Namelessness

JES · 2024-01-02T17:36:08.921Z

zbs:

If you were to start over right now and learn how to make electronic music from scratch, what would you do differently?

I’ve been playing music for over 43 years so “starting over” means different things at different stages.

Since my experience on bass shaped my later entry to electronic music, I think about that. I am left handed so I always wonder what would it would have been like if I’d started playing bass guitar left handed instead of right handed. But since I started on upright at 10, that wasn’t an option–“left handed upright bass” wasn’t an option in school at the time. I also wonder what my life would be like if I’d actually gone to music school.

If we are talking about synths, there are many points of inflection. 20th century things I’d do differently: I wish I’d taken a class on analog synthesis when I had the option back in the day. Would have sped up my learning later, except that I didn’t know to be interested.
I have no regrets regarding my discovery of granular synthesis around 2002 – that was fantastic.

21st century things I’d do differently: My most commonly given regret is not starting Eurorack with a single-manufacturer system or really even understanding the incompatibilities built into Eurorack. I think something without those incompatibilities would have saved me time and money though it would have required more initial outlay.

No regrets about “music career” stuff as it’s my avocation and not my day job and I’m happy with that.

anon60283851 · 2024-01-02T17:45:46.200Z

JES:

I also wonder what my life would be like if I’d actually gone to music school.

You’d have ended up being a software developer.

Source: did it so you wouldn’t have to!

eblomquist · 2024-01-02T17:53:51.122Z

WilliamHazard:

I think, in a similar vein, I would also spend more time talking to people about our lives and less time reading about gear.

This is the heart of llllllll to me. While there is no shortage of smart people on the web happy to share technical insights, there seem to be far fewer willing to open their hearts to connect with others on a soul level. I’m grateful for all the tech advice I’ve received here, but that pales in comparison to the deep stuff.

Thank you to everyone who is willing to go there, hopefully you know who you are.

JES · 2024-01-02T19:22:04.572Z

anon60283851:

You’d have ended up being a software developer.

Source: did it so you wouldn’t have to!

Phew! Dodged a bullet then. I don’t mind a little kludgy coding here and there but software development is for sure not my calling.

_marimo · 2024-01-02T22:50:33.991Z

I second this! Also, Ed we spoke a couple (few now?) years back when I was designing a community patch book for Mannequins modules and that sort of spirit of this site and the people who gravitate towards it are the reason I keep coming back.

Those patch books are somewhat of a moot point now that the technical maps are all fleshed out, but it was a fun time regardless.

eblomquist · 2024-01-02T23:01:51.964Z

Dave,

That was fun!

There is a lot of the “pay it forward” spirit here…

It feels good to connect with each other. I’ve been trying to do that with some of the Boston area folks, although being still under the shadow of Covid hasn’t helped much. Lunch outdoors in nice weather is a joy

I’ve been trying to do some periodic zoom hangs, both group and one to one, like you and I did. I actually prefer the depth of one to one, but group hangs can be fun too…

I highly recommend folks try to make connections with new (or existing) friends here…

They may be virtual connections or maybe in person, but no matter what, it’s really nice to decrease whatever sense of isolation or loneliness one might be feeling… And to increase the sense of camaraderie is wonderful

_mgb · 2024-01-03T01:02:21.447Z

anon60283851:

You’d have ended up being a software developer.

How true this is. I went to music school and am currently a software developer. Seems like a common pattern.

I do sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I’d gone to school for computer science. but oh well, we can only move forward.

n9n9n9 · 2024-01-03T15:35:06.024Z

I’d have travelled more. Through my 20s I didn’t have a lot of money and I tended to spend absolutely all of it on gear – but I couldn’t afford good gear so I bought shit gear. I would have been ok with just my sax, guitar and amp – nothing that I bought really made anything about my music better. But travel would have made everything better, including my music.

And now I’m 50 with 2 kids, a job, etc – sure I can travel, but it isn/t really the same.

anon45924993 · 2024-01-03T15:40:04.538Z

If I did it all over again I’d probably spend less time with music and more time with plants. It’s not really a problem though, I’m just making that adjustment now instead of earlier.

Edit:

Was just reflecting some more on this and I think it might just be a seasons of life thing. It made sense to focus on music when I was young and socially gregarious. My connection to community is a more quiet and contemplative relationship now. Mostly I’m just trying to give some gray haired ladies some private joy with the help of a few hundred rose bushes. And that takes a lot of time and effort!

misuba · 2024-01-03T16:34:48.089Z

I would go back and start by learning how to mix. It’d have been miserable, probably, but it would have saved a lot of frustration with the gap between my sounds and the “good, real sounds” that are on “real records.”

soysos · 2024-10-02T11:57:14.501Z

I miss this thread.
Popping something in to maybe spark some new discussions here.
We just moved our entire operation to a newly developed space. 2 movement and 2 sound studios. Right now I’m thinking a lot about how I want to distribute sources in the studio space (XLR and TSR sockets) to mic and line inputs on my 40 channel console.
Really thinking about concepts of workflow. It’s a good time to reflect on the ways I can and want to create. Of course there’s lots of gear, but it’s really thinking about I/O, sends, returns, mic preamps, monitoring, lines of sight, movable work surfaces, sync, etc …
This will be the 6th and final (!) location of my studio since around 1988.

eblomquist · 2024-10-02T12:10:48.965Z

Of course you will hopefully see a lot of llllllll folks booking time there while passing through town on tour!

sandettie · 2024-10-02T14:22:19.915Z

We’re enduring a heat wave, in a home not equipped for such weather. I don’t have the bandwidth to set up any hardware, apart from each piece of hardware being its own little space heater.

I turn to the laptop! It’s wild what I can coax out of found sounds by something as rudimentary as playing them at different speeds, or phasing repetitions, to say nothing of granularizing or other processing.

There are so many resources trivially available to do cool stuff. My challenge is to focus enough to follow a thread to somewhere interesting.

xmacex · 2024-10-12T11:28:04.536Z

I’ve been thinking, what would be nameless names of the drum tracks? I mean, it is arbitrary¹ that they are in the order they are although I would never take any issue that kick comes first as the most important percussive element (some other people might).

But what would you suggest to unname the canonical quad of

Kick
Snare/clap
Hat
Percussion

to abstract/purify/heal/progress from reactionary naming based on the silly rock drum kit, while retaining their assumed¹ functions?

Maybe

Kick (not “drummer kicks the drum”, but instead “sound kicks the dancer”)
Energy splash
Counterpoint
Weird bonus sound

Or further

Rhythm energy
More energy
Even more energy
Weird energy

Or

Kick in the chest
Kick in the face
Kick on the cheeks
Kick on the knee

¹ read: “cultural”

soysos · 2024-10-12T12:08:37.866Z

Well in the spirit of namelessness I would think there’s nothing wrong with defining the frequency ranges and general functions of the percussion voices. I do think I prioritise the bass/low end first, so in reguard to energy there’s only so much room to work with.
Snare/clap/tom like voices I would think take on a certain function and cymbals occupying their own space too.
Rambling a bit, but hopefully y’all get the idea.

xmacex · 2024-10-12T12:23:16.773Z

Great! I was thinking of this (again!) not long ago while Speedy J was delivering an absolute teardown at the club in the early hours. Loud, sweaty, dark, blinking. The function of what might traditionally in the regressive drum kit vocabulary be called an “open hat” and was more like “your hat is on fire”.

The most important drum
Second most important drum
Third most important drum
Fourth most important drum

That takes a lot of space on a front panel as a GUI, for namelessness. Oh well, a price to pay.

Or maybe drum dialectics:

Delivers the point
Cheers on
Makes room
Plants the seed of doubt

Unz
Khaa
Tsi
Klonk

Jendrik · 2024-10-12T12:31:04.748Z

under, off, sprinkle conservative.

alanza · 2024-10-12T12:47:54.227Z

personally i think redefining “kick” “snare” and so on is against the spirit of namelessness. a kick drum is not a brand name product.

xmacex · 2024-10-12T12:52:00.335Z

Fair! Maybe I was taking this too far/sideways from generic names to namelessness (no such thing), rather than proper names to generic names…

Kicky
Snary/clappy
Hatty
Percy

soysos · 2024-10-12T14:07:02.690Z

Maybe I like to think in regards to percussion voices as:
Lo - Kick + Bass
Mid Noise - Snare + Claps
Mid Res - Toms, Congas + Etc
Hi - Cymbals + Metalic

There just feels to be a natural balance of those elements that feels right to me. Of course everyone’s own tastes may swing somewhere between sparse/open to dense/busy, but in dance music of all kinds especially in the low end there’s only so much room.