tell you it doesn’t matter if you actually have that affair with your neighbors wife.. it’s did you do that in you heart. This, of course, was radical stuff.

Next Morning:

So I’m now trying to copy my Kontakt Sample library. Kontakt, of course, is a software sampler… Kontakt comes with an apparently incredible sample library… I say apparently because I’ve had a number of technical problems.. including defective DVDs, which has kept me from being able to explore said library. I still don’t have the damn thing working.. but now it looks like its simply a matter of copying the library from the DVDs..

The reason I’m doing this is because.. Well starting out with this piano.. just kind of the direction that was going.. It’s somewhat impressionistic.. and I had thought of throwing in some electronic sounds into the mix.. but I’m now thinking that what I want to do is.. keep thinking in the world of… kinda classical type orchestral stuff.. I mean just timber wise. And my understanding of the matter is that the Kontakt library stuff is the best library for this kind of thing… in my personal libraries anyway… So now its time to get that stuff working.

I do think having electronic stuff in the mix could be very cool.. if you’ve ever listened to OHM.. you hear electronic classical in action..  and I’d like to create that kind of a feel… where the work is basically orchestral.. but with electronic elements.. where the electronic elements function in a particular capacity.. but where the orchestral stuff is really the base of it all. I say this though I never know where my work is going to take me.

Back to the spiritual / relationship to law stuff:

My spiritual beliefs are clearly heretical. Jung has said that religion is a defense against religious experience..  which is to say that the church acts as an intercession between you and God. My sense of the.. way that religions roll in society has diminished.. and the kind of modern cultural climate surrounding it is.. I don’t always feel like religion is really doing a great job of serving the modern situation. There’s a reading of the Bible where you can say “Jesus didn’t come to bring people to the church, he came to bring the church to the people.” So I’d say that’s really the challenge for modern Christianity. 

My feeling is.. well I feel like.. do I even need the church? Couldn’t I just have a direct relationship with God? This is a somewhat dangerous idea.. but when I talk about our relationship to law, to conceptual frameworks, even to language.. I’m talking along these lines.. and so you can see how, on a process level in my work, my work explores this.

Hmm, how about we explore Ozzy’s take on this?

Always nice to have a little Randy Rhoads tribute, ha? (The boy could play!) 

I’ll end this entry here.. so.. I don’t know, what do you think?