Monthly Archives: March 2010 - Page 4

open to influence

Posted by on March 2, 2010 No comments

I have a nasty commute. 40 miles each way in Houston is about two hours on the road daily. With that kind of time my very large catalog of music gets dull quickly, so I rely on podcasts to fill the gap. I have to say that of all of the things The Almighty Internet has brought, radio is the best. Wait. What I meant was that I listen to a lot of podcasts on a number of different topics. When I have exhausted the reserves of a given set I will go in search of new life and that’s how I found Radio Lab [http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/]. It’s a great show that deals with science and art. Mostly it’s radio shows the way I would do them if I had the drive. Every show is really a long piece of music from the way the interviews are edited to their presentation. It’s brilliant.

This morning, I pulled down a couple of their older shows to fill the gap and there was a short about Terry Riley’s “In C.” A group of composers was asked to remix it and the results were pretty exciting. For me, they were perfectly timed.

Last night I spent my time in the studio pulling apart a couple of tracks I’ve recorded over the past couple of weeks. All of the tracks were acoustic guitar. Using a variety of simple techniques, I managed to obliterate any reference to the actual instrument and instead created a smear of sound. The structure of each piece was left in tact, but the effect was entirely different. I did the work hastily and without too much thinking. That’s more difficult than it sounds given the nature of software and user interfaces. It’s really hard to simply react with software the way one can with a musical instrument. There’s a lot of work to do in that area. In any case, the results were interesting but there was something missing.

And that’s why “In C” was a good thing to hear this morning. The approach taken by the various composers suggests solutions that I might not have come to as quickly. It’s relatively exciting.

Half of getting good creative work out the door is being open to different ways of thinking about it. I’m intrigued by how events and input that could be taken as random really aren’t (in this case by virtue of the fact that I’m me and I chose to expose myself to a given piece of material) and exactly how important that is to the development of the work.

possible interactions include

Posted by on March 1, 2010 No comments

The opinion is beginning to form in the back of my mind that perhaps books should have labels not unlike drugs. “Caution: this book has been known to derail creative thoughts and cause endless anguish.” Or maybe “Do not operate recording equipment after reading.” Maybe I should learn not to mix manifestos with deep creative work. Timing is everything.

Last week I finished Jaron Lanier’s “You Are Not A Gadget” and now I’m reading “Reality Hunger” by David Shields. These are not the books for me to read while doing creative work. Especially when I already charted my course. They certainly would have served my process last summer or (likely) in the coming hot season. Both books beg the question of innovation and look critically at the work being done by creative people today. In “Reality Hunger” there’s the sneaking feeling that too many people are losing sight of where we are culturally and the impact that art is making right now. It’s a great book, by the way. I don’t know that it serves the reader when read front to back but given its design one could easily pick it up, flip to a page, and get something from it. I’m at the 80% mark and would recommend it.

What my reaction to these books has done is place an additional burden on my current process. I’m suddenly very aware of what I’m doing and whether or not it is bringing anything new to the table. Everything is overly self-conscious and I have deep fears about what that will mean to the work. I probably should have picked up a novel instead, but the fact of the matter is that I’ve been waiting for books like this. It’s troubling to need something that gets in the way, in the short term anyway.