what is going on in your musical life

https://watt.cashmusic.org/writing/institutionalizationofrock

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoF_a0-7xVQ

Mary Woronov? Don't think I noticed her tjere before.

I recorded an interpretation of a visual artwork for this project: https://newmusic.org/painting-music-ops-feb-21/ . It will premiere as part of the Mar 19 video. Also going to record a version of the prepared guitar piece from my album for this festival, to premiere virtually on the 26th; also part of the composers' roundtable and one of the guitar orchestras: https://newmusic.org/painting-music-ops-feb-21/ . Still working on a grant application as well.

Billy Gibbons is giving the keynote btw.

Cool

He's not actually. I'm sure Nels Cline is relieved that the keyboardist from the Hold Steady is looking out for his potential academic career as a rock guitar professor, though.

lol

it doesn't really bother me at all that rock music isn't mass culture anymore, it's kind of cool and exciting imo

Link for the festival, sorry: http://www.21cguitar.com/

xp don't tell Simon Frith

Lol @ Billy Gibbons keynote

Simon's brother was in Henry Cow!

I'm aware lol
I remember reading something he wrote about how disco is objectively better than prog because sociology

Good ol sibling rivalry

I've been known to flippantly attribute his whole career to sibling rivalry. xp!

Lol team Fred here

You could always go into classical or jazz and ensure that your listeners will always be other musicians.

― to party with our demons (Sund4r), Sunday, March 14, 2021 2:41 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Lol, I was wondering who that post was going to be by, thought it would be Jordan.

― The Ballad of Mel Cooley (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, March 14, 2021 3:4

Lol, my electronic music is definitely purchased primarily by DJs and producers, as far as I can tell. But that's part of what drew me to dance and dance-adjacent music tbh -- DJs actually need copies of music to play, and there's a culture of buying, playing, and sharing it.

I think I posted something like this upthread, but there's nothing to lose by posting releases on Bandcamp. I would just keep expectations low, since like others have said, it's hard to get anyone to pay attention outside your immediate circle. Even with a label and a wider reach, only a small percentage of those who hear about it will take the time to listen, and an even smaller percentage of those will actually buy something on Bandcamp. Tbh it's kind of a miracle that anyone does.

And it's easy to just look at the really successful releases on Bandcamp with hundreds of little squares below the artwork and think that just happens. All the releases look more or less the same after all, you don't see whatever irl scene or label/marketing/etc is behind it.

Anyway boxedjoy is otm, at least something unexpected will happen if you put something out there and maybe send it to a few people you like/respect, especially if you keep doing it. That's been the case for me, and it's always something different.

Thanks for the Bandcamp advice folks!

Simon's brother was in Henry Cow!

Wow, things I am shockingly old when I learned, I had no idea

https://watt.cashmusic.org/writing/institutionalizationofrock

― Canon in Deez (silby), Sunday, March 14, 2021 5:33 PM (yesterday)

this was a good read, thanks silby

My undergrad alma mater has had a rock guitar program since the early 90s. I suspect that this was not the pitch that made it happen:

It is not that it requires institutionalized pedagogy to maintain a tradition, but that it needs financial support to maintain its practitioners

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAizj1BuAMw
We must do our alma mater.

https://watt.cashmusic.org/writing/institutionalizationofrock

― Canon in Deez (silby), Sunday, March 14, 2021 5:33 PM (yesterday)

this was a good read, thanks silby

― Zach_TBD (Karl Malone), Monday, March 15, 2021 2:50 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

I was excited to read this but found it pretty disappointing.

Idk if this is the right thread to discuss in any detail?

probably not

but i don't know. honestly, most people like me just don't post. if they don't know, they just don't post. i have the poster's disease of just posting, even if i don't know. i don't know. beats me

I think it would be best to dig up a relevant thread or start a new one. I'm sure there are more and better pieces on the topic.

Yeah, the article annoyed me, as was probably clear, even if I am all for 'institutionalising' any music (which is m/l the status quo in this country anyway). I could expand on another thread.

"annoyed" is exactly what it made me feel. I kind if want to start a new thread for saying 'no' to that article point by point.
Are you a professional music instructor, Sund4r?

I am, yeah.

dunno where to put this so it's going here

There’s a point in your life we’re you’re sat at work and the new starter tells people he plays guitar and someone says “ oh. Andrew used to be in a band” and you’re sat with a tie on and your wedding trousers and just feel terrible and they say “ he played Banjo with Muse”

— a.remote.viewer (@anewlinerelated) March 19, 2021

So I've made my wee bandcamp page and I'm going to try to organise my music into EPs or something. I was just wondering, when you lot are making music do you think about it how it would sound in the context of an album/EP or whatever or do you just treat each track as it's own thing?

So far I've just been taking each one as it comes and sort of starting afresh each time. I realise there's no right or wrong way of doing this, I'm just curious as to how other musicians think about these things.

bandcamp is the best platform IMO.

music streaming services' rise has precipitated a trend away from album releases and toward a steady drip of singles. obviously the album format is not going away, but maybe it's worth mentioning because it could mean there's less need for an album to break an artist, along with an increase in pressure to churn out more tunes. seems like it's publish or perish for the pop world as well as academia.

anyway i just think one track at a time. i'd been planning to cut a 2-tracker, but a catastrophic data loss event befell me, TWO very new laptops died for no apparent reason, and i was left dead in the water for several months as a result. i forget where i read that 2 is the ideal number of tracks for an EP, but it resonated with me. tons of dance music EPs suffer from filler tracks and remixes.

in my musical life i recently taught myself how to make tech house and came up with this track... or maybe it's 90s house. it samples paris is burning. i wish i could clean up the mix a bit, but all the data recovery software in the world could not bring back the session files, so the bounce of the ruff mix will be final: https://soundcloud.com/808mixtapes/davey-shindig-nerve/s-63y9hCl1kAA

shortly after i made that, i went through a cluster of tech nightmares and stopped making music for 4 months. just got back to it in earnest this week.

I think with an album/EP you just know. When I was writing and recording stuff last year I had about 20 files that I had been working on over the first three months, and I found that some began to make sense together in a way that others didn't. I had one or two that I really liked that didn't "fit" with what else I was doing.

Listening to a playlist of them on shuffle helped me a lot in terms of thinking of sequencing and intent, but I don't think it's as important these days. People might play your album or EP sequentially once they've bought it, but if they go on to your actual Bandcamp page the first thing they'll hear is your selected track.

also davey I really like that, Paris Is Burning can seem like such an obvious source of samples but I love what you've done with it

thank u boxedjoy! i couldn't not sample it, it's cries out to be sampled.

it***

a week worth of xp's paolo:

Yep, thats me. Back in the dubstep days I had a couple of vinyl releases, then put out various releases / remixes out digitally on Tigerbeat6 / Noodles (Si Begg's label) / Studio Rockers / Rocstar and quite a few smaller ones.

I eventually went down the whole 'build a room full of music kit and do it all on hardware' route and promptly ended up down a procrastination black hole (and the day job started taking up a lot more time), and didn't even send out tunes fornquite a few years.

I finally bit the bullet recently and went back to just a Macbook and a few choice bits of kit and that EP I posted is the first result :D

*for quite

Personally I'm always thinking in terms of albums & EPs, but it's more like 'how many tracks can I get out of this particular concept/technique/gear setup'?

If it's extremely fruitful, then it's an album, but that's only really happened a few times for me. Often it's only two or three tracks before I exhaust that avenue, then it's either an EP, or I pair them with another set of tracks that can plausibly fit together, and then I'll specifically make a few more to bridge the sonic gaps (which can be inspiring in itself).

(btw Willl I'm curious what those choice bits are)

@ Jordan - its all long obsolete stuff that I've had knocking around since the 90's atm, all actual sound generation is coming from the Mac:

Akai S2000 with a flash drive containing every drum break chopped up, only really used for jungle bits / timestretching, or to overload the inputs and then sample back to Ableton.

Soundcraft Spirit Folio 12 channel desk, literally used as a 12 channel distortion pedal to feed multiple outs from Ableton, saturate and mix together, then resample back in the box.

+ Roland Octapad Pad 80 for drumming fun + electric piano / knobby controllers etc.

Davey that track above is nice

thank u paolo-san

I have another general music question that doesn't have a right or wrong answer, and here it is: do you lot usually finish a track that you've started or do most of them get abandoned?

I've been making an effort for the last couple of years or so to finish just about everything that I start. I think it's quite common for new producers to give up on tracks early and I stopped doing that after reading a tip for beginners saying that it's generally best to finish something even if you're not happy with it, because if you don't practise finishing music then you'll only get good at starting tracks off. This can get quite frustrating though because obviously when you're working in a DAW you can go over and over something for ever and sometimes it's just not worth it, but then again sometimes it is. So I'm trying to get a balance between persevering with something and realising when enough is enough and it's time to drop it.

I definitely have a fair amount of unfinshed stuff on my hard drive. If you've never finished something, that sounds like good advice. However, it's fine to cut bait on something if you aren't feeling it!

Once a track gets past a certain point I almost always finish it. I think it's a good skill to recognize when something isn't worth fixing though, when to just move on. I have plenty of sketches that just didn't get off the runway.

I can only think of one track in the last year or two that was borderline, it went through multiple total re-writes, but I was too in love with the main beat to give up on it (even though everything I added to it made it worse for awhile).

I'm very bad about losing interest in quality tracks before finishing them, I find that if I leave it too long, I just have a very hard time getting into the headspace where I was excited about the track in the first place

my general strategy has been:

1. start working on something
2. forget about it for 10/15/20 years (delete where applicable)
3. rediscover it around the time ILX does a pre-cover project
4. slap some Garageband loops on it and call it done

lol

There really is something to be said for re-sampling and mangling abandoned sketches/tracks though, once you've forgotten about them and they feel like they've been done by someone else.