I’ve always liked the band Big Blood. They’re a husband and wife duo from Portland, Maine who put together some wonderful songs and soundscapes. They stand out more to me because I attach a physical texture to them. They cut limited runs of albums, each of which are shipped in custom made CD cases with original art and goodness stuffed in, like a thoughtful care package from a faraway friend who knows you’ve been depressed. They also sometimes come with individualized letters to the buyer. The two CDs I physically own of theirs are encased in a heavy card stock that has a rough grain texture and was torn by hand instead of clean cut. This texture is in my mind when I listen to their music.
My friend Tyler sometimes creates really unique tangible things, like portable dictionaries retrofitted with his poetry and art, to give to friends. He has some cool plans for releasing mysteries in tangible form that eventually lead those who decide to uncover it back to a digital component. A few years ago this idea wouldn’t have stuck out to me as much as it does now, which is a testament to how fast digitization has become the norm. I support this transfer to the digital, but am also excited for the future of the physical now that it has to be re-thought. There is a different inference from the physical these days. A non-mass-produced physical product feels historical in some ways, like a child’s crayon drawing stuck to your fridge. Even if it’s not from your kid or anyone you know, it’s an individual snapshot in time. Perhaps it is just the standard gravitas of a non-mass-produced experience. Perhaps it simply preys upon our evolutionary ties to the world before industrialization… customized, texturized, and extremely impermanent.
Perhaps this is the one failing of the internet… that the nature of the medium is mass production. An MP3 reproduces itself in exactly the same way as many times as it is requested. It can be distributed and saved with no loss or wear. It is preserved in pristine form forever (so long as the servers exist), and the ability to copy and seed the data eliminates the concept of one-of-a-kind uniqueness, even in a situation where it is only sent to one person. Its potential is still limitless. This is a good thing. Yet the limited and transient will always have its own allure.
It’s been some time since I’ve updated this particular blog. I do think about it sometimes, spinning the “what ifs” of lost trajectories through Wordpress, Facebook, Twitter, G+, Pinterest, Tumblr, and the rest. An e-xistential identity crisis is upon me, but it’s been trailing me since the beginning.
My analysis of the situation shows that these issues stem from a mix of Type-A OCD and the dilemma of modern day commoditization of the self. This particular blog was designed as an outlet for thoughts regarding music production. It’s the “music” drawer [sub-genre: sound experiments, recording production] in my very tidy e-presence dresser. Specific “band” updates each have their own defined outlets, real life day to day has its own, political/environmental has a separate dresser entirely, video game industry experience has one, my professional experience side has its own, and so on and so forth.
Twitter brings to light the other side of the equation, where to this day I can’t decide whether or not to use my real name. The reason? Fear of potential repercussions if my “name” were to ever become generally associated with a single branch of my non-existant media empire, which would then somehow limit me in my other outlets. It’s a psychotic internal struggle, but it is not unique to me. I see it everywhere: where does “me” the person end, and “me” the product begin? Can I be a person and a product? If I have multiple sides and multiple products, is it better to break them up into clear and understandable pieces? Does anything matter?
I like to think I can lay a big chunk of this blame on being brought up in the 80’s.
The hilarious part of this entire process, which is an OCD marathon through the mean streets of outside perception, is that there is no actual audience. I’m having a perception war with myself. I’m just a guy covered in newspaper clippings freaking out inside of a mirrored box.
All of this reminds me of a piece of David Berman’s poem, “Self Portrait at 28″:
It’s just that our advances are irrepressible.
Nowadays little kids can’t even set up lemonade stands.
It makes people too self-conscious about the past,
though try explaining that to a kid.
I’m not saying it should be this way.
All this new technology
will eventually give us new feelings
that will never completely displace the old ones
leaving everyone feeling quite nervous
and split in two.
We will travel to Mars
even as folks on Earth
are still ripping open potato chip
bags with their teeth.
Why? I don’t have the time or intelligence
to make all the connections
like my friend Gordon
(this is a true story)
who grew up in Braintree Massachusetts
and had never pictured a brain snagged in a tree
until I brought it up.
He’d never broken the name down to its parts.
By then it was too late.
He had moved to Coral Gables.
It also reminds me of Pete’s poem to me earlier today:
People on the internet don’t actually read anything anymore.
I think the right way forward is to just remember that nothing really matters. It’s 2012, we can all just be people again. Self internet marketing is just an embarrassing hold over from earlier times. It’s like the old testament of the media obsessed world. It never made sense and never will, but will probably live on forever in the hearts and minds of the disillusioned everywhere.
It’s late February. The sun literally hasn’t been out in like 6 months I think. You’d think one would sleep more when there’s no sun, but it just ends up confusing me.. my preamble to being in a nursing home shadowing and driving the staff crazy (the one future pro). Some things just aren’t cool.. including today’s entry into the Throw Away Music Series. Thank goodness for LOST tonight. Until then.. sound effects.
I meant to get alot of work done this week, both on my own music and the projects I’m on.. especially as I’m signing a deal to do a new iPhone game. But then the Starcraft 2 beta happened and I lost my fucking mind and became the best low-level Zerg player the world has ever seen.
Then tonight, inspired by Jonathan Mann’s “Song a Day”project that he’s been doing for like well over a year now, I put myself back to work. While I doubt I can live up to a song a day with everything that’s going on, I aim to hit at least 1 Throwaway Music Series entry a week.
For my friend Ray’s birthday this past weekend, my apartment was scheduled to be the place of a mass celebratory gathering. Any time people come over though, I usually assume it’s because they just wanted to dance on my carpet (very soft and blue). And since most of Ray’s friends are really into the new generation of folk stars, I figured I’d remix a David Dondero song to be fitting for the occassion.
It’s February 1st, and it may be my first day fully sober since a week before New Years, which means 2010 has just started for me. My New Years Resolution was to try less noise for a few weeks, but like the standard-fare rapidly ballooning facebook women who LOL to everyone about the weight they promised to keep off while posting pic after pic of themselves birthing Heinekens, I’m finding myself making nothing but noise.
My first actual recording of 2010 features me losing my mind and coming to with a sander wrapped in a t-shirt resting on an acoustic guitar with an ebo taped to the strings.
I began writing and recording music at the tail end of 2006. I’ve spent the past year or two toying with the idea of putting out an actual album, but it never happened, mainly because I wasn’t confident in the material but also because when you first start doing anything you take it much too seriously in a weird kind of way. Or maybe that’s just me.
Why redo the work if it’s already been done? That’s often my thought when going for a particular sound. It’s usually easiest to take the closest preset available and tweak it until it is close enough. I still whole-heartedly support this mindstate, as the minutiae can easily sidetrack and destroy whatever vision was forming when you sat down to begin work.
I spend alot of time working on initial ideas that never end up evolving into anything usable for any project. Normally I just pack these quick one to two hour experiments up into a folder, where it then lays forever forgotten. I figured that instead of doing that, it could be cool to post them on a somewhat hidden blog instead. Here’s tonight’s throwaway experiment. It utilizes a source sound of the spring of the cup holder in my car (when you expand it to allow for a drink to fit in), with basic drum tracks and a very basic oscillator.
(effect chain on base drum and snare tracks)