#33

My first name is extremely common and can be interpreted as a less common surname, while my last name is often misinterpreted as a less common first name. And it feels like a tag that someone else put on me, not something I chose myself.

I also wanted to have at least some symbolic anonymity and maybe a little sense of mystery.

I used a couple of other artist names and a handful of online names (some of which are still active) before going to Starthief. Which isn’t perfect, but works for me.

If I ever drastically change the kind of music I’m making, I might choose another name for it. There are a lot of great options. I like naming things. :slight_smile:

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#34

When I first started using this moniker on the internet it was two things, an obscure Star Wars reference, and it is an extension of my actual name. The reference has at times made me cringe but I’ve stuck with it. I’ve come to think of it as ‘me’ and somewhat anonymous at the same time. It also has kind of an open ended quality to it so that I’m not hemmed in to a specific genre or style. I once considered just switching to my name but decided against it due to the ‘seriousness’ that that implies. This is, after all, what I do to have fun.

#35

My father, when he was making a living as a gigging musician in the 50s, used a stage name because no one ever got his last name right when introducing the band.

I’ve always used my given name, not a stage name, because I just feel like me when I’m performing - not a different persona.

Band names seem to need to happen because the group needs a name beyond it’s members (ABBA and Peter, Paul and Mary not withstanding). So I have my share of those.

Web services demand noms-du-net since they don’t seem keen on dealing with the crazy reality of human given names. So I have too many of those - which really don’t like.

Domain names are really the new frontier in naming! I do have a nice one: “electric.kitchen” - While the name of my band for the last year - since the band is in flux - I’ve decided it’s too good a domain name - and I’ll just keep it and use it as a meta-project under which to hang all my work.

#36

That might be a genre thing.

(Pop stars and singer/songwriters often use their own name, and are rarely what you’d call academic intellectual music.)

#37

Yes totally right. I was indeed only referring to the type of music I’m into, not trying to make a universal rule out of it.

#38

I love naming things, bands, albums, songs…

I’ve released records (see Apple Music etc) under my own name Ed Blomquist as well as under a number of band names: Underwater Airport, Rivers and Skies, Nulmatica…

Other band names: The Free Range Experiment, Astronauts in Grave Peril, Masked Men…

#39

I started of using z-car in the 90’s but I had a little logo of a letter z and a police car. 4 track recordings mixed live onto cdr. Z-cars was among other things a tv show about the time when the british bobby first became equipped with cars. It was supposedly ground breaking in its day but in my memory it was a bit crap… but I liked that crappy brit tv thing.
When I tried to use it for ebay and other kind of web identities it was already taken. There were lots of z cars and lots of zcar bands mostly in America. I gave it a weird spelling, a new made up word yet un-claimed which I thought sounded a bit mystical and Turkish. As I am quite an un-mystical person (and not Turkish either) I liked the crap disguise of it…and it has stayed with me. As it’s just a made up word I don’t think it brings much preconceptions to the music. It is entirely possible that it actually means something in a non English context……I do play around with back identities of the persona…what if I was a retired policeman making hip electronica disguised as a fairground fortune teller in a turban? Mostly for my own amusement.
I have since came across a few zedkah’s since, one was a Czech guy on Myspace. Who I messaged and we both loved Zoviet France…. It was a weird synchronicity thing. I think there was a French hip hop group as well but I never chatted with them…
Like the toaster tattoo I don’t think I could remove it now it would leave blisters.
I am toying with a new project called UR the Hypnotists GF I can’t work out if it’s a terrible name. It fits the music and has its own fictional backstory.

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#40

UR the Hypnotists GF = great fun!

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#41

for me, the name was a very necessary branding choice, as my “day job” as a media composer is its own brand which uses my real name, and most of the work I do is with animated kids stuff, advertisements, etc…about as far and incongruous as you can be from “experimental ambient” music, or whatever you want to call it.

the name itself is based pretty obviously on the word “enso,” a couple of which I’ve had tattooed on my arm for a while now since before the name. from there I just adjusted it into something a bit more distinct and aesthetically pleasing, and also working in the first letter of my name (Nick). plus the philosophy and general aesthetic of enso seemed to vibe well with the intended project. I especially like when I get to write it with the macron like: n-Sō :nerd_face:

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#43

My project name is from an Iain Banks novel - my real name (which you can trivially find out should you care - I intermingle my project name and my real name in several places on the internet) is kind of boring I guess. I think I cared about names/symbols/hidden meanings & connections more when I was younger - now it’s just about the music - names don’t really draw me in so much anymore. They certainly used to.

I took a long time off music for having children and starting a startup so my project name became my online name for a time.

I do worry about the whole making things that are really stylistically different under that project name and I have another project name ‘Cadaestic’ that I use for more beat oriented stuff

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#45

I’ve used many names over the years. My own name, my initials (mn-l), been in about a dozen bands, and most recently use New Tendencies for my solo electronic music. I considered just using my name, but my first name is really common and my last name is really long, so it’s not great for publicity. I also like the aesthetic trappings of choosing a name that is meaningful for the project, but not getting too attached to it (one of the benefits of being rather obscure).

#46

I’ve never used my real name on a release mainly because Mohammed Ashraf is such a generic name where I come from (Egypt) and in most countries around it. Another thing is that I like making music that falls under different genres (ambient, drone, electronic, shoegaze…etc.) and I feel that if I release an album of a certain genre under my own name, I will be defined by that genre, which I am not comfortable with. The last reason for which I choose not to use my name is seeing how people react to anything that sounds remotely Arab or Muslim (it might be all in my head though).

So far, I have used Pie Are Squared for everything I’ve released. It’s a fun name that I don’t feel infers a certain sound so it gives me freedom to do whatever I want. However, I think I am going to retain Pie Are Squared for ambient/drone and then create Piers Q. Red for electronica and RedSquareShapes for my shoegaze/post-rock stuff. I settled on those 2 names because they sound similar to the original name so everything remains connected to each other in one way or another.

3 Likes
#47

I recently started using Unknown Known (well, I’ve put things on soundcloud under that name for a couple years, but only recently started making something like an effort to, like, have other people hear the music I’ve put on soundcloud, etc.).

I like that it’s a little bit of a subversion of that Donald Rumsfeld line, and the formalist in me is delighted to have filled in the fourth quadrant of that framework. I’m interested in generative processes, and the name also tries to get at the result of chaining a few simple things together for unexpected results.

I also played some things on a friend’s car stereo and one of his reactions was “Oh, that’s actually your name, I thought it was just filling in ‘Unknown Artist!’” Which I hadn’t really though through, but I love as a bit of an evocation of random mp3 imports into Itunes getting tagged as “unknown artist.”

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#48

I’m going to release a track I produced. I want to release this under the same name as I’ve been using as internet/forum name for the last 15 years. But since I’m not a native English speaker I have no idea how this name is experienced by people that are native.
It’s my name Shiftr … I’ve chosen this name some 20 years ago after looking for a name and mainly just liking the letters and the sound of it. Also for me it’s a kind of abbreviation of shifter. It has some feeling of movement in it for me. But i’ve also been told once (by a native English speaker) that if you delete one letter you have something completely different.
So what feel or connotation does my forum name have for you? Is it positive or negative? Something completely different?

#49

my long running moniker is hyena, it comes from my writing tag (yen) to which i added h and a some 16 years ago because i was almost 100% producing music with samples, so the idea of a scavenging animal sounded pretty good. now its a bit strange because i’m vegan since 10 years, so a vegan scavenger i suppose :smiley:
i also use my real name for stuff that doesn’t fit into the hyena aesthetics that built up during the years (breakcore,industrial,drone,noise,mainly darkside music) so that i’m free to express other feelings and ideas.

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#50

I used and still use some nick only for specific projects, ie KHN’SHS is my one man band, drone only, solo project. Everything else come from my own name and nothing else
To be completly honest I found nick or battle names boring these days

#51

this is a really interesting topic for me because i actually do everything via an alias. i’ve invented a person and that person is who i am when i begin to write music. it is a way of defining my musical self and separating that part of me from the self people see day to day. for me, säde mikkonen is the peace and the serenity i feel when im engrossed in writing music. säde mikkonen is the purest form of my creative self. im considering inventing a different person soon to take on a different project. i don’t like to associate my real self with my music, but instead allow my music to exist on someone else’s shoulders. säde mikkonen is not my name, but i am säde mikkonen.

inventing this person (their life story, where they were born, their age, etc) was a very fun project for me. it was very rewarding because for the longest time i felt that my real name was too tied to my music/a specific style and i felt like i wasn’t allowed to write the music i really wanted to anymore. becoming säde opened up a slew of avenues for me. the name was tied to no indicated style or person that had an audience to cater a specific sound to. i was free from what creatively constricted me for so many years; my name.

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#52

I also feel movement in your forum name and don’t believe there’s any need to worry what would happen if you changed a letter. I like it. (I’m a native English speaker in the USA.)

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#53

20 characters of thanks a lot!

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#54

My username looks like leetspeak but it started off as what my first name would be if I was a droid. I guess there should probably be a dash in there somewhere.