mmd

I have done some work to set up a little website to serve as a front end for my low-key business project ‘mmd mastering’. You can visit the site here. The service I am offering is mixing and mastering of audio material, negotiated per project with each client. If you would like to use this service check out the site’s FAQ and use the contact form to get in touch.

It’s early days at the moment with the site’s design and function, but there’s enough blurb to let you know the ins and outs of the service. I’ll also be using that site to feature some of the finished work I’ve done for clients – covering all sorts of unexpected styles of music. In terms of a business it’s baby steps for me seeing that I’ll be doing the work in my spare time outside of my day job. I’ll be initially focusing on a Renoise-clientel to inject some sonic love into that community. If things go steady I’ll evolve from there.

Upon reading an excellent book regarding the improvement of assertiveness and empathetic communication I’ve come to some realizations that relate to music production. I have had and still have a problem with assertiveness – too easily saying ‘yes’ to projects, jobs, performances and collaborations against my better judgment and sometimes completely against my personal desire. As the years have gone on I’ve realized clearer goals and intentions with my own projects and have needed more time to properly fulfill those projects. Most of my own major projects still remain incomplete, and I have serious album ideas that have been in slow evolution since 2001! Talk about albatrosses…

This situation of course is due to my own lack of assertion and not the fault at all of other people who make requests of my time, ideas and energy. That’s worth repeating: it’s not your fault I’m behind in what I want to do, that’s something I have caused myself. With that point being clear I can now express intention to be more assertive and create workable compromises to attain my goal. I’ve already stated recently here that I intend to finish off existing collaborative project in the next few months freeing my time in the studio for my own work, but assertions need to be made to prevent future complications. This comes from acknowledgment of personal rights, in this case my rights as a composer and creative music-person. This could work for any musician or creator, and could apply to yourself. So…

An assertive bill of rights:

1. We have the right to turn down invitations for working collaboratively. No matter how small and ‘temporary’ the project may be, we do not have to squeeze it in.
2. We have the right to be in a collaboration but choose and be clear about our level of engagement, which includes a clear and flexible statement of when the projects ends.
3. We have the right to not play live if we do not want to, irrespective of how much others want to play live for whatever reason.
4. We have the right to say we are not interested in helping or paying attention to another person’s project.
5. We have the right to pull out of a project if we feel it is a necessary priority, either in deferral or permanently.
6. We have the right to not accept work even if it is of a commercial nature, as money and worry about money poisons creative intentions if allowed to dominate.
7. We have the right to work on our own projects at whatever level of our choosing without guilt or acceptance of vilification or manipulation (via guilt) from others.
8. We have the right to our own leisure time and time for recuperation outside of music in whatever amount we see fit without accepting guilt projected from others.
9. We have the right to not work on music at all, even for no apparent reason.
10. We have the right to honor the natural expression of our inspiration and work as best we can to enjoy creation to ensure the best possible expression of it, and therefore we have the right to nurture that process with or without other people involved as we see fit.

If the above rights were completely asserted and attained that would be an ideal situation – and ideals are rarely completely reached. Practical experience shows that people will come up and put pressure on you, sometimes irrespective or your assertive position being clear. Depending on the situation this is where it is pragmatic to make a ‘workable compromise’ via empathetic communication. This still retains yourself as being the only judge of what you will do with your time and allows you to negotiate it relative to your desires and rights. An example of this may be: “I can do my album, but for fun I might go play live improv with xyz every now and then”, or similar. You still retain the right to change your mind and give as much as you want to expressed via assertion to the people attempting to ask things of you (either in open friendly way or right to way that are downright maliciously manipulative). You can retain your friendships, networked associates, clientele, peers and so on as much as you like if you assert what you want and clearly set up with empathy a workable compromise that attempt to keep both parties in a state of mutual understanding.

I want to do this now.

I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve heard in recent years someone saying “there’s too much music”. Just how does one understand that? How do you explain it? What do you do about it? What is the most sane course of action in reaction for someone who still has got the creative bug and is going to make music anyway? This is something I have been thinking about.

A recent trip to the coast and Brisbane to throw myself into the middle of ‘normal consumer culture’ of malls, record shops, party music and listening to radio like Triple J has produced the following vague realizations for me. It does indeed feel like music saturation is at an all time high yet in line with this the depth of appreciation of music is respectively shallow. More hasn’t equated to a ‘better experience’ nor has it led to an improvement socially or culturally with noticeable outcomes. Now more than ever you can easily access, via live music or music media, whatever taste you want to explore from classic over-played hits to the most obscure avant garde curiosities on the bleeding edge of whatever. But somehow our experiences don’t cumulatively flourish into vibrant rainbows but instead into a gray haze of blandness. When asked what do we REALLY want to hear that will inspire, invigorate and move us forward we really can’t qualify an answer of any use. To compound the situation we now have more people on the planet meaning more people making music easily with the accessible enhancements of consumer technology; add global dramas of economic, environmental and violent natures to the mix; add the chaos and instant gratification of the internet; add the crumbling certainties of the music industry and capitalism with it; add finally plain cultural confusion in western identity and purpose – and you have a situation that pumps out music like never before that we collectively greet with a drawn out yawn. True silence becomes priceless.

How do people stop themselves from being cynical in such circumstances save from being sheltered in self absorbed naivety? Worse still, how does a composer move forward with their own urges in the face of everything? Are you part of the solution or part of the problem? It’s hard to know and objectivity in this situation is quite slippery. Personally I press on because I’ve got no choice, the music has decided for me to express it – but that doesn’t prevent me from pumping out albums worth of bland stuff with only hints of personalized character, causing more yawns. I used to think ’soul’ would win people over, but is there such thing as too much ’soul’? There is no proper answer to that question. Any possible absolute negativity negates the possibility for unexpected surprises in music, which underground sources produce occasionally above the dilution. Such gems are rare, but I guess they are to be treasured and understood none the less. That point emphasizes that music isn’t about results, it’s about a journey of consciousness: for both composer and listener. And it is far more subtle than we think it is, far more humble and private.

A wine connoisseur doesn’t get excited over any old vintage: they have to look far, wide and deep for that special experience. So it is for music. And thus it validates all stations of music, from shallow corporate pop to the weirdest most buried oddities – they all have their place for the journey of the respective composers and respective audiences. Those of us suffering from ’saturation sickness’ could find comfort in this realization – that their own methods for finding those gems is a different challenge than one on the easy avenues of mass culture and mass consumerism. Don’t stand in the surf and be pummeled by the onslaught of the waves: go to shallows and look closely at the shells and stones. The energy you save doing this allows you to better spend you time enjoying things and thus better dealing with the dramas of the world.

After some moving about the country to fix up my car and visit friends and family we’ve very gladly moved back to Armidale for the peace and quiet and lack of humidity. Looking forward to getting back into the swing of this with production and no doubt a whole host of random things that come out of nowhere all the time. The general approach will be to polish off all existing collaborative projects in order to finally finish my own long standing projects with focus and flow.

A fair few musical and cultural realisations have been made of late, but I’ll write about them specially later if appropriate.

In gear-related news I have finally bit the bullet and committed to a new set of mixing monitors: A new pair of Yamaha HS80Ms! Unfortunately due to swimming fun over the summer break my ears became all blocked up – so I’ve yet to really enjoy and understand the new speakers. From what I can tell it’s a clear improvement on my old custom system, and I’ve set things up so I can quickly A-B old and new to continue understanding the difference to learn the new sound. Ears shall improve soon so I will report back on what I’m hearing, as well as posting some photos.

Edit: Apparently this blog is breaking on IE7 – I’ll try to get that fixed up soon…

May 2009 be a creative time for you all, in spite of all mounting insanity around you.

I recently found a great ‘manifesto’ by Mark Amerika that puts a clear perspective on the change and activity of the music world today. It neatly lays out the idea for ‘Avant Pop’ as a movement and relates strongly to a lot of what we do as artists. I connect instantly with this:

[A]rtists who create Avant-Pop art are the Children of Mass Media (even more than being the children of their parents who have much less influence over them).

It also touches on the globalized and networked nature of being a creative participant, rather than having traditional delineation of ‘producer’ and ‘consumer’:

The emerging wave of Avant-Pop artists now arriving on the scene find themselves caught in this struggle to rapidly transform our sick, commodity-infested workaday culture into a more sensual, trippy, exotic and networked Avant-Pop experience. One way to achieve this would be by creating and expanding niche communities. Niche communities, many of which already exist through the zine scene, will become, by virtue of the convergent electronic environments, virtual communities. By actively engaging themselves in the continuous exchange and proliferation of collectively-generated electronic publications, individually- designed creative works, manifestos, live on-line readings, multi- media interactive hypertexts, conferences, etc., Avant-Pop artists and the alternative networks they are part of will eat away at the conventional relics of a bygone era where the individual artist- author creates their beautifully-crafted, original works of art to be consumed primarily by the elitist art-world and their business- cronies who pass judgement on what is appropriate and what is not.

It’s an interesting read. You can find it here. More here.