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.

My previous posts on the Fuji X-Pro1 have received a lot of attention – Fuji X-Pro1 First Impressions, Can The Fuji X-Pro1 Replace A dSLR, Fuji X-Pro1 InfraRed

I have been using the X-Pro1 extensively over the past few weeks and I’m starting to feel more at home with the camera. I still have my reservations. But, it’s fair to say that when everything “clicks” the camera produces some amazing images.

I’ve been working on two follow up posts, a full review of the X-Pro1 and a little tutorial on using the X-Pro1 to shoot infrared, including white balance issues and photoshop insights. However, because of some other commitments, I probably won’t get around to posting those until later this month.

I’m thankful for the comments and advice I received in response to the last few posts. I’ve included some of the points people raised about X-Pro1 below, in a sort of FAQ of the discussion so far. If you have any other questions, then now is a good time to ask them, while I’m writing the final two posts on this camera.

The X-Pro1 is not that slow – I guess it depends on your point of reference. My D90 is really fast, from a cold start to ready to shoot. By comparison, the X-Pro1 feels sluggish. Same when processing multiple exposures.

If you insert the memory card in Mac, then it will run slow when you put it back in the X-Pro1 – I’ve tested this and it’s true. However, I always reformat cards when I put them back in the camera. That’s a core part of my workflow. So, this is not the reason for the sluggishness (at least in this case).

What filter do you use for infrared? – The Hoya R72. It’s widely available.

What are your settings for infrared? – You have to bump the ISO right up, around 5000. Most of theIR shots you see on this site are with wide apertures (f1.4 – f.4) and slow shutter speeds.

Why do you feel this is not a good camera for landscape work? – Partly it has to do with framing your shot. I still feel, with the X-Pro1, that I’m guessing where the frame of the image will be. That doesn’t fit with the way I approach landscape. But, mostly it has to with the design and the location of the battery and card compartment. I use Arca-Swiss plates for my tripod (Really Right Stuff has an X-Pro1 plate coming soon). Because of the location of the tripod screw on the X-Pro1, it will be impossible to change the battery or memory card without removing the plate. This undoes some of the advantages (and reliability) of using an Arca-Swiss system.

What’s your impression of the autofocus on the X-Pro1? – The autofocus is better than I expected. But, it is hit and miss. I probably wouldn’t be complaining at all about it though, if the Fuji lenses were usable in manual focus mode.

“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.

Of course, it’s not wrong to say I’m a blogger; it’s something I do. Then again, I type emails everyday, but you would hardly call me a typist (especially if you have seen me type), or an emailer.

My Approach To Blogging

Earlier this year I wrote a long piece on finding your voice as a blogger. Back then I said,

“I’m often asked, by new bloggers, or those thinking of starting a blog – “what do I write about.” My answer has always been – “write about what you do.”

In the same vein, when I’m asked – “how do I make my blog more interesting,” I reply – “to be more interesting online, become more interesting offline.””

I revisited the theme last week, outlining the way blogs give us the freedom to share our work and our passions.

Blogging, What I Do And How I Do It

When asked “what do you do?” the best reply I can give is to say I’m musician, photographer and writer. Looking back over the last ten years, I’ve been paid to make music (and design sound), create photographs and write words. I’ve never been paid to blog.

I’ve been asked to write a few guest posts here and there. But, those have been unpaid gigs. I’ve never put ads on this blog (and I never will). I don’t write reviews (or anything else) in exchange for cash or freebies.

Blogging As An Assumed Skill

Not that long ago, creating presentation slides was a costly affair. It involved hiring graphic designers and creating real, physical film slides. And, we had inter-office memos, written by typists who spent all day formatting and reproducing text. Of course, it is now assumed that any worker (or student) can create their own slideshows or emails.

In a similar way, we had a situation where only a select group of professionals, journalists and authors, would regularly express their ideas in print, in the public domain. But, now anyone can create a blog (or at least, a sustained presence in other social media).

Blogging is just a skill, like being able to write emails, or create slideshow presentations. That’s it. The really important question isn’t “do you have a blog,” it is “why do you have (or not have) a blog?” For me blogging flows out of the things I do and the way I’ve chosen to live my life. It’s not a goal, it’s a consequence.

So, although I blog, blogging is really a secondary activity. Blogging isn’t the thing I do. Rather, blogging is part of how I do things. Blogging is one way I share my work and love.

The Rockstar Comedian

Peters has become something of a rockstar in the comedy world. He recently played a 13,800 seat gig in Sydney, the largest ever in Australia for a comedian and has broken comedy event record sales in a number of countries, including the UK. His concert DVDs are best sellers and there are millions of views for clips of his routines on YouTube.

Peters’ brand of humour is a mix of observational humour, satire and mimicry. It’s an understatement to say he has a gift for accents. Anyone can do a simple Chinese accent. But, it takes skill to really understand the differences between Chinese languages and regional accents, then translate that back into the different ways Chinese people speak English, then turn that into a memorable comedy routine!

And, he does it with all sorts of other Asian, Middle Eastern, European and Latin American accents. No wonder Peters has such a global audience.

Peters In Singapore

When we arrived, DJ Ono was spinning a cool set. The music was interrupted at regular intervals by a loud announcement suggesting anyone caught trying record the concert (or use a mobile device) would be ejected from the show.

It was a mood killer, but I didn’t mind. It must be career-shorting for a comedian to have their routines prematurely posted all over the internet. And, anything that stops people holding mobile phones over the heads, or in front of the them, during a live performance is OK with me!

Before the main show, we enjoyed a short, sharp set from comedian Joey Medina. Medina was funny, blue and topical. He made some of the obvious jokes about Singapore (no chewing gum, no pornography), but also picked up on some recent news stories as well. He was a great “wake up and shake up” opening act.

Then Peters took to the stage for an hour and three-quarters, with no break and no encore. His set was hilarious, daring, well paced and simply masterful. Most of his material was new and the few jokes we had heard before were substantially reworked.

The Comic Edge

It’s fair to say that Peters often flies close to the wind; making observations that would be considered offensive in other circumstances. He gets away with it because, of course, he’s funny. But, he also gets away with it because of his Indian background, he’s a “minority” he’s one of the types he mocks. In fact, a lot of his humour is based on the kinds of jokes we make about our own kind.

Peters liberally picked on audience members in the front rows, identifying different ethnicities then using the interactions with audience members to launch into routines. However, there was one joke that didn’t fly. Peters was asking a Chinese Singaporean which languages he spoke. When the young man said he didn’t speak Malay, Peters asked if maybe that was beneath him, which was met with jeers from the audience. Interestingly, after that Peters made hardly any jokes about Chinese people and Chinese accents.

However, he more than made up for it with some great routines about India and Indians. It was kind of fitting, because there were a lot of Indians in the audience. Having lived in India myself, I was in tears of laughter at some of the routines. His story about meeting a Bollywood actress still has me in fits of laughter, 24 hours later.

The Power Of Laughing At Ourselves

Sometimes, when confronted with great satire, or observational comedy, we find ourselves saying “that’s so true.” I think that’s part of Peters’ appeal as a comedian. It’s what stops his humour from being cruel, or offensive.

Although, I did wonder how his jokes about Australians would have been received Down Under. While I don’t agree that Australian is the worst accent in the world, it certainly isn’t one of the most attractive either. And, I totally* agree that the common greeting, “how are you going,” deserves to be mocked.

There was a wonderful moment when Peters was talking to an audience member called Usman (a fairly common name in Pakistan and Northern India). Peters couldn’t quite catch the name, because of the way it was being pronounced; us-man. Then Peters asked if it was ooz-mun, and when that was confirmed, Peters said, “don’t say it like a white guy.”

A lot of us who have grown up as Third-Culture kids have had that struggle, being able to say our name in our own language. Laughing at ourselves and the absurdity of our situation is incredibly liberating. There’s something wonderful about being able to see the humour in everything and ultimately, the humour in ourselves.

When we can laugh at ourselves then we are on the road to true freedom.

*if you were at the gig, then you know to read that as toe-tah-lee!

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.

I’ve been blogging on and off since 2001 and without fail every month since late 2004. I’ve blogged my way through three international relocations and a complete career change of direction. Blogging helped me land my first professional photographic assignments and my first newspaper writing gig. Blogging has given me opportunities to speak at events and opened doors into the worlds of PR, Fashion and Food that would otherwise have stayed shut. And, blogging has brought scores of wonderful people into my life who have been friends, teachers, entertainers and role-models to me.

Freedom Is Blogging In Your Underwear

One of my all-time favourite bloggers, Hugh MacLeod has a new book coming out Freedom Is Blogging in Your Underwear. I’m really glad to see Hugh emphasising the importance of blogs. As he puts it,

“Having a blog, a voice, having my own media, utterly chan­ged my life. Sud­denly my career as a car­too­nist wasn’t depen­dent on other peo­ple: the “gate­kee­pers”?—?publishers, edi­tors, Holly­wood exe­cu­ti­ves, etc., etc.

Sud­denly I had direct con­tact with my audience. They had direct con­tact with me. I could just do my thing, without having to wait for some­body else to give me the “green light,” some­body else to write a check. I didn’t have to wait around for some­body else to deem me “worthy” …

This gave me the free­dom I spent most of my adult life searching for, the same free­dom I believe we’re ALL searching for, in one way or another.”

My Blogging Map

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve recently gone through all 1642 posts on this blog, which is a body of writing that stretches back to October 2004. It was an amazing experience to go back and see the way my writing, my focus, my interests and my attitudes have changed and evolved over these years.

Four things have remained constant for me. They are the reasons I got into blogging and they still guide my blogging today.

Self-Publishing – When I created my first websites in the mid-nineties, my academic environment considered me crazy and, not in a good way. They really feared the internet. But, it became clear, over the next few years as blogs emerged, that a revolution had begun in publishing. Blogging is the freedom to express your own ideas and experiences in your own words and in your own way.

Education – Blogging is at the heart of a change in the way we learn. Not just academic or formal education, but the way we learn about everyday things, like cooking a meal, fixing a bike or being a better parent. Whenever a blog catches my eye (and I start reaching for the subscribe button), it’s because the blogger is sharing something they have learnt, or offering me the opportunity to learn.

Authenticity – Blogs are a great way to combine our work and love, or as Robert Frost put it, our vocation and our avocation. That’s one of the biggest struggles in life. To be authentic both to who we are and who we want to be. For me, blogging has been the road to finding my own voice, as a writer, photographer and musician.

Accountability – I started out in the company of a lot of bloggers who were writing about faith and spirituality. There was a sense of community, connected to a desire to become a better person. I see that sense of community all over the blogosphere in bloggers who encourage each other to become better photographers, cooks, musicians, marketers, entrepreneurs, designers or writers.

The Long Road

I often thought about giving up during 2008-09. But, blogging had given me so much in the early years and has given me even more in the years since.

A blog says so much more than a massaged LinkedIn page or thousands of frantic tweets could ever manage. A blog carries far more weight than a business card or the best introduction you’ve ever had.

Apart from comments and tweets, this blog brings me hundreds of emails a year. Those emails have brought me business opportunities, but, more importantly, they have helped me connect with and be inspired by countless stories of creativity and courage.

The Blogger’s Goal Gold

Blogging isn’t just about “having your say,” it is a way of being in the world. Blogging allows us to think in public, to inspire each other and to built up a public and recognisable identity through our words and our work.

I was kind of amazed looking over my old blog posts. There’s a lot of useful stuff. Easily enough for a book on creativity, a portfolio of film, theatre and concert reviews or an eBook on photographic techniques.

I look at this blog as a story; my life told my way. But it’s also a resource, a treasure of work and experiences. And, the blog sustains a community who help me remain positive, authentic and committed to being the best version of me I can be.

Yesterday I spent some time reworking the categories and tags which will allow me to use a more streamlined navigation system. In doing this I had a look at everyone of the 1,642 posts I’ve written since October 2004. This is the biggest change I’ve made to the categories on this blog since I started using WordPress in 2004.

From today, there are only four categories – Sounds, Images, Words & Adventures.

A New Approach To Categories

Like most bloggers, I approached categories like a filing system. Categories were a way of filing blogposts according to different interests. The problem is that, over time, as your interests change and evolve, the category system becomes really messy.

When I looked at this from the perspective of people who come to this site and read the blog, it became clear that people only engage with my writing for a handful of reasons. So, it made sense to build the categories around those foci.

Sounds – Everything related to music and audio. From original music I compose, to reviews of concerts, stuff about guitars, music software and on into music technology.

Images – Photography is the main focus here, but this category also includes other visual arts and art history. Basically, this is everything that goes into making images.

Words – By far the largest category, this includes essays, opinion pieces, book reviews, food writing, film reviews, stories and lots of posts about blogging, social media and creativity.

Adventures – Travel, holidays, expatriate living and all sorts of new experiences and challenges.

Going through all my posts I tried to avoid assigning more than one category to any posts. In my old approach, reviewing a book on photography could have easily meant using two or three categories. Now, it would just sit under images. Largely, I was able to do that because of the role tags play in making blog searches work.

The Importance of Tags

The way I used to think about categories on this blog was a legacy of my approach to organising files on a computer. Once upon a time you had to work hard at creating logical folder structures (and sub-folders) in order to manage your work. While folders still matter, a lot of programmes (from Lightroom to iTunes) build folder structures for you and most of the work of finding files actually involves searches and tags.

The beauty of tags is they can be very specific and you can use lots of them for every file while keeping a simple folder or category structure. So, I now have four categories, but over four hundred tags. They work for you and your readers because tags are one of the first things search engines look for.

So, your Google searches are more effective if you use lots of well chosen tags. But, more importantly for me, local searches, when readers use the search button on my site, will also be more effective as well.

No Category For Faith

Spirituality was one of my most popular blogging themes from 2004-09. It might surprise some long-term readers to see no category for it now. The simple answer is that a search for any number of terms – faith, theology, church, prayer – will yield a large number of posts and lots of words.

The deeper answer resides in my dissatisfaction, back in 2009, with the direction of my spirituality-related writing. Too much of it was negative and focussed on past experiences. I believe good blogging comes from focussing on present day experiences. That’s why a lot of my essays, these days are about creativity.

Moreover, faith is a deep identity issue. Right now, having a spirituality category made about as much sense as having a brown curly hair category, or a life in Singapore category.

Location Doesn’t Matter Much Either

When I started this current blog, I didn’t plan to write much about life in Delhi. But, looking back, I actually did put a lot of experiences into the blog.

In Hong Kong, I always struggled to get local traffic and was criticised a few times for not blogging enough about Hong Kong. Going through my posts from those years, I actually did write a lot of Hong Kong related stuff, especially in my first two years there. In fact, the only real dip was in 2008-09, which were the years when I really didn’t write much about anything.

It feels like something similar is happening again in Singapore, which is OK by me. I never set out to be an “expat blogger.” Location doesn’t define who I am. My life is defined by what I do, how I do it and who I do it with. I hope the new categories make it a little easier to tell that story.

I’ve always been keen to try Infrared photography. It’s a technique that can produce stunning landscape and urban images. But, many, in fact most, dSLR camera cannot shoot infrared without hardware modification.

I had been seeing some comments suggesting that it was possible to shoot Infrared with an unmodified Fuji X-Pro1. So, I headed out this afternoon to pick up a Hoya R72 Infrared filter. When I got home, I grabbed my X-Pro1 and went out for a short walk.

The image at the top of this post is exactly what came out of the camera in JPG; no adjustments, no processing. For the rest of the images below, I imported the RAW files, converted them to TIFF in SilkyPix, then processed them with a variety of approaches (Lightroom, Color Efex Pro, Photoshop). That said, the images still looked pretty good just straight out of the camera.

There’s a huge amount of potential in this approach. I’m sure, as the word gets out that the Fuji X-Pro1 can do Infrared, more and more photographers will give it a go.

Last week I wrote an extensive post on the state of play in online photo sites & services. I made the point that sharing is one of four key activities, when it comes to photos online.

But, while curating and commenting are important, sharing is the most important of all.

So, I was thankful to see the latest eBook from Craft & Vision, Shoot & Share by Stuart Sipahigil, is all about photo sharing. And, I was even more thankful when I dove into the book and realised it wasn’t simply about sharing photos online.

The Sharing Mindset

Digital cameras and online services have made it easy to share images. But, it’s a good thing to step back and ask, why are we sharing? A great photo on 500px can make people go “wow.” But, if wowing people is our goal, then a large format print will have even more wow built into it.

Or, if our goal is to make people feel special, then tagging them on some images in Facebook or Instagram might be nice. But, making a photo book for them might well be even nicer.

The Sharing Workflow

What Stuart Sipahigil does really well in Shoot & Share is help us think about how and why we share photos, devise some goals for sharing them more effectively and, in turn, become better photographers by listening to everything we hear from the sharing experience.

We are not given a one size-fits-all template, but rather, through a series of questions and examples, we are encouraged to think about approaches to sharing our photos that will help us reach our own goals as photographers.

The Value of Sharing

Online galleries, prints & even exhibitions are not the whole story when it comes to photography. There’s a lot we can do to share the experience of photography; from writing, teaching to participating in photo walks.

What I found most helpful about Shoot & Share was the book’s breadth of focus. It’s easy to get caught up in the latest widget or website, the journey of becoming a “better” photographer or the whole commercial thing. It’s good to take a step back a little and think about the relationships, passions and emotions connected to photography and why we bother to lift a camera to the world in the first place.

How To Order

I heartily recommend Shoot & Share to photographers of all sorts. After all, it is only $5, which is a lot less than most photography magazines. You can pick up Shoot & Share from Craft & Vision and for the next couple of days you can get a discount by using the code SHARE4 or a 20% discount on five or more eBooks with the code SHARE20.

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.”

Last July I posted a very popular article about the photo hosting site 500px. At the time 500px was still relatively unknown and starting to create a buzz. As I said,

“… there is a lot that 500px is doing right and I’m looking forward to seeing if this service can really grow in the coming months.”

Since then Flickr has continued to decline while 500px has gone from strength to strength. For example, 500px just matched Flickr, by releasing an Android app. But, 500px has an excellent iPad app, while Flickr has never even released an app for the best mobile device out there for showcasing photos.

Giving Flickr The Flick

As I mentioned before, I had a lot invested in Flickr; a lot of photos, a lot of conversations and, of course, a lot of money buying Pro accounts. But, while Flickr’s vast library of images has continued to grow, the service has been slow to improve. It’s still sluggish, somewhat ugly and caught in the past. Meanwhile, other services, like 500px, Instagram, Pinterest and Google+ have changed our expectations of what an online platform can offer photographers.

So, I am going through my Flickr followers, getting in contact with them & suggesting they might like to connect on other platforms (like this blog, Twitter, 500px or Instagram). Next Friday I will delete my Flickr account.

Sharing, Commenting, Exhibiting & Curating

There are four basic things people like to do, online, with photos; sharing, commenting, exhibiting & curating. Flickr was once a leader in each of these four activities. Now, for all those interests, there’s at least one other service that is the leader.

Sharing – OK, the web might well be drowning in photos of cats, flowers and breakfasts. But, people like to share their experiences, passions and life stories through photos. Facebook understood this; they made sharing everyday images central to their platform. It made sense when they bought Instagram, a fast growing and reliable service that was built for sharing mobile photography.

Commenting – One of Flickr’s big breakthroughs was making it easy to comment on photos and neatly formatting those comments. But, Flickr now looks terrible compared to the commenting process on Google+.

Exhibiting – While sharing, is all about letting people see your latest images, exhibiting is about showing off your best images. Flickr gave us the ability to group images into sets, but it was never really a great place for your portfolio. By contrast, 500px really is about amazing work. It’s faster and classier than Flickr ever was and, since I wrote that piece last year, it really has become a place for serious photography (take a look at Scott Kelby’s trawl through great 500px images on his The Grid video cast).

Curating – One activity that is sometimes missed is curating, or sharing your favourite selections of other people’s images. Some folks like to exhibit their good taste or their ability to find interesting new work. Flickr made this possible through groups, but Pinterest has elevated curation to new heights.

Flickr Outflanked

It’s hard to see Flickr regaining the lead in any one of these fields. And, of course, there are other services I haven’t even mentioned, like Tumblr, Path, Lightbox, and SmugMug who, in their own ways, beat Flickr.

500px Today

I really like the way 500px has implemented sets (you can see mine here) and their approach to mobile apps. But, the service is not without some problems. For one, I’m not a fan of exhibiting scores next to images. I had the experience where I shared an image on Twitter and in a few days, the number of views and likes went up, but the score went down. That’s a turn off.

And, I deeply dislike the flow feature. It mixes your photos up with the the photos you have liked and changes the crop and perspective of the images in the layout. If the purpose of a site is exhibiting, then the photographer should have more control over how their images are seen.

The Future

I believe the action, in the coming year, will be between Facebook (with Instagram) and Google+. Instagram will continue, for the time being at least, to grow and influence the mobile photo sharing space. While Google+, especially when you consider the talent they have assembled for their upcoming photography conference, will shape the game for serious and commercial photography.

Of course, 500px still has an edge for exhibiting, but that’s a very slim edge. I’d be very surprised if we don’t soon see Google+ adding better galleries soon. And, of course, Pinterest may well be swallowed up the way Instagram was.

There’s an irony in SoundCloud saying they want to be the Flickr of music, while Flickr is becoming the MySpace of photography. Flickr was, for a number of years, the benchmark for sharing photos online. But, I’m afraid that time is well and truly behind us now.

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!

X-Pro1 Detail & Bokeh Test

It’s been a couple of weeks since I posted my initial impressions of the new Fuji X-Pro1 camera. I’ve been writing a comprehensive hands-on review. But, there are a few more things I need to understand and a couple of situations I want to photograph in, before I can finish that piece.

However, I want to address one question that many people have been asking; can the Fuji X-Pro1 replace a dSLR?

The best answer I can give is – maybe.

Why Do Photographers Buy dSLR cameras?

I’m not trying to be evasive, but, there is a problem in the question. Photographers buy dSLR cameras for many different reasons. Speed, image quality, flexibility, and ergonomics are some of things dSLR cameras have in their favour. But, not all of those matter to every photographer in the same way and to the same degree.

This Is a Camera With Strengths And Limitations

The image quality of the X-Pro1is as good as the best crop-sensor dSLR cameras out there and better than the best dSLR cameras from a few years ago. I’ve been shooting with Fuji’s own 35mm f.1.4 lens and my best images look great, straight out of the camera, with no processing.

But, great image quality is useless if you can’t shoot in focus. The Fuji lens is useless in manual focus mode and the camera’s autofocus system is temperamental at best.

And, there is no news yet on when we will be able to open the X-Pro1’s RAW files in Lightroom or Photoshop!

Moreover, image quality is irrelevant if you miss the moment. The X-Pro1 takes an age to start up and feels slow in general. For example, when you shoot exposure brackets the camera shoots the bracket quickly, but then takes an age to process the images before you can shoot again.

The X-Pro1 does a good job of putting its controls in (relatively) usable spots around the body. Features are less menu-trapped than on many low end dSLRs. It’s a fairly good layout for photographers who shoot in Manual and Aperture modes. There is also an assignable Function button, which I use for ISO. But, it does mean that I then have to dive into the menus to adjust White Balance.

The Joy Of The Hybrid Viewfinder

The X-Pro1 has one huge thing in its favour – the hybrid viewfinder. The X-Pro1 overlays, in a heads-up-display style, a lot of the information you need while shooting and lets you see the image you just shot and the menu all inside the viewfinder. That means you can do everything without having to lift the camera away from your face.

If you watch photographers, a lot of them waste time in between shots lowering the camera and navigating buttons and menus. The X-Pro1 is designed to encourage you not to do that. In effect, it is built to help you shoot like most pros, who rarely move the camera away from their face to make adjustments.

Why I Bought The X-Pro1

I bought the X-Pro1 to go alongside my Nikon dSLR gear, not as an out and out replacement. I will soon move to full frame dSLR for my landscape and studio portrait work. While I can imagine using the Fuji for portraits, in the full review I will explain the reasons why I wouldn’t use the X-Pro1 for landscape.

But, there are lots of situations, especially on day trips and city streets, where a dSLR feels bulky and indiscrete. There’s a lot to be said for carrying a smaller camera that packs the same kind of image quality and creative versatility.

And, since I can use my Nikon lenses (with adapters) on the X-Pro1, it makes a nice slim alternative as a second body on long trips, especially when I’m doing a mix of landscape and street work.

Conclusion

This is not a full review of the X-Pro1. There’s a lot more to be said about the camera’s strengths and weaknesses. But, I hope this goes at least part of the way towards answering whether this camera can replace a dSLR in certain situations.

Ultimately, the answer really depends on what you photograph and how you work. To be honest, I still haven’t made up my mind about the X-Pro1. Some days I like it, some days I don’t. But, if it does turn out to be a keeper, then I will be carrying it instead of a dSLR for some adventures and alongside my Nikon gear for others.

In preparation for the new show, Ze released this video, called An Invocation for Beginnings. I’d encourage you to watch it.

This is a wonderful response to the struggles and fears that we creative souls face. I agree with everything in the invocation; it is all stuff I have struggled to say to myself over the years.

“There’s no need to sharpen my pencils anymore. My pencils are sharp enough. Even the dull ones will make a mark.”

Thank you Ze.

Of course, I’m still a small fish is a huge ocean of blogs. I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way. But, my recent post Are Personal Blogs Making A Comeback?” attracted a good reaction and started some conversations about what we can learn, today, from the insights of those earlier years of blogging. Here’s some ideas I’d suggest for newer bloggers – and, maybe a few things some older bloggers have forgotten.

You Don’t Have To Post Every Day

In the past year, I’ve seen a lot of bloggers set themselves the goal of posting every day. It makes me ask – why? Blogs were a technological breakthrough, because they allowed us to create sites that were easy to update and self-organised by date. Blogs looked like diaries, but bloggers soon realised there was no need to let the format dictate what you did in this space.

And, once we were able to track our numbers more clearly, it became obvious that we could attract a similar amount of monthly traffic, posting good quality every few days, rather than post mediocre stuff every day or two.

I know some will argue that blogging more often will increase your traffic. But, that is only ever incrementally true and, only so long as your quality doesn’t drop. Besides, there is so much noise on the internet as it is. You’ll never become an A-lister, or even a B-lister, incrementally.

Cherish Your Comments

I get why some people turn comments off on their blogs. It’s hard to style comment sections well, moderating comments is a pain and you are always exposing yourself to anonymous attacks (anonymity plus the internet is a known recipe for the worst in human communication). But, comments were always an important part of blogging revolution.

At the beginning, we loved comments, because the made blogs feel more alive than static sites. They show the world that you are open to new ideas and differences of opinion, or, to put it another way, that you are willing to learn. Comments also give you the opportunity to further explain your ideas. Some of my best blogposts have come from ideas thrown around in comments, either here, or on other blogs.

Don’t be Selfish

There was something in the water in 2009-10. A lot of really “selfish” blogs were launched. It was like the new bloggers were allergic to posting links to other bloggers, giving credit for ideas or sharing the attention in any way. Each blog was an island.

But, when blogging started to take off, a lot of us grew our sites in collaboration, rather than in competition. It really was a case of “a rising tide floats all boats” with plenty of goodwill being shown in sharing links and highlighting either good posts on other blogs, or new blogs with potential.

In Hong Kong I saw a great example of this with the food blogging scene. Most of the high profile bloggers were very generous with sharing praise for each other’s work and also meeting to encourage each other (and enjoy some good food). This created a “scene” in the artistic sense and great opportunities (like writing for local papers and more inside access to the food industry) came as a result.

Design, To The Best Of Your Abilities

Today’s blogs often look so good. But, many bloggers start out obsessed with getting the design, categories and other bits of architecture right before they even have anything to say.

The first blogs were very basic and a lot of the biggest names in blogging ran hugely popular sites for years with very rudimentary designs. Give yourself time, to work out the best categories, tags and design elements and concentrate at the start on having something unique and interesting to say.

Blog Like You Haven’t Made It

It’s easy to be seduced into thinking you are an expert online. People get a thousand followers on Twitter, a hundred readers a month for their blog and suddenly, the delusions of grandeur set in.

Perhaps the biggest difference between blogs today and blogs ten years is ago is back then, bloggers were more honest about their struggles. Blogs were a way to tell the real story (especially in faith-based communities), to be more transparent about who you were and to make yourself publicly accountable for some change in your life (like learning to cook to becoming a better parent).

There’s always a place in the world for the experts and trend-spotters. But, there’s a bigger place in our hearts for people who take risks in public, who share their talent with us and who are honest and vulnerable.

Have Fun

I was so glad to see Ze Frank making a comeback. His original video blog, the Ze Frank show, ran for a year from March 2006 until March 2007. To me, that was a golden time in blogging, not simply because of Ze’s show, but because blogs really were in the limelight. Quality and traffic was high.

But, in a few years a lot of people moved their attention onto social media and many bloggers got caught up in the niche blogging approach I mentioned last week. The Blogosphere just seemed a lot less fun.

To me blogging was so important, because it gave us a way to publish and broadcast our own thoughts in our own words. Blogging was a way to learn, to grow and to be accountable. And, to borrow the words of Robert Frost, it was a way to unite our avocation with our vocation; to bring together the things we love and the work we do, with the goal of hopefully creating a new and better life for ourselves.

I still believe that and, I believe blogging shouldn’t be a chore. Rather, it should be an adventure, a way to meet amazing people and a chance to have 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.

What This Means For The Industry

It’s a great day for Instagram’s founders and probably, a very good day for Facebook, who in one bold move have taken out one of their biggest competitors in the mobile social space. Instagram had a lot of loyalty with iPhone users and had just opened itself up (very successfully) to those on the Android platform.

Of course, there will be a backlash. Instagram had been a cool, hipster-ish platform and now that Facebook has entered the picture, Instagram will become mainstream and, by extension, un-cool.

We will undoubtably see a flood of new social services emerge. Some will vie for the title of “next cool photography app,” while others will try to be the new thing that quickly attracts enough followers to appear on the radar of Facebook, Twitter, Google & maybe even Apple. They will all be chasing the big sellout.

What This Means For Mobile Photographers

I really enjoyed Instagram’s season in the sun. It will be remembered (along with Best Camera & Camera+) as one of the apps that helped popularise smartphone photography. And, it was a lot of fun to play with; the square crop, the bleach-bypass effects, the light-hearted social aspect.

But, for me, Instagram was always the side-car and never the motorbike. I liked Instagram because it was a good way to share photos on Twitter and a fun place to experiment photographic ideas. But, Instagram was not without its problems and never destined to be a focus, in and of itself.

Even before the sudden burst of users when Instagram opened its doors to the Android platform, there were limitations. The popular page had long since stopped being a useful way to find new photographers to follow. It wasn’t easy to manage your followers and following. Without the ability to organise people into groups, lists or categories, those who posted less often were drowned out by the more aggressive sharers.

And, let’s be honest; there were just too many photos of cats!

But, it was clear that all those things that had not mattered when Instagram was small, cool and niche, were now going to need to be addressed as the service grew ever more popular.

What This Means For The Future

I’m not sure what Instagram will change overnight, but it will change. I’ll stick with it, at least until the summer, but I won’t be using Instagram in 2013. It’s time to move on and I have no doubt another great mobile photo sharing app is out there.

The more important issue will be how we manage the explosion of new apps and services in the coming months and years. Trying on new social media platforms is not like trying on a pair of jeans. It takes an investment of time, effort and intellect – all of which are in increasingly limited supply as we navigate a world increasingly full of electronic distractions.

Easter is, for most Christians, a far more important season that Christmas. The journey to the cross and then three days later, the resurrection and the empty tomb are central to the Christian faith. And, the subtle variations in the way Christians interpret those events help explain the differences between Christian traditions and churches.

Resurrection is a powerful idea. It fills us with the hope of overcoming our failures and fears and ultimately, the fear of death. But, as the preachers are often fond of saying, the resurrection only comes after the cross, after the “atonement.”

Atonement is often described in terms of punishment and suffering. Perhaps a better description might be; atonement is a way of asking, “what will it take to be united again?”

We experience the process of atonement all our lives and in all our relationships. We fail, things break down and then we try and seek out unity and harmony again.

So resurrection is not just about overcoming our failures so we can go on with our life. It is about going on, united to everything that makes us feel most alive and full of love.

On this Easter Sunday, I’d like to thank all of you for reading this blog, for writing, commenting and sharing articles and for your encouragement and support during the year. I hope in whatever way you live your life, that you can find atonement, resurrection, unity and love and you can live your life fully and fearlessly.

Many bloggers started to look at their sites as a way to make money. Blogs soon became clogged with banners and ads. Bloggers wrote less personal posts and focussed on fewer and more niche topics. And, blogs became more marketing influenced, to the point where many bloggers became obsessed with the idea of being a “personal brand.”

But, thankfully, things are starting to change.

The Shift

I was inspired to read The Blogging Cycle – Back To The Beginning on the 52 Tiger blog, which started with this observation.

“I’ve noticed an interesting shift in blogging. In short, there’s a trend moving away from hyper-focused niche blogs, back to what I’d call “personality” blogs. It makes me think of when I started writing online in 2000, and I like it.”

I agree. My observation is that bloggers have, in the past two years, started to blur the edges of their niches and let their own voice ring through more clearly. Many bloggers have made the decision to be less one dimensional and more human.

The Slash Reality

The problem with the whole myth of the personal brand is that people are not really like brands at all – at least, not the interesting ones; the ones we really admire, the ones we want to kick back and have a beer with, invite to our dinner parties or the ones with whom we fall in love.

People, are far more complex and embody many more contradictions than a brand could ever sustain.

As I’ve discussed in previous posts (Generation Slash and Generation Slash Revisited) many of us can no longer neatly label our work and place it in a single category or niche.

Chase Jarvis, for example, is a professional photographer and also one of my favourite bloggers. Chase’s blog has all the characteristics of a professional blog, but, you also get a lot of Chase’s own personality and voice ringing through. And, increasingly, his blog is embracing topics and interests outside of photography. The next episode of Chase Jarvis Live (a free vidcast) will feature actor/director/musician/curator/environmentalist/entrepreneur, Adrian Grenier, who is very much the embodiement of the Generation Slash trend.

Away From Content And Back To Writing

In the past year a number of “high profile” bloggers have confided to me that they are bored with the pro-blogging “game.” Writing often just to create traffic, with short, keyword-laden posts that do little other than score well on Google searches is not what motivated them to get into blogging in the first place.

There is a vast difference between filling your blog with content in order to generate traffic and writing because you simply have something to say.

I’m hopeful that more and more bloggers will let their personality shine through and focus less on the so-called rules for generating more traffic and search hits. The truth is that it’s very hard to really get noticed if you are playing the same game everyone else is playing and following the same (totally made-up) rules.

Increasingly the most influential blogs in any field are the ones that most clearly come from one, original and talented person being themselves. If you want your blog to stand out, help you build a following, make real connections with people and develop a reputation, then your best bet is to be yourself and let your personality filter through every part of your website and infuse it with originality.

And, anytime life hands you the opportunity to be sucessful by being yourself, it is a beautful thing.

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!

I wanted to be a photographer, not just a camera owner.

In these three years, I’ve photographed nomads in Northern India, pole dancers in Hong Kong, pierced Hindu devotees in Malaysia and families celebrating Day of the Dead by candlelight in Mexico. I’ve also spent a lot of time shooting natural landscapes, urban vistas and even a bit of live music.

And, this hasn’t just been an “amateur” experience. I’ve mounted a public exhibition, had photos featured in magazines and high profile websites as well as being contracted to shoot portraits and editorial pieces.

The Pro Thing

Today I’m standing where a lot of photographers have found themselves before; wondering what this all means and where to go from here. Perhaps it is not surprising there is a whole cottage industry built around helping photographers “go pro.”

And, in this time, I’ve carefully watched the way photographers position and brand themselves – the way they manage perception – from the subtle through to the outrageous.

For example; in the way I tell my story, I make it clear that I haven’t been doing this long and I don’t really have vast reserves of experience. However, I could tell the story a different way. After all, I did, albeit briefly, shoot a Rolleiflex as a kid. I also took some decent SLR photos on safari in Africa in my mid twenties. And, in-between, I shot a fair few rolls of Black & White. It’s not entirely untrue to say I have more than twenty years of experience in photography.

Except, of course, t’s not entirely true either. Telling the story any other way gives the impression that I know more than is actually the case. But, as a branding and marketing ploy, it could well be very effective!

The Teaching Thing

One direction I could go, is to get into teaching photography. A lot of photographers do it as a way to supplement their income. It’s not hard to find photographers out there with very little experience (and fairly ordinary portfolios) who have ebooks, videos and workshops to sell.

Not that I have any aversion to teaching. I taught guitar, on and off, for a decade. And, many of my fondest academic memories were of giving lectures, seminars and teaching in other, more informal situations. Nor do I have an aversion to chasing commercial opportunities (as long as they are the right ones).

The Kind Words Thing

I’ve been on four photography workshops now. In the last three of those I’ve wound up doing some informal teaching. It’s not been something I set out to do. But, as a consequence of isolation, either because the workshop leaders were unavailable (or unwilling to help), I’ve found myself answering a fellow participant’s questions and offering something from my shallow pool of experience.

All those fellow participants have emailed me later to thank me for my time and in conversation with them, they all suggested I think about teaching photography.

The But Thing

I have no doubt that the little help I could offer was useful, not because I’m anything special as a photographer, but because the whole photography thing hasn’t come easily to me. I’ve had to work at it and piece together my approach, from a wide range of experiences.

That’s not unusual for me – it’s been the same with everything I’m good at.

But, I still feel there’s a big gap between making sense, when I talk about my approach in photography and helping people find theirs. I don’t really have a systematic approach, there are huge gaps in my understanding of the art and I don’t feel anywhere near having technical mastery of the camera (certainly compared to the way I feel about guitar).

I’ve never been motivated to do something, just because I can. And, I have an aversion to adding my voice to the din of a noisy room. Just because I could teach photography, does not, in any way, feel like a compelling argument to actually go out and market myself as a teacher.

What I Can Offer

But, I’m not tin-eared to what my friends have said. I’ve been blessed with some very solid learning experiences, met (and photographed alongside) some amazing photographers and had the chance to try some amazing gear. It would be selfish not to share some of that.

Although, I’ve not always done a good job of sharing practical insights on this blog, I hope that you’ve found more “nuts & bolts” ideas that might help you create better images, or at least be inspired to get out there and shoot.

Honestly, I have no idea where this photographic adventure will take me. It’s already far exceeded any expectations I had back in 2009. One day I might change my mind. But, I doubt that will happen any time soon. For now, it’s “business” as usual.

Ian Ruhter has not only made his own camera and dived head first into reviving an antiquated art form (wet plate photography) he is doing it in a large, very expense and unique format. And, most importantly of all, his work looks stunning.

I don’t really want to say much about this. Just check out the video and leave your thoughts in the comments section below. And, don’t miss the part where he says that each exposure costs $500 – not each project, or each print, each exposure!

Then, while looking for examples to reference, I stumbled upon this live performance, by Simon & Garfunkel, of their classic song, The Sounds Of Silence. This short, masterful performance better addressed the issue than my 600-odd words ever could. So instead of reading another long blogpost, I ask you to take a couple of minutes to watch this clip.

“And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share”

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”

This week I welcomed a new camera into the studio, the Fuji X-Pro1. I’ll write a deeper review once I’ve had the chance to use this camera a little more. For now, I want to offer up a few images and initial impressions.

The 35mm f1.4 lens is sharp. I shot this image while playing with the autofocus and I’ve added an enlargement of the compressed air can, on the right side, so you can see the detail.

This is an image my daughter took (not bad composition for a ten year old), which shows the character of the camera and also the difficultly of shooting wide open with the sometimes jumpy autofocus.

The camera has three internal crop modes, regular 35mm, cinematic 16:9, which is fun to play with and also a 1:1 square crop which I will talk about in more depth in a future post. Here, I was playing with the 16:9 mode.

The camera also has a macro mode, though it seems to me that you have to shoot with the digital viewfinder to make it work. Still, the potential here is really enticing (and I love the background blur).

I love that the world is wild and untameable; that as much as I create sense and order in my life, mystery, decay and so-called imperfections will always seep in…

…and, I believe there is a beauty in that.

For some time now I’ve been working on a collaborative project with James Marsh, a Hong Kong based freelance film critic. Well, that project has now become a reality. I’d like to introduce you to, The Society For Film.

Our new podcast is a freewheeling conversation about film – old, new, mainstream and esoteric. We discuss recent releases, reissues of older films, the cinema-going experience, home theatre, film festivals and pretty much anything to do with film today.

As long term readers of this blog might know, I was seriously into academic film studies back in a previous life. The Society For Film represents my first big move back into the area of film criticism.

Moreover, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to produce a podcast for a few years now. It took a while to find a topic and format that worked well.

I consider myself very fortunate to be doing this in partnership with James, who is a knowledgeable and hard working film critic as well as being a really fun guy to hang out with.

It’s still early days. But, with five episodes (or dispatches as we like to call them) posted we are starting to find our feet. Our most recent podcast is an in-depth look at the 36th Hong Kong International Film Festival and is available both on The Society For Film website and via iTunes.

So, if you love film, then check out The Society For Film.

But, when it came time for my daughter to show me her work, she didn’t reach for a book in her school bag. Instead, she grabbed an iPad and showed me her iBook.

For this assignment, the kids had used Apple’s new iBooks Author programme to create little electronic books. They drew the artwork by hand, then scanned it and combined the images with their text in iBooks Author. It was a lot of fun to see my daughter’s hard work displayed in this format.

iBook Authorship

So, here was my daughter using the same software that Apple offers and recommends for publishers looking to sell eBooks on their online marketplace, iBookstore. In fact, it would only take a few simple steps for her to offer this book as a free download on the iBookstore.

Meanwhile, I, the so-called real writer in the family, having published newspaper, magazine and journal articles, having blogged for over ten years, having very nearly signed an old-school book contract, I had nothing to offer the iBookstore marketplace.

The i-Reality

Back when I was my daughter’s age. Publishing a book, starting a radio station, or recording your own album was unheard of. People did that, of course, but the costs were so high that you either needed serious wealth, or to be given an opportunity through a contract.

What some of did was simply mimic the professional approach in our own way; cheaply printing zones, selling independent music on tape, or blagging our way onto community radio.

In this digital age, the situation is totally different because the costs involved (what economists call the barriers to entry) have totally changed. Apple don’t even charge for iBooks Author, which is outrageous when you consider what similarly featured Desktop Publishing and Word Processing packages cost just a few years ago. Today we create, in our homes, with the same tools the “pros” use.

If there is one advantage kids in my daughter’s generation have over us it is this. They will not grow up with the idea that publishing depends on wealth or big business. They simply see it as a given that you make excellent work and share it with a global marketplace at the click of a button.

The rest of us are dammed to spending the our days trying to believe that is true and that the world changed so radically in our own lifetime.

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.