SoundCloud, my favourite musician-oriented music streaming service is starting to roll out a major facelift (and upgrade) to it’s web based services. Today I was fortunate enough to get access to the Next SoundCloud. The changes are impressive, to say the least.

The Beat Doesn’t Stop

SoundCloud won a lot of people over with its clean an minimal layout. The new design is still very clean and sharp, but manages to put more information on each page. You also have infinite scroll through a users songs, so there’s no wait for new pages to load up. The whole look is fresh and current.

One key feature is the new menu header. This gives you the usual navigation functions. But, it also hosts the waveform. That means you can start playing a song and if you go surfing around SoundCloud the song will keep playing in the background (SoundCloud call this continuous play). Then wherever you end up, just click the waveform in the header and it will take you back to the song’s page.

It’s a simple thing, but keeping the beat going is so important for a music service. We don’t want the song to stop playing, just because we are checking out who the artist follows, or moving from an artist page to a song page.

Some Layout Considerations For Artists

The new layout makes the artist information more prominent. Your avatar picture displays about twice as large (might be time to invest in a new picture) and the bio and song information text gets a larger, more readable font. Also, the song graphics are more important now and songs without an uploaded graphic take on your avatar picture by default.

In the new layout, it really makes sense to add a good graphic, logo or image to every song you upload.

You can use the text to say something about yourself, or your songs more clearly and directly. In fact, my first reaction to the new layout was to say to myself, “I need to rewrite my bio and song info.” My second reaction was “people are really going to notice the buy button now!”

The Social Thing

SoundCloud have improved the social side things in very useful ways (in contrast to 500px gamification antics). On an artist page you get “following in common” information and links to recent likes and comments by the artist. Given that you can surf these links without stopping the song that is playing, discovery of new material became a whole lot more fun.

And, there’s a new scrolling window for in-song comments. It’s a little hard to follow on heavily commented upon songs, but the comments are a lot more readable now.

Lists -The New MixTapes

You can now add other people’s songs to your lists and even combine them easily into one long waveform. This is the coolest and easiest to use digital version of the old mixtape idea.

There is also a repost button, that allows you to add a track to your own SoundCloud stream and share it to your followers. This feature is great for music writers/bloggers, promoters and event organisers, or anyone who wants to share a curated playlist with their followers.

The Most Interesting Little Button

Below the artwork on each song information page there is a new little button labelled “Report copyright infringement.” Press this and a page opens where you can report copyright issues in detail. This is a clear sign that SoundCloud is maturing into a more commercial platform.

Conclusion

The Next SoundCloud is not complete. Some features are still missing (including stats, some settings, uploading and group management) and SoundCloud are promising more new features. But, it’s a beefy and substantial upgrade for this service.

The social features have suddenly become a lot more interesting for non-musicians. And, for artists, it’s a very complete solution, with a reassuring nod towards copyright protection.

I’m very excited by what SoundCloud have given us so far and I look forward to seeing the rest of the features unveiled in the coming weeks.

“No new projects, no new clients, no sales pitches, no networking, no marketing, no branding, no seeking influence, no driving online traffic, no conferences, no workshops, no more business/industry/creativity books or blogs and no new online or social media services/platforms/add-ons.”

So, why am I going to a big fat music industry conference like MusicMatters?

The Long View

When I moved to Hong Kong, I expected to be there for two to three years and stayed for five. I made decisions in the first few years, like choosing not to go out to events and meet people, that I later came to regret. It was only after I started really making an effort to attend events and connect with people through Twitter, in late 2009, that opportunities started to open up.

I honestly don’t know how long I’ll be living in Singapore. But, if I do stay here for a while, which is a possibility, then I might regret not attending MusicMatters this year. That’s the same reason why I jumped at the chance to help organise the Singapore Souncloud meetup next week.

The Asian Moment

Back in 1999 I was expecting to live out my days in Europe and North America. Then in early 2003 the opportunity came to move to to Delhi and I’ve lived in Asia ever since.

There’s no other event in Asia that compares to MusicMatters. In 2010, the conference significantly expanded its live music showcase and last year two extra days were added, with a focus on digital media. This year, the conference is expanding again, with gaming and publishing programmes. It’s really becoming a multi-dimensional conference and the closest thing to SXSW we have in Asia.

The Singapore Location

Not long ago, I read someone suggesting that last year’s MusicMatters was not relevant for local musicians. That’s certainly not the way I see it. I’ve tried toiling away in obscurity and it’s vastly over-rated. Having the focus of the world’s music industry on your doorstep is a huge gift.

Of course, these kinds of opportunites are what you make of them. The more you invest of yourself, the more you get out of them. It’s all about meeting the different kinds of people you need in your creative universe. And, when you don’t have to add the cost of airfares and hotels to the equation, the investment looks even better.

The Momentum Thing

The 2010 conference was a challenging experience for me. I’d just started my company, SoundWallah, had a little over 1,000 followers on Twitter and my blog was in the doldrums. I often felt lost and struggled to build connections. Last year, I had about 2,800 followers, a more active blog and although I still felt like a nobody, but, at least I didn’t have that “alone in the wilderness” feeling.

This year, I’ve got a lot more followers on Twitter and larger readership on the blog and for the past few weeks, a regular stream of emails from people who are going to the conference and would like to meet and talk. It hasn’t been easy to build that kind of momentum and it doesn’t make sense to walk away from it now.

The Win-Win

The conference line-up is very impressive and I’m expecting to attend great talks and hear amazing music. I’m also looking forward to asking questions during the panels and posting comments on Twitter. In fact I’m expecting the whole week to be kind of awesome.

But, come Monday the 28th, I’ll be back to the regular grind. It might take a few extra coffees to kick start my day, but the reality of “the work” will be in front of me again.

“That’s really the whole point of closing the doors – more music, more images, more words. I’m not rejecting work, I’m embracing it in a very focussed, passionate and deliberate fashion.”

But, producing all that extra work is pointless if it’s just going to sit on a hard drive. Getting that work out there requires connections. That’s the reality of the digital revolution. That’s why I’m borrowing time to go to MusicMatters. Even if I spend the rest of the year cloistered away in my studio, the conversations will continue – and, I’m choosing to be part of them.

I’m really excited to be helping organise a meeting of Singapore’s Soundcloud users, as part of Soundcloud’s Global Meetup day. Last year I co-hosted the Hong Kong meetup, iMusic, which was organised as part of Social Media Week Hong Kong. iMusic was a huge success and I’m very hopeful that SgSc will also be a great night.

SgSc will happen at The Pigeonhole, a very cool arts venue who have graciously come onboard as a sponsor. The Pigeonhole is a book cafe & dynamic arts space run by Rayner Lim & Ave Chan, promoting local NGOs, music, film, fine arts and performing arts.

Event Information

SgSc will feature live music, interviews, talks and time to meet & greet locally based musicians and Soundclouders. I’ll be updating this page over the next few days with more details about artists and speakers.

Venue: The Pigeonhole 52 & 53 Duxton Road
Date: Thursday May 17
Time: 7.30-10.00pm

Meetup Event Page
Facebook Event Page

SoundCloud Event Group

If you are a musician based in Singapore, and you’d like your original tunes played at the venue, before and after the live performances, then consider submitting a track to our Soundcloud Event Group. We’ll be moderating the tracks so only work from artists based in Singapore gets heard and then shared with the whole Soundcloud family around the world.

Local and Global, that’s what the Soundcloud Global Meetup day is all about.

In the midst of that Spike (who blogs at Hongkie Town & Spike’s Photos) made a funny and provocative comment.

It’s a funny joke, but it really got me thinking; about how we share music in the social media age.

The Tweetable Song?

Critics of Twitter often claim that you can’t say anything meaningful in 140 characters. Well, can you say anything musical in 140 notes? To test that out, I sat down an composed a short little orchestral piece, just a few bars, that has 140 notes spread out over various instruments.

While the piece is short, it’s certainly rich and dense, in a cinematic sort of way. Clearly, I could have composed a much longer piece, if I had been more economical in terms of how many instruments I used and how many voices were doubled.

In fact, if we move away from classical music and, for the sake of the exercise, factor out repetition, it’s amazing how few notes some songs use. There’s an original Jazz/Blues piece I’m writing, where the rhythm guitar part is only 20 notes. Sure the notes get repeated and recombined in different ways, but it is still only 20 notes – in a fairly complex harmony. The bass only plays 8 notes in the whole song!

Attention And Aperture

Of course, the number of notes is not the real issue. The challenge is how much attention our media-sautrated minds can give to those notes. Amazingly, when I post links to music on Twitter, those links attract a lot less attention and traffic than links to photos or written articles.

Perhaps musicians face the challenge of trying to ram music down a tube designed for text and images?

Google+ – Minus The Music

Nothing speaks to the secondary nature of music on social media more clearly than the design of Google+. I’m a Google+ skeptic. In fact, I almost posted a piece entitled Google¯ (or GoogleMinus), but the site’s recent redesign and the upcoming Google+ Photographer’s Conference have made me reconsider things.

Still, if you want to share music on Google+ you face a challenge. The service is optimised for sharing photos, videos and links to sites. But, if you want music to play on Google+ itself (rather than sending people out to another link) you have to embed the music in a video (or YouTube clip).

It’s a small thing, but it’s a extra layer of effort and hassle for the musician.

The Musical Badlands

Having a foot in two creative camps, allows me to compare the social media landscape for different industries. And, right now, it is much easier to write a clean, minimal strategy for photography than for music. Google+ and Twitter are built to let you see images without leaving the service and the sidecar platforms, like 500px and Instagram are growing fast.

The Musician faces bigger challenges, has a larger range of services to choose from and needs a more complex solution if they want to sell their work online. SoundCloud, for example, is awesome, but it doesn’t look like it will ever become mainstream in the way MySpace was.

The Most Important Investment

When I started blogging in 2001 ICQ & GeoCities were still popular. Since then I’ve seen, Friends Reunited, Bebo, Friendster, & MySpace come and go. The odds are that we will soon be adding Flickr to that list. And, it’s hard to see both Facebook and Twitter going anywhere but down from here.

You know the one about putting all your eggs in one basket? Well, the only digital basket you can ever really own is your own domain – your .com address. Once you have people regularly visiting your own site, you can serve up your music any way you like – and, you don’t have to keep it down to 140 notes!

MusicMatters Is Back

In late May, the MusicMatters conference will be back in Singapore. Last year the conference moved from Hong Kong, significantly expanded the live showcase and nearly doubled the number of sessions and panels to accommodate a new digital and online entertainment programme. This year, the live showcase will be even bigger and a gaming stream will be added to the conference.

It’s exciting stuff.

Well, obviously not exciting enough for some in the local music scene. The Straits Times ran a regrettably negative piece (behind a paywall now) that quoted local music figures suggesting the conference was “not relevant” or “helpful” for local musicians.

To be blunt, the “what have they done for Singapore” whine started even before last year’s conference was over. That despite having Singaporeans on the main stage panels, Singapore bands playing in the showcase, free tickets to the conference for people in the local music scene, and the spotlight of the world’s music industry being put on this city.

$4Million Dollars Went Somewhere

Apparently, the Singapore government has spent over $4 Million (about U$3.2 Million) in the past three years on growing the music industry here. It seems that a significant amount of this has gone on promoting foreign tours and showcases at conferences like SxSW, Canadian Music Week and MIDEM.

This story seems to have split people into two camps, with some viewing this as a huge amount and others suggesting it is just a drop in the ocean. But, there does appear to be a consensus that the government should spend more.

Radio Quotas

There appears to be a lot of enthusiasm (in the music scene) for the idea of imposing “local content” quotas on radio stations in Singapore. The idea is that by forcing radio stations to play more “local content” it will change listeners’ tastes and improve the support for musicians here.

While it is true that local content rules have helped the Canadian music industry and are now in place in Australia, the devil is, as always, in the details. For example, in Australia a lot of radio stations get around the rules somewhat by playing more local content at less popular times of the day. And, although the rules require at least 25% of content to be local, only 6.25% needs to be new local music.

And, what qualifies as local content? Would it really be that much better if the airwaves were full of local artists singing covers of yesterday’s hits?

The Thread Of Connection

I’ve strung these stories together, because there’s a common theme here. It is a discontent that says more needs to done for (and spent on behalf of) Singapore’s musicians.

And, by extent, it’s a discontent that implies things will never change for Singapore’s musicians unless the government and other external agents do more. That’s a very paralysing mindset. Art doesn’t need validation.

Fantasies And Realities

If you are waiting for someone else to do the heavy lifting for you, be it a conference, or a government programme, then you will always be playing catch up to those who are not waiting for anybody. And, when you look at the global music scene, there are so many people doing amazingly innovative and collaborative things to create a buzz around their work right now, with very small budgets and no government or big industry support.

When I started out, it cost a few years’ worth of salary to build a basic (but decent) project studio (on top of buying instruments). That didn’t even get you a label, or distribution. Now, for a few month’s salary, you can record amazing quality, produce videos and get your stuff in the biggest music stores in the world.

I’ve got some pretty bad music industry stories to tell (and the emotional scars to go with them). But, they don’t really matter anymore. Because this new reality is so much better than any of the fantasies I had as a teenager with a guitar and a four track.

As my friend, singer songwriter Kris Morris put it, you don’t need permission or validation.

“You don’t need a recording contract to be a musician.
You don’t need a book deal to be a writer.
You don’t need a venture capitalist to be an entrepreneur.
You don’t need a Hollywood agent to be an actor.
You don’t need mega movie studio backing to be a director.
You don’t need to get the big conference gigs to be a real expert in your field.
You don’t need the in crowd to give you the nod.
You don’t need permission.”

So, take a listen, vote if you like it, or just let me know what you think.

If you compare my version to the original, you’ll probably notice I changed the arrangement quite a bit, cutting out some parts of chorus and chugging the order of things. I used the original vocals, but added layers and lots of reverb & effects. I recorded all the instrumentation myself, including Bass, two Rhythm Guitars, three Synths and programmed drum samples using the ToonTrack Jazz Drums kit.

I chose to keep things simple at the mixing stage. There’s UAD plugins on the guitars (1176 & Pultec), Bass (dbx160) and effects sends (4k Buss Compressor and EMT140 Plate Reverb) as well as Fab Filter Pro-C compression on the vocals. Everything else is Logic’s own effects.

There’s some light mastering, including Fab Filter’s Pro-L limiter and the UAD ATR120 tape emulator, just to polish things off.

All told it was one long night’s work, about seven hours, including arranging and recording the original parts. A lot of fun!

4. Mixing in the MP3 Age

I love the way Chris Lord-Alge talks about “the lost art of the long listen.” I’m not sure if we will see one minute songs for the social media generation, but, to be honest, it wouldn’t surprise me. It’s a brutally honest video and while Lord-Alge is hopeful that “the next Beatles will come” it does make one wonder if the industry will ever build studios like the one in this interview, ever again.

5. Calling Bob Clearmountain…

In a fun and respectful homage, Chris Lord-Alge calls and has a revealing conversation with mixing legend, Bob Clearmountain, who worked in and partly built some of Avatar’s Studio A. Look out for the amazing moment when we see the stairwell that was used a reverb chamber for hits like Brian Adam’s Heaven and Roxy Music’s Avalon.

6. How To Make It As A Mixer

The interviews finish off with more insights into Chris Lord-Alge’s creative process. There’s also some solid advice (from 2.30 onwards) on how to get into the mixing side of the business. Drive, determination, passion and the willingness to do extra work, on your own time, for free in order to create a compelling portfolio of work are all described as essential. Ultimately, it’s a tough business and if you aren’t willing to do more, to stand out, you won’t get the opportunities.

“Energy levels is all that matters, that’s what makes it work.”

And, in case you missed it, you can catch the first three videos in the series here - and, I encourage you to check out SonicScoop, one of my favourite music blogs!

“My relationship with my muse is a delicate one at the best of times and I feel that it is my duty to protect her from influences that may offend her fragile nature.

She comes to me with the gift of song and in return I treat her with the respect I feel she deserves — in this case this means not subjecting her to the indignities of judgement and competition. My muse is not a horse and I am in no horse race and if indeed she was, still I would not harness her to this tumbrel — this bloody cart of severed heads and glittering prizes. My muse may spook! May bolt! May abandon me completely!
Nick Cave”

That quote, taken from letter Cave wrote, asking MTV to withdraw his nomination for a Best Male Artist award has helped shaped my approach to creativity. As I’ve already written in Make Art Not Sport, I have an aversion to artist competitions.

So, why did I, in the early hours of this morning, submit an entry for a music competition? Well, at the risk of justifying a massive hypocrisy, let me take a few steps back and try to explain. But, before I do that, why don’t you take a listen to the track?

Indaba Music

Indaba Music is a social platform for musicians to meet and share their music. In many ways, Indaba is similar to SoundCloud, in terms of giving you a place to store music, widgets and players to share and emded your sound and the chance to comment on the work of others.

But, Indaba has commerce built more directly into it than SoundCloud. The site is built around collaboration and giving you tools to sell your music online (including iTunes).

There are also regular remix and original music contests, with cash prizes and opportunities to have your work promoted, included on artist releases and in compilations. For example, one of the current competitions, to remix a track by The Greens, carries a first prize of Receive $2,500, inclusion in the official release by the band, exposure on the band’s social media sites and a video chat session with Grammy-winning multi-platinum producer Rob Fusari.

Yes, But This Is A Competition

OK, it’s still a competition. It’s a little sad to see all the “vote for me” posts on the site and I’m not suggesting that you divert all your creative energies into chasing these kinds of prizes.

That said, these competitions allow you to play with the original track stems to some great songs. Remixing someone else’s work is a great way to sharpen (or keep in shape) your production skills.

I decided to have a go at the Rufus Wainwright competition, partly because I’m just a huge fan of the guy. It was a blast to work on one of his songs. I could have just entered, taken the stems and never posted an entry. But, that doesn’t feel right to me.

I guess in this instance, for me, the competition is not the focus – it’s really just about the opportunity to have a go at this kind of project.

The Geek Zone

Here’s a quick rundown of what I did to the track. This was two evening’s of work.

Vocals I did very little to the original vocal, apart from riding the levels a few times and adding a reverb/delay/Bowie-in-Berlin effect at the start of the outro. I created two extra sets of backing vocals. One had the Mid removed and I cross-faded that with the original backing vocals, depending in the intensity of the section. The other, I applied a delay chain (3 delays, different settings) and a high-pass filter. I automated the levels heavily, on a phrase by phrase level, for that track.

Drums I didn’t even listen to the original drums before doing the remix. There are two Toontrack drum kits in there. The Original, is giving me a very raw kick and snare sound, which is compressed with the UAD 4K plugin, and the cymbals come from the Americana kit, with flanging selectively applied to some hits.

Bass I listened to the original bass (and piano) to get a feel for the chord progression, but created my own Bass parts. Maybe the dub step thing is rubbing off because, all told, there are six basses on this track – three synth basses, cello and bass string sections and my own electric bass. There’s a lot of automation on the synth basses, a UAD dbx160 compressor on the electric bass and some serious subtractive EQ on the string samples.

Keyboards Most of the keyboards you hear are parts I played in live, on the YouRock Guitar, using Native Instrument’s Skanner and Razor plugins. I did use some original piano in the two chorus sections. The first is a 12-bar section, with a chord on each bar. So I cut that into 12 regions, reversed each region, then stitched it back together. It’s a neat trick when you quickly want to repurpose a part. The second time round, I ran the audio through some delays and the Logic Pro Ringshifter effect.

Mastering I did a DIY mastering job on this. After mixing down to stereo, I EQ’d the whole track with Logic’s Match EQ and one of my reference tracks. Ideally, I would have done EQs for each section, rather than one global EQ, but I was running out of time. I then applied Parallel Mulit-Band Compression (see this wonderful article by Holger Lagerfeldt). After that I ran the track through UAD’s ATR102 tape emulation plugin and finally added some limiting with Fab Filter’s Pro-L.

The newest guitar in my studio is certainly something of an oddity. The wonderfully named You Rock Guitar is, first and foremost, a game controller. There’s no question that straight out of the box it looks and feels like a toy.

But, thanks to some clever developments, it can function as a MIDI controller, which means I can plug it into my Mac and drive synthesisers and sample players with it for a fraction of the price of serious guitar-style MIDI controllers. At least, that’s what the marketing suggests.

Before Getting Started

I ordered my You Rock Guitar from AudioMidi in the US and it arrived safely and well packed. The You Rock Guitar is ready to play straight out of the box.

Unfortunately, the printed manual that comes with the it is not great. It lacks detail about a number of important features, including the TAP and SLIDE modes, which I will mention later.

Thankfully, a quick visit to the You Rock Guitar website gave me loads more information on how to set up the controller and a heads up about a free software download, that gave me a firmware update (highly recommended) and a computer software controller programme (essential for serious studio work).

Look, Feel And Design

The You Rock Guitar is plastic, but solid, in a built to last kind of way. The detachable neck clicks easily into place and you can connect it up with either with a standard MIDI cable or USB.

The neck has no strings. In their place, you have six elastic-like strips of contacts, running across plastic frets. On the body, there are six strings, not connected to the neck. There’s a whammy bar (which does not effect the string pressure) as well as various switches and other controls.

Stuff I Don’t Use

It’s worth remembering that this controller is primarily designed for games and interestingly, for kids who might want to make the transition from music games to actually playing music themselves. So, it ships with an onboard synth that can be plugged into any sort of amplifier, some backing tracks to jam along with and even a chord and scale learning mode.

I’ve not tested these features out. But, it’s cool, to see them being developed.

You Rock MIDI

My interest in the You Rock Guitar came solely from the promise of being able to control Logic Pro, Kontakt and Reason with a simple (and cheap) guitar style controller. Although I can play keyboards well enough to input basic chords and lines in real time, I’m nowhere near as expressive on a keyboard as I am on the cheapest of guitars.

The first few attempts with the You Rock Guitar were not promising. I had trouble getting it to hold notes cleanly and was either getting false triggers or no trigger at all when using the string controllers.

However, things improved noticeably once I a) installed the firmware upgrade, b)adjusted the string tension (via screws on the bridge) and c) switched to using a pick.

Getting Into The Modes

The You Rock Guitar has three modes that add to its versatility. All of them accessed from a switch bank on the top of the guitar’s body.

Normally the You Rock Guitar dampens open string sounds. But the OPEN mode, lets them ring out, which is good if you want to let open string arpeggios ring, or for getting the most from exotic samples like Gu Zheng or Sitar.

The SLIDE mode, as the name suggests, slides from one note to another. You need to keep the initial note pressed while you activate the new note, but it’s fairly intuitive once you get into it.

Finally, the TAP mode lets you activate notes just by fretting them, without needing to pick the string. I found that for some, very sensitive sample sets, this mode was more controllable. Also, in this mode I use my right hand to switch in and out of the SLIDE mode, while playing string, brass or synth patches.

The Controller Software

As I mentioned, you can download a controller programme from the You Rock Guitar website. This allows you do to some important adjustments to the controller’s performance.

For example, you adjust the picking sensitivity and the travel of the whammy bar (I have mine set to ± 2 semi-tones). Also, you can also implement non-standard tunings or capo-style transposition.

Conclusions

The You Rock Guitar is a fun toy for serious studios. Even if you can play a MIDI keyboard, the You Rock Guitar is a cool and expressive alternative for playing and programme soft synths and sample players. And, of course, if you are a guitarist who struggles at the keyboard, the You Rock Guitar might well open up a world of possibilities.

There are still some glitches and occasional missed notes however, even with the firmware upgrade. And, with some sample libraries, you don’t always feel completely in control of the velocity and volume.

To be honest, I probably wouldn’t use this on a gig for anything other than novelty value. Although, I have to admit, it would be fascinating to try and play with just a You Rock Guitar and an iPad!

Ultimately, I bought the You Rock Guitar to play in the studio and I’m having a blast doing so. In fact, the only problem I have now is finding a small space close to my desk for it to live. Because, I want to keep this controller close by and use it often!

In this beautifully put together interview, from 1966, we get some deep and revealing insights into Bill Evans approach to music. The video goes for a little under forty-five minutes and includes clips of Evans playing and an introduction and passing comments from Steve Allen.

In the opening voice over Evans makes the claim for a “universal musical mind.” We could (quite profitably) spend a long time discussing this kind of philosophical idealism. The interesting practical implication of his claim is this; all people really need, in order to “get” music, is exposure, time and education (what Evans calls conditioning) and in some ways the insights of the “lay” person may have as much, or more merit than those of the professional musician.

On Music, Mastery And Being Real

Once Evans starts to talk about the challenges of being a musician, it’s clear why he doesn’t necessarily think the professional is always going to be right. In fact, Evans is quite bold in saying many musicians over-reach, playing things they don’t really understand.

Evans talks about “the problem” which as I understand it, is the problem of how to be a Jazz musician and how to play jazz in a real and masterful way. For Evans, Jazz is not so much a style or genre, as it is a process, a way of approaching composition. For him all spontaneously created music is Jazz, regardless of style or form.

For Evans, the mistake many musicians make (and we could extend this to other creative fields) is they try to approximate the output of somebody else’s creative process, without having mastery of every small and discrete part of the process.

“The person that succeeds in anything has the realistic viewpoint at the beginning in knowing that the problem is large and he has to take it a step at a time and has to enjoy the step by step learning procedure.”

Again and again Evans says it is better to play honest, or simple music than trying to approximate a more complex sound you have not truly mastered and ultimately will be unable to build upon.

On Loving The Process

It’s perhaps not surprising Evans has such a methodical approach since, by his own admission, he came to improvisation relatively late on. He struggled for years to play well without having sheet music in front of him and only developed “expressive ability” by the age of 28.

Still, it’s clear Evans learned to love, or at least value the process of piecing together everything required to become a Jazz musician.

The Self-Taught Musician

Evans sees teaching Jazz (and perhaps music in general) as difficult because many beginners do not want to immerse themselves in chords, theory or existing forms, for fear of being seen as an imitator or unoriginal. He sees this as both naive and an attempt to not address important musical principles.

In fact, Evans implies that most of those who don’t make it fail because they are either impatient, or simply don’t understand the immensity of “the problem.”

For Evans, every Jazz musician is, ultimately self-taught. They may have benefitted from formal education. But, in the end, they must make decisions at every stage of the process, about how they will address “the problem.”

“The thing that you as an artist are ultimately concerned with is how you are handling your materials. Are you able to handle them in any way you want?”

What Is Creative Freedom

Bill Evans’ notion of Jazz freedom is not about playing whatever you want, or playing something no-one has ever played before. Rather, freedom is the ability to honestly and in a real way, draw everything you have mastered into the moment when you play. It’s freedom in a context, working with and against a form and as an honest response based on what you have taught yourself. This freedom does not come from a lack of constraints, but from the consistent and systematic process of learning to spontaneously create music within a context that is actually full of constraints.

What Is Your Problem

I wonder how many of us can really name our big creative problem? Evans had a clear sense of what the Jazz problem was. I’m inclined to think there is a big, existential problem in every creative field not just music, that each creative soul ultimately needs to face.

SonicScoop Power Sessions with Chris Lord-Alge

In this first part of the interview, Chris Lord-Alge talks about how he feel in love with music and got into the music business. I love the way he talks about starting out and just taking “the smallest, most un-Rock ‘n Roll sessions,” just get himself started.

“It was like flutes and horns and not even a drum kit. But, I was in there to win.”

Part 2 – Mixing and the Magic Chains

In the second video Chris Lord-Alge talks addresses the question of how to produce hit mixes in three hours. He discusses the importance of having the right gear and also, more importantly, knowing how your gear works. He also answers some questions on how things have changed with the advent of digital recording and what that means for a producer and mixer.

The Anthemic CLA Mix

Finally, we get some insight into how Chris Lord-Alge sets up his monitoring and the importance of mixing and working at low volume levels. It’s fascinating to listen to the language he uses to describe the mixing process; he talks a lot about taming sounds and making them work together. He also prefers to do all the EQ work in one hit and doesn’t necessarily compress every track of a song, including critical elements like the snare and kick drum.

“The music is not going to mix itself, you actually have to move the faders!”

If you want to read a little bit more about Chris Lord-Age and his approach to production and mixing, then take a look at this excellent interview on Audiofanzine, Mixing with an Attitude.

“Everyone is just doom and gloom. Well, that’s just your attitude. If you want to be a doom and gloomer, go work in a different business. But as far as I am concerned, music is only going to get better, and you just have to be positive and make it happen. Chris Lord-Alge”

My plan for 2012 was to focus on creating new work and exploring fresh ideas. Mostly due to health reasons, it has been a slow start to the year. Although neither of these tunes are my best, it just feels good to be putting new sounds out there. I’m glad that these pieces are different to my previous work and it was a lot of fun producing them. Please take a listen and let me know what you think.

Career Set To Stun

This is a big departure for me. Part of what I’ve been trying to do this year is discover what the music “inside me” is. Turns out the twisting, percolating bass sounds of Dubstep have gotten under my skin.

This isn’t a pure Dubstep track, after all, very little of what I do is pure. But, I’ve tried in my own way to draw from the style. I’m also using a lot of new (to me) plugins & effects, like the LinPlug relectro, Native Instruments Razor and Skanner and UAD Ampex ATR102 Tape Emulation.

The Society Theme (Short Mix)

Tomorrow I’ll write a little more about The Society For Film, a new podcast that I’m working on with Hong Kong based film critic James Marsh.

I wanted to create a piece of music that was both cinematic and genre-defying. I started out with the quirky, off kilter spy guitar idea, but I knew I wanted to add some Choral voices, Sci-Fi effects and over-the-top drums. This was the first time I’ve EQ’d every track in a mix with the UAD Neve 31102 plugins and the final stereo mix was shaped with the Fab Filter Pro-Q equaliser and Pro-L limiter.

What Next?

I’ve learnt the hard way not to telegraph my next musical projects. My big mistake, in trying to create a solo project a few years back was getting ahead of myself – I simply didn’t have the production chops to do it all alone.

My studio space is only just acquiring some semblance of order. Two weeks ago I had a big final organisational push. The result is that two quick, fun little tracks emerged within a few days. These are my first finished musical projects in a new city.

Of course, it’s not the only major conference or event in a city that is well known for having a great arts and live music scene. But, I was floored to realise just how big the creative economy is in Austin. These lines from Lynne Margolis piece on GRAMMY.com tell the story,

“As thousands of musicians and industry representatives descend on the city for the 26th annual installment of SXSW, they’re contributing to a creative community that had a $4.35 billion impact on Austin’s economy in 2010, according to a study commissioned by the city. And yet, unlike New York, Los Angeles or Nashville, Austin is not home to major record labels, big management agencies or music publishing companies. Despite this, people see something perhaps even more valuable in Austin — an appreciation for music as art rather than commodity, and an environment that nurtures its creative class.

“Austin musicians value their art every bit as much as they value their commercial success, if not more,” says Brent Grulke, SXSW’s creative director. “Austin has traditionally been supportive of musicians. There are places to play. There are jobs. … Most of the time, musicians have to have another job on top of their music career. And it has traditionally been an affordable place to live.

“In Austin,” he adds, “musicians are [in] a high-status profession. It may be a low-paying profession, but it is a high-status position. People love musicians in Austin.”"

A $4.35 billion creative economy in a town with a population well under 1 million!

How did they do it?

“According to Asleep At The Wheel’s Ray Benson, the lack of an institutionalized infrastructure in Austin has forced musicians to be more resourceful, and that DIY entrepreneurial streak is what makes them well-situated to weather the industry’s metamorphosis from unit sales to alternative revenue streams.”

So, instead of relying on the big end of the business and institutional infrastructure, the “Austin model” relies on resourcefulness, DIY entrepreneurship and adapting to the current market reality.

“Benson has built two recording studios, and started his own record label (Bismeaux Records) and management company.

“We’re working on a niche label, and we’re doing it with our own money, our own bootstraps. That has always been the difference between Austin and Nashville, L.A., and New York,” says Benson, a nine-time GRAMMY winner and former Recording Academy Trustee. “We’ve never made a lot of money, or even any money, sometimes, on records, the way that the [major label] system was set up. Now we actually make a little bit of money — on a whole lot smaller number of sales.”"

Heck, there wasn’t much else to do.

Music Fans Ask The Oddest Questions

It was my first time over at this friend’s place. They clearly had more money than my folks (although my parent’s Hi-Fi was better than theirs!). As I came into the house, my friend’s father hit me with the twenty-questions – where was I from, what classes did I take at school, did I play sports – that sort of stuff. Then we got onto music tastes.

“Do you like Jazz?” he asked. “Yes,” I replied eagerly. He then stumped me with his next question – “Trad or Modern?” “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” was my weak reply.

I’ll never forget his next statement. “Traditional or Modern Jazz son. You have to choose. One or the other. You can’t like both.”

I can’t quite remember what I said after that. I know my fumbled answer did mention Miles Davis and John Coltrane. But, the truth was that, for the rest of the afternoon I was wondering what the difference was between Traditional and Modern Jazz.

The WWOZ Thing

In recent months I’ve taken to listening to online radio. In particular I’ve fallen in love with WWOZ, which broadcasts from New Orleans. WWOZ advertise themselves as a Jazz and Heritage station, but the range of music they broadcast is impressively wide.

The other night I was listening to Jellyroll Justice’s show and he programmed a solid hour of Jazz Guitar, which turned out to be an encyclopaedic survey of the genre, from acoustic Gypsy Jazz to funky Jazz-Rock. A few hours later there was a typical turn where, in the space of five songs the programming went from edgy Electric Blues to sweet Big Band Swing.

I love the wonderfully eclectic programming on WWOZ. Sure, it’s unfashionably wild and unpredictable at times, far from the genre-focussed narrowness of most radio stations. But, it reflects the way musicians listen to music.

Every musician I know listens to a far wider variety of music than the stuff they actually play.

False Choices

I visited that friend’s place quite regularly for about three years, before, as often happens at that age, we drifted apart. The odd thing was that for all the posturing about Traditional versus Modern Jazz, I never once saw (or heard) my friend’s father listening to music. I saw him reading the newspaper, watching television, doing a jigsaw puzzle, but never listening to music, or Jazz, either Traditional or Modern.

I don’t buy it.

Anyone who expects governments, especially governments in Asia, to foster creativity would do well to read the recent New York Times piece on Zhou Youguang 106, the year old inventor of PinYin (a language that transliterates symbols based chinese into phonic “western” forms).

“Inventions are flowers that grow out of the soil of freedom. Innovation and invention don’t grow out of the government’s orders.”

What Governments Can Do

That’s not to say governments can’t do things. Good education policies are important. Making it easier for creative types to start business and get business-friendly bank accounts is also important. And, of course, the general good-for-society issues, like reliable transport, mail, affordable utilities and affordable rent will also play their part. Finally, governments can make visa processes, both short and one term, easier for the creative industries.

Why We Shouldn’t Wait For Help

We open ourselves up to a dangerously dis-empowering mindset when we lay the blame for personal setbacks on a lack of government initiatives. If you want to be a songwriter, then, on the most important level, all you need is a guitar (or keyboard) and a notepad. That’s it.

As much as I believe in education, the case for growing a creative industry through vocational training is exaggerated. My high school had almost no music programme. We got six months of music in grade 7 and that was it. Music was not offered again in any other grade. My daughter had, by the end of her grade 2, been exposed to more art history and major art works than my fellow students saw in all our 13 years of compulsory schooling.

That didn’t stop my friends from going out and starting bands and writing songs. We made our own t-shirts, printed our own posters, recorded our own demos, booked our own gigs, loaded and repaired our own gear and created our own buzz. The more successful musicians, in our scene and in other towns were doing the same.

And, get this: All that stuff is cheaper and easier now.

The Logic Of The Crowd

Back in the dark ages we always talked about getting “a crowd.” Everyone knew that your new band, or act had to be able to draw a small and loyal following before bigger opportunities came along. Once you had a small crowd you could think about selling tapes, trying to get bigger gigs and attracting local (community) radio airtime.

This wasn’t rocket science. You didn’t need a course to teach you that. You knew it from hanging around music stores, doing fill-in gigs and listening to older guys talk.

Although things have changed now, the principles are still the same. We are doing word of mouth online now and you have access to a whole world of resources for every step of the creative process. You don’t need government support to do it. The tools are, literally, at your fingertips.

The Brutal Truth

I recall one bad gigging experience. This guy had been bugging me for some time to join his blues band. He could certainly talk the talk. I said yes to one gig. We were second on a bill of three bands. The room was 2/3rds full at the start of our set and 9/10ths empty by the end of our third song. This guy simply didn’t have what it took to lead a band, either as a singer or as a personality. The crowd voted and I (soon to be followed by the rest of his band) walked.

With the internet, the idea of a super-talented artist toiling away in obscurity is gone. If your stuff is in any way good, original or just different and you put even a small effort into pimping your work, you will attract a crowd online.

Every hour you spend wishing the government (or the industry, or your parents) had supported you more is an hour you’ve taken away from doing your work and telling people about your work.

Yeah, I don’t know what that means either.

How The Majors Innovate

In fact, I’m not sure I want the big end of the music business messing around with innovation. Let me give you an example.

Much to my surprise, Van Halen’s new album is rather good. I loved this band when I was younger and Eddie Van Halen was a huge influence on my guitar playing. Their new album brings back the original frontman, the ever-flamboyant David Lee Roth, who sings with bluesy conviction on a collection of heavy, grinding tracks that recall their fourth album, Fair Warning (a personal and fan favourite).

I found the music video for the album’s first single, Tattoo on YouTube and wanted to share it with the family, via our Apple TV. So, on my MacBook Pro, I added the clip to my YouTube favourites list and then looked for it on the Apple TV. But, it was a no-go. Apparently songs featured on the VEVO channel of YouTube are blocked from appearing on Apple TV, either in a favourites list or via the search function.

Is that what major label “innovation” looks like – making it harder for a fan to share their love of an artist’s work with other potential fans?

What Innovation Really Looks Like

By contrast, Apple’s iTunes Match offering is a more compelling form of innovation. For a nominal amount you can store and easy send your whole music library to any of your iTunes enabled devices. This, in effect, legitimises those music files that you may, or may not have paid for. It creates a revenue stream for artists whose work had been copied and solves consumer needs for storage and easily moving their library between devices.

That’s innovation! And, not surprisingly, it comes from a tech company, not a music company.

And, let’s remember, that is precisely what the major labels and music associations did not want us to be able to do. They didn’t want us to be able to convert formats, to digitise our analog libraries for ourselves, to create copies of songs for different devices or to legitimise and digitally recombine the songs we had. They wanted DRM!

Of course, Steve Jobs called for the end of Music DRM back in 2007 and faced a backlash of the big end of the music business. But, DRM was dismantled and now iTunes Match is solving the music listening needs of many consumers.

“Lefsetz is the author of the Lefsetz Letter, an online record-biz op-ed that mixes analysis, rants, boomer-rock reveries, and the odd bit of futurism. Like most music bloggers, Lefsetz posts frequently and verbosely; unlike most music bloggers, he has actually gained the interest of the music industry, so much so that even Lefsetz’s most casually tossed-off missives get noticed.”

What is obvious today, was obvious five years ago

It’s tempting to suggest Lefsetz is just another opinionated (old-style) blogger, recycling ideas from other more innovative commentators, lavishing far too much time reviewing old artists and pounding a small number of overworked themes.

For example, in a recent post he claims that we are heading for “a place where music is ubiquitous.” Sure, but David Kusek and Gerd Leonhard were saying that back in 2005 with their book, The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution (Berklee Press). Here as in other places, it seems Lefsetz is only restating what others have said before – less clearly, less presciently and with less evidence to back up the claims.

I took the 12 week BerkleeMusic The Future of Music and the Music Business course with David Kusek back in early 2004. It was pretty clear then that we needed to change our mindset (and that we needed new kinds of managers and business leaders). The industry has only recently started to really adapt to those challenges. If this was an opera, then today we are only at the beginning of the fourth act in a five act drama!

Who is Lefsetz audience?

But, maybe I’m not really Lefsetz’ audience? Maybe I (and probably you, if you regularly read this blog) are the choir that writers like Lefsetz no longer needs to preach to? After all, there are so many great music business blogs out there, like Digital Music News, Musician Coaching and SonicScoop.

However, you don’t have to go to a lot of “industry events” to see that an alarming number of “industry professionals” at big companies are trapped in (or by) the past. Others have adapted somewhat, but can’t stop themselves from tilting at the same old windmills (like piracy and file sharing). Some are few really are innovating, but are held back by the companies they work for and the byzantine legacy of the industry’s existing structures (like licensing and copyright).

If these people really do read Lefsetz, then maybe he is doing a service for the rest of us?

Why Lefsetz Matters

At his best, Lefestz is disarmingly accurate. I do hope his best writing is one day collected into a (well edited) book. Take this, which comes at the end of a recent post on visiting the old Sun Studios in Memphis (where Elvis started out),

“…now you can cut your album on a laptop and shoot an HD video on a smartphone.

And seemingly everybody who had success before laments the passage of the good old days.

The good old days weren’t so great. Most people couldn’t get exposure, it was frighteningly expensive to record.

These are the good old days.”

That’s a decent summary of our current reality as musicians. And, for a business as disconnected from reality as the music industry, maybe there is a need for the ranters and pamphleteers like Bob Lefsetz?

Why I don’t (usually) read Lefsetz

I tuned back into Lefsetz because I kept being asked questions about him, because he is going to be at MusicMatters in May and because of that Wired article. But, I’m not a regular reader of his work. Too many of his posts are poorly formatted, judgemental, repetitive and mean (yes, I’m referring to his comments about Taylor Swift).

Lefsetz is at his best, as a blogger, when he is concise and focussed on the positive trends in the music industry. You get a sense of what he can offer in this interview with the Hollywood reporter – Music Industry Watchdog Bob Lefsetz on the Future of the Biz and 5 Mistakes New Acts Should Avoid. Yet, despite making some good observations about the declining significance of the major labels, the future of the industry and the most compelling players on the business side of things (especially Coran Capshaw and Ian Rogers), there’s still the odd comment that makes you wince.

“There are tons of talented businesspeople and very few talented acts.”

No. Sorry. That’s total BS. In recent years I’ve seen a lot of talented acts and artists who still do not have major exposure. And, I know of a lot – a potential tidal wave – of artists who were buried by the old system that are still making good music and have yet to plug into the new digital economy.

There are some truly talented business-people in this industry, but I wouldn’t say there is a lot them. In fact it is alarming, once you get down the local and regional level, how many artists, managers, venue operators, studio owners and promoters can’t even build a decent website or manage a basic social media presence and still believe in the old “get signed to a label” mythology.

Conclusion

Lefsetz says he’s been “…inside the belly of the beast” so to speak. Having never worked at a major label I respect that. I’ll be curious to hear what Lefsetz has to say at MusicMatters and I hope to ask him some questions about music blogging, either from the floor or in person.

But, when it comes to advice about where this game is going, I’d rather tune into the opinions of people who are doing more substantial research into the industry (like Mike King at Berklee or Andrew Dubber at Birmingham City University) and to the many people who are out there, day to day, making music and building new building music technologies.

The music industry has been forced to change because digital technologies are reshaping our attitudes and behaviours. Consumers have had a taste of being opinion-leaders and influencers and they are not going to step away from that. For artists, success in this environment will come just as much from connecting with their fans desire to be influential in their community and to produce their own art as it will from the artists’ own work.

And, for bloggers, being able to point to what you’ve done, to change the world, will matter a lot more than just having an opinion about what others have done. The past belonged to the gatekeepers, the future belongs to the makers.

Remember, this isn’t really a “lesson” series. Rather, these notes are the lines, scales and studies I’m writing for myself. Here I’m exploring new shapes and ideas, as well as reminding myself of things that have dropped out of my repertoire.

After last month’s post I had a handful of emails and tweets asking if I would write some instructional, or how-to posts for up-and-coming guitarists. It’s certainly something I’ve thought about over the years. I did post some instructional stuff on the old (now deleted) version of this blog and my two Chord Cafe posts from 2005 (here and here) were an attempt to write a little book on the subject.

Anyway, here’s is this month’s three February Etudes here (22) (free, of course).

Etude 1 – C Dorian

This is a fairly straightforward set of warmup studies. The second is what I call “target-starts” which involves picking a target note for the start of each bar (here it’s C/F/G/D/C/F/G/F/C) then building a pattern around that. The third is more like a long jazz line, including the idea of keeping the note transitions tight, across each bar and also between the the 2nd and 3rd beats inside each bar, as small as possible (something we looked at last month).

Etude 2 – C Major Pentatonic

Most electric guitarists learn minor pentatonic scales early on, especially for soloing over rock and blues progressions. Although many jazz musicians effectively use pentatonic scales, I’ve always struggled to incorporate them, perhaps because the “blues box” patterns are so ingrained in my memory. These studies are an attempt to break out of that.

The first exercise will not look, on paper, like a Pentatonic to most guitarists. But, work through the odd-looking fingerings and you’ll hear that distinctive Pentatonic sound. This is my goal here; break away from established patterns, but hold fast to the musical logic and sound.

The second exercise highlights one of the coolest ways to use pentatonics. What’s happening here is I am including short key changes to the adjacent Pentatonic key, a semi-tone up or down, then coming back to the original key. This is one of the simplest ways to find “outside” notes and works well over stable chord changes (like funk tunes).

The next few exercises further explore this theme. In the third exercise I start with a very familiar fingering, then dance around some outside notes before circling into a final phrase. The fourth and fifth exercises go outside very early and rely on theme and variation to hold your ear, even though there most of the notes are outside the home key.

Etude 3 – Bossa Antigua

For this month’s final study, I’m applying things we looked at in this month’s (and last month’s) notes to the chord progession for the jazz standard, Bossa Antigua.

First up, was last month’s R-7-3-5-4-2-6-R pattern, which as I mentioned, is a great way to cement in your mind the sound of a chord progression. The following verses then progressively incorporate ideas from this month’s studies, including some of the Dorian patterns and lots of the Pentatonic ideas.

One thing I will look at more systematically in future notes is the ways we can combine Pentatonic scales and chords. You can play up to three different Pentatonic scales over any major, minor or dominant chord (while making sense) and when you combine that with the adjacent scales, you soon have a rich palette of Pentatonic options to choose from.

That’s all for now.

At the end of the clip, Neil Young makes an extraordinary comment,

“Steve Jobs was a pioneer of digital music… but when he went home, he listened to vinyl”

There have been rumours floating around that Apple were working on bringing very high quality files to the iTunes store. Whether that will happen now is anyone’s guess.

I’ve already nailed my colours to the mast on this issue, we need a high quality format for the sale and distribution of music. I thought that last year wearing my music business hat and I believe even more-so now I’m totally in a music making mood.

It’s easy to dismiss the resurgence of vinyl as a fad. To some extent it might be misplaced nostalgia (I’ll admit that’s partially true for me). But, if you grew up listening to music on full-throated Hi-Fi systems, mp3s and cheap ear-bud headphones will never satisfy you.

Nor should they.

These are lowest common denominator solutions. I think the analogy between music ripped to an iPod and music on AM radio is a valid one. What we don’t have is a counterweight, the equivalent to what vinyl was; the immersive and profound listening experience.

My hunch is we will never see it from the major labels – they are committed to chocking innovation, narrowing the bandwidth, lobbying for restrictive laws like SOPA and suing anyone they can. Then again, with fewer and fewer new acts being developed each year, the template for music as brand-driven marketing is set in stone.

However, we may see it from smaller players. In fact, I’m hopeful because the independent music artist today has unprecedented freedom to choose the format for their music. Be it music embedded in high quality apps, music shipped on small hard-drives, or simple downloadable at higher resolution it all comes down to one thing.

Respect.

In particular, respect for the person who wants to listen to your music. That’s where the language of fans gets it old wrong. It’s a throwback to the era of scarcity, where the poor fan needed the artist/label to supply them with music that was in controlled supply.

But, now there is a surplus of music. It’s never been easier to find amazing new music. The real challenge is finding the music that is worth listening to. Highly compressed mp3 just flattens the experience, dulls the differences between good and mediocre artistry.

I believe the future will reward musicians who can respect the fact that their listeners have a broader relationship with music than just what they offer. It’s analogous to what it means to be an adult, realising that that your friends also have other friends and that supporting your friends means helping them build a life where they can honour all their commitments, not just the ones they have to you.

And, in terms of music, that means building great listening experiences and supporting the technology that will allow that to happen – be it faster internet connections, better apps and devices and also formats that preserve more of the detail that we worked so hard to bring to our musical performances and recordings.

The Support

These pieces of proposed legislation have heavyweight backers in the creative world, especially from the within the music industry. In fact, I believe the when groups like the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) support SOPA, it says a lot about the widening gulf between the big end of the music industry and most working musicians.

The Goal

The argument is that SOPA and PIPA are about enforcing copyright and protecting intellectual property. But, the powers these laws would create extent far beyond simple protections. I believe that, ultimately, these laws have the goal of shutting down two perceived threats that come from the internet – sharing and what we could call the “amateur economy.”

The Koan

We have seen, thanks to the internet, a massive shift in the creative world in the last two decades. I like to explain it this way,

It used to be that those who can do. Now, those who do, can.

What do I mean by that? Well, go back thirty years, the big question was this; can you get yourself a position in the creative economy – a job in a newspaper, a record label contract, a fine arts degree of some such marker of professional standing? If the answer was yes, then you could go on and do the work, be paid for it and so on.

Everyone else was just an amateur. How good you were was secondary to where you were in the system.

But, we have a different situation now. Any creative soul than does the work can put it out there and potentially find a market for what they do, regardless of professional standing. You don’t need a recording contract or a label to release an album. You don’t need a publisher to get your book on to the biggest marketplace in the world. You don’t need a degree to call yourself a photographer.

Just do the work and you can succeed.

The Business Reality

It’s not hard to see how this fundamentally undermines the business model of publishers, record labels, film studios and television stations. Why watch some mediocre “funniest home videos” TV show, when you have a world full of funny stuff waiting for you on YouTube?

It’s worth remembering that businesses do not just compete by offering the best or cheapest product in the marketplace. Sometimes they compete by defining the market itself, through laws, regulations, court cases and industry standards. That’s a way to control who can compete in the market and what they can offer.

And, of course, the recorded music industry started to lose control of the music business over ten years ago.

The Irony

If laws like SOPA and PIPA ever get passed, they will undermine sites like YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud and the like. The irony is that they will also undermine not just the tools that are blamed for the so-called problem of file-sharing, they will also undermine the best tools independent musicians have ever had to make their work publicly available.

The old creative industry was supported by high barriers to entry. When I was a kid you could produce a tape, sell it at your gigs and maybe in a local record store (if you were lucky). But, pressing vinyl, buying radio and newspaper coverage and reaching people on the other side of your state, let alone the other side of the world, cost big money. Of course, the internet has now stripped out a lot of the cost associated with distributing music.

This is the real battleground. Record labels, especially the major labels, were built for a business environment that no longer exists. If free markets were really free, these companies would simply cave in on themselves and either cease to exist, or radically reconfigure themselves. That they are able to fight is largely down the value of their back catalogue and the legal structures working to protect those assets (i.e., the copyright on old material).

The Conclusion

I do not believe that information wants to be free. Information, creativity and art want to valued, appreciated and respected. There is a lot about internet culture that doesn’t work to do that. We do need better laws and regulations to value and respect creative work and help artists and artisans support themselves.

We also need to make it easier for people to do the right thing, which includes making it easier and not harder for people to pay some sort of licensing then they use the work of others and making it easier for bright, innovative creative people to start businesses.

SOPA and PIPA are wrongheaded on so many levels. These laws are not about making it easier for people to build new creative businesses, they are about protecting existing assets. By undermining the internet they will not, ultimately stop piracy. But, they make make it virtually impossible for those who want to build new creative enterprises to find markets for their work without replying on heavy and slow moving companies from a bygone era.

But, with the six month anniversary of my move to Singapore coming up, I did find myself wondering what could be done to help the Singapore music scene grow. A lot of my ideas for developing and marketing local music were captured in last year’s posts on developing a better jazz scene in Hong Kong and my presentation on social media for musicians.

Things That Could Be Done

Structurally, there are some big things that could happen. With MusicMatters’ relocation from Hong Kong, Singapore already has the premier regional music conference. Singapore could attract a major international music college, like Berklee, to set up a campus here. It would also be beneficial to develop an inclusive trade body focussed on developing and exporting talent and musical enterprises, as SoundsAustralia (check out their awesome Generate 2012 initiative) and the Canadian Independent Music Association do so well.

I’m still collecting my thoughts on the local scene. There does seem to be a lot of kids playing with lots of gear available locally and opportunities for music education. There are good musicians here, venues with potential and a ready stream of touring acts.

I do see a need for more good quality music journalism and blogging. SonicScoop is a fantastic example of a local music industry blog, covering studio openings, recording sessions and music tech stories in New York. Singapore could do with something similar.

But, there’s one big issue that I feel needs to be addressed. As a way of talking about that issue, let’s look at another well known city.

From The Outside In

When people think of the US music scene, they focus on LA and New York. But, in recent years Nashville, has risen to prominence. Formerly known as the home of country music, Nashville is now a music industry powerhouse. As Sociologist Richard Florida writes in The Changing Geography of Pop Music,

“Over the past several decades, Nashville transformed itself from a rather narrow country music outpost in the 1960s and 1970s into a major center for commercial music. By the mid-2000s, only New York and Los Angeles housed more musicians. Nashville’s rise is even more impressive when you look at its ratio of musicians to total population. In 1970, Nashville wasn’t even one of the top five regions by this measure. By 2004, it was the national leader, with nearly four times the U.S. average. Today, it  is home to over 180 recording studios, 130 music publishers, 100 live music clubs, and 80 record labels.”

Few better represent the modern face of Nashville than Keith Urban. But, here’s the thing. Urban is not a Nashville native. He’s not even an American. Urban is New Zealand born and grew up in Australia, where he started his recording career. And, he’s certainly not the only one to move from Down Under to a successful music industry career in Nashville.

Florida’s point is not about making simple comparisons; this city is better than that sort of stuff. Rather, he is trying to spot trends that drive the growth of a music scene. As he said in another article, back in 2009,

“This is not about comparing New York and Nashville in particular. My point is more general: we need to think not only about music industries, but also about music scenes as a factor in attracting musicians to cities and sustaining their creativity once they’re in place.”

For example, Florida mentions some factors that have led to the growth of Montreal’s music scene,

“Though Montreal may not have the commercial punch of Nashville, its musical assets extend far beyond Arcade Fire. In a study of Montreal’s creative economy I conducted with Stolarick and consultant Lou Musante in the early-2000s, we found musicians from around North America relocating there to take advantage of the city’s historic and cultural heritage, openness, and affordable real estate.”

To summarise the point, here’s one final quote from Florida, again discussing Nashville,

“…Nashville has begun to suck in talent from the rest of the country and the world.”

What Needs To Happen

Of course, Nashville is just one example and it may well be an impossible example to replicate. But, the story holds for the growth of other great musical capitals in history – they sucked in talent.

A great contemporary music scene is always porous. It will attract musicians from elsewhere. In many ways the idea of a “local” music scene is kind of misleading. When I was growing up there was lots of great live music in Sydney. But the scene was made up not only of “locals,” but also musicians who had moved from other Australian cities, from New Zealand, from the Pacific Islands, from the UK, from Europe and from North and South America.

Every generation of musicians dreams of moving to the big cultural sponge. When I was young, it was New York, London, Boston and LA. This wasn’t the stuff of fantasy. I know people who did it. Some never came back. Every few years the cities change, but the dynamics stay the same.

This is the big challenge – can Singapore continue to develop an inclusive music scene that attracts musicians and music entrepreneurs to come and live here, developing new music and musical ventures with local and regional talent?

What People Don’t Care About

Over the Christmas break we had some guests stop by, on their way to Europe from Australia. The teenage son noticed, amongst the screensaver images playing through our Apple TV, some shots of Canadian band Simple Plan.

He asked me if I had met the band. I mentioned that they had been at last year’s MusicMatters, that I had met some of the band members and had really enjoyed the set I photographed in Clarke Quay. I then went on to talk about the band’s management and the support acts get in Canada. But, I could see his eyes starting to glaze over. Clearly this kid from Australia didn’t give a hoot that Simple Plan came from Canada, or the Canadian industry that supported them. So I changed tack.

“You should have seen the crowd reaction when they came on stage to play their free set,” I said. “It was awesome; they are a great band.”

“Yeah, they rock,” he replied.

On the first Monday of every month I’ll posting some notes, from my “office” so to speak. These will include five guitar studies, available for you to download, for free.

These are not really lessons. I’m sharing with you the actual stuff I’m working on. Some of it is technique. Some of it remembering patterns I’ve forgotten. Some of it is sure to feel esoteric and, occasionally, out there.

Anyway, here’s a rundown on the five studies for January (you can download the studies at the end of the post);

January Etude 1
Pat Methany’s Guitar Etudes have inspired me to more intentional about warm-up patterns. This study is three patterns, working through the chords of the C Major scale. The second and third patterns link together arpeggios in quick succession, which is an essential skill for jazz guitar.

January Etude 2 (G Harmonic Major)
I love the sound of the G Harmonic Major, but truth be told, I haven’t really mastered it yet. The first two patterns in this study show the basic way I become familiar with a scale and its chords. The third pattern is the G Harmonic Major played as quartals (chords built by stacking intervals of a fourth, instead of intervals of a third, as with normal chords). Quartals are an important form of modern jazz harmony.

The final pattern in this study lays out the quartal chords as arpeggios. This is an unusual vibe. Open, but with some jaggedness as well. Love it or hate, this is the Harmonic Minor sound I am trying to develop.

January Etude 3 (D Modal)
There are at least two ways to practice modes. The most common way is to play them sequentially, that is, play all the modes of one scale. You see that in Etude 1. The other approach, is to play them in parallel; all of the modes of the same root note. That’s what this study is all about.

The third pattern in this study is one of the best ways I know to drill the sound of different chords. The first four notes are the core sound of the chord (Root, 7th, 3rd, 5th). The next three are the colours (4th, 9th, sixth). With patterns like this, it pays to play slowly and cleanly, letting the notes ring out as long as you can hold them, so you can really hear the variations between each chord.

January Etude 4 (G Jazz Blues)
This study shows how far you can go with a number of basic building blocks. Of course, I wouldn’t play a blues this way – the study is all about getting the available notes under your fingers and drilling the chord changes into your memory.

The first two studies demonstrate one of the most basic approach to learning how to play over jazz chord changes; playing the first four notes of a scale from the root of a chord, either going or going down. The third pattern combines the ascending and descending initial phrases.

The fourth pattern involves playing arpeggios over the chords. In this instance, all the arpeggios start on the root of the chords, to aid memorisation of the chord progression.

The fifth pattern is one of my favourite practice tools. The whole exercise is made up of four note arpeggio “clusters.” These are pre-determined patterns of notes that I choose every half bar. For this one I worked with R-3-7-4, 9-6-7-4, 3-7-5-9, 7-4-3-6, 5-9-R-4. I also forced myself to keep the transitions between each cluster small; either a tone, semi-tone, or the same note.

The final pattern is a combination of initial phrases and clusters. Again, I’ve tried to keep the transitions between each four note group as tight as possible. This demonstrates one of my key goals in single note playing; spell out the chords clearly while keeping the transitions, across bars and chord changes as controlled and fluid as possible.

January Etude 5 (Post Christmas)
I wanted to keep the spirit of Christmas alive a little longer. So, this study is based on the progression for Angels We Have Heard On High. I’ve moved it to the key of Ab and included a number of ideas from the previous studies, as well some things I’ll explore more in the future.

A Note About Fingerings
I’ve included TAB for guitarists who don’t read music well. However, all the fingerings are totally optional. I’m not into making hard rules about the correct way to finger scales or arpeggios and I will often finger the same notes in the same song in different ways.

You may find some of the fingerings odd or even uncomfortable. In Etude 5, over the Bb7-Eb7 changes there are some very unusual fingerings. That’s just something I’m currently experimenting with.

I’d suggest trying my fingerings, simply because sometimes by playing the same thing in different ways, we open up new ideas. But, if you feel any pain or discomfort, or just hate the way I’ve TAB’d this out – feel free to finger the notes a different way!

The Download
You can download the five January Etudes here (36). They are five separate PDF files in a folder. That’s over 12 pages of practice material that should hopefully keep you going till February.

OK, probably not.

Truth is I’m not normally a big fan of “best-of” lists. And, listing best songs, as opposed to best albums, always makes it harder to include jazz and other less mainstream genres, for example.

However, I’ve been asked to recomend new music a lot in recent years and haven’t always done a good job. So for your listening pleasure (and occasional derision), here’s twenty five songs that caught my ear in 2011.

25. Van Hunt – What Were You Hoping For

Every year I hear songs that try to pull off what Van Hunt so effortlessly does here, the minimal arrangement, contrasting grooves in guitar and beats, the lofi vocal sound, the mashup of radio bits in the background. But, unlike other similar songs, What Were You Hoping For never collapses under it’s own cleverness.

24. Andy Stott – Dark Details

I don’t listen to much electronica these days. But, this dark patient track, drenched as it is in complex reverb really caught my ear and stood out. Give it time and it will suck you in.

23. Future Islands – Balance

Some songs just get on first hearing. That’s how I felt about this tune. I adore how this song manages to feel fresh and retro at the same time.

22. Lykke Li – Get Some remix by Beck

The original version of this song was pretty good – Lykke Li is a solid vocalist. But, this remix by Beck is something else; one of the coolest grooves of the year.

21. Dierks Bentley – Am I The Only One

Sure, it’s a simple one dimensional song. But, it gets the job done so well. Sometimes a song works because it perfectly expresses a moment in your life and, for me, this song did that a number of times this year!

20. Dum Dum Girls – Bedroom Eyes

There was a huge buzz around this band a while back and it’s not hard to see why. Effortlessly catchy vocals and a great sound.

19. Bad Meets Evil – Lighters ft. Bruno Mars

The whole world probably heard my yawn when I first heard this song. But, only few seconds in it becomes clear that Eminem is throwing down one of the best raps in years. Yes, it’s a formula, but this time it’s transcendent.

18. Lacuna Coil – “Trip The Darkness”

Sometimes I’m just a sucker for melodic vocals and punchy riffs. There’s plenty of both in this song, with the promise of more to come on their new album!

7. Sarah Jarosz – Run Away

Some performances conjure a whole panorama in a turn of a phrase. Jarosz has this gift and Run Away is perhaps her most rich and cinematic track.

16. The Black Keys – Lonely Boy

I was a later comer to the buzz around The Black Keys. Regardless, this is a killer song with a great vibe.

15. Maya Azucena – Cry Love

Given the way the western world is going, it’s not surprising there are more socially conscious songs being written. Cry Love is one of the most beautiful, a vivid tune that pays tribute to a great soul tradition.

14. Within Temptation – Faster

Yeah I know. It’s another melodic rock tune with a female lead singer. What can I say, it’s a great performance and a really solid song (with some interesting Chris Issak overtones). Well, that’s my excuse anyway.

13. Tom Waits – “Bad As Me”

Tom Waits is my all time favourite singer and songwriter. The only thing that really bears commenting it that this track is one of the best songs he’s written in years.

12. Bon Iver – Calgary

There’s always such a rich atmosphere to Bon Iver’s work and here they have what seems to me to be one of their best tunes. Enchanting stuff, with just enough edge to keep it interesting all the way through.

11. Arch Enemy – Yesterday Is Dead And Gone

It’s not hard to see why this band has a fanatical following. What’s that line about a fist in a velvet glove. Whatever it is, this my favourite metal song of the year.

10. Adele – Rolling In The Deep

It would be unforgivably contrarian not to include the song that will probably top most journalist’s lists for 2011. After all, it is an amazing song.

9. Rodney Atkins – Take A Back Road

I love the way country music can take simple, everyday emotions and spin them out into singable tunes. Besides, you’ve got to love a song that includes the lyric, “put a little gravel in my travel!”

8. Evanescence – What You Want

This song just works for me on every level. Although my tolerance for the whole goth/emo thing is pretty low, Evanescence often win me over, as they did here.

7. Lana Del Rey – Video Games

A lot of commentators got carried away with the “next great voice” stuff describing this song. That’s a shame, because it obscures how evocative and captivating the whole arrangement is. Captivating stuff.

6. Ryan Adams – Lucky Now

Ryan Adams is the best songwriter of my generation and his latest album, including this song is just further proof of that.

5. Jumpstart – These Kids Wear Crowns

I instantly fell in love with this catchy, feel-good song. If you are a regular reader of this blog you probably saw my pictures of TKWC when they were in Singapore in May. Great band, great song.

4. St Vincent – Surgeon

Downbeat, moody, inventive, sure. It’s also a memorable, original and surprising song from what is fast becoming one of my favourite acts.

3. Fleet Foxes – “Helplessness Blues”

Bleak and brutally open, this song tore my heart open the first time I heard it. Awesome work.

2. Yuck – Get Away

Sure, I like Yuck because the evoke the music I loved back in the 90s. But, that’s kind of besides the point. This kind of songrwiting and performance stands on it’s own merits and not just as some kind of homage. Brilliant stuff.

1. Esperanza Spalding & Gretchen Parlato – Useless Landscape

Did I conspire, against all odds, to squeeze a jazz song into number one slot, even though it is actually a cover. OK, I’m guilty as charged. But, this is such a brilliant performance from Esperanza Spalding who is already established as the bright young thing of the jazz world and Gretchen Parlato who has what many people consider to be the vocal jazz album of the year.

At first glance the book looks like a set of classical-music inspired exercises. In fact, you can play them as they are written – that’s what I’ve done most days. There’s plenty in the book to challenge any player’s dexterity and stamina.

But, Methany doesn’t actually play the exercises as written studies. What he does is run through scales, arpeggios and classical themes in a semi-improvised way, working them up and down the neck and across different keys. I refer to it as semi-improvised, because unlike jazz, it’s not paying that follows chords as we find them in a song and the orders of notes often remains fixed as the patterns move, unlike the constantly varying flow of jazz lines and melodies.

That said, the exercises never sound like mindless shredding. There’s a musical logic to them; they sound like music. And, some of the exercises, the ones that most closely parallel classical etudes, make for quite pleasant listening.

Methany’s goal is to thoroughly warm himself up physically for a performance (he says he likes to play for at least an hour before a show) without exhausting the part of his mind used for improvisation. Methany wants to hit the first solo of the night feeling physically limber and mentally fresh.

Given that, what impresses about the studies in Guitar Etudes is the amount of information, in terms of scales and arpeggios that one needs to internalise in order to order to be able to riff and explore in this manner. Although there was nothing I couldn’t recognise (in terms of music theory), there were some arpeggios I had not practised including some challenging open patterns.

So you can approach Guitar Etudes in a few different ways. You can take the studies at face value and simply practice them as they appear in the book. Technically this will push anyone, from advanced beginner to seasoned player to be sharper and more controlled.

Or, you can mine the book for ideas, patterns and ways to combine arpeggios and single lines. Although none of the studies sound like jazz, they do get your fingers moving in ways that approximate the fingerings and dexterity you will need to play jazz. Too many guitar practice books run you up and down patterns that bear little resemblance to the way you play actual music.

Beyond that, you can come up with your own studies to warm up as Methany does. Of course, doing that will require you to learn (or re-learn) lots of scales and arpeggios, to the point where you can recombine them at will. But, that is the technical heart of great jazz playing, which is what makes this inspiring book of musical studies such a worthwhile challenge.

“In case you didn’t get the memo, major music companies are no longer in the business of developing artists or “making records”. A&R staffs have been slashed, and frankly, the track records of most A&R people were abysmal anyway. Record labels and even publishers today are looking for people who have product in hand—artists who they’ve developed, records they’re releasing, shows they’re producing. Don’t bring demos. No one in the record business even knows what those are. Bring product.”

Over my lifetime I’ve watched technology constantly ramp up expectations about what we have to do for ourselves. Offices used to have typing pools, now everyone writes their own emails, letters and documents. Companies would pay huge amounts to have film slides developed for presentations, now everyone uses slide-ware like Keynote or Powerpoint. Photographers would either have to build a darkroom, or send photos off to be processed, but now that can be done on a portable computer. And, musicians had to book expensive studio time to record a demo of their music, but we all produce our demos at home now.

That trend is only going to continue. The stages, between our raw creative output and a “product” (for want of a better term) that people want, are going to progressively fall on our shoulders.

Photographers need to learn not just how to make photos, but how to manage video, create books (and ebooks), develop exhibitions. Musicians, also need to understand video, create teaching programmes, run a studio, make their records and book their own gigs. Writers need to learn how to self-publish, find their own editors, develop their own collaborative projects, launch their own magazines or sites. And, everyone needs to learn to market and promote themselves.

The “be discovered” economy is gone – for ever. If you want to make a name for yourself, you have to make a name for yourself. What I am seeing, over and over, is that publishers, labels, newspapers and the like are responding to people who have already developed a following for their work. The expectation is higher that it has ever been when it comes to proving that you’ve “got it.”

This all feeds into why I’m “closing my doors” in 2012. To build a bridge from where I am to where I could be, I need a substantial body of new, fresh work in a format that people can “consume.”

Or, as Eric Beall put it,

“Don’t bring demos. Bring product.”

Now you can buy Mainstage for the very attractive price of U$29.99, instead of having to pay for the whole Logic Pro package. It’s as if Apple has offered the music production world an early Christmas gift. OK, so it’s the kind of gift you have to pay for, still, this is amazing value.

Mainstage is a live performance tool, designed to allow musicians to play any of Logic’s synths, samples and effects without having to open up Logic Pro. You can loop, play to backing tracks, add effects, play synths and create harmonies in real time.

I’ve always felt that Mainstage didn’t get the attention it deserved from the music world. This was probably because it was bundled with Logic Pro, which meant that users of other DAW programmes were not checking it out. Now, it has been unbundled, I expect we’ll see a lot more users jumping on the Mainstage bandwagon.

When you buy Mainstage, you also get access to the great Logic Pro content, including 1700 sampler instruments, 15,000 loops, 1000 reverb spaces and 4,500 presets. You also get the versatile Logic Pro softsynths, including the powerful Sculpture modelling synth and my personal favourite, Ultrabeat.

And, for guitarists who want to explore software modelling, Mainstage offers all of Logic’s great guitar-oriented effects and amplifier models. That’s a lot of fun and usable sounds. Plus, guitar teachers may find this useful as a portable setup for introducing students to a range of guitar tones and the basics of modifying a guitar’s sound.

For the most part, Mainstage is an amazing, powerful and stable programme. That said, I’d like to see it handle external Audio Unit plugins a little better. I’ve certainly had some frustrations running Kontakt from inside Mainstage. But, if Apple continue to develop this product it can easily become the best in it’s class. And, as it stands, it is amazing, almost irresistible value.

Vinyl, still one of the best formats for storing music

Not that long ago storing your music was simply a physical challenge. We used shelves, drawers, boxes and occasionally weird shaped towers to store our tapes, reels, vinyl, CDs then MiniDiscs. But then came the big revolution and we started to store music on computers and portable devices.

Bit Rate And Sample Rate
When we record audio, there are two measurements we use – bit rate and sample rate. The bit rate refers to the depth of each sample, which is kind of like the resolution of the recording, or how much detail is going into each slice of digital information. The sample rate then refers to how many (thousands) of sample, or slices are being created for each second.

The CD compromise
The CD format was standardised around a 44.1kHz sample rate (44,100 samples per second) and 16 bit depth. That equation was determined by the technology available at the time, what was understood then about how the range of human hearing translated into the digital realm and pure business economics. However, it soon became apparent to most people in the audio and music world that 44.1kHz/16bit was a disappointing compromise, which is why all professional music studios (and many project and home studios) now work at better than CD quality for recording and mixing purposes.

The fascinating thing about 44.1kHz/16 bit is the math – one minute of music, in stereo, requires 10.1MB of storage space. That was a good fit for the record industry. Vinyl albums were typically 40 minutes long (more or less), but CDs could offer over 70 minutes of music.

But, putting a large collection of music on a hard drive would prove costly for a long time. 1000 songs, of 4 minutes length at this quality requires over 40GB of storage space. It wasn’t so long ago that drives of that size were prohibitively expensive.

The MP3 Equation
MP3 (and similar formats) were developed as a way of compressing audio files in order to take up less space. Audio information is lost in order to make the file smaller. Remember, a 4 minute song at CD quality (44.1kHz/16bit) will take up 40.4MB of space, while the same song as a 128kBs MP3 will take up less than 4MB. That’s a pretty dramatic reduction in file size. Of course, the trade-off is in sound quality – 128kBs is about the same quality as listening to AM radio.

Quality can be improved by using a higher MP3 sample rate, but as you can imagine, that means more space is required. 256kBs is a popular choice, but grows our 4 minute song’s file size to about 7.5MB and 320kBs takes it out close to 9.5MB.

Given that 1TB (1000GB) hard-drives are now common and inexpensive, the idea of housing a whole lifetime’s collection of music on one disc at decent (320kBs) quality is more than achievable.

The Numbers Confusion
Before going on, I’d like to comment on bit rates and kBs because that confuses a lot of people. Bit rate is measure used in uncompressed audio files like CDs, not MP3. By contrast, kBs is used when discussing MP3 to show how much information is being retained in the audio file.

If we multiply our bit rate and sample rate in a CD-quality uncompressed file, we do get a kBs like number – for 44.1kHz/16bit it is 1350kBs. As you can see that’s a lot more information, more than 10 times as much per second, as you get in a 128kBs MP3 file.

For Music Studios, The Numbers Get Crazy
Of course, in the studio we can work at higher than CD quality (recording tracks as WAV files). In fact, everyone does. It is possible to record at double the sample rate of CDs, or 88.24kHz and many high end studios are working at 96kHz or higher. Moreover, everyone I know records at 24bit depth. But, bear in mind that recording at 88.244kHz/24bit requires three times the storage space of 44.1kHz/16bit.

And, when it comes to multitrack production, that means three times the storage per minute and for each track of music!

How I do it
Whereas a 24 track, 4 minute project (all mono) recorded at 44.1kHz/16bit would require around 480Mb of storage space, the same project at 88.2kHz/24bit (mono) would take up around 1.5GB. That’s per song for fairly basic production, by today’s standards. A really big project, with 64 stereo tracks at 96kHz/24bit would require at least 8.5GB (and more, depending on how we produce the music).

In planning my requirements, I work on an allowance of 2.5GB per song. I run my studio at 48kHz/24bit, which is a compromise that works for me. That 2.5 GB allowance gives me 64 mono tracks for a 5 minute song. I’ve seldom gone bigger than that, to be honest. Plenty of my projects come in well under 1GB.

I have a 750GB drive (labelled “Tape”) that houses all the music I’ve produced on my Mac Pro since I bought it in 2008 (I’ll discuss backup strategies at another time). But, the time has come to look for a replacement.

The SSD Alternative
Hard drive prices have recently gone up, due to the tragic floods in Thailand. But, you can still pick up a 2TB hardive for a little over $200US plus shipping, or about 10-11 cents a GigaByte. By contrast, Solid State Drives are very expensive. You are looking at more than $1.5 a GB!

However, the performance of SSD is impressive. I’ve run my 2.4GHz Dual-Core 6GB Macbook Pro on SSD for over a year now and for many tasks it’s faster than my Octo-Core 2.8GHz 10GB Mac Pro! I see SSD drives as helpful in at least three ways.

First, starting up a programme in a SSD is a joy. But, in audio production, one doesn’t really open and close programmes often, so the advantages of an SSD as boot up drive are limited, especially if you have a lot of RAM.

The exception to this is starting up samplers, which are still the slowest part of production for a lot of people. It is not the sample player, but rather the samples themselves that take a long time to load. Sample libraries are large, so moving them to SSD is costly. Although I have terrbytes of samples, the reality is that the sample libraries I use most often could comfortably be spread over two 120GB drives (which could replace of the Mac Pro’s CD drives – that would mean much, much faster loading times!

Running active projects from SSD would be cool. Being disciplined about archiving past work would make this possible as well. The way I work, a 120GB SSD drive could hold up to a year’s projects, more or less.

So, I’m currently considering reloading my Mac Pro. But, there’s one thing making me pause for thought.

The Future Of The Mac Pro
A few months back I speculated on the future decline of the Mac Pro and in recent weeks composer and Logic Pro author Jay Asher has chimed in with similar views.

It’s not hard to imagine that because of the potential of Thunderbolt, Apple might deliver a radically redesigned, smaller and lighter Mac Pro, or perhaps just do away with the line altogether and deliver a super-charged iMac.

Conclusion
For storing recorded music the maths are now simple for most people. In fact the cost of a 2TB drive is so low that I’m starting to re-burn my whole CD collection at 44kHz/16bit for better quality. 40,000 songs is enough for me!

For producing music, the future is certainly SSD. Even though SSD drives are still expensive, the numbers and performance boost for loading libraries make it attractive enough to start the transition.

But, if Thunderbolt is going to deliver on its promise, then 2012 has to be a big year of transition. Given that my Mac Pro is still working well (and Logic Pro 9.1.6 is really stable), I’m not going to fundamentally change my music production system just yet. Soon. But not yet.

A slide from my Social Music presentation for HKSocial in June

Earlier this year I played a small part in helping kick-off HKSocial, a monthly breakfast meeting, for creative types in Hong Kong who are interested in better understanding Social Media. Despite having moved to Singapore, it’s nice to see they haven’t forgotten me, yet, as I was reminded on Friday when my Twitter stream lit up with comments from people attending their recent event.

I had been mentioned in relation to SoundCloud, the excellent social music sharing platform. SoundCloud came up in two talks I gave in Hong Kong this year, iMusic in February, which was part of Social Media Week Hong Kong (read more about it here and see the presentation outline here) and my presentation to HKSocial in June.

All this reminded me that my “to-do” list includes searching SoundCloud to find cool new music here in Singapore. Actually, that’s easier said than done. One of the weakest aspects of SoundCloud is the search facility. Searching for a genre of music works fairly well. But, searching by location is patchy (at best) and when you do start to narrow things down, it’s really time consuming to separate instrument based musicians from DJs (I’d love it if SoundCloud would introduce a way to exclude mixtapes and tracks over 20 minutes long from search results!).

Still, I managed to find a few interesting tracks to share with you. Take a listen and see what you think.

Marcus Wong
Do You Know When (demo) by marcuswong

Marcus Wong describes himself as a former side-man who is now striking out on his own. He plays with indie/alternative band, automobil. His bio is a little apologetic about the quality of his demos, but I felt they had a really engaging vibe. You can hear more of Marcus’ demos on SoundCloud.

supersixteen.
01 Less Is More, But More Is Still More (new) by supersixteen.

Instrumental post-rock can be really engaging and, in it’s best moments, very cinematic. That’s certainly true of Jowell Tan’s solo project, supersixteen. You can find more beguiling music from supersixteen. here.

shinodax
Area of Affection (Instrumental demo) by shinodax

Shinodax was one of a number of appealing metal acts that came up in this search (also check out Scentless Apprentice and taufiklast). Although Shinodax had a number of good covers and clips on his page this instrumental demo really caught my attention.

Lihkin Iyer
Anniyan – Randaka Rework by Lihkin Iyer

Lihkin Iyer is Nikhil Ramakrishnan’s Drum & Bass project and from the sounds of this remixes and demos, he has a lot of really fresh ideas.

Asyraft
The waves of whatever by asyraft

Firdhauz Asyraft has a really diverse set of playful and witty music on offer. Although many of this tracks are just short demos, like the one above, the musical ideas are really good. I’d love to see more of these tracks expanded into full songs someday.

Sharliza Jelita
Sharliza Jelita – Breaks My Heart In Two by -Sharliza Jelita-

Sharliza Jelita hails from Singapore, although it looks like she is now based in London. She has a really unique voice and some really entertaining pop tracks (unfortunately, my favourite Jelita tune Strange Things did not have an embed code enabled).

Arujua
Arajua- Quotation by Abdulhakimhj

You’ll hear some really impressive experimental rock on Arujua’s SoundCloud page (with plenty of shoegaze and post-rock textures. It was hard to pick a favourite track from them, since I also really liked Sky and I Had An Abstract as well the tune you can hear above – Quotation.

Aeondrift
Aeondrift – Core Djent-neration (Crisis Imminent) 2.22 [2011] E 128kbps by Aeondrift

Aeondrift is Jun Lee’s extraordinary gamemusic-influced avante-garde metal project. If that sounds like a mouthful, then you try to describe the amazingly intricate music Aeondrift offers up.

Kevin Teoh
Sending Off by kevinteoh

Kevin Teoh is a composer and his soundtrack cues work equally well as ambient listening music. Check out his other tunes, it’s some of the most engaging and raw stuff I’ve heard on SoundCloud this year.

Sage
Sage – Here For You (demo from upcoming debut) by sridharsmusic

Sage is a project from the multi-talented Sridharan Ravichandran (you can check out all his music here). On the strength of this one demo track I look forward to hearing more from Sage.

Bharat Goel
Bharat Goel feat. Mansheel Gujral – Aaja Soneya (Folk+Dubstep) by Bharat Goel

Bharat Goel is based in Mumbai, London and Singapore. Perhaps I could have left this track out, in the interests of some kind of “purity.” But, that’s not my style. And, besides, this is such a cool remix. Check out more from Goel over at SoundCloud.

And, the internet being what it is these I should point out that I have no financial interest in SoundCloud. I pay my subscription like every other user. And, none of the acts featured in this post approached me to be showcased here or offered any consideration for having their tunes highlighted. I found them the old fashioned way, trial and error and picking what caught my attention.

Create Digital Music is one of my favourite blogs; consistently good writing and insight. A recent post, What You Don’t Need To Make Music, featured Zack Wright, who is currently recording under the name Dkon. Apparently Dkon works under a manifesto, which, I have to say, gave me a kick in the butt.

Dkons Tips For Creative Success

1. Less is more
If you read nothing else in this article, read this. Having more options is not good for your creativity. Learn what you have, use what you have. Having a limited set of options forces you to focus.

2. You don’t need expensive stuff
There are a lot of people who think you need to keep improving your studio, and getting the latest, most expensive gear in order to have the ability to be able to make something good. This is nonsense. From an economic point of view, the 800 EP cost me about $125 to make. (Renoise license of about ~$75, and I bought the 800 on Craigslist for $40). I made my first several albums (*Lost Subject*, *Greater Cascadia*, and *Mythology of the Metropolis*) with very limited means and equipment. Make do with what you have. Buy gear secondhand, but only what you will actually use. Use free or cheap software. Use free or cheap plugins.

3. It doesn’t matter what software you use
There are so many DAW options now, but they all do basically the same thing. The only real difference is workflow. Pick one that appeals to you, learn it as you go along, and you will succeed. I have been using mostly Renoise for the past few years because I like the workflow and relatively simple interface. It may look confusing if you’ve never used a tracker before, but once you get the hang of it, it’s incredibly fast to get your ideas down, which is a major advantage. When inspiration hits you, the faster you can start working, the better.

4. Work around the limitations of what you have
If something is limited in some way, use it to your advantage. Why do you think things like the 303 and 808 are still universally adored? They are both incredibly limited instruments, but what they do, they do very well. Using a more concrete example in my case, the Poly 800. It’s horribly tedious to program, but has a great sound and a lot of character. If it was covered in knobs and sliders, I don’t think it would be as appealing in a bizarre kind of way. The limited nature of the instrument encourages creativity.

5. Treat everything as a sample
Especially in regards to software like Renoise. Find a sound on an instrument you like. Record yourself playing a few chords or a sequence of notes. Chop it up, sequence it, and rearrange it. Usually, if I do this, the sequence that ends up being used is different than the one that I originally played. Move things around, play with the pitch, change the envelopes. Being imprecise with your editing gives it a more humanized feel, without resorting to adding “humanization” after the fact.

6. Fidelity is highly overrated
Do you think anyone is going to care if your snares are amazingly compressed and EQ’ed if your song is terrible? No. Making your music sound “nice” should be an afterthought. Focus on content, not gloss.

7. If you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong
Making music, or art of any kind, should be fun. Treat it as play, not as work. Don’t think of what you want to make before you start – let the finished product reveal itself through your work. Dive in and explore without conscious thought.

Wow! Setting up here in Singapore has been hard work and, to be frank, I haven’t had a lot of fun in recent months. Moreover, I’ve been focussed on creating a great sounding studio with cool new gear, rather than a place with a nice vibe that allows me to milk what I already have.

The bite in the Peter’s article (please take a look at the original post when you have time, there’s plenty more info and some music to listen to), was seeing a picture of the Roland SH-101.

I had one of those – in fact, it was my first synthesiser! Despite being a hit when it was first released, the synth fell out of favour and I sold mine because it was kind of being looked down upon, with newer products in the market.

Which raises one of the crazy dynamics in music gear (and this also applies to photography and other creative fields). One one hand, the SH-101 was being derided by “experts” for lacking features, sounding old and having poor ergonomics. On the other hand, it was used by artists like Aphex Twin, Devo, Gorillaz, Portishead, The Prodigy, Thomas Dolby and many others to create great music.

All this got me wondering; what if we set up our studios not based on what sounded best (or mopst impressed our friends and online buddies). What if designed our musical spaces around the gear that was most fun and inspiring to us? What if we just accepted that the gear we already have is more than enough? What if we – and of course I mean me – just got on with it?

Soft synths and sample players usually default to a stereo or mono signal, but you can set some of them up to feed Logic with a multi output. The number of output tracks will vary, depending on the product. If you have the processing power, I think it’s almost always better to use multi output. That’s because you do the mixing in Logic, rather than letting the softsynth or sample player handle the mixing for you.

And, once you start mixing for each indivual sound, or instrument, you will have more creative control.

Here’s a quick rundown of how I do this with Logic and Toontrack’s EZdrummer programme. You can apply this same idea to other sample players as well (later, I’ll follow this up with a workflow for using multiouput with Logic’s own Ultrabeat drum machine).

When you choose the sample player, you’ll see two options “Stereo” or “Multi Output (8xStereo).” Choose the later.

Now you need to go into the EZdrummer interface and choose the mixer. One thing I like about EZdrummer is the way this interface makes it easy to see how the sample player is mixing the sounds. For those familiar with hardware setups, what we will be doing is replacing EZdrummer’s own sub-mixer and routing everything into Logic’s main mixer.

In EZdrummer, select one of the channels, scroll down and choose “Multichannel.”

Your mixer should now look like this, with different channel numbers under each sound.

One thing you might notice is that the faders are flat, set to -4.8dB, with no panning. This is my preset for using EZdrummer in this mode. Since I’m mixing in Logic, I don’t need the EZdrummer mixer to do any extra work. Also, if I leave the faders at 0.0dB, the summed mix in Logic will distort and be too loud. In fact, if you don’t already do this, it’s a good habit to set all your soft-synths and sample players to lower output settings.

Although we set EZdrummer up in Mutli Output (8xStereo) mode, by default EZdrummer uses only 7 outputs (1. Bass Drum, 2. Snare Top, 3. Snare Bottom, 4. Hi-Hat, 5. Toms (in stereo), 6. Overhead Mics (in stereo), 7. Room Mics (in stereo)). Each soft instrument will have quirks like this and it’s worth exploring them before you start setting up the Logic Mixer – as we’ll see in a moment.

Now open up the Logic mixer (x is the keyboard shortcut to open the mixer window).

Below the mute and solo buttons you’ll a button marked “+” that will open auxillary tracks for each output in EZdrummer. The trick here is to press it once for each extra track you need. You can in fact open up 8 tracks, but since EZdrummer is only exporting 7 tracks, that last track will be empty and silent. Once opened up, your mixer window will look something like this.

From here you can mix and effect each track to your heart’s delight. For example, this is what my mixer window looked like, after applying track names, effects and mixer settings.

Take a listen to the clip below. The first bar is a funky drum pattern as you would hear it stright out of EZdrummer in stereo. The second is the same pattern, in Muti Output, with effects applied. There is group reverb and compression (with individual settings for each track) then each drum sound is individually EQd, with some other effects thrown in (distortion on kick drum, transient attack variation on snare top, tape delay on snare bottom, stereo spreading on hi-hats and complex delay on the room mics).

I won’t be attending the concert. But, I couldn’t resist a quick trip down YouTube memory lane. It was fascinating to compare two versions of one their best known hit, “Here I Go Again.” The first version is the original, from 1982, the second is the more well known global hit, from 1987.

There’s a lot to learn from comparing the two versions. I’m not talking about the videos. Clearly, one has a leggy redhead with a death-wish (who hangs out of cars like that?) and one doesn’t. No, I’m talking about the sound, orchestration and arrangement of each song.

One of the best ways to learn about contemporary music production is to make these sorts of comparisons. Listen to the vocals, the guitars, the keyboards and the drums in each version. What’s different about the tones, timbre and texture of each part?

There’s quite a lot that has been done to make the 1987 version sound so different from the 1982 version. Instrument choices, mic techniques, eq, compression and reverb settings and, of course, personnel changes. If you are a musician, or involved in sound production, then grab a notepad and see if you can identify at least 25 production differences between the two versions.

This kind of exercise is called critical listening and it’s one of the best ways to learn about music production and improve your skills in the studio. In fact, it’s so important, BerkleeMusic even have a course covering the skill set. You’ll also find several goods books on subject as well.

It should go without saying that if you really want to get into critical listening, you’ll need a good environment and a good source. This isn’t really the sort of thing you will do on a busy underground train with your mp3 player and cheap headphones (and I’ll admit, doing it with YouTube videos is of limited value as well). You’ll also want to do it when you have time to make some notes and listen back to sections of the music again (and again and again).

Of course, the value of critical listening comes when you apply the things you’ve heard to your own music. I started out trying to copy not just the notes and solos of my favourite guitarists, but also their tones and sounds. It’s all about building a vocabulary of sound, for your instrument and for everything you record in your projects.

The same is true when you start mixing. Listening carefully to Motown tunes, or Blue Note recordings, or 70s West Coast rock will each give you different ideas about how to combine instruments, pan them in the stereo realm and adjust their sounds with eq and compression. The more approaches you become familiar with, the more moves will be at your disposal when you try to create a sonic signature for your music.

But, I keep being asked and to be honest, we all need a little encouragement and left field inspiration from time to time.

So, in no particular order, here are ten suggestions. These are ideas that feature regularly in my work and lessons I’ve learnt “the hard way.” I hope you find them useful.

1. Use templates that pre-load instruments

If you want to be more productive, then work hard at cutting the time between getting an idea and capturing that idea in Logic. A well designed studio will help, as will creating Logic templates for each kind of music you create.

I have templates for orchestral music, that pre-load sample players and libraries, templates for funk music, that layout a virtual band (with spare tracks for recording guitars) and so on. In each, I have plugins and presets loaded (usually bypassed). So, instead of reinventing the wheel with every new song and project, I have a head-start.

2. Use multi-out on drum tracks

Logic’s drum machine plugin, Ultrabeat and drum plugins like EZDrummer give you the choice of either sending their output through one stereo pair, or via a multi-output. Always use the latter if your system can handle it.

Multi-output allows you to EQ, compress and effect each sound in your percussion groove individually, which is an extremely powerful tool for making your beats pop, jump and sing.

3. Try reverse

Paul Stavrou’s Mixing With Your Mind is one the best books I’ve read on studio-craft. One of the doors it opened for me was applying effects (like reverb and compression) in reverse.

Take a track, like an acoustic guitar part, reverse it in the sample editor, apply compression, bounce in place, then reverse it back. Now listen. Kind of amazing! Try this approach with a range of effects (I love it with things like flange modulations, or the Grooveshifter plugin).

4. Record your silence

Here’s a tip from the world of sound design. Whenever you set up a mic in your studio, record a few seconds of silence and save that on a spare track.

The problem you’ll find when you start editing vocal tracks, or anything recorded with a microphone, is that there is an inconsistency between silence with “air” (the silence in between words or notes) and absolute silence (the sound of an empty track in Logic). One of the ways to smooth out a heavily edited track and make it sound more natural is to mix (or edit) back some room sound.

5. Try subtractive only EQ, especially when stuck with a mix

I love digital EQs and the ones that ship with Logic are pretty powerful – maybe too powerful at times. It’s easy to get carried away (and some projects people have sent me have crazy EQ on them).

If you get stuck making a mix gel, then try this. Duplicate all your eq plugins on each track and bypass the ones you were using. Now, on the new eqs only use cuts (subtraction). Don’t boost any frequencies, only make cuts. You’ll find that this approach makes less of change to each sound, but often it does a better job of getting tracks to work together.

6. Learn about latency

I spent a lot of time getting my head around the technical setup issues in Logic Pro – probably too much time. But, if there is one essential technical issue to think about it’s latency.

Latency is the delay, in your system, between sounds in the machine and sounds in the real world. It’s much less of an issue these days, with faster machines, better interfaces and easier to use software. But, you will one day have to get your head around it. MacProVideo has an awesome tutorial on latency and most books on using Logic Pro address the issue. Make some time, do some research and figure out your solution before it kills you mid-project.

7. Create a sample instrument

It’s surprisingly easy to create a sample instrument in EXS24 and it can sometimes come in really handy for doubling parts. A few notes from a bass, or a few hits of percussion and you can have a basic sample instrument.

8. Use guitar sims – on everything

One area where Logic has improved a lot in recent versions in the guitar amplifier and effects simulations. To be honest, I don’t use these much on my guitar parts, because I have a lot of great amps and analogue effects in my studio.

But, I do love to use them on everything else – especially on virtual instruments. Obviously they can bring sample organs and electric pianos to life. And, they can do wonders on drum machine or drum sample parts and even soft-synths.

9. Use memorable names and pretty colours

When I started using Logic, I used default names for each track and take. Then, after a while, I had a hard drive full of files called Guitar1.1, Guitar1.2, etc.

Take the time to devise a track and part numbering system that makes sense to you (and while you are it, think about how colours could make your projects easier to navigate).

10. Drop your levels and use amazing monitors

Every project I’ve been sent or asked to look at in recent years has been way too loud. Often individual tracks are clipping and almost always the final mix is clipping and distorted (in a bad way).

Learn to work with your levels lower and your final mix in a safe rage. Buy some decent monitor speakers (perhaps the most important investment in any studio) and use them to bring your levels up.

Of course, there is more (like parallel effects, assigning busses and side-chaining). But, this is a decent start. If you’d like more Logic/DAW related posts, please let me know.

Creating “sound-alike” music can be ethically dodgy, but I felt that in this instance it was possible to create something better and more original than the music they had been negotiating to obtain.

Moreover, this project had the potential to generate some decent turnover, so they could afford to be professional. I sharpened my pencil and gave them the best quote possible and the quickest timeframe I could realistically deliver within. I offered to compose, programme, record, perform, mix and master an original piece of music (all on my high-end gear, of course) and also throw in a couple of derivative pieces as well.

Naturally, there are all sorts of ethical considerations when you offer a quote for original music. You want to be fair to yourself (for the time involved, equipment being used and the years it’s taken you to become a musician). Also, you want to be fair to your prospective clients (especially if their budget is tight). You also have to be fair to your other clients (who have paid already for similar work). And, perhaps most importantly of all, you have to be fair to your own industry (assuming there will be a music industry in the future).

Realistically the project was going to take me three days, but I only quoted for two. If my studio was well set up I could do it in two, but working in a new space is always slow. I also used the lowest studio rate I ever quote on, offered some extra pieces as mentioned and gave the best hint I could that I’d be willing to negotiate further (or maybe accept payment in kind).

You can probably guess where this story is going. I didn’t get the job.

They decided to go with some music they secured for free.

To add insult to, well maybe not injury, they didn’t even bother to reply to my quote, or follow up to see if I could make a better offer.

And, of course, fool that I am, I had already spent a few hours writing a riff for them once the original quote went out.

To be honest, I was bitter for a while. It was hard not to lump this together with other types of hypocrisy from “creatives” who expect to be well compensated for their work, yet at the same time expect to not pay for the music they use in their productions (not to mention the music in their iPods).

I’ve always been open to “marketplacing” my work; trading a creative service in exchange for something else. That’s where most of us started – trading guitar lessons for screen-printing and so on. In these times there’s a lot to be said for being willing to trade music for graphic design or photos, for example.

But, increasingly, it seems that “creatives” expect the musician to work for free.

Am I being harsh? Perhaps. In the past few years I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been asked to work for free. Sure, there is always “exposure,” “a good cause,” or some other payoff being suggested. But, the equation is the same – and heavily skewed against the musician.

The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.
Marcus Aurelius

There are lessons for me in this experience. I could do a better job of responding to emails in a timely fashion. I could also spend a little more time explaining to people why I didn’t go with their quote in bid situations. When we feel slighted in a situation it’s always good to examine if, maybe, we could treat others better when they are in a similar situation.

But, there’s another lesson here as well. As musicians, maybe we need to do a better job of explaining to people why it’s worth paying us. Maybe some folks have forgotten how much better a production can be with real background music, rather than just generic loops or remixes?

Or, maybe music is just finished?

I don’t really have any answers right now. This experience hit me for six and, given that I fell pretty ill soon afterward, I’m not in the cheeriest frame of mind right now.

Part of me is tempted to finish that track and offer it here as a free download to this blog’s readers. If I do that, it will be the first publicly offered recording from my studio here in Singapore. I’m not sure if that would be a good omen or not. Like so many things in the music world right now, it just seems so uncertain.

We live in an extraordinary era, with the economics of communication totally changing. What do I mean by that? Well, when I was young, we would tune into television or radio and hope to hear people that were interesting (to us), talking about things that were relevant (to us). It was a pretty inefficient process, when you stop to think about it.

But, these days we have a glut of interesting “content” available to us, though websites, podcasts and the like. Instead of waiting and hoping that something interesting will pop up, we now have to sift through a lot of stuff that could engage us and then try to find the time to take it in.

The days of wait and hope are gone.

Case in point was the video below, of Chase Jarvis interviewing Sir Mix-a-Lot (famous for the hit single, Baby Got Back). I’ve been wanting to watch this one for a while, but only just found the time today.

It’s a wide ranging discussion that hits on a few points I’ve been discussing for some time. For example, the parallels between what has happened in photography and music since the advent of digital technology. If for no other reason, it’s worth watching the video just for this conversation about creative output and social media.

At one point in the conversation Chase Jarvis throws in the word “interdisciplinary,” which is a way of saying “knowledge that exists in more than one field of study.” Back in my academic days, for example, I was fond of claiming that all the best research was interdisciplinary. It was a way of suggesting that many new discoveries came when we looked at the places where established subjects (or disciplines) overlapped.

That’s a fancy way of saying, a lot of the most exciting stuff, today, comes from people who have a foot in more than one camp. Photographers who also direct videos, musicians who also design hardware, writers who also develop graphics, chefs who also design crockery.

The best people are often expanding the borders of what they do in ways that defy traditional definitions.

Of course, this can present practical problems. I had an incident recently when a client didn’t want to pay me for a job because someone in their finance department thought it was odd that a “music” company had been hired to do photography. I had to produce a business registration certificate showing that my company was set up to do photography as well as music.

A reminder that however creative we may think the world is, there are plenty of people who are used to having everyone stay in their lanes.

But, let’s think about a practical example. Say you are a wedding photographer. These days, couples also want some video, which usually means some sound and music. Oh, and wouldn’t it be nice to also have photo albums with original design. If the wedding photographer becomes successful, they might eventually have a videographer, sound/music engineer and even a graphic designer working for them. Until then, they may have to wear some or all of those hats themselves and be the photographer/videographer/sound/grahics person.

Of course, it’s always been like that for small businesses. Think of the cafe owner who might start out as a barista, but also learns to prepare food, do the books, design some graphics and even dabble in PR.

A few things are changing though. The tools are becoming cheaper and allowing us to work in more than one field. My recent experiments in Time Lapse were possible because they only required tools I already have. When time permits, I’ll compose music for those videos – again with tools that are already on my computer.

I’ve been thinking about this stuff for a while. Back in 2008 I wrote a post entitled Generation Slash, which asked if this interdisciplinary trend might be a mark of my generation.

To some extent I think the past three years have answered that question. Yes, we are generation slash. But, we still live in a world made of lanes, marked with clear lines that define reality for a lot of people.

A few months back I mentioned Corwin Hiebert in a blogpost about Generous Marketing. I’m a fan of Corwin’s work and was excited to see him releasing a . His previous title, Growing The VisionMonger was really helpful to me when I trying to figure out how to get SoundWallah working. Not surprisingly, his new book is excellent, well-thought out and extremely helpful.

Your Creative Mix is a book in two parts. The first half deals with understanding and developing your own personal sense of creativity. The second addresses the collaborative and marketing processes you need in order to let your creativity thrive in the real world.

Although addressed primarily to photographers, Your Creative Mix is a useful book for anyone working in a “creative” field. A lot, in fact most of the insights, could be equally applied to the music world. Moreover, it’s a perfect read for anyone running a small creative business, like a design agency, video studio or small fashion label.

I found both sections inspiring, largely it feels like Corwin is writing with people like me in mind. The focus is not on creativity in some abstract sense, but rather creativity as a tangible process for turning ideas into realities. In particular, the section on how to develop and nurture collaborations has got me thinking about how to approach opportunities after moving to a new city.

There’s also a tone in Corwin’s suggestions about how to use Social Media that I really appreciate. He recomends a way of being online that is focussed on genuine, helpful, supportive and thoughtful interaction. In particular I was impressed by his encouragement to focus on the creative work first,

“While your competitors (or peers) are blowing their brains out trying to unlock the keys to blogging and Twitter you can take solace in the knowledge that those making noise now will be silenced quickly if they don’t have anything exciting to make noise about down the road.”

I sincerely recommend Your Creative Mix by Corwin Hiebert.. This ebook has hit me hard enough that I’m using it to help in rewriting my business plan as I set myself up in Singapore.

Your Creative Mix is available now as a downloadable PDF for just $5USD from Craft & Vision.