Wishing everyone a prosperous, fabulous and harmonious new year. 2010 is here!
My personal wishes for the new year:
The fine folks at Celemony just released Melodyne, their polyphonic audio note editor. Yes, you heard me right: you can now edit audio clips the way you edit MIDI! Once only a distant figment of my imagination, this feature is now actually a reality.
What will this mean? Well, for one, it will be easier to correct an acoustical performance. If you wanted to alter a chord of a recorded piano performance for example, it will be easier than ever. You can just load up that recording in Melodyne and drag around individual notes in a chord to reassign their pitch and time position. Somehow, a magic algorithm doctor made the special voodoo needed to make it possible.
It’s mind boggling, really. See for yourself in this nifty video.
I really think this is going to be pretty revolutionary for sampling. I don’t personally sample other artists (even though I’d love to) because I don’t want to hire a lawyer for the clearances. (Also I’m a chicken.) But I do know that some artists like to grab a snippet and alter it so much that nobody will ever know where it came from. This will be a godsend for them, and not just to make the sample fit their track better… If one was in court, suing for sample usage, and the sample that was used had completely different notes and timing — it would be hard to prove that someone ’stole’ the awesomeness from a prior track. And at the very least, it would make the case pretty interesting. 
Some advances you just know will mark a watershed moment in production technology. This might just be one of them.
Growing up was an all you can eat buffet of Mozart, Beethoven and Bach. As such, the few non-classical recordings in the house fascinated me the most. We only had a handful, which made the bizarre kinetic 5/4 swing of Brubeck’s “Take 5″ and the exotic Beatles quite otherwordly and enchanting. At that age I had no idea that I’d write music one day: I assumed that most music was a serious orchestral business. Nice, safe, phrases repeated over and over, nearly always landing on the tonic. Rarely any non-Italian lyrics, definitely no drumkit.
One year I asked my Santa for a walkman and he was generous that year. It blew up my musical world. Suddenly three minute confections of synths, orch hits, grinding guitars, dance moves and shakin’ beats were getting piped into my headphones. I would hide in my bed past my bedtime and surf the FM channels. I would wait the agonizing 5 minutes before the next song, my eyes bleary with sleeplessness, just in case the next song was one I would love. I soaked in the lyrics, the style, scandalized by the sex, excited by the bass, fascinated by the hooks.
I bought tapes and played the singles over and over again, rewinding the tapes until the ribbon was loose and warbled and the pitches started to slacken. But still, then, I had no idea I would one day tackle making my own creations.
Later, as a teen, I accompanied an amazingly talented electronica group into the studio. They had a real cult following online, before anybody know what ‘online’ was. As the night progressed into an all nighter, someone realized I was getting very bored and offering me a Juno-106 synth and a pair of headphones to play with. Something shifted in me that night… while playing with the knobs, listening to the buzzing squelching and changing timbre… I feel in love.
That was the first spark I had in what would later become a long and torrid love-affair with synthesizers. In a way, that would also lead to opening up the world of music creation that would eventually lead to sequencers, drum machines, samplers and ultimately songwriting / composition.
I think I probably got a late start in music, compared to what I would have liked. Even though I’d written love poems to my piano and sung myself to sleep as a child, I didn’t realize I was musical. It took a fascination with synths and other tools to get me to cross to the other side. My love for them allowed me to experiment and explore music more deeply. It allowed me to finally discover who I am.
Sometimes when I tell people I make electronic music, they often react with a face I recognize. It’s usually a mixture of curiosity, awe, confusion, and if you look carefully – a smidge of disdain sometimes. Like somehow those tools take away the hard work, the creativity. To be honest, I can’t really get on board with that point of view. Those machines really helped to unlock my creativity. The artistic choices you can make are virtually infinite, which in some ways makes things a bit harder. They also require an awful lot of skill, patience and hard work to operate properly. Lastly, and this is the most important to me, they free the mere mortal, the complete newbie, to try writing music. For this, I owe synths a debt of gratitude.
For this I will always be glad.
First of all, let me just say that it is never recommended.
The truth is, the producer hat and the vocalist hat are essentially at odds with each other. Just because you can do each one separately, doesn’t mean it will go smoothly when you try to do them together. The producer is the critical ear, the filter. Your producer brain wants to say no, do it better, that is not good enough. The producer brain is quite discerning. Then there is the performing brain — that is the part that must stay open. The performing brain must be supported, encouraged. There are no mistakes. The performance requires feelings, openness, vulnerabilty and safety.
Can you see how those things are nearly opposite? Stay too accepting, and you’ll never get that good take. Stay too critical, and you’ll never get that good take.
So, with this in mind, I am going to try to disclose some of my conclusions after sweating it out like crazy:
BUY ONLINE
The Gates are Wide Open, What Now?
18 08 2009Due to public acceptance of digital distribution, majors are now forced to compete more and more with indie artists. The world is upside down. It used to be the major labels and distributors controlled all of the content in record stores. It used to be that they were the gatekeepers. If you wanted to get heard, you more or less had to play ball with them. Much to their chagrin, it’s all moving online now.
They tried to control the distribution there too, remember? By adding DRM and doing various PR shenanigans, which only served to alienate their customers more and more. Really, they didn’t treat their customers all that well. When I bought a Compact Disc, I could make as many copies as I liked without hassle. It wasn’t copy protected. But when I just wanted the mp3 that I was going to make with my Compact Disc, they were blocking me all the way. So I waited. And waited. And finally the Apples and Amazons of the world managed to convince enough guys in suits to get their heads out of their own arses and sell me something I actually want.
But how do you cope with all the onslaught? Anybody with a few bucks can get digital distribution now, and the album is never out of stock. And that’s a good thing. Tons of new music all the time. But how are customers to choose? Where are they finding their music? These are things which keep me up at night. If access is not limited, then is it all about exposure? And who do you trust for recommendations?
Personally, I rely on friends, and chance. If I come across something I love, I’ll make an effort to find it. Otherwise, I ask for trusted friends to recommend stuff. It is the most reliable method. Strangely, they mainly recommend the same stuff. Somehow the music is snaking through the social network. And not just in the Twitter sort of way. Lately I’ve taken to having good old fashioned listening sessions with buds, sort of an extended musical show and tell. I really find it helps to cut through the mammoth mountain of choices.
For this reason I suspect some releases and careers will take longer to build. The slower the burn, the longer the fire – that type of thing. I try to take comfort in this when I ponder the microscopic corner of the music universe I presently occupy. At least I’m not some raging forest fire.
Do major labels still have something to offer? Surely they must. They are a finely oiled PR machine. They have money – lots more than the artists usually have, but less than they used to. And if you want to be a massive overnight Pop wonder, you would have a tough time doing it without big label clout.
I often think the role of the majors may eventually become more like a consultant or an investor. Like to nurture artists to grow. Leverage their experience, their contacts. Offer something the artists need. Since a distribution monopoly is no longer something they are offering, they must offer something else. Without expertise or other value, how will they inspire their bread and butter to sign on the dotted line?
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Tags: digital distribution, distribution, gatekeepers, indie artists, indie music, major labels, music industry, new media, online music
Categories : Industry Commentary