Category Archives: criticism

What’s the Problem?

Posted by on May 10, 2011 No comments

Because communication is no longer a problem in our culture, that is to say, access to a large audience no longer requires a large capital investment, there is a belief that any individual should be able to pursue their passion without compromise. This is false.

Life is a web of compromises. Dropping everything to pursue my dream of writing art music would mean sacrificing things that are just as important to me, if not more so, than The Work. That is, if I wanted to pursue my dream in its purest from.

My dream is to spend hours creating beautiful canvases of sound that follow organic forms. I want to explore the limits of technology and music. I imagine trying to capture the sound of Love or Death or Joy. The means exist. If only I could translate that passion and its product into food and shelter. Then I could live the life that is so obviously within my reach, right? And with blogs and the Internet, that’s a breeze, right? Problem solved!

And that’s the source of my frustration. Not every artist has work that can be monetized. And not everyone wants to monetize her work. Does that mean that The Work isn’t important? Does that mean that the artist is a failure? Does that mean that this individual will not contribute to the canon or to the cultural consciousness? Clearly not.

I have been reading a lot lately about creativity and how it fits into the world today. From writing a memoir with no intention of publishing it to finding ways of sneaking in bits and pieces of what we consider to be our calling into our daily lives it seems to me that there has been a demonization of The Day Job in the life of a creative person. As a result, I started writing something down the other day and it won’t stop pouring out. I struck a nerve and it turns out that my relationship to my creative work and what I do for a living is important enough to me to take the time to explain it.

There is a lot of ranting to come. My inner monologue is pretty high pitched right now and the six people who read this blog will be subjected to my manifesto soon enough! But for now, this is a public declaration for accountability purposes. Getting this thing down is important to me and maybe it will be to you.

In the mean time, I am back in the studio tonight and recording more tunes for an upcoming collaboration. Stay tuned!

improvement

Posted by on September 30, 2010 No comments

I came across something interesting this morning at kottke.org. It was this little tidbit:

“Using that definition, it’s interesting that you can’t figure out whether you’re any good or not from your 300 friends on Facebook, the 23 people who liked your Tumblr post, the 415 people you follow on Twitter, or the 15 people who faved your Flickr photo.”

Exactly! It’s impossible to know if one has any aptitude or ability through what is (erroneously) labeled as positive feedback. The only way to determine where you are in the process of developing your talent is through criticism and open discussion. A binary mechanism akin to the “Like” button isn’t going to tell you anything. It may indicate the number of people who actually invested time in your work by reading or looking or listening – and that is very valuable! – but it certainly won’t tell you if you’re getting closer to your goals.

I have some people to whom I send my stuff. There are a few musicians and a few that aren’t. Getting a read on what I do from another musician might tell me how my music is changing. What am I doing differently? Has the quality slipped? Did I sound lost? These are the kinds of things that are difficult to know when listening to my own work. And let’s face it, in the bedroom studio to iPod listener chain of music that is rapidly becoming the new norm, it’s hard to get that feedback before something is released. So the input from other people who are musicians, though not doing the same kinds of things, is incredibly valuable.

My non-musician friends tell me how the rest of the world will hear my music. Since I’m aiming for an audience of 200 people, it’s a pretty small circle and my style tends to range at times. I wonder how I can keep the attention of a group that size. So it helps to hear something back from one of those collaborators (because that’s what they are) that might change the way I approach sequencing songs or whether or not something even makes the cut.

Did I mention that the people I have selected are brutally honest? That’s something else that is missing from the world of the re-tweet. I learned a long time ago that it takes just as much intestinal fortitude to give criticism as it does to take it. Sometimes more. And it is a talent in itself. To develop at all, an artist needs to have strong, trustworthy people around to assist in the process. Those folks are in short supply. They certainly aren’t the type to click “Like” and move on. The best stay and talk. They look for the weak spots. They find the imperfections in and recognize the center of the work. Remember, perfection means stasis. I’m glad I’m never perfect. That would be the end of it for me. A good critic will reach out and feed your talent by giving a potential direction for development. The answer to “what do I practice next?” always comes from someone who can see the thin spots. A great critic is a teacher.

That isn’t to say that I don’t really enjoy seeing all of the “Likes” – far from it! As I said, it means that someone is paying attention and has just made their network aware of my work. When I released Nothing of Consequence it was amazing to go to Facebook and see every status for two scrolling pages showing nothing but links to my album. That’s more exciting to me than the quick thumbs up. Sharing my work means a lot. We’ll see how I do in a couple of days with my new tunes.

Seek out good critics and when you find one, don’t let go!

what’s new?

Posted by on March 4, 2010 No comments

Over the past few days the primary question, creatively, that has haunted me is “what’s the way forward?” Part of me wants to say “the question for this generation of artists is…” but in truth, I don’t really care about the generation. They’re not in my head. I am. So my question is: what is truly new?

The leap that music made when electronics and computers created all of the new timbres and possibilities in the early 20th century seems all but spent now. It’s no longer enough to come up with a beautiful tone or a perfect simulation. It’s expected. The context of the tone is the thing. It always has been, but for a long time a composer could get away with quite a bit as long as the sounds were interesting or created via a new method. In some cases the same old sounds made a new way was enough to attract attention.

Please note: There are no deep insights here.

Years ago, when I was stuck and looking for a guidepost, I would go to the EMF’s web site and look up a new CD by a composer I’d never heard of before. That’s how I found Hildegard Westerkamp and her wonderful soundscapes. My Larry Austin collection started there as well. Today it feels like there’s less that I haven’t heard and I wonder if my listening is simply not deep enough for the music being produced today (do I get it?). Or perhaps it’s that the magnitude of available music is so great that there isn’t time to spend on deep listening. And with so much available, there’s no reason to work at a piece that doesn’t instantly connect. If the web in 1996 looked the way it does today I wonder if I would have had the guts to spend time with the work of Austin or Westerkamp. I might not have taken the time because there would always have been something else that fit my existing palette right at my fingertips.

This speaks volumes about how I feel about my music today. If it doesn’t connect with the listener the first time, what chance do I have? With the constant communication and connection brought to us today, it’s hard to imagine not trying to please the audience. The days of “who cares if they listen” (google it for a giggle) are long gone and the time of the retweet and page rank is here. What is a composer to do?

Well, I dig deeper. I listen to the things that inspire me. I follow twisting paths of references from recording to recording and trace the life of different composers hoping to pick up the scent of something that I missed. I really do wonder if I’m not part of a lost generation of composers. Creative minds lost to the media that surround them and unable to create a new message because the methods are all so novel that they beg investigation.

What a wonderful problem to have, on the surface. And if the problem were only on the surface, I’d be fine.

what have you done for me lately

Posted by on February 26, 2010 No comments

In graduate school there was a seminar for composers where we talked about our work and personal philosophy of music. One big questions was “are you an innovator or a more conservative composer?” Being as electronic/computer music was my focus I sided with innovator. My argument was that if one traced the history of computer music it was one of experimentation. If a composer wasn’t pushing forward with a new technique then there wasn’t much to hold one’s attention. I felt that it was a culture of “what have you done for me lately.” I still think that was a pretty accurate assessment based on my discussions with other composers and students. We listened for the technique and not for the music.

That should have been a pretty big red flag. After the dreams of my PhD faded and I retreated creatively to my mental cave, I found myself drawn back to the guitar; my gateway to music. And not the classical guitar that was the center of my musical training but the steel string acoustic guitar. Something visceral and very real settled in when I returned to it and I’ve been riding that feeling ever since.

Now, years later, I’m starting to wonder if there isn’t a need to combine the two. That deep passion for music and the deep research that comes with technology and its application. Thinking back to journal articles and more academic discussions makes me think that I really do need more. It’s a good time to take stock and experiment a little. The things I’m reading these days have put most of what I’m doing in a new light. Some of it good, some of it less good, but all of it indicates a need for adjustment if not wholesale change.

Musical development is a road that never ends. I think I’m being reminded that it’s OK to pull over for coffee from time to time but there’s a lot of ground to cover.

no more rock and roll dreams

Posted by on February 3, 2010 No comments

If you played the guitar in High School during the late 80s and early 90s like I did there is an excellent chance that you were in a band. Somebody had a drum kit. Somebody played bass. And somebody screamed into a mic. Maybe there were keyboards (Yamaha or Roland only, please), maybe not. Odds are pretty good it was a four piece and you played pretty loudly. Loud is a really good definition of bands at that stage and in that place in time. I know my band was loud. Really loud. And we played pretty fast. Most songs sat around the 138 bpm mark or higher and moved at a good clip. Did I mention that we were loud? Especially in my mom’s basement or in our singer’s garage. Really, really loud.

While setting up for practice or tearing down there was always at least one 10 minute break where the “what ifs” broke out and we’d go on at length about how cool it would be to get a record contract and tour. How much money we’d have. How many guitars I would be able to go through in a show. How we’d remember the tough times and help bands like us make it big. We’ll set aside the “rough life” of living in a college town in northeast Ohio for a little bit because, well, with nothing to compare it to your first bite of caviar is just salty sacks of nastiness.

Since those days in the basement I have learned that life as a touring musician isn’t for everyone. It’s hard work that requires dedication and sacrifice. My life took me to different places and my journey with music was on an entirely different track from that of the kid wailing on his Strat. I’m glad I did what I did. No regrets there. But something that I have come to realize is that the dreams of that era are fading into myth and legend. Record contracts don’t work like they used to (or like we imagined they did). Touring isn’t about private jets and fancy hotels (not that it ever was for most bands). The time of the megadeal is dying out. Things are smaller now. The world is a different place.

At 16, I dreamed of being on a stage in a huge stadium with tens of thousands cheering for every guitar solo I tore through. Today, you couldn’t drag me to a stadium to hear a concert. It’s crowded, noisy, and generally not fun. It’s a “me media” world now and artists have to fight for space on an iPod and not for top billing at a show. There are many who disagree with that, but among the people I know (my tribe if you will) this is exactly the case. When I release a sketch or an album, I’m hoping for a person to listen to a tune all the way through and then toss it into the vast random shuffle of his or her music library to be doled out in the context of playlists or at the mercy of random. On occasion I’ll go to hear a good band or to support someone I know. That’s cool. It’s usually a smaller venue and a good time is had by all. There is a connection that carries the experience. It’s good. It’s fun. But the big Rock-with-a-capital-R shows are a dying breed and will be all but gone in five years’ time.

This isn’t a lament.

Someone mentioned to me the other day that if Back to the Future were made today, Marty would go back in time to 1980. That was a kick in the head. In 1980, no one that I knew had even heard of the Internet. Well, my dad did, but he wasn’t talking about it. No browsers. No “social media.” None of that. There were cultural gatekeepers everywhere. Today? It’s all but gone. Get some free web hosting and jump on the site of the minute and you’ll have a platform for your work. And that’s any work. Books, music, paintings, sculpture, crafts, all of it. Of course, that means that everyone gets a smaller and smaller slice of the attention at large. That’s great if you have adjusted your expectation.

There aren’t many seats at the table for bands like U2. Who is the next U2? Will there be another U2? There’s an entire industry hoping that there will still be a table at all, but for msot musicians I don’t think it much matters. If you can be content to have listeners who number in the hundreds, you’re doing very well. Get to the thousand mark and maybe you can make a living with your art. I wish you luck! I’m aiming for it myself in a skewed sort of way. But the big rock and roll dreams are all used up. It was a powerful and wonderful time, but check that verb tense. It’s in the past and that’s OK.