I recorded the Classics Series, Frank Zappa Apostrophe/Over-nite Sensation program to my DVR as it was shown via the VH1 Classics cable channel a couple of nights ago.

Wow! I used to listen to Frank Zappa quite a lot during my high school days, but I suspect I didn’t really appreciate Apostrophe as much as now when I’m older.

If there was an artist that was so opposite of the classical ‘rock&rock’ archetype artist, this is it. Frank Zappa was really a composer that made use of rock music as his medium.

Watching and listening to programs such as this one makes me go back to the studio and really make use of arrangements, triads, non-standard tonality changes, scales. I miss all that stuff after a longer stint doing techno productions….

PS: If you ever have the stamina to watch this movie from beginning to end, Frank Zappa’s Baby Snakes movie is very, very interesting. Not to speak of the concert scenes, too..

Another thing to get the creativity up is to experiment with other musicians. You could join various jams, craigslist is a good source of finding what’s going on. Or then ask around, or find out what’s going on.

The nice thing with playing other musicians is that you really never know the outcome. Which is for me very liberating — after living years and years inside a production studio and controlling every aspect of the production.

Sometimes the whole of it all sounds very inspiring, compared with you controlling every aspect.

As a DJ, it is not so hard to hook together two systems with MIDI synchronization. In the case of Ableton Live, read the manuals that has the info. You only need MIDI in/out ports on your audio card/box. Then one could play tracks and the other annotates them, and you could switch roles. Or even more fancy, do a totally free-form jam with dance tracks.

It is the unexpected result that is the interesting aspect when working with other musicians. It’s fun to fine-tune a performance, as well. But for me, the interesting thing is when multiple musicians get together and have a good way of communicating and creating music on the spot.

This is part two of how to get the mojo back, creativity, inspiration, you know that feeling where you really are in the flow and want to make music.

For me it was to get a bass guitar and a bass amp? Why? Well, I got recently to a point when doing digital dance music where I realized that most of my time I spend with polishing and fixing audio material on a screen, mostly using my own loop snippets. Even worse, taking out nuances such as sloppy playing and so on. It makes the music exact, but there’s no breathing in it.

In addition, mostly with keyboards you really don’t get that much variation across a song played, especially if you use copy-paste to line out song structures.

With a bass guitar, I could have small timing parts that I deliberately create in order to get to the groove pocket. I could use my fingers with all kinds of variations to change the sound. I could put in different strings, experiment with my amp simulator in my Line 6 LD150, and so on… I kind of missed that part.

In addition, it’s fun playing with other musicians, of all kinds. Sitting by myself in a studio became somewhat an isolated experience. The sum of it all is sometimes much more interesting than the single-person total control of a production.

There’s nothing wrong to expand and learn playing guitars and so on. I’m an ex guitar-player, even ex bass session player (used to do hundreds of gigs back in college days), but it’s been 25+ years since I last seriously played bass. Anyway, getting back to bass playing has  been fun, indeed.

Phew. This was intense. I was drowning in a bigger software project, but finally we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. So sorry for the long delay concerning new postings.

I will actually write a short series of ‘getting the mojo back.’ I think this scenario happens to a lot of artists, from time to time. For me it was a combination of working long days and weekends and not having enough energy to work on something completely different in the evenings, as well as another thing I will mention in a later posting.

Anyway, how to get the mojo back if you feel your creativity has stagnated, or you just feel you are on the wrong track and nothing happens?

One way I solved this was to once again rip in all my tracks from every CD I had, but this time I was selective and only ripped in material that I felt was special and different. So most of the mix CDs were excluded. While adding in classical music, old rock music, soul, reggae and so on was something I wanted to do.

Then via iTunes I just dumped it all into an iPod and set the iPod in shuffle mode. Yes, it sounds like Kent of all the people finally got the idea behind iTunes/iPods, but for me it was the concept of hearing Schumann one minute, Bjork the next, then Rush followed by XTC and a little bit Fixx and Simple Minds, and then Swayzak. Those kinds of odd combinations made me appreciate all kinds of musical ideas, and get new ideas how to progress with new productions.

More mojo stuff in the next posting!

My wife wanted me to make another mix for running purposes. That it inself is usually a challenge, as runners, depending on their pace, like something like 80-95 bpm. Finding tracks in that range that are not ballads is a tough job, unless you use the 160-180bpm tracks and those are super-fast. In addition she wanted music from the eighties, from the European New Romantic period (Simple Minds et rest.)

So I fired up my newly installed iTunes collection and looked through material. It was actually very interesting. For example, the Ultravox Rage in Eden album had bpm values from 73bpm to 150bpm, and many tracks were 140bpm or more. In many cases the tracks sounded faster than the actual bpm value, using all kinds of classical tricks such as syncopation.

And this was true of many other similar albums of this time.

Now, it seems we are stuck in the 128bpm rot in the concurrent electronic music, especially in the dance music world. Maybe it’s a practical issue concerning the dancing audience and having the option to increase the bpm during the mix. But it’s for me a little bit sad that we don’t really make use of various tempos in music today. It seems few dare to change this model. Anyway, especially if someone is working on an album, I would strongly recommend to just break all the rules and use tempos from 60pm up to 180bpm. That would be refreshing. Now, having even radical tempo changes along the track would be even more intriguing.

Classical composers used tempo changes, even microscopic ones, along their compositions. While we are locked to a fixed tempo, ack.

See this, it is of course Autechre. Otherwise Myspace pages for many bands and artists are either totally confusing, but Autechre makes use of that.

In general, if a web page is hard to understand and use, it will mean that few will bother exploring the page…

Anyway, Autechre is soon out with a new album, hurray. They’ve done all, glitch music, minimalism, and so on, a long long time ago.

Actually their Wikipedia entry had a very interesting note:

In response to comments about their unique sound, Autechre argue that given the incredible range of tools available to modern composers, especially in the electronic genres, it is incomprehensible that any band should “sound like” any other band.

Yes!

Fabric, the London based night club, just announced their podcast, so I was curious to listen to the first one. Not what I expected, at all, it was an interesting journey to the history of blues and forward in time, so why not, it’s good to listen to all kinds of music.

Phlow is an online blog that has articles about netlabels, and they just started a podcast series. This one actually sends out single songs most of the days, one at a time, so it’s like getting a single a day from their selection. It’s a good idea, and I suspect other podcasts that send out netlabel music might jump on this same concept.

Filter27 is another electronic music blog, and they also have a podcast, they don’t seem to send out so much music, once a month or so, but the DJ mixes are very radical and interesting.

I have my own Something/Everything podcast, the idea was to dump out music from my collection of material that I put together every month, but of course I’m running behind with it all, have two EP releases I need to get in place, and get BioWaves 005, now a one hour series. But I have not forgotten this other one, so as they say in the business: stay tuned.

I’m afraid this will sound like a grumpy old man writing entries how things were better long time ago (it was not), anyway, had to release some steam, and if you think this is the opposite, feel free to quote.

For a longer time I’ve now listened to dance tracks where a producer is using a female singer, and then a remixer goes in and does more remixing.

What then happens is that the poor female singer is sampled with a tiny snippet, let’s say 1/16 bar, and that one is used as a stuttering effect across the whole remix. Most likely the original singer is very talented, and the lyrics might be very good, but there’s no chance to hear it.

Trust me, if you have a good singer, male or female, singing for your track, let her or him be heard with their true voice. By the way, why are there so few male singers on contemporary tracks, Underworld being one exception, and look how popular Underworld is?

Secondly. A lot of contemporary minimalist tracks indeed pave the way for new, interesting music, especially on the netlabel releases. However, I’ve heard enough tracks with that vinyl emulation/distortion mode, the one where it sounds like the track is slowly dissipating into tiny bits. We don’t need any more that kind of sound, it was originally just bad to hear it, so with today’s excellent music systems, please, I rather like to hear a really good production than something that is deliberately crippled just so it’s cool and sounds like the rest of similar vinyl distortion emulation stuff.

Hmm. What else? Oh, the use of arpeggiators. I’m falling to the trap myself over and over again. Arpeggiators are nice, but the stiff 1/16 scale up-down thingie, that’s been around since the 1970:ies, nothing new, nothing exciting. If arpeggiators are used, do something totally unexpected.

There’s maybe more, but I better stop. I like any kind of music that dares to be different. If someone emulates an existing artist or style, their chance of being recognized just diminishes, as the sound will not pop out from various mixes, radio shows, podcasts, shows and so on. Especially if the production is using a cliche effect, then it’s usually hard for me to get any more listening time.

The Dance Department Beats To Go is another podcast series I’m listening to from time to time. Yes, it it sometimes cheezy, but this is one quick way to find out what the hot sound is just now, and I can’t complain when the guest mixes have been from Nathan Fake, John Holden, Richie Hawtin and others that I really like.

The DJ, Dennis Ruyer, usually ends the podcast with a historical dance track, so those are also fun to follow.

This is the RSS feed link in case you want to subscribe to it, or check out an episode or two.

On a sad note, Joe Zawinul passed on from this life. Anyone who was involved in the early days of synthesizers in jazz and popular music, he was one of the main influences. And he was doing gigs and music up to the last moment — so if there’s one inspiration taken from this, it is to just continue day by day, and don’t stop.

If you don’t know his music, visit iTunes, or get a CD from your local store with him, or his band, Weather Report. And get inspired to get up to the same musical level as he achieved.

See this posting at filter27. Tony Wilson was one of those important movers and shakers in this electronic music business. His gutsy approach to release tracks and promote artists, as well as be influential in starting the big club scene in England is something to honor. There’s something amazing about people like Tony Wilson, who just did things to see what the outcome would really be.

The movie 24 Hour Party People was sometimes over the top, but it’s worth watching just to get the feeling of how things happened and the state of mind during that period.

I was listening to the dedication mix this morning, and it was indeed interesting to take a historical trip through the very early days of electronic dance music, and especially compare it with the material done today. Boy, I didn’t remember that the clap sound was so up-front mixed at that time period. Or that the influences between fast hip-hop and electro dance music cross-pollinated, mostly thanks to Artur Baker, another influential electronic music producer.

Anyway, I salute to the person who was influential in giving us Blue Monday, and much more.

I started to place information in the links section of this web site with links to various resources I consult on a daily basis. To start with I will add various podcasts I’m listening to.

I’m really into podcasting nowadays, of many reasons. Think of it as radio but much, much better. It’s not tied to a certain time, so I need to open up the radio or net stream, it downloads when it’s available. Also, new episodes will show up in iTunes over time. I could drag these to any media player (i.e. iPod) I use, or then just play it on the computer, or even burn a CD if I need to. And the extended podcasting format makes it possible to embed images and links, so if those are available, I could find more information about artists this way.

I’ve been listening to the Resident Advisor podcast to soon six months, and it’s a very good program. Each podcast has a producer/DJ doing a mix with very contemporary music, and the quality so far has been very good, where good for me is an intriguing mix — not how well someone blends together two tracks, or using overplayed tracks, that’s boring for me.

Examples of recent Resident Advisor podcasts I’ve listened to is Dixon (funky, funky!), Vince Watson (well, trance is alive after all), Chateu Fligth (hurrah for those who experiment), Hector (what a surprise), and many others.

Chopping Heads /with Tes by Funkstorung! Here’s the emusic entry. That’s where experimental hip-hop and rap should go, instead of the commercial bing/gold-chain stuff today.

Long time ago, on another planet, when I used to DJ in the early 80ies, it was common to play both fast disco tracks, early day electronic house music, as well as rap/hiphop. The hiphop tracks were not always below 100bpm, too, so the audience could dance. Those days are gone.

Actually, I will check out the new Beastie Boys album. The Mix-Up, that is arriving very shortly. They again play instruments on this record, instead of using samples. It’s even an instrumental only record… There’s a video of “The Gala Event” over at amazon.

Beastie Boys are nice, they are pushing the boundaries. I also saw that you could download their a capellas at their web site, very nice!

Anyway, I think even in a supposedly stagnated musical realm like rap music and hip hop, there’s always someone who will push the boundaries, and then that shows up on my own radar screen.

Here’s a snapshot of an Ableton Live project that is maybe over two years old that I opened up tonight, just for fun. Lots of edits and loops, or what… And only 15 tracks in the whole 23+ minute track. I used to reuse tracks all over the place at that time.

This is from the period when I did over twenty minutes long tracks, or songs, kind of experimenting how a symphony was put together with tons of loops.

Some of the loops had crazy edits, like fast loops and deliberate warp point to make things slow down, or speed up. I think I will try to use that in new productions — forgot about that trick. Move the warpers around in tracks, to crazy places, and see how it sounds.

This project was even so old that Complex warp mode didn’t exist then, so I switched over everywhere to use complex mode with non-drum material.

It was fun and icky looking at the mastering done then. I changed a lot of settings to make it more crispy, good old Izotope Ozone and Hi pass filters everywhere. It’s good to always go back and see what was done long time ago, you always learn every day if you work with audio.

As for what should I do with these tracks, I still don’t know. Maybe release an EP with the material later this year. I need to think about it.

Something I’ve noticed for a while is the lack of using different keys in the same track. This is especially true of minimalist music, I guess it has to be minimalist on all levels. But it’s true of a lot of underground dance music — staying in the same key.

Hmm. There’s always something dynamic about switching keys in a song. The old pop-trick was to go up two semi-tones at the last chorus, it kind of elevated the chorus and gave it a more dynamic expression.

In classical music, the way playing with scales and especially keys is always fun, there’s no limit sometimes what composers did concerning even switching between minor and major keys across the whole composition. And speaking of Debussy, that’s a challenge concerning finding keys that are constantly in motion.

Anyway, I think contrasts are good, they are another spice to be used and not keep it hidden in the closet. Just now I’m working on DNA Tones, Part Three, and the the latter part of the track will have a key change that is six semitones up from the original place. I even use another bass line and sound in that part, just to have fun when composing tracks.

PS: This is yet another picture in my ‘blue cat’ period of photos…