PhotoDude.com

Fri. Oct 07, 2005

My Little Frontier

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that “I first thought it would be very self-indulgent for a rank amateur to ramble in my blog about what this ‘process’ has been like for me. But then I came to my senses and realized that rank amateurs rambling on subjects about which they have no expertise isn’t self indulgent … it is blogging!” However, I’ll be kind enough to move my rambling about music off the front page.

As I mentioned some time ago, I have no musical training whatsoever. Well, there was about three months of trumpet lessons in the fifth or sixth grade … but they didn’t take. My dad used to sing quite a bit, in the choir and even in a barbershop quartet. My sister is quite talented on the flute, and tutors to this day.

What happened to me? Well, before I even got my driver’s license, I’d become interested in radio. And that became how I “played” music. In fact, the happiest time in my eight years in radio wasn’t when I was the Big Dawg Program Director, it was when I was the Music Director, working the 6-10pm airshift.

I’d come in to work … about noon. Most people hated Mondays, but if you were Music Director, that was the day Santa arrived, nearly 52 weeks a year. All the new releases came in the mail that day from all the record companies. I’d spend the afternoon listening to the latest that had arrived, determine the station’s playlist, getting schmoozed by record company reps, break for dinner around 5, then do my airshift from 6-10pm. Being 21 years old at the time, at 10pm, the night was still young! It was perhaps the most purely carefree time of my life.

Anyway, that’s my history “playing” music. But I’ve always been someone who has to have a creative outlet, even when working in a “creative field.” I was the odd 7 year old who asked his parents if he could take oil painting lessons, and bless them, they said “OK.” I kept it up through high school, and I wasn’t exactly a prodigy. But I enjoyed it, and got something else from the experience.

When my parents set me up with some lessons, it was in an adult oil painting class on Saturday afternoons in the basement of a local art shop/gallery (in Oakland, NJ, in 1965, it might have been the only option). And I remember asking the guy who was teaching me what he did for a living. He basically told me, “This. Painting, and teaching painting.” At the age of seven, that was a bit of a revelation for me. I’d assumed that he just did that as a hobby, and that he had a job like my dad, where you go someplace and make stuff (that was my seven year old understanding of my dad’s work as an engineer at places like Westinghouse). This was my first inkling that you could make a living … creatively.

After painting, it was radio (along with theatre in college), then photography, and then along came the web. I’ve managed to make a living out of things I started out doing for the creative thrill. And no matter how much I might whine at times, that makes me a pretty damn lucky guy.

However, it can be like any profession that people get into due to some form of passion. Be it law, politics, medicine, journalism, or whatever, the purity of the passion that drew you in is always compromised by economic realities and the pressures of the marketplace. You rarely get to do exactly the things you want to do, you do the things others want you to do, the things you for which you can get paid, the things they need.

Here’s the classic example that shows it’s been true forever, and it’s been true of the best: Michelangelo. Today, we look up at his work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and there’s no doubt it is a masterpiece. But at the time, he hated doing it. He wrote to a friend at the time “I am in a very very bad place,” complaining of the literally back-breaking work on scaffolding, and how he’d really rather be doing his true love … sculpture.

He did the Chapel for money, and only afterwards was he able to convince the Pope to allow him to make a bronze sculpture. Of the Pope, of course. When the Pope saw the finished piece, he hated it so much he had it melted into a cannon.

So I always try to remember it could be worse. And that no matter what you do to make an income, you will always have to pursue your passions on the side. Even within the same area. People will pay me to photograph their products, but if I want to shoot Monument Valley again, well, that’s on my tab.

Which, in a really roundabout way, brings me back to music. Over the course of 40 years of various creative explorations since the age of 7, any area in which I had some interest and “access,” I just dove in. Creatively, there are things in which I’ve had zero interest, areas where I had obvious limitations (I don’t have the legs for ballet), and things I’ve done just enough to know I don’t need to do them any more.

I still have a lot of creative fun, and though I take new paths, it’s usually pretty well mapped ground. This, however, has been like a new frontier for me. And at the age of 47, that’s a pretty cool thing. An entirely new creative frontier. It awakens the child in me. And he just wants to play, without adult concerns, just for the selfish joy of creating something.

Despite that “new frontier” feeling, there’s also a lot that feels familiar. In radio, you develop pretty refined hearing, and I was pretty darn good at picking hits. I could recognize a good hook, and I could also tell you “there’s something off there.” So I have a good ear, if an untrained one.

Then there’s “the interface.” It’s a tremendous advantage for me, and I leverage it mercilessly. Put me at a real piano (like the one my wife plays), tell me to come up with three and a half minutes of anything tolerable, and it will be an ugly ugly disappointment. So much so you will likely have a hard time getting me to sit down there again.

But I knew about Garageband before I got the Mac Mini. In fact, a couple of months before I got it, I downloaded a song that Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) had placed online in the Garageband format. He invited people to remix it, re-record it, make him sound like a girl, and basically use it as raw data for their own new creation.

I thought that was a pretty generous and cool thing for him to do, and I figured it might be the extent of my playing around in Garageband … using someone else’s parts. So when I got the Mini, I transferred that 70MB file over from my PC, and opened that sucker up to see what this Garageband thing was all about.

Frankly, it was a great if unintentional tutorial, and I immediately felt comfortable upon seeing Garageband’s interface with a song fully loaded in it. The old radio guy in me said “it’s a multi-channel mixing board,” and the web guy in me said “that’s a Flash timeline.” They talked it over, played around with Trent’s song for about 30 minutes, and realized there were over a thousand other “parts” to play with, in the form of Apple Loops.

And that’s how I ended up with the first four constructs I made. Just mixing and matching the existing loops. But it’s a bit limiting, and on the fourth one, I wanted a simple counterpoint, but could find no loop that fit the bill. So I used Apple’s most wondrous oxymoron, “Musical Typing,” to play the notes using the letters on my keyboard. It was something like ; l k i … and there was no consistent way to actually make the note sound on the desired beat. One or two of the notes would always be a little off rhythm.

I’d read that you could go into Garageband’s Loop Editor and fix that. Sure enough, you see a line representing the note, and if you drag it right or left, you can make it hit dead on the beat you desired. However, while trying to drag a note horizontally to the right beat, I accidently slipped and it moved vertically instead … and the note changed. E became F.

And a big honkin’ light bulb went off and illuminated the dark space in my brain labelled “music.”

I realized that it wouldn’t increase my musical skills, but what I really needed was a better input device. And, if necessary, I could move the notes around with the software to accomplish the things I might not be able to with fingers on keys. That’s how the GarageKey came into my life, after some 2×4 sized hints to my wife leading up to my birthday.

Cheating? Most certainly. It’s been going on in various fields for, oh, almost a decade now. It’s the digital “lowering of the bar.” Think back to 1995. How many people were making photo quality prints in their home? It required both expertise and a wallet that few possessed. Ten years later with the advent of relatively inexpensive digital cameras and photo-quality inkjet printers, how many are today? Ten years ago, how many people had a way to easily publish their thoughts (or photos, or poems, or songs, etc.) and place them before a huge potential audience?

There are thousands of people who knew as little about photography as I know about music that have nonetheless placed some amazing pictures online. They’ve got a good eye, and technology has advanced enough that it is largely able to get out of the way of that “good eye.” The result is some quality published work that a decade ago wouldn’t have left the stable of the mind.

Well, I’ve got a good ear. And now I’ve got the technology to mostly get out of the way of it. And while I’ve got a long ways to go at learning the keyboard, when it comes to the core of that technology, I’ve got the software skills to leverage until I catch up.

And I leverage the web, too. Because like most everything I’ve done over the past decade, I’m self-educating. In an earlier comment, Mr. Turner said, “Actually, as someone who spent years learning (trying) to read music, the fact that you could find middle C on an alien keyboard and not hit any wrong notes staying in that key impressed me.”

I can’t read music at all. In fact, I worry that my “music reading” skills will become welded to the timeline view, as I’m beginning to be able to look at it in that form and know what it is. So when I realized that the song had to be in a key (Hmm), and the Garageband default is “C,” I figured I better find me one.

I used Google. Ended up here. A little more poking around revealed a Piano Chord and Scale Finder. The “lead guitar” in the chorus of Bamboo Blues is a variation on the pentatonic blues scale in D.

Yeah, I’m learning. Two weeks ago “pentatonic blues scale in D” would have been complete gibberish to me. But this is a process I’ve been through before. Think of how a blind person seems to have heightened capabilities with their remaining senses. You’ve got two ears like me, but when you spend eight years in radio constructing and deconstructing sounds in various ways, well, I can hear things you can’t. When you spend nearly two decades in photography, applying a critical eye to light, shadow, and subject, well, I can see things you can’t see.

It can be quite disorienting. “Did you hear that?!?” “Hear what?” You didn’t see that?!?” “Reid … are you OK?”

I exaggerate, but you get the idea. Well, I’m going through a bit of that again. I find myself listening to music in a slightly different way than I did. Or maybe I’m hearing it in a slightly different way. I hear more layers, like a deconstruction. Yet still hear the whole, maybe even with a new fullness. It’s hard to describe, but I recognize it as part of a creative learning process I’ve gone through before.

And that’s why it’s so much fun for me. A true creative frontier for me, despite the millions who’ve done this and a whole lot more long before this. I have absolutely zero illusions that this will ever become anything more than it is right now. Something that gives my inner child creative pleasure, which I then inflict on you.

And after having written most of this piece, I stumbled upon the latest from musician Ben Weasel, and it sounded very familiar, but from the other side:

Last month Miss Pixie was good enough to give me some remedial instruction in drawing. Being of the “I can’t draw a straight line” mindset, it appeared at first to be a harmless exercise in futility, but a baseball, an apple, two oranges and a pear later, I’m finding it to be kind of fun. And the pear isn’t half-bad. Attempts at drawing bananas have thus far had comic results, but the Louvre wasn’t built in a day.

I’m working with pastels at the moment with an eye towards watercolors and, eventually, oils. The idea is to get to the point where I can do my own record cover, thus saving a little money.

One of the great things about drawing is that it forces you to remove the filters from your vision and see things as they actually are in the moment (insert your own Suzuki/Merton quotes); you have to see what you’re drawing in its totality rather than contextually. I’m learning some valuable lessons that seem to be paying modest dividends in other creative endeavors, so it’s time well spent.

I’ll let you know when I figure out how to draw a banana.

I’m with you Ben, but have buried this link so deep you hopefully won’t see it, as that has been my only odd and irrational trepidation about posting these “songs” here. There are real musicians out there who are at least my digital acquaintance or better, and some perverse sense of creative pride and/or respect had me embarrassed that they would find these “things.” Pat Tomek already has, and when he mentioned it in an e-mail, I literally winced. Oh, it wasn’t Pat, he was very kind and encouraging with good tips, but … it’s that “lowering of the bar” thing. With one free program and a $79 keyboard, I’m putting my crap up, and these guys have devoted their whole lives to music. There’s more innate skill in one of their fingernail clippings than I’ll ever have.

I guess it’s a matter of creative respect, not just individually, but for anyone with the talent and dedication it takes to make music their life. But I also realize it’s little different than people proudly placing their photography on the web, even though they don’t know the difference between the Scheimpflug principle and Shinola.

Which, in turn, brings it back to my definition of “art.” “Art” with a capital A is when other people say “it’s Art,” but true “art” is something created solely to please the person who created it. If other people like it, even want to buy it, that’s great. But that’s not the reason it was made.

And even in that respect, “my little frontier” has caused me to look at things a bit differently. A few months ago, I would have read Notes on Making Art with a much different eye. Perhaps a slightly jaundiced one, one that doesn’t see much I’m not already way past. But today, I relate it to my “playing” music, which is “art” in the little “a” sense, to me at least. And it all seems to apply in new ways:

Do NOT mix generating and editing. When you’re making a piece, don’t stop and get judgmental half-way through. If it’s a piece of crap, get that piece of crap out of your system—don’t try to fix it mid-flow. Finish it, move on.

Don’t be afraid to re-use elements. If each piece has to be unique, then you’re going to get hung-up when you create some bit that you like. But if you can re-use bits, then you can keep moving.

“Get through your first 50 failures as fast as you can.” ... For every piece of crap you create, you’re one step closer to getting something you really like.

Don’t even bother “fixing” pieces. Making art shouldn’t be a struggle. You’re simply “thinking out loud” onto the page, photo-paper, or canvas. If a product seems confused, leave it confused. Make another piece where you contemplate whatever issues you were wrestling with.

Work fast. Creativity is exciting. If you’re not judging while you’re making, then you can just throw things together as fast as your mind can move.

Let your level show. Let the world know that despite having years of investment in your art form, you’re still a beginner who doesn’t know it all.

Don’t hide your failures. If you are only willing to show those perfect pieces that you are aspiring towards, you’re never going to display / publish your work. Show everything, the worst of the crap included, and let your ego be humbled—and goaded to create more.

And that’s pretty much where I’m at with music. I’ve created a fair amount of crap so far (much of which will never be heard by more than two ears … mine), and had a blast doing it.

And that is my only goal. No dreams of becoming some kind of Internet Rock Star, in fact, a fear of it (fame is a gloriously overrated commodity, and bandwidth is expensive). No expectation or intention to ever make a dime from this. In fact, no intention or expectation of ever making anything out of this, except more fun. For me.

That’s what’s so … liberating … about it. Childish, selfish, creative fun, with no expectations.

What’s next? Hell if I know. That’s like asking a child in the sandbox, “what’s next?” It’s whatever comes out. I’ve been playing around with something inspired by listening to Leon Russell’s version of “Spanish Harlem.” And right now, I’m reading “How To Write A Rap Song.”

Well, that didn’t take long to read. Yes, you should be very afraid…