In this episode I share my last sorta finished bit of music.. that I’ve been meaning to post forever.. I’m not sure what I think of it.. maybe you can leave your comments to help me think this through.. At the moment I’m thinking the mix could be fixed up a bit.. with respect to the base end.. That’s my chief issue.

I wrote a lot about this little project.. and so.. well, I should leave some links to said posts.

• Music to Freak Out Stoners: Music Production in the Deep End 
• MTFS Revisited: New Sonic Adventures

After this, we get a few posts that.. Kinda go into the depths.. and these are sorta subtextual, at least, stuff on this production.

• From Linguistics and music, to depth  psychology, psychedelics, mysticism, philosophy.. and Aesthetic as it relates to my musical art project
• Notes from a rad mad Electroacoustic creative music production process
• Some Jolly Lyrics.. to the music I’m making
• Must post something….. News from the front: Music Production blah blah blah’s

So I guess that’s it.. after that the blog kinda goes off into sound synthesis… which may sorta form the basis of what I show in the next podcast episode.. so till then hope you dig it.

I should add that should you want to subscribe to this via iTunes, this be the link. 

 

 Music to Freak Out Stoners Revisited [6:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

After quite a hassle.. Digital Performer 6 is finally running on my system. The first thing you noticed about DP6, versus 5, is you got a new interface.. This new interface has 3 main implications:

1. How do you make a wheel again?: You have a new interface to learn… you must learn new ways of doing whatever it was you were doing before.. 
2. There is a Psycho Acoustic principle via which software with new shiny interfaces always sounds better then the old ugly ones: More then anyone ever wants to admit.. our perception of audio is influenced by suggestion.. and so it is that if the software you’re using looks pretty.. well you think it sounds a whole lot better. From the point of view of someone producing music.. this is a nice feature.. as it inspires you on your adventure..
3. Stuff is Streamlines, or at least that’s what MOTU would have you believe: For the period in which you can’t figure out how to do what you used to take for granted.. stuff isn’t streamlined…. But I must say.. there’s a lot of stuff about Digital Performer that I really thought was.. well ways in which DP wasn’t exactly making sense in a modern production context.. and what do you know.. they’ve worked out much of that.

Beyond this grooviness.. we got other new grooviness.. but none of this is what’s really striking me at the moment.

Matt, what is really striking you? 

What’s really striking me is a sense of Awe of what I’m able to do in my studio now. On the sonic software side of things we got Digital Performer 6, Ableton Live, Reason, Native Instruments Komplete, Kore 2, and Liquid Mix 16… plus a couple other odds and ends. There are gaps that still need filling, which I could go on about ad nauseam… some of which I’m looking to rectify in the short term, others more long term.. but however you want to slice it.. there’s a lot of power under the hood.

Why are you struck by this now?

This is a complex topic but.. There is this sense that “software tools are not as good as hardware tools,” or at least that would be a simple way of putting it. It’s quite a bit like some people feeling that vinyl records are better then CDs… That vinyl is somehow “warmer” then CDs. This is a complex topic that can go into subjects of sample rates, ramifications of particular mastering issues for vinyl… and on and on and on. In the world of music production technology the topic is even more complex as that the technology of production is much less static then the issues of Vinyl and CDs.. which, lets face it.. people are choosing low quality MP3s anyway…  so what does it really matter?

My production tools acquisition process has always been one where issues of “price versus performance” plays the key roll.. If hardware tools are 1o% better then software tools, but cost 40% more.. I’m probably going with the software.. But in the world of serious sound engineering.. it’s the finally 10 or 5 percent that separates the men from the boys.. Most of what makes a good record are the people making it, not the tools.. but tools are very important.. and if you don’t have the right tools.. you’re probably not going to get there.. 

All of this talk is somewhat abstract.. until you actually start listening to the gear… In the last few months I’ve been going through a few years of Sound on Sound magazine.. reading reviews, interviews, and whatever.. trying to get a better picture of what gear is out there.. production techniques.. and all sorts of related things.. as well as scouring the internet.. and listening to all kinds of samples of all sorts of tools.

Somewhere in this process I began to think “hmm, maybe my tools aren’t so great?” But then DP6’s new look and feel came to the rescue.. and I started to perceive differently.. and started to discover how amazing some of the tools I have really are.

So I mean it was a kind of subjective shift that brought a new perspective.

Where the Artist Plays

As I tried to get to before.. the most important thing is not your tools.. it’s you. And it’s not even really your skills so much as your spirit.. for it is, after all, the spirit who employs said skills.. and even said tools!

There is something to be said for habit.. I find myself approaching my music making in more or less the same way as I always have.. In the last 9 months or so.. I’ve gone on all manner of fun little experimental adventures.. exploration of process alternatives.. and what not… But even with all that.. as I approach the music making today.. I do so in the hum drum of habit.

Habit?

For many, habit is a state inside of which growth doesn’t really happen. However.. if there is sufficient anarchy in your habits.. that anarchy is always going to be putting you in varying positions which you will have to wrestle your way out of.. and that’s often where the interest in my work comes. Or that’s one way of putting it.

Still.. I’m not without desire to get out of my usual habits.. it’s just that.. such ambitions are not really the most important thing.. the most important thing is getting the damn ball rolling.. and if that means playing to your preexistent strengths, so bit it. 

Getting the ball rolling? 

Yeah.. getting the ball rolling is the most important thing. As we speak the ball is in motion.. Wether I’m working a way on music, screwing around with photography, working with video, computer graphics, web design, whatever.. at the very least.. each day.. I do something.

The end goal is to have as much of your energy as possible pouring into this work.  The more of you you can put into it.. the better the work will be… By which I don’t necessarily mean that you should “be in your work” but.. well thats complicated.

Next Day Sometime

My work is a strange beast!  In someways, going about what I’m going about.. I feel like I’m working on Indra’s Net version 2.. Indra’s Net was a project I worked on sometime in 2004… and at the time the laptop I was using.. well the screen was freaking small.. which effected things in a number of ways.. the processor, even for the time.. was very much on the budget side.. I never had enough RAM.. some of my software wouldn’t even run! And we didn’t even have enough hard disk room to save what we were doing in anything other then MP3 files!

Now of course.. we’re using 2 24″ HD displays.. We only have about 2GB of RAM but that hasn’t been a real issue in the music production department.. We have software that’s 2 generations beyond what I was using on Indra’s Net.. We have ridiculous amounts of processing power…  and we have more disk space then we’d ever use for music production. Finally, instead of Cubase we are now using Digital Performer.

Beyond all that we are 4 years in the future.. 4 Years more mature.. whatever I’ve learned about music production since then.. and 4 years evolution in my work. 

So.. The implications of all this.. are actually kind of big.

Implications on habit

I don’t think I spoke elegantly about this last night.. and now that I’m a little further along in my production.. new things are growing clear.

Habit, in a certain way.. is like a path you’re walking down.. habit being an act that keeps you on that path.. and so it is that we see our selves evolving further down a path.. There are certain things we add to our bag of tricks.. certain things that change things a little bit.. lets explore in the context of the current production.

New to the new studio.. is a lot of new Reverbs. Digital Performer gives us a convolution Reverb.. and Kore 2 gives us a whole number of other sorts of new reverbs.. besides new reverbs there is, for me.. new ways of thinking about how to use reverbs.. varying .. and how I might EQ them… all of which has to do with creating a sense of space inside of which our music is happening.

My music, of course, is about space.. moving through space.. more psychic space then real space.. and music production in general.. creating a sense of space is important..

project specifics 

I think of the music as something like a buddhist meditation.. it is something like thoughts flowing through consciousness.. consciousness is our stage.

The use of Reverb and delay, and how I’m mixing stuff.. can transform.. or contextualize something that would normally be thought of as aggressive or rocking.. into something more ambient.. something we don’t think of as aggressive or rocking.. and in a fluid sorta evolving mix.. with respect to our sense of space.. the context can give us different shades.. where the aggressive bits can be more like textures.. to being.. something to rock out to.

This production is very much like this.. about this..  We have this rather industrial type percussion.. which rises in intensity over several measures.. and also moves from very far away to closer.. It repeats.. with gaps between repeats.. and it isn’t until it’s second repeat that it ever gets close enough to us that we feel it as heavy in anyway.

The sound elements that start off far away, and move in closer to us.. are all simply repeating the same lines.. no variations at this point.. accept in how they play against the other repeating parts.. and with respect to there location in the mix.

Everything has this ambient like feeling to it.. Until part way through.. We have a rather lead synth sound.. it repeats twice.. but then.. when it might repeat.. in comes a church organ.. which though it does start of a little ways away from us.. it doesn’t start off in audible.. and it’s repetitions are variations.. and it becomes as if the repetitions of the different instruments are now kind of.. playing against each other in a new kind of way.

It’s during this stage of the music’s evolution that I’m now bringing in a string section. The string section will not be playing a repetitive part.. but will instead be playing in ways the plays off the harmonic ecology of the mix.. repetitions we do find in it.. will be to echo other instruments.. and to create a move clear coherence.. in the material.

For now the music is moving into a place where it could be quite a bit more aggressive.. to be heavy and rocking.. but where we are at now is still a bit of a dream. 

How this Compares to Indra’s Net 

What I failed to mention about the Indra’s Net Project was that.. I had just bought Komplete 2.. (5 is my current version).. and I was really just started to explore the tools.. and a new version of Cubase.. Now I actually know the tools..

What we are seeing now is subtleties.. between the new reverbs, the larger sound pallets… and the mix has a much greater kind of.. quality to it.

Ok.. well finally I want to share some of my pictures from a hike I took around Blue Hills about a week ago.. there’s been a few requests so…  gotta get on that, right?

Before we get started.. let me just say I’m new to photography.. really only picked up a camera for the first time at the early part of this past summer.. but that said.. I don’t think I’m really that bad at it.. really just learning… and as I take you through these, I’ll no doubt talk about it a little… 

Ok, so Entering Blue Hills

We are entering via the main pond.. and before we get to the main field.. by the main pond, well it looks kinda like this, right? 

If you walk up the hill towards the big dark tree there.. and look out over the field.. here’s your view:

Kinda pretty, ha?

If you walk into the tree line.. and then just a bit to the right.. you’ll come to this view of the pond / beach…

Not really sure if that was the pic I meant to post for that scene.. but oh well…

Here’s one around the same area.. but with the tree’s obstructing our view.

And here we have another view of the water:

Should I add that these are all taken at about the same time of day?

Shit.. I def posted the wrong one here!

Anyway.. its a bit of a walk from here.. across a few fields.. and you eventually end up on “The Old route 128.” Which.. I guess is 128 before it.. was moved? lol, clearly I don’t know anything about it…

This is all more or less the order shot.. and me looking for something worth shooting.. well, I was messing around with focal ranges.. which is different from how I normally shoot.. and wanted to see what I’d get with this aperture if I zoomed in on something and.. with the background kinda out of focus.. and here’s what I got..

Which lead into this series.. who’s mood I rather like.

I do rather like the super saturated look.. along with that very high contrast. 

This little series was more or less taken with me standing in the same position.. just rotating around. 

And.. if we get out of this little mini series.. and rotate around to the street.. we see our bicyclist friend again.. riding away from us…

You know its kind of funny.. cause this pic is just sooooo unusable!  I mean its way out of focus.. you got that mad lens flare.. before I digitally developed the hell out of it.. it looked way the hell over exposed.. so that this was really an experiment of taking an unusable picture and making it usable.. not that it’s so great even as is.. but.. I still sorta like it.. perhaps with an “if only.”

But you know.. good enough for telling our story.

Anyway.. so its about at this point where we get to a place on the old 128 that I was really digging.. if you pay attention to the marks of the street.. you’ll see an awful lot of the following pictures take place around the same place.

Ok, now pay attention to these leaves coming up… as again they’ll give us a sense of where we is at.. looking in the opposite direction down this street.

lol, it’s like a Terry Gilliam movie, ha?

And look.. its that guy again… (notice the leaves still?) 

And yet another unusable.. though I like it.. him going the other way.

And again we turn our attention to the trees…..

If you note the look of the ground.. you see we’re still in the same place.. more or less.

And just a we bit further up the road…

I like the sense of how far the road goes up there.. and then the mood of the leaves and the light.. and all that. 

And this is where I started getting into exploring color in the digital darkroom, in a slightly different sorta direction:

And a different angle on the same fallen tree: 

And then just up the road, just a little bit.

And this is more or less at the end of this little walk of ours:

So that’s the main of our little walk, right? 

With that, I leave you… Want more? My flickr photo stream can be found at flickr.com/photos/mattsearles and.. the photo set from this hike can be found here… with much bigger versions of these pics.. which kinda helps.. in many cases.

It’s been kicking around in my head for a little while now.. well the past few days, feeling inspiration to make something great. It started with DIYDays… which got me inspired to get serious about film making… and what of the From Here to Awesome Film festival stuff played at Mass Art recently….. That really got me going bit.

Then I took a look at my first attempt at video podcasting..  My impression of it, after not looking at it for ages was.. well that yes it has flaws but.. the potential it speaks for knocked me out.

My approach to film making is in no way conventional.. I would describe it as “a painters approach to film making.” Or maybe that’s my approach to editing and post production.. A way of thinking where this end of things becomes the core of the process.. and the other parts are more like “lets go get some raw materials.” In any event.. the process is that of an exploratory painter.. really. 

Raw Materials 

As it turns out.. I have some raw materials.. video I’ve been shooting for the raw materials of a project.. I have a tun of tapes going back the last.. oh, I don’t know.. lets say 8 or 9 years.. plus a few that go back a whole lot further.

The idea behind my shooting was to make a kind of record.. to kind of show you life in a way that you wouldn’t otherwise see. To try and open the worlds eyes to reality.. or something like that. Who knows, I was on LSD or some psychedelic when I conceived of it, right?

But now I’m contemplating “a new stage of raw material acquisition.” To put it another way, I’m thinking of buying new cameras. 

Thinking about Cameras 

Generally, in thinking about cameras, we have a few categories of video cameras.

1. Social Media Cams: These are generally cheap.. usually pretty pour quality.. but the kinda things you can always have on you, which is the real key here.. and they don’t really call attention to them selves.. we are talking flip cams (that run around 100 bucks) or perhaps smart phones that let you broadcast live over the internet via qik. These could also be just basic photo cameras that also let you shoot video.. even the cheapest of cheap cell phones often have this sorta option
2. Spy-ish Cams: These are cheap from the perspective of video quality.. and actually not all that expensive..  The cameras them selves are usually sub $1000, perhaps sub $500.. The real point of these cameras is that nobody knows your using them. I like the idea of being able to shoot without calling attention to myself.. both from the perspective of documenting something as it is.. without the subject becoming self conscious.. and the idea that you could create a narrative film.. taking place in real spaces.. without anyone knowing there’s a film going on.
3. Quality Video Cameras: From my perspective.. we are talking about the ability to have a lot of Aesthetic control here.. If we are talking from a serious film making perspective.. all the other cameras are rather “punk rock” where as.. here we are talking.. cinematography. These are cameras that cost many thousands of dollars.

Quality Cameras Canon EOS 5D Mark II  

Let us start with the Canon EOS 5D Mark II. This is really a DSLR.. which is to say a camera for photography.. a very professional camera at that.. It lists for $2700 for just the body, and $3500 for the body and the lens. (The lens being worth a bit more then a grand I believe). 

Besides being a pretty serious DSLR, the 5D Mark II is also a camera capable of shooting 30 fps 1080p… which it records to H.264. From a film making perspective.. being limited to 30 fps is not really ideal.. though firm ware could change this.. But over all.. for the price, it’s very difficult to beat this camera.. as a video camera. I mean.. for this price and having a lens system? Not to mention that you’re also getting a very nice DSLR? So I’ve been thinking seriously about the 5D Mark II. 

Red Scarlet 

Ok.. this is what we call in the biz a game changer. 

And

Ok, since most of my readers are probably not the type to be following this sorta thing.. let me kind of break this down for you a little.

Here’s a link to a little thing that explains what 3k means. This isn’t a totally accurate statement.. but it’s something that will point you in the right direction “3k is to HD what HD is to standard deffiniton.” 3K is ideal if you want to bring what you’re shooting to theatrical release.

The price of $3000 is.. for a red scarlet.. is probably about what you would be paying to rent, for a weekend, a current 3k camera. I could point you to $10,000 camera’s I’ve lusted after.. that are not capable of half of what this Red Scarlet is capable of.

Now the final thing that sets the REDs apart is.. its a bit like shooting with film, in the sense that you have something like a negative.. which you can develop from.. a negative having more dynamic range then actual picture out putted. This means a much higher level of aesthetic control..  

Well, I think I’ll end this post here, for now.. there’s many more subjects to cover on this subject.. We’ll see what happens. 

Adobe has announced new versions of there Creative Suits…  You can see video presentations of all there new software at tv.adobe.com. What I’ll be talking about in this post is stuff relating to what I’m sorta evaluating.. which is the Web Premium Bundle.. and After Effects CS4. On that note, lets start with some of the videos…

Adobe Web Premium CS4: 

As you might expect from adobe.. the video lies.. (I say this due to my past bad experience with Adobe… ) The video lies in that it suggests that Indesign is a part of the Web Premium Bundle.. and it is not!

My bad Adobe Experience

I thought I had posted on this.. but haven’t been able to find the post so.. here’s the deal:

I went to buy the web bundle.. but um.. the adobe site wasn’t real clear.. bad usability, and all that.. which is sorta ironic for a company building design tools! So I bought the wrong bundle by accident…  I was on the phone with Adobe on 4 ceperate occasions trying to streighten it all out.. each conversation had me moving between various people to talk to.. each seemed to take upwards of an hour.. an it seemed that nearly everyone was giving me a different story…  the long and the short of it was.. I don’t know if I’ve been refunded yet for the wrong bundle! And if you ask me it’s all about what’s bad with Adobe…. and this video being misleading is just more of the same!

On the Subject of the Bundle 

I wrote this post around the time I bought the bundle.. and provides some reasonably good background on the subject.

Web Standards

The problem with the bundle.. well it feels a little bit like Adobe “doesn’t get it.” One of the biggest revolutions in the world of web design has been Web Standards.. we design sites in such a way to separate out content, presentation, and behavior..  and introduce graceful degradation..  If this is done right.. then whatever you’re using to view the site.. be it IE, FireFox.. your PDA, iPhone.. if you have accessibility issues so there’s a voice synth speaking out the page.. whatever..  it will work on your platform in the most ideal-ish sorta way.

The trouble with the Adobe software has been that it does not enable this sorta industry standard development practices…. The learning curve nessisary to doing this kind of development is great.. and you’d like tools to help with that.. Not only that but.. “designers” tend to think visually.. and so you’d like tools that allow you to think visually.. as a pose to think code.. in terms of working out a design.. from a process perspective.. and blah blah blah.

Adobe has been… about 6 years late to the standards party? And you know.. on the internet things move really really fast.. so I don’t think there’s any reasonable excuse for this.. In any event.. Fireworks.. which is a web graphics orientated program.. will now spit out standards compliant code.. which is a groovy thing.. and Dreamweaver looks like.. they’ve done a number of thing to help with a standards based work flow.. so I am digging that.

Dreamweaver.. as of CS3, introduce the AJAX Spry framework.. This allows you to, via WYWYG, put together AJAX stuff. AJAX is.. how web applications are made, basically.. It’s kind of a way of using XHTML, JavaScript, CSS, XML, and server stuff.. to do certain kinds of stuff.. lets say. AJAX is a groovy technology and all.. but it is not without problems.. though it should be said that, as with most technologies, the problem is not so much the technology as how the technology is used…  and um… the problem with the Spry framework.. is it is much less then best practices… in how it does its things.. 

My feeling is.. I’d like to see the software get better at standards out of the box.. but at least its headed in that direction.. if at an unforgivably slow pace…. and I really need to get my hands on the software before I can really judge these things too well. 

Flash CS4

Flash CS4 is the most compelling part, at least for me personally, to the Web Premium bundle upgrade:

Flash has ALWAYS been the best tool for web based animation.. trouble is.. not a hell of a lot has happened to Flash, as far as animation is concerned.. since like.. Flash 5… we are talking the last tech bubble here! Most of the excitement in the Flash platform, since version 5.. and including version 5… has been all about the developer side of Flash.. and since FLEX is were a serious Flash developer would turn.. you’d hope you’d see better design and animation tools in Flash.. and indeed, we are now seeing them.

The new feature of being able to modify different parameters individually.. be it transparency, scale, its location on the screen.. being able to modify motion curves…  in a rather After Effects-esk way. This will revolutionize how I work with Flash.. and it’ll do this, really, on a process level.. which is a very deep thing. 

But Adobe didn’t stop there! They finally gave us IK (Inverse Kinematics.) Basically we are talking about Bones here.. which is a core feature of character animation in 3D graphics. This is also a very big thing for animation.

If all this isn’t enough.. we get some kind of a new 3D tool..  It didn’t look all that impressive from the presentation.. though I didn’t think the any of the Flash stuff looked all that impressive in the presentations.. unless you kinda knew what was going on…  I mean they were using a very boring project for there examples.. but this could be a very cool thing to.

PhotoShop CS4

There’s a lot of new stuff in Photoshop that looks interesting.. New ways of dealing with camera RAW.. the ability to bring 3D objects into PhotoShop and paint directly on them..  There’s bad news that Photoshop will not be 64-bit on the Mac.. which is a big downer.. but Adobe claims there new way of using your graphics card will more then make up for that.. This, as we say in the biz, is spin…  

Sound Booth CS4

Sound Booth is new to the Web Premium bundle. I do a lot of music production.. and for a lot of what Sound booth does.. I have better apps.. However.. it does have some spectral editing abilities.. which I would really love to play with.. and Sound Booth is more geared to working inside of this kind of media production environment.. as a pose to music production more generally.

I think it’s nice they put Sound Booth in.. for anyone who’s doing Flash.. I think sound in Flash isn’t really good enough.. I mean Flash projects don’t have enough attention paid to sound.. and this ought to help that a little bit.

After Effects CS4

Here’s the After Effects video:

So what do you think of that? Let me take you through it…

Mobile Us 

First we have a tool for creating content for multiple mobile platforms. My first impression was “Why are you putting this into after effects?” I mean.. After Effects isn’t a video editing tool.. it’s a special effects, motion graphics, animation, compositing type tool….  If I’m creating stuff in After Effects… that stuff’s next stop is a video editing program… before it’s final output.

Now ok.. this is a little complicated but..  what are you creating content for? What percentage of content is purely for mobile platforms? What I mean is.. that same content, don’t you probably want to stick it on youtube, or some other online distribution platform? If that’s the case.. you want to render stuff out of After Effects at the resolution of.. well the highest resolution you’re making your stuff for. As a result.. when you render stuff out of After Effects.. you’re not going to be saving on render times.. by aiming at smaller resolution platforms..  

The only thing I will say on behalf of this new feature is.. having guides that tell you when and where stuff in your frame is going to be cut out of on a target platform.. is very important.

Search

This is a very interesting part of the Adobe Suites… Basically.. there’s meta data that follows media through out the system.. and this is a fairly central part of the search. This is quite revolutionary stuff.. but.. if After Effects is you’re only Adobe Video / Production sorta program..  of what use is it to you anyway?

In my studio Final Cut Studio is where I work with video. When it comes to music production, that might have something to do with a scoring video… that’s taking place in Digital Performer, Ableton Live, Reason.. etc. None of this stuff will carry that meta data…  So for folks in this position.. you’re basically waiting a few years to see if Adobe’s stuff.. gets adopted by a wider echo system of developers.

I’m basically working on.. . lets call it the pro side of the DIY spectrum… what this means is I don’t often have an actual production team… and the process of inputting the meta data into this system..  will likely be neglected in most cases.. particularly if the pay off is lost as soon as I start working in one of those non Adobe products! Though apparently some of the Adobe stuff will turn audio speaking into text for the meta data… 

Matt’s Choice

Price 

The Web Premium bundle will now set you back $1700… and the upgrade (which is what I’d be buying) goes for $600. After Effects $1000 for the full, and $300 for the upgrade. That, at least in my world, is not chicken feed.

Economic Considerations 

You know.. there’s a couple things here..

1. The economy is slowing down. What does this mean to the budding entrepreneur / whomever? It means its time to stop spending money on stuff!!! I mean if the great depression 2.0 is just around the corner? Things will hopefully not be that dyer.. but whatever you think about this sorta thing.. one wants to be careful about the choices one makes.
2. On a Personal Level… I have a limited amount of cash to live off of.. until I sell the house.. and I’d like to not sell the house till the housing market / economy is in a better position then what we find today.. So again, I gotta be careful about spending money.

CS4 Bundles thangs

A lot of people you talk to are saying “There’s a new CS4 already?” These are complex tools and its hard to keep up with it all. My situation is even worse.. cause in addition to that bundle.. I’m doing video, music production, and 3D graphics..  photography.. etc..   At $600, am I going to get my money’s worth out of the new versions?  That’s my big question mark.. I mean.. If Firework’s standards support is actually pretty good.. the Dreaweaver stuff turns out to make a difference.. Of course we expect Flash to be all that.. Having sound booth has its advantages…  The photoshop stuff could really mean something..   You know I’m just on the fence about it.

After Effects 

After Effects is another matter. I own After Effects 4.0.. which is like.. pre Mac OSX… and will not run on an Intel Mac.. So I need to drop the money on After Effects just to have an After Effects! If I was getting on After Effects CS3, I think I might be passing on this upgrade.. but as of now, there’s no question that I’m upgrading. 

Other Expenses? 

So here’s some other things I’m thinking of spend money on.. in the relatively short term

1. RAM, probably a couple hundred dollars worth
2. HD Camera, probably around $700
3. Cantor Vocal Synth $400
4. Breverb reverb: $280
5. Binarual microphone set up thing.. I think we are talking about $200
6. Laptop..  more then a grand
7. If I go with such a laptop.. add $500 for time capsule 

 Out side of this.. There’s the possibility of other software upgrades…  and can I afford those?

Day’s latter:

 Hmm.. I think I should just post this as is.

So recently I’ve been reconnecting, a bit, with folks from my college days at Mass Art.. and in the Studio of Interrelated media program.. with an interest in checking out folks work.. Which brings us to todays subject of Mr. Bobby Abate.

I believe I first met Mr. Abate while I was in the August Studio Program at Mass Art.. This is a program for high school students.. where you take a bunch of classes for the month of August.. it was an amazing time, living in the Dorms.. I met him and a girl he was hanging with.. while smoking butts outside the dorm.. just sorta randomly.. and ended up doing something that night.. don’t quite remember what.

Any who.. Bobby was a brilliant Artist.. I mean he just made a lot of really amazing work.. and what do you know.. his work’s still quite great.. and he’s one of the folks from that time who’s still very serious about his artist’s pursuits… 

So here’s a Youtube video of his I really liked:

One of the thing’s that struck me sorta funny about this video is.. he mentions Tony Oursler as  the guy who got the funding he was trying to get.. What I thought was sorta funny about that is that Tony was the video professor at Mass Art while we were there..  Tony is often hailed as one of the top 5 or so video artst’s to come out of the US ever.. so pretty stiff competition, right? But also this video makes me think of Tony’s work.. in that you have this kind of degradation of video in a way that calls attention to it’s video-ness in a way very similar to Tony’s work.. a sort of similar aesthetic..  Though clearly Bobby Abate’s work is.. well I want to say more erotically charged? And um.. has a certain dangerous quality in that and.. well lots of stuff really.

You can see more of his work at his official website.. sweetkitty.com, brilliant stuff. 

I should maybe close on.. in reference to the video.. I don’t actually know a heck of a lot about the art world today. My carrier vision has always been about searching for new existential / asymmetric relationships to the market place.. but.. working out the art world part.. is something to do.. as I tend to want to go down rather serious avant guard -ish paths.. In any event.. you look at how Brilliant his work is.. and… well shouldn’t he be in a very high stratosphere?

So I guess it was thursday.. they had all gone out to eat some place when Melissa had an allergic reaction that lead to the UMass Medical Center in Worcester Mass..

in “critical but stable condition.” I didn’t actually hear about this till a phone message this past friday from Aunt Jackie.

[That’s a picture from our 2008 family reunion in upstate New York.]

So we arranged that we’d meet and see her this Sunday, aka today… And it was this morning’s call to confirm the let me know my sister was doing significantly better… which was nice.

Waking up dad is no easy feat.. especially not lately, and especially not this early… but somehow I got him up, and it was off to a late start.

It was about a 45 minute drive to the Hospital. There was only one catch.. the directions where wrong.. the address was wrong, Goggle Maps is a lier… but eventually we made it.

I haven’t seen very much of my sister since I was a kid: My sister has sever mental retardation and autism..  and was a kind of nightmare in terms of the amount of stress her condition put on my parents while I was growing up.. and was, by extension.. an issue for me. So sometime around.. well when I was in high school.. so late 80s, my Sister went off to live in a home in Western Mass. 

My mom died this past december.. It was a combination of lung problems.. related to cancer and cancer treatment.. as well as a bad heart condition.. which was first created in the stress-fest days before Melissa went to live at Archway. My mom had kind of set things up so my Aunt Jackie would take care of Melissa’s affairs, and what not, after she died.. though I now play some kind of a roll.. a roll I don’t do so well at, this and taking care of my Dad with Dementia…

In any event, I haven’t seen my Missy since Mom died… and this certainly wasn’t the best of circumstances.

She sure does look different, shockingly so to me.. My memory of her is.. well of her being both a good deal younger and having a good deal more weight.. as a result of all the medication she was always on.. and bouncing around through. She looked like a women.. and that somehow startled me a little.

But my Father tells me she didn’t look thin to him.. but that she seemed less responsive and less alert then usual… but then he hasn’t seen Missy for a long while ethier.

Because of the direction problems I wasn’t able to meet up with my Aunt Jackie.. but from talking to her on the phone since getting home.. it sounds like Melissa was really only responsive to the people from Archway.. and apparently at some point she had asked for Mom. I don’t know how well she understands that Mom died. 

In any event, I thought she looked pretty good considering… and sorta.. it’s hard to explain really. I felt like there was something going on behind her eyes.. wishing I could somehow connect to her. That’s the way with Autism though.. But I felt this more then I ever had in the past.. She just kind of sat there rocking.. oscillating between smiles, a kind of looking around thing.. and this far off look..  

I sorta tried to connect in a kind of non-verbal-ish way… I don’t know if it did anything.. but there you go, right? It was kind of awkward, as it always is for me, not really knowing quite how to act.. I’ve felt that way since I was a little kid.. going to the special needs camps and whatever.. just not knowing how to relate to that world.. So I let my father take the lead on this part of things.. and that seemed to work out well.

And a Closing Statement to my Social Media Friends 

Out side of all that.. I want to thank all my social media friends.. who’s kind words have been so helpful while these sorts of things have been going on.. and not knowing if my Sister would be ok, and all of that. You guys are why I love social media!  So thank you.

It’s almost 12 30 as I write this. This past Friday I was notified that my sister was in critical but stable condition, having had am allergic reaction to something.. It’s made for a bit of a difficult weekend.

My sister suffers from severe mental retardation and autism. She lives in a home in somewhat western-ish Mass. When my mom died last december.. it sorta fell on me to.. I’m not sure what.. but to make sure things were.. not so bad. But also I’ve been in the position of being in charge of taking care of my father who has dementia… Between this kind of thing and like.. sorta normal challenges of life of which my mom largely shielded me from… I’m greeted with a set of challenges I’m generally not feeling totally up to… That I must find a way to rise to…  And it surely doesn’t help that career wise I tend to be the starving artist type.

So now I’m waking up dad and getting ready to leave to go meet with my Aunt Jackie to visit my Sister in the hospital. The good news is my sisters condition has stabilized.. and she’s being moved out of the ICU.

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. 

I seem to be inside of strange place where instead of actually producing music I’m… kinda like designing the building blocks of music production projects…. Or I’m programing synthesizers anyway.

I’m in Absynth 4.. Seems like the last time I sat around programing Absynth.. it must have been a couple versions back.. In any event, I find myself digging down deeper.

Because all my programing is now “Synthesizer X + Kore” there’s a kind of.. strangely different way of thinking about synthesizers. I’m a software synth guy, you must understand.. so I’m not used to having a lot of hardware controls via which I can get expressive with a synthesizer.. So I’ve never programmed a synth with the notion of “if you move these 8 knobs, and 8 buttons you’ll find this groovy expressive potential in this sound.”

Absynth.. Is interesting in that.. It’s one of the first synthesizers I ever kind of fell in love with programming. Absynth’s expressive potential for ambient music.. for evolving sound scapes.. is just awesome. And there’s something about programming it that gets my imagination going like no other..  It’s all a bit more like creating a sonic puppet then a conventional synth patch.. In the sense that you’re going in and finding different ways it could be expressive.. as a part of how you program it.

Latter that night

The patch I’m currently working on, as I write this post, is one that I’m not real sure if it’s usefulness as an instrument.. I mean I have no idea how it could fit into my work.. but I will say.. its fun as hell playing with… perhaps I can take a swing at trying to express what I mean by this….

Conventionally.. I don’t really use compressors or EQs.. or I didn’t until recently.. and I’m still at an early stage of learning how to integrate them into my work. Now conventionally EQs and Compressors are… well like the most important tools of mix engineers. EQs and compressors help you to shape various aspects of your mix.. But how I usually do it is.. in the choice of what instruments I use.. Another words.. how I shape the things EQ and Compressors shape.. I shape by things like what instruments I use.. which is.. in a lot of ways.. kinda better.   

A day or so latter:

You used to be able to just embed these.. but I can’t work out how to do that since they changed last.fm a little bit.. in any event.. here’s a direct link to a track called A Short Trip To Another Day. (clicking on it will open it in a new window.) The reason I link to this track is.. is it’s an example of something created based off.. well the same sorta spirit I’m working in now..  

I’m jumping around in this post a little.. so try and bare with me..

A Short Trip To Another Day was one of my first attempts at programming Absynth.. The program I created was.. one that I didn’t really know how I would be expressive with it.. or how it would work in my music.. So the process of creating A Short Trip to Another Day was one of exploring how it might fit into my work..

Working in this sorta way.. I think it pushes you in different directions then you might other wise work in.. which can result in more interesting work.. and I have to say that this might be one of my favorite tracks.. and so it illustrates what I’m talking about in this entry. 

Ok.. so…  

As I was saying before.. I never used to use EQs or Compressors in my productions.. and um.. EQs and Compressors are tools via which to craft a mix.. and they indeed are tools that I could use in order to exert some control over the sounds created by my synth programs..

So.. looking forward from where I’m at at this moment.. I see growth potential in my music, along a few different lines..  

1. There’s the process of learning to program various synthesizers and the power of custom sound libraries.. and all there implications… This isn’t a totally new concept.. but we are learning to program new synths / new versions of synths.. ad exploring new possibilities along these lines.
2. There is the issue of the hardware / software control.. thinking about sounds as puppets.. with various ways of getting expressive with our sounds.. that are much more complex in how they might be expressive.. then normally found in my work.
3. There is the subject of how to use EQs and Compressors in my work.. where they might make my work better, or perhaps make my work not soo much better.. but it is about the exploration of what there roll can be.. which is in large measure a more artistic thing then a conventional technical thing of.. the way things are conventionally done by people.
4. There is the possibility of using Kore 2 for “Super Instruments,” which is to say.. You create a patch.. that combines any number or synthesizers and effects into one giant “super instrument” and what that could bring to the table.

In talking about these possible directions..  for growth.. We are talking about how this work could become enriched. 

Latter that night, over tired (after a synth programing catastrophe)  

I started in on a new Absynth program today. What happened is.. I figured out how to have the.. well performance sliders, lets call them.. things I’d probably control via the Kore 2 controller.. modify envelopes. This would be a fairly simple thing.. but it’s enough to get me excited… With envelopes you can create rhythms… and you know.. these rhythms could evolve over time.. but also you could have different parts of your synth program playing different rhythms of different lengths.. that loop.. So its like.. well lets just say that’s pretty cool for the way I like to work..  (though I don’t normally use synth patches that include rhythms)… but the polymeric possibilities are very exciting to me..   

Anyway…..  So you can take one of these rhythms.. and you can make it so that one or another performance control alters the tempo of the rhythms… and in one patch.. you could have a lot of rhythms… So what I wanted to do is build in some way of controlling the relative amplitude of different rhythms, as well as there tempos… and also just kind of throw some fun stuff on the fire. Now.. .

Ok, groovy enough.. But allow me to attempt to explain what’s exciting to me about this..  out side of just the usual “and these are the reasons polymeric stuff is good for ambient music styles.” We’re actually not just talking poly-metric… where talking poly-tempi…  Another words.. we’re have multiple tempos going on inside of a single synth patch… I guess it’s like you have the main tempo.. that’s the tempo of the project  your working on.. and everything is synched to that tempo.. and you can shift that tempo around if you like.. but that’s like “the conductor tempo.” But.. you could have.. various instruments that… while being able to start out with an obvious relationship to that tempo.. can go off the rails in one way or another.

The difference between music and noise is probably your ability to recognize a pattern… And for patterns to be interesting.. they probably need to reach an optimal state between simple and complex, with respect to ones ability to recognize them… 

A few days latter 

Ok, I’m going to leave it off right here.. without finishing this, cause other wise it probably wont get posted.. but at least its an interesting look at what I’m up to.