NaSoAlMo: What it is and why we like it

This month, or November actually, I plan on participating in NaSoAlMo, other wise known as National Solo Album Month.. This is a thing where various musician / sound artistic types.. decided to participate in a challenge to create a solo album in a months time..  Basically.. it’s an excuse to get serious.. for a month.

Last year, as long times followers would know, I created ZarMattAThustra’s Deep Space Adventures.. for NaSoAlMo….  This, I must tell you, was one hell of an adventure. There’s nothing like working your ass off on something, if you want to grow by leaps and bounds… and at the end of last years National Solo Album Month’s thing..  I felt like I had made a giant jump in my music production / etc skills..  And so now, we embark on the next adventure…

On the Stategery and tactics of taking on such a challenge

Generally speaking.. if I’m working in my conventional ways.. and didn’t have a lot of other stuff to contend myself with.. was very focused.. I could maybe spit out about a track a week.. which might be around.. oh lets say an average of about 6 minutes a pop…. which comes out to what, like 24 minutes of music? Well.. the challenge is to make an album of at least 29:09 minutes.. so that’s not quite going to cut it.. and seeing as I have other things to deal with in life.. and seeing as last year I only found out about this about half way through the month… one must develop alternative strategies and tactics.. which is perhaps another interesting thing to deal with… 

So, lets take a look at last years strategies.. and this years strategies.

ZarMattAThustra’s Deep Space Adventures Production Strategy 

I found out, as I said before, about this challenge, about half way through the month.. but had already begun work on a few tracks.. so figured I could still make a go of it.. If I tried something radicle.

My radical process started with.. working with different types of sound generating type programs.. where you improvise via tweaking various parameters and record the results. This instantly creates a whole lot of music.. but then you have the question of “is this interesting music?” So the next challenge is “how do we make this interesting music?” This became the jumping off point for an experimental sonic adventure. For the most part, this involved the following approaches:

1. Lets Process the crap out of these audio files.
2. Lets mix stuff together different versions of processed audio into a kind of composite audio file.
3. Lets slice up the audio file into discreet loops n stuff
4. Lets sequence the loops
5. Lets integrate this with our usual way of working 

 Well, that’s the broad outline anyway.. 

Tools Used

1. Ableton Live
2. Arturia Storm
3. Native Instruments Komplete (mostly Reaktor)
4. A Wimpy G4 Mac
5. Reason
6. A guitar
7. A Zoom H4 field recorder 

Ok, so that’s the basic broad brush stroke outline of it.. You can read more of my writings related to this project here…  That would be the full list.. The writings where I wrote during the production are as follows: Off In Reaktor Land, Red Rum Re Drumed, and finally Gonzo adventures in music production.

Should you like to hear the album in it’s entirety, you can find it on over here at mattsearles.com/music. 

At the time I created it.. I wasn’t real sure of it.. but since then I’ve gotten a lot of good reviews from people.. and now figure.. well, it’s probably a pretty good album.

The New Production Adventure

Tools likely to be used:

1. The Bad Ass 8 Core Mac Pro
2. This here new MacBook (2GHz Due)
3. Komplete 5
4. Kore
5. Ableton Live
6. Reason
7. ReCycle
8. A Tascam 16 channel Mixer as a MIDI controller
9. An M-Audio DJ like MIDI controller
10. A Guitar
11. A Slide Bass
12. Digital Performer
13. Liquid Mix 16
14. Couple of budget Condenser Microphones
15. Zoom H4

In addition to all that madness..  I’m looking to add VirSyns Cantor Vocal Synth and… VirSyns “Take Five FX bundle” which includes Bark, Matrix, Reflect, TDesign, and VTape. Indulge me as I talk about these a little, won’t you?

1. Bark is a pretty interesting looking  27 band filter / EQ and compressor
2. VTape is a set of analog tape emulation plugs that emulate tape based saturation, delay, and flange. I’m very much in need of a tape delay type effect.. and very much wanting some sort of analog tape emulation warmth.. 
3. Reflect is an Algorithmic Convolution Reverb. Even in the current version of Digital Performer, I’m not feeling like my reverb bases are covered quite enough.. and I expect Reflect to really help out along these lines.. and the integration of Algorithmic and Convolution technologies into a single reverb unit is a quite attractive thing.
4. TDesign is a Transient former.. I don’t know too much about this sorta effect.. but it does give you control over your dynamics / transience.. and there are quite a few production folks out there whom are very into such things
5. Matrix is a Vocoder, and according to a recent issue of Sound On Sound, a very impressive Vocoder.

 So… as you can no doubt see.. We’re talking about a massive upgrade from last year’s project.. studio wise anyway, so, what of the plan off attack?

Plan of Attack

I have lots of music ideas, and I’m pretty sure this project isn’t going to be able to explore them all.. but, we’ll certainly see how far we can make it.

• The first thing I want to do is.. See if I can’t jam out some stuff using Kore to control various Reaktor beatboxes, sequenced instruments, and sound generators..  This will effectively create one box full of building blocks.
• Next I want to experiment with a somewhat traditional-ish approach to sequencing.. where you play around on a keyboard, quantize stuff, and put together stuff that way..
• I want to use ReCycle to create REX files out of some of the results.. to use as building blocks that way.
• A rather central thing I want to explore is.. vocals. These vocals will probably be ether.. me speaking into microphones and vocoding the hell out of it.. / Melodying the hell of it.. or Cantor stuff.. somehow creatively mixed into the music.
• I’m actually thinking of the possibility that this album project could feature some sort of a narrative / lyrical whatever.. that might sit at the center of the album.. which would be a really huge jump for me to take.
• I see a part in the process where I jam away on guitar and bass to construct.. well… something or other.
• I imagine a part of the process where I have all kinds of content loaded up into Ableton Live.. and use the MIDI controllers / Mixers to kinda improvise out something…

 Of course, in the end, all this stuff must me integrated into one giant process… so, wish me luck…

Ok, well here it is

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

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

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

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

Commercial Objectives 

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

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

How I sorta conceptualize it

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

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

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

There’s “the Mystic Prophet Philosopher shtick.” 

Latter, next day:

So I quickly whipped up some stickers:

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

I kinda dig this one. 

Feedback

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

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

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

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

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

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

Matt Responds to Feedback 

To Paul’s point (hbeeinc).. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

To DJ City Maus’s point.

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

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

To New Ape V / Evan Pew’s Point:

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

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

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!

Indra’s Net, is of course some music I made some years ago.  I find myself showing it to people, listening to it, and reflecting on it.  It’s not my latest work, that would be Zar Matt A Thustra’s Deep Space Adventures.  Indra’s net is probably more representative of things to come inso far as ZarMattAThustra’s Deep Space Adventures was rushed to be put together..  and is..  more experimental, and made with different tools on a weaker computer.  Though I imagine my next work will be something of a combination of the positives of these things.

Of course you can find both CD’s for free by clicking here.  And I invite you to comment back here your thoughts on it.

Indra’s Net is a crazy piece of work.  It’s ambient electronic music of a sort unlike anything you’ve heard before.  (Which is not to say that it is without aggressive moments.)  It takes you into these alien worlds.. places unlike any place you’ve ever been to before.  It is a hypnotic trip of the mind.   

In the story of my work it represents a huge step forward from my Viveka project (which you can currently only hear parts of, for free online) in that it is a quantum leap forward in terms of the tools I was using.  At least in terms of the digital instruments, Indra’s Net is uncompromising.  But the full breadth of what they are capable of was not realizable on the system I was using.  

And this is what brings me to the day dreams about a new project:

1.  On the old system you had limited processor power.. and one of the places this effects is your ability to create an ambient space inside of which the music happens.  Reverb tends to be a computationally expensive effect, especially convolution reverb.  A part of making a mix, that sounds like it has a lot of depth, will involve creating multiple layers of reverb, sometimes EQ’d and compressed in different ways.. where instruments are placed into those spaces in varying degrees.  For the sort of work I’m doing you’d see these instruments and sounds moving in and out of those spaces.  Some of the tracks on Indra’s Net have very little of this going on due to how much power the instruments took up.
2.  Because you have a very limited amount of power you tend to be very judicious in how you place effects on instruments..  I suppose this goes with #1.  The implication is that stuff doesn’t always get crafted as much as you might like.
3.  I have a lot of new tools.  I think most of Indra’s Net was done with Komplete 2, and I’m at least on 3 now, plus Kore.   Some of the software of Komplete 3 wouldn’t even run on the old system, never mind run well.  In addition to this I’m now working with new versions of Reason (Reason wasn’t even used on Indra’s Net) and Ableton Live.  So this represents a huge kind of technological leap forward.. particularly when used on a system that can handle all this.

So all of this represents an evolution in the production tools.  Beyond this we also have me at a much more sophisticated place in terms of my production and mixing skills, and there are certain point in the Indra’s mix that I’m not 100% happy with.

Latter that day:

As I sit here writing this, I wonder what is likely to come.  We are days away from MacWorld where new equipment is likely to be unveiled.  If the Mac Pro line gets a bump I will surely buy that, other wise there’s at least some chance I might go with the new Mac Pro.  I’m currently in the process of doing research into the various tools I’m working with to see what sorta multi core support they might have, to get a feel for what difference a Mac Pro might mean to my work.  Is a Mac Book Pro “good enough?” What’s the power difference between a Mac Book Pro and a Mac Pro look like?

In my mind Mac Pro = uncompromising power.  Uncompromising power = Amazing possibilities.  But what’s in my mind, and what exactly might be real are probably two distinct things.  I have a will to ‘kinda sorta over do it.’  What I’d like to do is plop down another $450 for the Komplete 5 upgrade, and then another $700 or so for Liquid mix, and go from there.  But spending that sorta money isn’t sanity, even if it would do wonders for my work.  It would make sense if some label came up to me and offered me some sorta contract that including some sort of an advance, or it would make sense if I had some kind of income going on, but for the moment, we must hold back.

It’s ok though, because we are talking about something amazing without even going that far, so let us try to explore some this:

Conventionally I have a limited number of instruments I’m able to work with at anyone time, as well as a limited number of effects.  While this is still to be the case, the limitations are no where near so stringent..  Which means we can enter into more complex soundscapes.  Imagine if you will..  a complex arsenal of sounds.  This is a production process that would take a good deal more labor per second of audio then Indra’s Net..  But imagine you have all these sounds.  Just because it leaps into my mind, imagine you have an orchestra.  Given, this is a somewhat limited orchestra, but imagine its there.  Our orchestra is playing something..  The composition has complex interrelationships of performance dynamics, to such an extent that it can remind you of a real orchestra playing the great classical music of a great composer.   Not only this but our orchestra is a microtonal orchestra.  There is an expressive quality to the music, that as a result of the microtonalism, simply makes us feel as if we are in a world with a greater tonal fidelity then anything we’ve heard before.

Ok great..  Now imagine it really sounds like we are in a real concert hall.  But that’s not all.. Imagine the music is a 5.1 Surround Sound Mix, and we are in the middle of the sound.  The orchestra is, in mix engineer language, on a virtual sound stage in front of us.  It sounds more or less real, and we are captivated by it.  This until the reality goes too far:

Somewhere behind us, somewhat faintly in the background, we being to hear the whispers of a conversation.  Out of this conversation emerges a fight.  All the people around the fight are great disturbed by the fight, by it getting in the way of hearing the performance, and then before we know it, security is called in.  Imagine, if you will, that this was something like an audio play.. something you weren’t really expecting.  We, after all, thought we came to listen to the music!

The next thing you know we are following our fighting couple as they get thrown out of the hall.  So that the 5.1 Mix takes us through the crowd, and out side..  As we travel out, the orchestra moves further away from us..  and the acoustic space of the where we are, changes to suit where we are..  And there’s a suitable level of sound design to reinforce all this.  The sound design is a kind of composition.  A composition that plays with the ambiguity as to wether we should interpret it as noise, sound design, or composition… but tries to be read, if you’re reading superficially, as the sound of the environment.

Now what of these characters we are following, what’s there story?  Hell, what’s our story, why are we following them?  

Out side on the street we can hear cars driving buy, often with stereos blaring.  Each one represents a different sonic cluster, should we call it.  Another words the stereos superficially mimmic different styles of music..  metal, hip hop, whatever. And in a Charles Ives sorta way, as they move around in space.. there music links up with each other..  so that we might hear as a kind of whole.. Wizing around the streets… as we move through the streets.

Ok, lets stop this right hear.  I don’t know that I would ever try to make music like this.. It at least sounds interesting on the level of an idea, but who knows what happens when we try and execute it.  One of the ideas I think of as I write about it is the idea that we could have a range between realism and formalism.  Another words, at what point do the sounds sound real, the space sound real, like we are really in it..  And then at what point is, as if on some sorta acid trip, melt into some other reality?  The other reality was there all along after all, just masquerading as a more conventional reality.  Perhaps the music is an investigation of metaphysical presumptions, or perhaps the unconscious in everyday life?

What I’m describing to you is sorta how my music works..  Though we are not normally in settings that sound so… specific or like a known reality.

One thought I had while imagining this was “what if we scored the story?”  Another words, ok, you have an orchestra over there, and then you have this fight over there, and then we are over here, and all around us are the people of the audience.  What if we scored these stories.  How might the orchestra react to this going on in its midst?   

A few latter:

I don’t know that that story really describes where I really see my music going.  Technology is really only one small part of it..  And in the end its more about creativity and ideas.

Do you mind if I speak with some arrogance?  If you’re reading this you probably fall into one of two camps:

1. You never heard of me in your life.
2. You’ve met me, but don’t really know too much about me, or about what sorta work I might do.

Depending on the camp you fit into..  Well I have no idea…  and you might not be coming from a place where what I’m doing makes any sense..  I mean I think there are some people for whom my work clicks, and others for whom it doesn’t.  I’m afraid that what I’m about to say might sound terribly arrogant to the first group..  

I think this music kicks ass.  I think it kicks ass on a level that is far beyond conventional ass kicking.. I mean I think we have a certain set of expectations that we have of work we find in our culture.. a range if you will.. at the top of which is “kick ass” and I think this stuff is a little off the charts. 

So far I’ve blogged very little about my music..  Not really enough so that you’d really get deep into what its really all about..  Hell I haven’t blogged too much at all yet.  I’m just trying to get used to blogging via wordpress..  out in the open.  But I promise you this.. if you stick with me..  I’ll show you some serious ass kicking like you never saw before.  I know from the surface it might not look like that at all.. like you could expect such a thing.. but trust me..  beneath the surface, tucked away in a secret compartment somewhere.. are the tools of ass kicking.  Right now I’m just sorta fooling around..  but soon… shit will fly!

LOL which still doesn’t get at it, ha?  But to really get to it is going to take a lot of blogging on my part. We are going to have to explore a lot of different subjects together.  I have some idea.. a kind of philosophy.. lots of people have there philosophies.. and I don’t know if I can really call my self a philosopher or not..  but I have some amazing ideas.  I have ideas that could change the way you think.  I have ideas that could open you to whole new worlds.. whole new ways of experiencing life.  These are my gold.  And with them I hope to knock your socks off.  

 In this episode I play a lot of the music I did for Zar Matt A Thustra’s Deep Space Adventures, as a port of the National Solo Album Month challenge. I’m giving Zar Matt A Thustra’s Deep Space Adventures away for free, and making podsafe. You can find links to this music at mattsearles.com/music  In part, this episode is a moment in time: A moment in confronting the NaSoAlMo challenge and thinking about the future of my music in light of the challenge. Or this challenge pushed into exploring creative production processes that open up new possibilities for my work.. We hear some of the fruits of that experimentation in the episode. The first track we listen to is called Vasperian Blogocombat, an idea from Vaspers the Grate. Vaspers is someone I met via twitter.. and has been very encouraging of me and my work… This track was inspired by him as well as my experiences with social media. Here’s a video clip of Vaspers the Grate talking about being Vaspers the Grate. I think of him as a kind of insane genius. I think his stuff is brilliant.. So Dig it:  

 And while you are at it, check out the Vaspers the Grate Blog. He is pretty awesome after all. The next track in this episode includes a conversation with Mark and his now ex girl friend.. which seemed to work great with the music I was making.. I call this track Herstory as Mark tells a somewhat feminist type version of history.. that is a lot of fun.. Feminist history with a kind of Dio esk metal operatic aesthetic.. How can you beat that? From here the episodes veers off into the subject of my parents declining health. My mom would be emitted to the hospital on the night before Thanksgiving (just after this recording took place) Apparently a conflict in her mediations, internal bleeding, and what have you.. brought her pretty close to death. It would be a little over a week before she would come home.. she’s home now as of this writing, but she’s still terribly fragile.. barely able to lean up in bed on her own strength. It was a very difficult Thanksgiving, the next podcast episode ought to cover this a little more. The final track is.. not really titled yet.. I have a working tittle of something like ‘Electronic Ambient Experiment Adventure.’

 

 MS Episode 10: Plots Thicken & ZarMattAThustra's Deep Space Adventures: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I’ve been doing a hell of a lot of audio work lately.. I’ve written, without posting, extensive blog entries on the subject.. So.. this is sorta like somewhere mid stream in all of this and I’m not sure if it makes full sense out of context, but what the hell.

Ok.. so what is Aurtria Storm? In the past people have called it Reason Lite, but it’s really a totally other sort of beast. Storm has a legacy of being on the consumer side of sound production.. and then sorta swerving into the pro side.. I’ve had it for years but never really bothered to learn how to use it as I bought it at a time when I didn’t think I’d be able to afford Reason, shortly after words I actually was able to afford it, and so Storm has just sorta fell by the way side. Consequently my description will be a little on the unreliable narrator side of things.

Recently I’ve been doing a lot of work with Reaktor.. with various sound generating devices that you can basically tweak parameters of while recording to create evolving sound scapes… basically. Well Storm allows you to record and edit your tweaking.. and then, at the end of the process.. export the audio..

I was over tired as I headed into Storm.. and not really in the mood to figure much of anything out.. and having forgotten whatever I had figured out in the past.. So I basically auditioned a few devices and just started to play around. .throwing a few effects on a few things.. and eventually crafting something out of it.

The trouble is.. from my point of view.. I didn’t actually create anything that could be thought of as anything other then crap. That said.. I did sorta find a direction to walk in.. and headed down that path a few steps anyway. My feeling is “so what if it’s crap, we can process the hell out of it until it turns into something of some value somewhere.” This strikes me as a fairly reasonable attitude to take in these matters… I mean there really is something to be said for screwing around with your process.. going in directions where you don’t have so much control over results.. So I feel that there’s some value in this.. It’s just that that value hasn’t materialized for me yet.

My impression of Storm at this point? Well… I feel that I’m too damn ignorant to have a real opinion of the matter.. but that’s not to say I’m without fear. My fear is that it’s just total junk. I mean who are those Aurtria folks kidding anyway? You call that a synthesizer, you call that an effect? I mean you get these really ugly sounding devices.. and not ugly in the good sense of the word.. ugly in some cheesy 80s pop synth sounding sense that’s not anything I’d ever want to be associated with.

Aurtria has a reputation for making some pretty outstanding emulations of classic synthesizers.. On the box, that I still have.. it features ringing endorsements from the likes of DJ Spooky.. I’ve read some killer reviews of Storm as one of the most underrated programs out there.. On the box it says things like: 14 instruments, 10 effects, 11 composition assistance.. what the hell is a composition assistant? It goes on…

My feeling is it’s probably a pretty good piece of gear once you learn it.. or in my case.. maybe remember it.. But until that point it’s pretty much rubbish.

What a strange blog entry from me, ha?

A few latter: I just navigated my browser on over to Aurtuia’s Storm Product page. I can’t believe there still on version 3.. Which was around how many years ago? Um.. guys, I think its time for an upgrade..

Anyway here’s a video that shows you a little of what its all about:

Kinda makes it look pretty cool, ha?

Here’s a video they got “on the history of Storm.”

I object to the description “cutting edge.” Sure.. if you go back 3 or 4 years.. maybe.. But today there are lots of tools out there that comes with lots of instruments and lots of effects.. A lot more then what Storm has on offer.. and with greater depth.. Of course Storm is now listing for $150 which is a hell of a lot less money then my precious Reason but…

Well it doesn’t help that my computer doesn’t even meet Storms minimum system specs.. There’s a certain point at which I just have to stop and accept that I can’t really push things much further..

What I plan to do is use my Storm creations as raw building blocks for further adventures.. And we’ll just see what happens.

This is kind of a strange episode.. Me going off into experimental land.. Talking about music production, composition, my work, and stuff related to my struggle to make my art happen.. inside of the social media space. The whole talk happens while experimental electronic music plays in the background.. creating certain strange resonances inside the talk. Perhaps I’ve been listening to too much John Cage?

The electronic music elements mixed beneath the dialog track are all taken from my Zarmattathustra’s Deep Space Adventures CD’s raw materials.. its sorta remixed if you will.. This is a CD I’m working to finish by the end of this month. Also there’s two actual tracks from the Deep Space Adventures in this episode.. one called Red Rum which starts off the podcast.. and another, not yet titled, that ends the epsidoe. For the latter I’m looking for suggestion for track names.. If I use a name you suggest to me, I’ll attribute you for that name.. You can email me at ZarMattAThustra [ at ] Gmail.com with name ideas.

 

 Matt Searles Podcast Episode 9: Red Rum Re Drummed [41:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I’ve jumped off into the land of Reaktor. I’m off in a process of music creation that is totally unknown to me. I’ve been a Reaktor user for years and years.. but that doesn’t mean I have a clue. In part this is because I’m embarking in a direction Reaktor has always suggested to me but that I’ve never explored in any great depth. At this moment my library of tools.. out side of Reaktor, has grown and matured in such a way that it can facilitate these sorts of directions in ways it couldn’t in the past.

Ableton Live, a program that is centered around the idea of “loop sequencing” is a big part of this. With Live you can take an audio file.. take a part of that file, and make a loop out of it… and manipulate it in a variety of different ways. So if you find your self generating huge amounts of raw audio material, from whatever sort of process you might engage your self with.. you can go on a kind of creative editorial process.. I guess.. and sorta take things some place.

I say I guess because I really have no idea where I’m going with all this: I’m just engaged in the process. There’s any number of directions I could see myself going in.. from where I’m at now, with respect to what I’m doing now.. but it’s all fairly unknown territory for me.. so the ratio of success to failure is probably not very high… depending on how you measure success.

There’s a growing feeling that I have a lot to learn out here. When I listen to the products of this process, as early on as I am in exploring it, there’s certain things it suggests to me in relationship to the sort of work that I normally do. It’s as if there’s some sort of a continuity, that what I’m looking at are two ends of a world of creative possibilities.. and it seems to me that learning to bridge the gaps between these two ends.. these two worlds really, is an objective that would be important to explore.

As it strikes me now, there are a few principle elements who’s exploration will bridge these gaps. #1 Is music theory, #2 is sound synthesis, #3 at least to my current mind set is linguistics, and #4 is probably audio engineering.. kinda sorta broadly. If there is a #5 It must have something to do with my own creative process.. my own ideas about composition and music creation, and artistic what have you…

Music theory is a strange sort of world that I haven’t explored very deeply at all. In a sense, spending years making music is an exploration of music theory in a practical sort of way. By creating music you develop a feel for what works and what doesn’t.. What grasping of traditional theory I have operates as a conceptual framework for how I interact with sound.. though this grasping is a rather surreal sort of grasping. What strikes me as important about exploring theory in greater depth is that it could yield any number of insights into what I’m doing.. and allow me to travel in directions that I haven’t really traveled all that much in, and to do so with greater ease. Though as I write these words I’m, in the back of my mind, thinking “screw theory, we’ll just explore melody in new ways.”

Sound synthesis is a different ball of wax altogether. Sound synthesis is basically about how synthesizers synthesize sound: What are the different methods of sound synthesis, how do they work, how do we use them for creative expression?

Linguistics is a strange curve ball in all this. I’m reading Leonard Bernstein talking about a connection between music theory and linguistics. It’s suggestive to me of a different way of thinking about composition then ether traditional music theory or my own approaches to composition. It brings you into thinking that musical language is somehow innate in our beings… It’s innateness, among other things, suggests that there might be other fruitful approaches for thinking about and creating music. Lets leave it at that for now.

Audio engineering brings us into a very large space that extends the subject of sound synthesis into other areas. We must think about things like psycho acoustics… yes, developing a mastery of mix engineering is a project that I’ve now been engaged in for sometime. The subject of recording engineering is probably important in here somewhere.. and the full subject of digital manipulation of sound is to.

The creative process is one where we look at all this stuff we hope to learn.. the core principles.. and try and find ways of breathing creative life into them.

I don’t know if any of this makes sense.. but its what I find myself thinking about tonight. This is sorta like a journal of my adventure into Reaktor land.. my reaction to these new processes I’m starting to explore.

If you’d like to get a sense for what sorta music I make.. and clearly this would help make these words a good deal more comprehensible, here’s a link to Indra’s Net.. which would be a CDs worth of music I’ve recently made freely available to anyone who might like to hear.

This month.. that is the month of november, I’m working to put make and put out a new CDs worth of material.. its in this new material that we hear these new experiments mixed with my older processes… though taken to new highs… Here’s a link to the november CD, Zar Matt A Thustra’s Deep Space Adventures.