I believe that an artist is of his time, and that, even if you’re not using these techniques, it’s interesting to see what others are doing, and the legal issues that they face. (This is the first of three clips that make up the movie. To see it in its full, follow the link above.)
I was a little disappointed that the film doesn’t present an alternative view — legally, but mostly artistically.
For instance, in the opening sequence, there’s a clip of Ray Charles doing a very Ray-Charles-esque moan. I’m sure Ray spent significant time learning how to do that — getting the sound right, figuring out that he wasn’t Harry Belafonte, for instance, and that he could do that, and putting it to track. That moan, however brief, is a part of who he was, and, if you know his work, is immediately identifiable as such. Artistically, why is it okay to take that from him, without any consent, and use it in whatever mish-mash of meaning the current artist is trying to create?
I know that we’re all standing on the shoulders of giants, and the movie presents that idea. The current music scene wouldn’t be what it was if artists didn’t learn from the artists before them. But in past ages, a musician would learn a technique, adopt it to their own work, and then decide whether they wanted to or could use that. (I can’t moan like Ray Charles, but I can moan. What does it feel like when I do it? Steve Winwood is pretty clearly channeling Ray in ‘Gimme Some Lovin”, but it’s now his own.) In that exploration, the artist becomes better at his craft, and, eventually, develops his own style.
But mashups seem like power without discipline or understanding to me. The artist is borrowing Ray Charles’ moan without the price of learning or experiencing what that means or any real ability to make it their own. It’s just a cool beat. It feels like it might be great the first time — reinventing the past! finding new dimensions in old work! the startling juxtaposition! — but the 10th? The 10,000th?
And what’s the purpose? Do artists make mashups just because they sound good? That seems fun, but ultimately hollow. Is the music of our current culture really just about the beat? This seems like the basest description of music to me, however immediately enjoyable. If so, what does that say about us? Where does the mashup artist present his own voice?
Is this entire field of music just about the cultural connection? “You and I — we have a past! Because we both watched The Brady Bunch!”
I suppose there’s an argument to be made that it’s like jazz — riffing on existing themes and ideas. But, again, there’s a discipline and knowledge there that doesn’t seem to exist in this form.
I also think there’s a slope — it’s one thing to borrow a beat, and do something on top of it. It’s another to make your work largely predicate on that of others.
I am completely open to being educated on this. — Bring out your mashups that rise above the source.
Fantasy author Jim Hines wondered whether a lot of the common wisdom of being published — “you have to sell short stories first”, “you have to have an in with the publisher”, “fame and fortune awaits the published author!” — were true.
So he wrote a survey, got 246 published authors to return the result(!), and published his findings.
If you’re thinking about writing a novel (particularly a genre novel), it’s deeply informative.
For instance…
Combining the agent and publisher questions, a total of 140 — more than half — made that first professional novel sale with no connections to either the publisher or the agent.
Here’s the percentage breakdown:
Met editor at a convention: 17% Knew editor personally: 3% Referred to editor: 11% Met agent at a convention: 11% Knew agent personally: 4% Referred to agent: 21% Did not use an agent: 25%
The Rolling Stone’s Exile on Main Street is one of my favorite albums of all time. To me, it sounds like what a wild, reckless weekend should be: full of sloppy, late nights; words that are true in the moment; strutting and flirting; good friends coming and going, seemingly at random; and the biggest Sunday morning coming down ever, tagged with a round of redemption.
As, apparently, with all good things of my youth, it’s been dug up and reissued, repackaged, re-engineered with modern technology, and now with the stuff that we weren’t sure you’d enjoy the first time around!
The artist gets to explore, quickly, many ideas. He practices starting. He can fail with some impunity. (“I had to do it fast, so it’s not as graceful as I’d like…”) He can succeed, and bring the work along, perhaps at a later date.
It tightens up the palette, makes the artist consider what’s truly important to him, both in terms of production and theme, and brings forth that constant in a creative person’s life: “what now?” And, just like always, but a little bigger in the heat of the sprint, the clock is ticking.
It’s even better with a group! — Sprint, support, share.
And then there’s this story about the value of quantity over quality, from David Bayles and Ted Orland’s Art and Fear:
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
Sprint! It’s fun.
I bring all of this up because the latest, most visible creative sprint — a magazine produced in 48 hours — is out now. The magazine (“48 Hour Magazine”) was photographed, illustrated, and edited in two days, from 1500 submissions from around the world. The first issue is appropriately themed “Hustle.” There’s a preview at that link.
Posted: May 12th, 2010 | Author:dave | Filed under:good read, writing | Comments Off
Steven Pressfield starts by wondering why we love amnesia stories, and works his way into the act of learning one’s own voice.
I have a theory that charisma arises from authenticity. When a writer has found his voice, when a singer has discovered her style, they have power. We feel it. It draws us to them. Why? Because we want it too. We want to be ourselves they way they are themselves. One of the reasons wild animals are so compelling is that they are entirely themselves. They can’t be otherwise.
Economist and writer Jeremy Rifkin put together a great presentation on the value of empathy. It’s full of information and fun to watch. In it, he presents the idea that empathy is nothing less than the thing that will ultimately save us or doom us.
The good news? For most of it, he’s talking about math at its most basic form — counting. Counting can change your life, and it’s easy!
If you are overwhelmed by data, try counting just one thing. You’d be amazed at how much you can learn just by tracking, for example, the number of people who buy something whenever you send out an email announcing your new art for sale (you do this, right?).
Posted: May 9th, 2010 | Author:dave | Filed under:good read, music | Comments Off
Independent musician Dayna Kurtz is trying to raise money to get an album that she released in Europe released in the United States. She’s started a kickstarter project to do this. The video on that page is really well done.
Rather incredibly to me, she got a piece of hate mail in response this project.
Here’s a nice write-up from Hugh MacLeod on why you should love what you do. As usual with his writing, he tends to veer to the negative example, but it’s not without truth.
As the traditional record business has turned topsy-turvy, artists as well as startup companies are developing ways to finance the making of music today. A couple of European websites, Sellaband.com and Slicethepie.com, act as revenue-generating conduits between musicians and fans.
There’s also a nice video interview with independent musician Sam Phillips, who’s doing it on her own.
Fantasy author 
There’s a lot of value in the artistic sprint — “quick! 
Independent musician 