Electronic Music Maker Mottos

Recently I asked the members of Electronic Music Philosophy a question. The question was the following one: You are asked to write a motto for every electronic music maker to remember at all times. What motto do you give them? 

The question was, of course, a trick one. It was a trick question because, conceivably, every answer given could be right and every answer given could be questioned. There was no possible answer on which everyone would agree or to which everyone would have had to assent. It was, then, merely an excuse for a discussion. Or a blog. But then the question was set in the context of a Facebook group set up to encourage thought and discussion about electronic music. So its purpose was served. And I was very happy to find that I got quite a selection of answers. Some of these were jokey and not serious. These people are not yet aware that I never joke when I'm talking about electronic music but good humour dictates that I let their answers stand. Perhaps if they are reading this now they have become aware. It may be that as I now discuss some of the answers that were given I make a fool of myself by taking as serious something that wasn't. However, for the purposes of this blog I need to and so I will have to hope that the discussion overall is judged worthwhile at the end. Of course, before starting to argue against all the people in the group I'd like to thank them for taking the trouble at all. And now I'm going to tell you why your mottos were all wrong.

There were some mottos that suggested that what was required was industry or effort. Examples of this would be "just keep patchin ooooon," "Always do more than the machines" and "Get back to work". But I question whether electronic music is about work or effort. Of course, many will say that it is. They will point out that its only when you work that the synapses can start to fire and ideas take shape. By working you start to put your habits to work and enable what you are thinking to take effect. But yet it remains the case that you can just have an idea and bring it to life relatively simply. I myself use a kind of inspirational idea of music in practice. It remains a mystery to me why what I do that I like for an extended period thereafter is "good" and why other things I've done are "bad". But I know it has nothing to do with effort for often I have barely made any but the results are fine. Other times (a few!) I've made lots and it isn't. I cannot distinguish between my good pieces and bad ones on the basis of some kind of effort to results ratio. I doubt anyone can.

Perhaps the polar opposite of the "hard work" mentality in the answers given was the one which praised thinking. Examples here are "Get quiet and think," Do not forget to listen," "Start by silence" and "study music". Of course, you might expect that I have more sympathy with such answers but not simply so. Now I am never going to write in this blog that you shouldn't think in general terms but I am going to ask what you should be thinking about. If this thinking is a mere stroking of your musical egos then I am more firmly against it. Thinking is your opportunity to not do what you always do or what you want to do or what you might like as a result. Thinking is your chance to design an idea or a technique or a strategy for something you haven't done before and don't necessarily know the outcome to. So I'm more against the kind of thinking which studies conventions or enshrines ways of working that either the musical body as a whole or you yourself have canonized and more in favour of using thinking to think of new ways for you to do things. If you are going to think, don't waste it.

One idea which cropped up in the answers I was definitely against. This was the idea that you should do something you will like. No person who reads and is stimulated by reading John Cage can go along with this. Examples here are "Make the music you want to hear" and "Make music you love and others will love it too". The second idea there I simply don't believe not least because very many people make very private music. This is not least in that the internal sense of the music they make is very attuned to a particular person, the one who made it. It may not have been made to be widely liked for, in that, it loses the sense of being the music of a single soul that created it. Music is not simply communication nor is it simply made to amuse or entertain others. And, to be honest, I'm not sure if it should even be made "to be loved" at all in the first place. I also absolutely don't think we should be making what we want to hear. In fact, I think the opposite. I think that is a lot of the problem with why many hit a roadblock when making music. They want to make something they would like. On the contrary, I say that you should surprise yourself. You should make something you might not like and then challenge yourself to change so that you can come to like it. Music making is not ego stroking. It is consciousness expanding.

Some responses I got I especially liked. These are because they were both thoughtful and enigmatic in themselves. They challenged me and made me think about them. This is exactly the kind of answer I was hoping for. So "the more you think about music, the less you feel it" intrigued me because it suggested that something not necessarily cognitive, feeling, perhaps intuition, was important. And I couldn't agree more here. Thinking is one thing and has its uses, as mentioned above, but there are other human things which are no less important. Feeling or mood or intuition are some of these things. And this is nothing to do with knowledge or logic. It is allowing yourself to be guided, giving up micro-control. In a world when so much of music and so many music discussions are dominated by ideas of professionalism or what is the "right" way to do things I want to be that guy who constantly says there is no right way. Following a feeling or just doing something at random are equally as valid. There is no optimum place to put your speakers. There is no ideal way to use compression. There are just people who do things and sonic results. Stop getting bogged down in the idea music is about knowledge and just feel. Then have the confidence to go where your feelings take you. You cannot go wrong because there is no wrong.

Some of this attitude was mirrored in a number of answers, I'm happy to say. A number of people talked about breaking rules which is both good and bad in my view. Its good that they want to break them and advise others to do the same but its bad that they ever thought there were any rules to begin with. Of course, most people when getting into some interest start off very straight and play according to what the rules of their particular game appear to be. I remember the first music I made. It was a carbon copy of things I liked informed by reading articles in Sound on Sound magazine about what the right way to do things was (or the right way in 1985 when I started buying it). But the resulting music was a very bad, unfeeling, join the dots, kind of copy of the things I liked, things I had merely tried to imitate. In layman's terms, it was utter crap. I thought about this for years and had a couple of periods of doing nothing at all, trying to figure out why it was so dull and stilted. And then it hit me that I was trying to conform to someone else's ideas. Or even a whole industry's. I stopped buying Sound on Sound or, indeed, paying attention to what others thought was right. I started trying to do what I felt and disregarded any rules. Indeed, I tried to forget anyone else had any. That's when I started to get somewhere. So yes, Ian Haygreen, your answer "Everything's permissible. Including the kitchen sink" is absolutely correct! 

I didn't answer my own question when I made it. I wanted to see what everyone else said and then use a blog to set mine out. So I didn't answer because to do so would have stolen my thunder here. The answer I would give, which is equally as wrong and as challengeable as everyone else's, is "Be interesting and explore something". I say this because, first, it is meant to be a motto which is a kind of guiding thought or direction in which to head and I think we all need those. Without them we are simply inert. But I also think that because I think music should be about something. This can be an idea, an experiment, a feeling, a mood, or anything that can be explored musically, that is, in sound. So my motto is giving impetus and direction. But its also giving a purpose and a standard, its saying that you should aim for something, try to do what you are capable of and not stay in a comfort zone. "Be interesting and explore something" is about taking a risk and perhaps even getting into trouble. 

Because electronic music shouldn't be safe, right?

This is A Gear Blog

This is a gear blog. Its going to discuss electronic music tools, devices and equipment. Do you ever ask yourselves questions like "What is my perfect synth?" or "What would my perfect setup be?". Have you ever sat down with a pen and paper or at a computer and attempted to design the perfect electronic music studio for yourself? Have you ever done the same thing but made your perfect list of gear instead? (I have.) Some of you must have because if I go on Facebook or the most popular synth forums online the vast majority of discussions are about gear and the longest threads are 9 or 10 year old threads of endlessly scrolling studio pictures. This leads me to think that at least the people who buy electronic music equipment and go online to talk about it are interested in "stuff".

                               Is the Roland JD:XA your ideal synth?

But an interest in things does not necessarily mean an interest in music. I have found this out over time. Look in these same Facebook groups and synth websites and you will see that music or musical ideas are discussed much less. Some groups even ban music or talk of it and reserve themselves as places for chat about equipment only. Many physical music magazines seem to be barely disguised adverts for endless equipment. Previous blogs I have written have led to conversations revealing that some people are simply synth collectors or budding museum curators. Others use synths as furniture or electronic ornaments. Yet others simply seem addicted to buying things. There is nothing wrong with any of this but it can get slightly confusing if you wander into such places and wonder why musical purposes for these electronic music tools are not being discussed.

                 Is the Elektron Analog RYTM your perfect drum machine?

But what about those questions I asked right at the top of this blog? What, for example, would the perfect synth for you be? (Seriously, ask yourself.) When I read gear forums I seem to see every synth that any manufacturer ever puts out is immediately torn to shreds by the commenters. Either this is missing or there is not one of those (when there definitely should be) or they could have made this device so much better if only they'd dropped this feature and added this other one. It seems fair to say that people discussing electronic music equipment are never satisfied. This is one reason I ask myself if anyone commenting on things like this actually has any idea about the devices that they themselves really want. This, though, involves stepping back from browsing the pages of your online retailer or electronic music gear forum and thinking about it seriously. 

Would you sell your soul for a Korg Arp Odyssey?

However, its hard to think about what kind of device or devices you might want to use if you don't know the context you want to use it in. So then you have to start asking yourself even MORE questions and doing even MORE thinking. It might be pertinent to ask what any device might be used with and so then you have ask yourself what sort of setup you want as a whole. It makes sense in this context to ask yourself what you want to do with these things in terms of musical output (unless you're one of the collectors or synth museum curators I mentioned) and so that comes into the equation. I wonder if anyone actually does this? It seems from my casual glances that many people simply ask themselves if they have money and if they like a given thing and then they cobble together random, not thought through setups with no guiding philosophy or idea active in the background. "This is nice, I can afford it, I'll buy it" is the only thought process taking place. I wonder how many of these people have things lying around they never use? I wonder how many are honest enough to admit it?

                             Teenage Engineering Pocket Operators

The commercial market that partly shapes what is available for music makers to buy responds to this. Cheap devices like Pocket Operators, Monotrons and Volcas exist because they can be "impulse purchases" for people with a spare relatively small amount of cash. We have all seen the pictures posted of desks festooned with a million small things. None of these things are overly special in terms of features and the sound is kind of compromised in comparison to more expensive and professional things but they are music making devices nevertheless. I think also of Apps on phones or tablets. Some people have taken special affection for such things and these small devices have their fanclubs just like many other things do. These devices are exactly the kinds of things Morton Subotnick meant when, decades ago, he imagined a future time when electronic devices would be available for any member of the general public to use to make music with. That time is our time. Right now.

                                 Korg Volca Beats, Bass and Keys

At this point in the blog I need to make it clear that I am an electronic musician and electronic music and ideas about how to make it are what I personally am interested in. Discussing the tools used to make it does not come naturally to me because it seems to me a bit like carpenters sitting discussing hammers and chisels instead of using hammers and chisels to make something. Of course, such discussions have their place and no one would want to ban discussions about hammers and chisels. Its just that hammers and chisels were created to be used for a primary task beyond the facts of their existence and the qualities that they possess. It could also be argued that discussing what you do with them is much more interesting than the things themselves. But that's just my opinion. With this in mind, the rest of this blog is now going to discuss gear as applied to its intended purpose: making electronic music. Should you be a collector, a curator of a synth museum or a synth buying addict you may want to get off the bus here. But you're welcome to stay for the rest of the ride.


If, like me, electronic music is your goal then the things you make it with are mere stepping stones to that goal rather than the goal itself. I'd actually go further and say that if electronic music is your goal then you cannot let yourself get sidetracked by gear fetishism. Gear fetishism is not musical or related to music. It is a fascination with the things in themselves as things. Its one reason why in the most gear fetishistic places (you know where they are) discussions about music or musical uses of things are scarce on the ground. Maybe the fetishists themselves realize this and maybe they don't. It doesn't really matter. As I said before, there's nothing wrong with this. People can choose what conversations they have and what activities they value. Its just my point here that talking about gear in itself is not musical. So if music is your aim then talking about gear is a means to an end not the end in itself. If you are talking about a synthesizer or a drum machine or an FX box it doesn't automatically follow that some musical purpose lies beyond your discussion of the thing. That case has to be made during the discussion by the participants.

I want to make the case in this blog that there is another way forward in the discussion of gear and electronic music besides the way I described earlier which is seemingly the ad hoc purchasing of random items because they seem desirable and you have the cash to buy them. I am, of course, assuming some measure of thought and purpose here in my prospective electronic musician. That is to say I am assuming they have a plan, an idea of what they want to be, where they want to go and how they want to get there. It would be all too easy to just imagine that the ideal electronic musician has one of everything they can afford but I believe this approach is driven more by unthinking commercialism and an uncontrolled ego than any sane musical purpose. I am not writing here for such people though. Rather, I am writing for those who want to think about what they should have and why, people who critique their requirements as electronic musicians and have the purpose of stretching their musical creativity in view. This, it seems clear, is far from everyone and the commercialists probably don't care about that at all. But people like myself do. My approach here is going to be very different from the grinning forum dweller who has nothing better to talk about than "gas" (gear acquisition syndrome).

      The Modal 008, one of the most expensive analog synths... in the world!


You see I really do believe that rather than playing the constantly silly acquisition game it would be more musically useful to think more musically and, from this perspective, think about what you need and what, perhaps, may be useful as a bonus. The fantasy electronic musician position where one has a huge studio like you've seen on You Tube full of every vintage modular and analog polysynth is not within everyone's reach nor is it necessarily desirable unless you plan to spend your future showing pictures of it to the other people who want to be like you. I make this argument primarily for the people who don't have very much gear and who despair sometimes because they don't have "the next big thing" that everyone says you should have. Commercial purposes dictate that you should have this thing. Musical ones, which rarely enter such discussions, might not. And how could they if many supposed musicians never even address the point? My point is that musical purposes should outweigh the commercial ones if music is your purpose. When thinking and talking about gear it should be musical criteria that are dominant not commercial or conversational ones. 

When looked at from a musical perspective I'm not necessarily that sure there is so much to say about gear online anyway. To really experience an instrument you must hear it yourself and/or play it yourself. Only then can you know if something suits your workflow or any purpose you might set it to. Someone else's view of how it sounds isn't much use to you because you aren't them and so don't share their tastes or motivations. This becomes more important the more expensive a thing is unless you are in the lucky position of being able to buy and sell things at will. I do see people like this in forums sometimes. They seem to buy things constantly and then sell most of them again 3 months later. Of course, the swapping of views is fair enough but, again, it shouldn't exactly be decisive if musical purposes are key for you. Its your own ears and your own foibles which only you know that have to be pleased and not some conversational right and wrong in a forum situation.

           Fantasy setup time! But how do you know this would work for you?


So I think that the fantasies of forum dwellers who will always think that people should have one of everything in huge, unmanageable rigs are actually siren voices for most people luring them onto the rocks of becoming a gear collector. I think these siren voices distract people from properly musical purposes and that upsets me because music is the point of these things. And music is not really a hundred snatched You Tube videos of you doing "just a quick jam". Yes, people can do what they like. But others can also look on and wish that things were different and imagine all the music that could be made if the people who spoke about things diverted their energies into creative purposes with the things. Imagine how much better music you might make if you weren't spending hours talking about what you or others had to make it with. Imagine actually working at your music in an attempt to make it better. Imagine that better music was not made with a better thing but with a better musician using whatever thing they had.

This latter point is key. For music is not just about (more) things. Its about what you (can) do with the things. Indeed, this might even be MORE important because you can make great music with synthesizers. But everyone has also heard rubbish music made with them too. And no instrument yet made comes with an "instant great music" button. Its still about the user putting things to musically interesting uses and that will not be learned or found by chatting about "stuff" nor by buying synthesizer A over synthesizer B. After you have settled on what equipment you can afford or have access to it will still be up to you to make something of it unless you intend to build your musical reputation off posting rig pics for the next 10 years. Its my view, however, that these forum fantasists miss the point. That point, in my humble opinion, is that it should not be the musical ideal of most to have one of everything with every possible musical instrument at their fingertips. Instead, it should be about leveraging and mustering any musical instincts or capabilities we have regardless of what gear we may manage to acquire. Remember, I did say that musical purposes were key for me. I am not in the least bit interested in dick waving on forums.

       Left alone for 2 years with only a Modulör 114 what could YOU achieve?


It is often said, so much it is pretty much a truism at this point, that limitations encourage creativity. This is one more reason to have modest intentions when it comes to the acquisition of electronic music equipment. And it seems to me that it would be better to develop as a musician with less than to focus on getting stuff but being a poorer musician for it. Pity the person who has one of everything but never does anything worth a listen with any of it. So this is why I personally have focused musically on various quite modest things, things like groove boxes or kaoss pads. Another aspect to consider here is that music should be fun and, I also think, simple. Music making should not be a huge, complicated enterprise or even something approaching a chore. I preach here the benefits of simplicity. Happy is the electronic musician with his or her compact little setup who intends to explore it to its outer limits and every moment of it is limitless fun. I like to believe that, ultimately, someone will derive much more pleasure from their musical development on any given device than they will from the acquisition of things.  What use is some ubersynth if it sits on a stand unused, one of ten ubersynths you've got but barely use?

Now of course its true that Trent Reznor, Vince Clarke, Hans Zimmer and Jean-Michel Jarre (and a few others) maintain synth shrines and I suppose its natural (or, at least, tempting) to want to be like them. They all make great music to be sure. But let me let you into a secret. People who don't have 5% of what they have make great music too. Great music is not restricted to very rich people with large synth collections. There is no link between expensive gear and great music. And there are lots of other famous musicians and composers who were not also collectors. Someone whose music and philosophy of music I have been influenced by is John Cage. Some say he was the greatest experimental musician of the 20th century. I don't know about that but I do know that in the mid 1970s he was writing pieces to be played on cacti and other plants. Yes, that's right: plants. Not a Moog. Not an Arp. Not a CS-80. Plants. More specifically, plants wearing contact microphones played with toothpicks. Here was a man for whom music was sound and the liberation of sounds and the letting of sounds be themselves. His appreciation of music was not in some fetishistic circus in which commercial products became venerated as idols. This blog asks you to consider being more like him.

If you did become more like him I think your music would get better. Your music would start to become more about ideas, which are limitless, than things, which are not. I think you would start to take more risks, stretch your horizons and have more fun. How much fun can you really have staring at your latest synth and telling strangers you own it anyway? Will it be as much fun as pushing radios on the floor and playing with water in a bath as Cage did during a 1960 performance of his piece "Water Walk" on US TV? I think that if you did become more like him your judgment would become more about what was musically useful and interesting than pleasing people in forums or boosting your ego with acquisitions. Of course, this depends on your motivations being musical ones and whether they are or not is strictly up to you.

Now at the top of this blog I did say that this was a gear blog but that was, I'm afraid, a bit of a deception. It has been a blog that discussed gear. But it only really had one purpose and that was to say that within electronic music, as with all music, the primary currency is not the thing but THE IDEA.

AND YOU WON'T FIND THOSE FOR SALE IN GEAR STORES.

Electronic Music Theory and Gear Fetishization

It is good, I think, when you come across electronic musicians who are thinking about what they do. And this seems quite common because electronic music, for one reason and another, seems to attract quite cerebral people. But this is not to suggest that all electronic musicians do this nor that all thoughts are equal. This morning I was reading the website of one electronic musician who posts regularly on Facebook and I couldn't believe what I was reading. He is clearly a person who thinks about what he does but the results of this thinking seemed to be lots of rules about how to go about making electronic music as if there were a right or wrong way to do it. The vision of this person was based on technical skill and proficiency, another choice he had made rather than an unavoidable necessity. The whole philosophy of this person seemed to be very outward looking, as if the job of an electronic musician was to impress anybody who might be looking with what, for want of a better word, might strike someone else as a "professional" image. 

The 0-Coast Synthesizer by Make Noise

This all annoyed the hell out of me. The professional guild of musicians have been trying to hoodwink people for years into thinking that unless you could play your instrument properly or you had this skill or that skill or knew this arcane art that only they could teach you or unless you had the right gear which was truly "pro" then, somehow, what you were doing was invalid, pointless and even laughable. These were the kind of people who, when synthesizers started invading popular music, tried to get electronic music makers banned because they could seemingly do with one finger what they had taken years to learn with their professional notions of what music was about. Electronic music, as popularly conceived, became something which re-wrote the book on what "making proper music" was all about. And it didn't involve music teachers, professional notions of what music even was or even necessarily any playing skill. If I can program a 303 and an 808 I can make music that keeps a club moving all night in this new paradigm. You have to realize that this fact annoys the hell out of some people. So imagine what fiddling with knobs and plugging patch cables here and there does to them! And what comes out of the audio out might not even be a melody!

Now even if a fair number of electronic music makers today don't buy into such professional and misleading notions, perhaps because they have a "punk" ethos that you take what gear you can get and then make the best of it, there are still plenty who do buy into one aspect: gear fetishization. In fact, the Facebook group you probably saw this post advertised in is likely full of people discussing gear, stuff, instruments, look what I've got, isn't that expensive synthesizer great, etc. You get the idea. Other well known forums online, such as Gearslutz or Muffwigglers, are equally places where most often gear is discussed. I find this a bit strange and this is not because it is discussed at all but because it takes up so much space. The cherry on the cake of this sort of thing is the "show your setup" thread that such places always have. What for? It seems quite clear to me that whatever motivates such threads, or taking part in them, it is not a musical impulse. This is something else not to do with music. Maybe its a bit like someone showing you a fantastic sports car. Looks nice but you have no idea if they can even drive it. What's my point in mentioning all this? My point is that electronic music is about music and everything else surrounding musical output, which is the creating and arranging of sounds, is peripheral to that.

Of course, if people want to start "look at my setup" groups, clubs, websites or pages then that's completely up to them. For myself, I'm totally clear that I'm more focused of what comes out of electronic music equipment than what it looks like in your home studio or how much of it hundreds of anonymous Internet people have. From comments and conversations I sometimes have I think a few others are with me too. These people, perhaps people like me, wonder why so much space is given over to stuff and rather less is given over to what you might do with it - which is surely the point of having it at all in the first place? Part of the problem here is the electronic music press and media. A lot of those who write about electronic music write about things rather than ideas. You get puff pieces on what such and such an anonymous maker of trance music in Berlin has as opposed to a discussion of his musical ideas. This is not always true but it seems to be the prevailing direction of travel. Perhaps it is not then so surprising that we consumers and music makers go the same way. But it seems to me that this is arse about face. The fact you can show me your huge modular setup up or your Rick Wakeman style 28 keyboard rig tells me nothing about what you can do with it or how you go about utilizing the huge resources at your command. And, frankly, that is much more interesting than knowing you are rich and can afford a lot of stuff.

This is because I think electronic music, par excellence, is a music of ideas. Or, at least, it should be. And so when I routinely see people complaining about "fart noises" (and you could find such comments every day if you looked) I think that what they are complaining about is a lack of imagination, a void of ideas. Anyone who begins to build a modular synthesizer or buys something like the 0-Coast there is a picture of above can make the "fart noise" very easily and really without trying. This requires no effort or skill. This, I think, is what people complain about. If you think about the history of electronic music in what we might call its commercial period which is now almost exactly 50 years then what we see is a history of ideas with electronics. And that period extends back further with the various radiophonic experiments that took place in various labs in Europe and America even before that. These experiments took place on huge lab equipment largely adapted from radio studio gear. Those working there, people like Pierre Schaeffer in France who invented the Phonogene, were trying to put this equipment to new uses to author sound. What they were doing wasn't strictly conventional and they were coming up with new and controversial ways to do old things but also new things as well. Electronic musicians today with an 0-Coast or a modular or an electronic device of most kinds have the same opportunity that they did. 

This opportunity is not based so much in stuff. Indeed, if I may be so bold, does it REALLY even matter what you have got? You may be one of those who looks down on the guy (or girl!) with their 3 or 4 Volcas (or a Rhythm Wolf!) because you have one of every expensive synthesizer there is. (I assume this is what the "look at my big rig" pics are for?) So what? Its what you do with it that counts. And here's the thing about music: you may make a fantastic piece of electronic sound every time you switch your synths on BUT you'll never be the only one. Jean-Michel Jarre seems like a guy who has one of everything. He has made some of the best electronic music ever as my ears hear it but he has also made some limp dross. In terms of equipment I doubt there is a person on the planet who has had access to more of it than him. He has used (and owned) everything from the huge and rare Arp 2500 to the Fairlight CMI to the new Roland System 8 which seems to be his main keyboard on his current tour. But this doesn't guarantee that his next album (which incidentally is Oxygene 3) will be something you like or want to hear or that it will be musically innovative or interesting. Electronic music is a musician plus electronic equipment (whatever that is) plus IDEAS. And the ideas aren't the least of those things. 

                       Jean-Michel Jarre on his current Electronica Tour

What does this mean for electronic music? It means you should stop worrying about what you've got or not got and starting thinking about how to use it. The most distinctive thing about any electronic music will always be how it sounds. This isn't merely a matter of tone. People can do great things with a Minimoog, for example, but I assure you its just as easy to make rubbish with one too. The same applies to any musical tool whether analog, digital, hardware or software, modular or fixed architecture. No tool yet invented guarantees original, innovative or creative electronic music. This is because that is the bit that you, the user, supplies. So it would be a bit pointless, should you be lucky enough to be rich, to build a mega studio full of every synth desired if it turned out that you didn't have a single interesting musical idea in your head. Such people do exist. They probably spend their time showing off their kit, racking up likes and follows from people led astray by a room full of gear and thinking that that is the goal. Its not wrong to have nice things. But its not really the point either, is it? Synth museums are not places of exciting musical creativity.

But back to the person with whom I started, the man whose website listed all the rules he thought he needed to follow in order to feel professional about what he was doing.  It was all very interesting. But its a million miles away from any understanding of musical expression that I have. And, to be clear, I think that for many people, if not most making electronic music, expression is what it is about. This man also seemed to think that musical proficiency was the basis for taking part as well, how well you could play something. But how does that apply to a music that is primarily about the creation of sounds as is the case with electronics? It occurred to me as I was reading that I have personally eliminated the need for the vast majority of these rules simply by regarding music as a matter of personal expression rather than technical ability. What's more, if you take the view that any musical piece or performance is nothing more than yet another experiment, as many experimental musicians might want you to, then you don't have to worry about artificial notions of how good or bad it was either. These, I find, are stupid terms when assessing music you make in any case.  All rules seem to do is heap personal pressure on the music-maker. And I just don't see why anyone would want to do that. If I were to make any rules there would be just one: don't worry about what you do or how you do it: any sounds you make are perfectly valid and equally worthy. Electronic music is experimentalism pure and simple: there is no right or wrong.

What more of a framework do we need than this? We certainly should not impose the standards of commerciality upon our creativity (unless that is what we are doing and I concede that those for whom making music is their business have to do this). Electronic music has always been a pioneering form of music, a form of music which is about originality, experimentalism and ideas. Since the first music with commercial synthesizers was made in the mid to late 60s numerous whole new genres of music and sounds have been created and become the soundtracks to numerous people's lives.  This is the very heart of what electronic music is about. This is why in previous blogs I've written about the exciting possibilities of machines. A lot of this is to do with the so-called "happy accidents" and the possibility that something electronic may just spit out some sound or phrase which inspires you in a direction that you, as a player, may never have thought of. I personally have 100's of examples of this from my own time making electronic music and you probably do too. Electronic music is not just about playing a tune either. Electronic music is how you build sounds up and weave them together, yes, but its also about creating the sounds themselves. This is what synthesis is! Indeed, much electronic music is just electronic sound and whole genres (such as Japanoise, for example) are based on making a certain sound.

                                Japanese Noise Artist, Merzbow

So I'm very much all in favour of an experimental, non-professional approach to the creation of electronic music, music that becomes an expression of the human through machines. I think it helps to have some idea about what you think you are doing when turning on a synthesizer too. I don't mean in terms of how to use it (much good music has been made by people who had no clue how to use the device in front of them just as it has with the most proficient user of all) but in terms of a philosophy of ideas. I personally find the most joy and excitement in electronic music which is interesting and this is different from simply "good" or "bad", subjective terms which are functionally useless when judging music I think. What I want to hear when I listen is some clue that the music maker was trying to do something specific or get somewhere in particular or musically describe or inhabit some space. If I can see they are doing that then it helps me to appreciate what is going on. In comparison, a simple like or dislike is pretty meaningless. I think what informs this thinking in me is the idea that with electronic music you can go places. You can make new things and you have a blank canvas to do it on. Electronic music can go wherever you want to take it. It can describe the future, as it often does in sci-fi soundtracks, or create whole ideas from nothing. 

Electronic music is as big, or as small, as YOUR imagination. So imagine. Dream crazy dreams!

What is Beauty?

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever seen me that I do not pay much attention (read "any attention") to how I look. So there is not really much chance that anyone is going to look at me one day and describe me as "beautiful". This is just not something that happens to someone who looks like a bag of spanners such as myself. In terms of personal appearance I have mostly been one of those who ignores the very concept. I see clothes as functional rather than fashion items, personal grooming is something I imagine you do if you own horses (and you do it to them and not yourself) and I basically never try to impress anyone with the way I look. I guess I have always found that very fake and superficial. My presumed attitude in life has been that if you aren't prepared to go on more than a subjective appreciation of how I look, on your own terms and not even mine, then, well, you don't deserve to know what goodies lurk underneath the surface, unseen.

Now it may be that one reason my life is in the hole it appears to be is exactly because I have taken this attitude to life! I am not unaware of this criticism or this conclusion. But to hell with it anyway. If one is going to have opinions or make choices then the least one can do is commit to them and be prepared to see them through to the end. I was never going to be anyone's idea of beautiful anyway. There is some self-confirmation going on somewhere in all that as people see the bag of spanners, ignore or dismiss me and, in so doing, confirm to me that the world is superficial and cruel. Of course, it was a set up because I never tried to impress anyone in the first place. We see the world we want to see.

And this is the first thing to say to the question "What is beauty?" Beauty is a faculty of the eyes, a seeing thing, that takes place in social and cultural contexts. Beauty does not, and cannot, occur in a vacuum. It is one of the qualities of appearance. We are schooled through life to judge, critically and subjectively, what is beautiful and what is not. As with all subjective opinions this means that nothing is inherently beautiful. It also means that anything can be regarded as beautiful if it meets someone's requirements for it. I am now listening to something I regard as a beautiful sound because although beauty starts with being about what we see it can be used metaphorically in other areas too. The same rules apply here as well. There is no inherently beautiful sound but every sound can be beautiful. You may question me and say what about those things that everyone seems to think is beautiful? I would describe these things as subject to a great deal of intersubjective agreement. Most people seem to like sunsets or pictures of mountains or the beach, for example. 

Of course, the subject of beauty can be both benign and also full of consequence. My thinking about beauty this week started when I saw a conversation between some people online where one of the people, to my eyes a stunningly beautiful young woman, was speaking to a friend about how she does not always like the pictures people take of her and this causes her stress. This upset me somewhat because, as I say, to my eyes this young woman appears sublimely beautiful. I imagine that most other people seeing her would agree. But perhaps she wouldn't agree herself. We have all read stories of people who become obsessed with their appearance and it becomes a matter of some psychological harm to them. We have read or heard of stories where people, often young women it seems, have surgeries or even mutilate themselves (and its a thin dividing line) in pursuit of some idea of physical beauty. Perhaps they decide they need larger breasts or something isn't the right shape or their skin is the wrong color. Perhaps they think that covering themselves in tattoos is where beauty is found. For them beauty is a definite idea they have in their head or something the culture they want to live up to is telling them they must be. I pity such people both for the stress they go through because of this and because they objectify the idea of beauty in such a way.

All this makes me think about landscapes which I often find beautiful and usually mysterious. Natural landscapes are the results of random events. No one, in the main, made them look that way. A mountain just is a mountain. A fake mountainscape, someone's idea of what a mountain should look like, would seem fake and false by comparison. But just to look at a set of mountains, as I have done in the Bavarian Alps, for example, is to be almost overawed by something mysterious and unexplainable. For me it was most overwhelming and almost philosophical in the force of its beauty exactly because no one had done this. It just was, natural, innocent. This speaks to me of the beauty of innocence which is very unlike this world of our's in which innocence is almost a crime. Beauty is something we think we can make from scratch. But its not. Real beauty is like a pool that needs to be left undisturbed and just regarded. The minute you disturb the pool, thinking you can make it better, is the moment innocence is lost and ripples from your activity destroy what was there.

So I do not find beauty in deliberation and affectation. This is not to say that with effort we cannot improve something's appearance. However, notions of better and worse appearance need not necessarily be anything to do with beauty at all. This is again affected by our cultural and social situations. Important to me is that beauty can be seen wherever someone will see it. I often look at pictures on Tumblrs of abandoned buildings. I find a strange beauty in them. It is not a beauty of cleanliness, of human effort and of perfection for, on one view, these places are a complete scrap heap, a mess. But I would find scrap heaps beautiful too. This tells me that beauty is not about perfection, something which is an idea and an ideal in any case. Any notion of perfection you could come up with would be rhetorical, a matter of debate and not fact. All ideas of beauty are challengeable. I do not even really think that "perfection" is a thing that exists when we talk about beauty in any case. I have always found the flawed more beautiful anyway. This accords with my "natural" principles and I suppose this is why I find those people who chase after beauty in themselves so disturbing. When we confuse beauty with perfection we can go to a very dark place.

The same is true when we apply beauty elsewhere. In thinking about all this I, of course, found need to express it musically. So I made an album called "Schönheit" which is German for "beauty" but can also be used as the quality of being beautiful. It contains what I regard as some beautiful sounds and rhythms. You may listen to it and find it a noisy, dissonant, off camber collection of songs with few redeeming features. But, as with all my music and with me myself, I am only existing musically for those who want to look underneath the surface. The form the music takes is almost there to make listeners choose. Are they going to look, unthinkingly, think they hear a certain thing, and then turn away without so much as questioning what they think they hear, or are they going to go beyond it and actually interrogate what they are hearing and their own ideas of what it is and why they are listening as they do? Beauty and attractiveness, as I have said a couple of times now, do not exist in a vacuum. These faculties can be taught and we can shape them, either deliberately or unconsciously. So beauty and attractiveness are not static things, givens, we can lead them on, we can push them in a direction we want them to go. My music is there as an aid to this and is part of some notional agenda in me to help create people who question themselves and why they think the ways they do. And maybe even realize they can change that and start to do something about it.

Beauty is a paradigm subject in this regard exactly because it is not a given. It is an award we give to things in regard to how we think they look or how we perceive them. You will know from previous blogs that I try very hard not to be a conventional person. Convention I regard with a barely disguised contempt in most senses. One of the reasons I don't like convention is because it is lazy. When it comes to beauty I would much rather question why I find something beautiful or not than just feel safe in my enculturated points of view. Beauty, it seems to me, is almost exactly a matter of what is under the surface yet is taken by most people to ONLY be the surface. Beauty is only skin deep, right? Well, no. Beauty is not a matter of what you are looking at. Its a matter of what you see. And they are two very different things. The thoughtful amongst my readers will ponder that difference. 

You can listen to my album "Schönheit", which ponders these ideas musically, HERE! 

Artist Interview: ODORBABY

Odorbaby (or maybe its ODORBABY?) is both an enigma and a phenomenon. To date, I have no idea who Odorbaby is, how many people are involved, what gender they might be or where they are. Odorbaby encourages this fact for whoever is there behind Odorbaby pulling the strings is clearly a thinker and a person of ideas. Odorbaby, as a musical act, is powered by ideas and a freeform invention. The work of Odorbaby appears to be bricolage influenced by an interest in noise. I first came across Odorbaby a while ago but I wasn't ready for it. The PR strategy is blunt and in your face and the music is no less so. But, giving it a second chance I became seduced by the complexity of it and the fact that, underneath, there is actually something there worthwhile. Odorbaby is both more and less than it appears and this is probably by design. The music is not a noise wall as it can be with some noise artists. Here a more playful and nuanced mind is at work. I appreciate Odorbaby's music as moments in time. Odorbaby is capturng life, maybe not yours or mine or even Odorbaby's, but somebody's. You could send Odorbaby's music into space as an example of human life. But enough waffle. I was lucky enough to secure an interview from the eccentric and elusive Odorbaby and what follows is Odorbaby's own cryptic answers. The caps are original to Odorbaby and, with a respectful nod towards Odorbaby, I keep them in place as Odorbaby would intend.

1. What is your history in making music? How do you come to be doing what you are doing?

ODORBABY IS ONE OF SEVERAL PROJECTS WE ENGAGE IN SOMEWHERE OVER THE MERZBOW BUT WE WILL LIMIT THIS INTERVIEW TO THE ALMIGHTY AWESOME OF THE ODORBABY DISTORTION PROTOCOL STRATEGY

ODORBABY IS THE RESULT OF TRYING TO PLAY NICE WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF THE AMERICAN MUSIC BUSINESS AND REALIZING THAT 

PEOPLE DONT WANT MUSIC THEY WANT MUSIC FLAVORED CONSUMPTION PRODUCT 

PEOPLE DONT WANT MUSICIANS THEY WANT MANNEQUINS 

PEOPLE DONT WANT ART THEY WANT DISTRACTION AND SPECTACLE 

PEOPLE BASICALLY DONT CARE THEY JUST WANT TO SEE MONEY CHANGE HANDS AND HAVE SOMETHING TO BRAG ABOUT THAT MAKES THEM LOOK SPECIAL 

EVERYTHING IS ALWAYS THE MOST AWESOME THE MOST INCREDIBLE THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO A MUSIC FESTIVAL THEN YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THIS MEANS 

ALSO HIPSTERS

EVERYBODY TRIES TO DO IT RIGHT AND EVERYBODY FAILS THEN GETS USED UP AND DISCARDED AND NOBODY REALLY CARES ANYWAY

THE WHOLE THING IS AN INTRICATELY CHOREOGRAPHED CONSUMPTION RITUAL AND LITTLE MORE THAN THAT

SO ODORBABY IS THEREFORE COMMITTED TO BEING GOOD FOR BUSINESS AND SERVICING THIS DEMOGRAPHIC IN THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY POSSIBLE

ODORBABY LEVERAGES EFFICIENCIES BY SKIPPING STRAIGHT TO THE FAILURE AND DISCARDING STAGE AND STARTING FROM THERE

MOST OF THE PEOPLE INVOLVED IN THE ODORBABY PROJECT HAVE MUSIC MAKING OR PRODUCTION AND OR SOFTWARE BACKGROUNDS SO THE SONIC MASTERWORKS OF ODORBABY ARE A REFLECTION OF TECHNOLOGY BASED SOLUTIONS TO THINGS USUALLY

WE ASSUME THAT NOBODY CARES AND PLAN ACCORDINGLY

ITS TURNS OUT TO BE MORE FUN THAT WAY

2. Describe your music style and the aims of the music you make. What is Odorbaby about?

ODORBABY DEVOURS PROCESSES AND REGURGITATES EVERYTHING THAT CROSSES ODORBABYS PATH BLASTING THEM FORTH ALMIGHTILY 

AWESOME

THERE IS AN OVERSUPPLY IN THIS WORLD OF INFORMATION WHETHER THIS INFORMATION TAKES THE FORM OF MUSIC OR NEWS OR ESPECIALLY SOCIAL MEDIA 

ODORBABY IS THEREFORE COMMITTED TO UPCYCLING THIS INFORMATION INTO NEW FORMS OF CONSUMPTION PRODUCT IN ORDER TO RELIEVE THE PLANET OF SOME OF THE BURDEN OF THIS INFOGLUT

THIS IS THE FOUNDATION OF THE ODORBABY DISTORTION PROTOCOL STRATEGY WHICH PERMEATES EVERY ASPECT OF THE ALMIGHTY AWESOMENESS OF ODORBABY 

COUNT ON ODORBABY FOR ALL OF YOUR AWESOMENESS NEEDS

ODORBABY IS ALSO ABOUT IGNORING THE PRETENSE THAT SUFFUSES MUCH OF HUMAN ACTIVITY AND INSTEAD LAYS BARE THE SIMPLE AND SOMETIMES HUMOROUS FUTILITY OF HUMAN HUBRIS AND FOLLY 

WHY PRETEND WHEN LIFE IS WEIRD ENOUGH AS IT IS

3. What do you use to make music? What would you like to use?

EACH ODORBABY SONIC MASTERWORK HAS A SPECIFIC MEANS OF AWESOMENESS PRODUCTION

HERE IS A BRIEF LIST OF WHICH MASTERWORK IS CREATED HOW

- GOOD FOR BUSINESS

RECORDINGS FROM ODORBABY PERFORMANCES AND COLLABORATIONS IN AUSTIN TEXAS ARE EITHER PRESENTED AS THEY ARE OR ARE EDITED FOR A SPECIFIC TYPE OF SONIC EXPERIENCE NOTHING FANCY NO TRICKS JUST STRAIGHT UP NOISE AWESOMENESS

AT THIS POINT IN THE ODORBABY EPIC SAGA A LOT OF PERFORMANCES INVOLVED MICROPHONE AND SOUND SYSTEM ABUSE PLUS SMOKE MACHINES AND OTHER DANGEROUS UNCOMFORTABLE DEVICES

NOT MUCH OF THE LIVE DAMAGE SHOWED UP ON THIS RECORDING

- AMERICAN STANDARD

ODORBABYS POP MUSIC MASTERWORK EVERYTHING IS EDITED AND ASSEMBLED ACCORDING TO POP MUSIC STANDARDS SOMETIMES WITH BEATS OTHER TIMES WITH JUST AUTOTUNE BECAUSE AUTOTUNE IS AWESOME 

PLUS SOME BITS DONE WITH A SMALL MODULAR SYSTEM ODORBABY ACQUIRED IN BERLIN

- CONSUMPTION PRODUCT

YOUR DAILY MINUTES OF NOISE WERE CREATED USING THE SUPERCOLLIDER SOFTWARE PLATFORM AS A MULTICHANNEL NOISE SOURCE 

THEN THE NOISE SOURCES WERE ROUTED THROUGH THE SMALL MODULAR SYSTEM USED ON AMERICAN STANDARD TO CREATE AN AWESOME BLEND OF NOISE 

WHICH WAS THEN CUT INTO ONE MINUTE SEGMENTS AND LOVINGLY GIFTED TO THE INTERNET

- RELAX IT GETS WORSE

THIS HAS A VARIETY OF SOUND SOURCES MOSTLY DATABENT AUDIO FILES CREATED IN AUDACITY FROM AN IPHONE PICTURE OF A TREE OUTSIDE OF THE APARTMENT 

THE AUDIO FILE IS PROCESSED IN AUDACITY USING SPECTRAL MODULATION AU PLUGINS TO MAKE A PILE OF  PITCH AND TIMBRE SEGMENTS 

WHICH ARE THEN PLAYED IN TRAKTOR PRO AND MANIPULATED USING  STANDARD TRAKTOR PRO FX AND SEVERLY TWEAKING SETTINGS

- AVIATION CRAB ORCHESTRA (AN EPIC SAGA)

THIS SONIC MASTERWORK IS BASED ON THE IDEA THAT THE CREATION OF SOUND AND THE RECORDING AND PROCESSING OF SOUND HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH EACH OTHER 

THE POINT IS THAT THE MIX IS THE COMPOSITION AND THE SOUND MATERIAL EXISTS ONLY TO GIVE SUBSTANCE TO THIS MIX

RANDOMLY ACQUIRED AUDIO FILES ARE CHOPPED UP AND REASSEMBLED LIKE YOU WOULD DO FOR A WILLIAM BURROUGHS TYPE CUT UP OPERATION INTO A SOURCE FILE NO LONGER THAN AROUND THREE AND A HALF MINUTES 

THEN THE SOURCE FILE IS SIMPLY LAID INTO A PROTOOLS SESSION WITH THE MIX ALREADY AUTOMATED AND THEN RENDERED INTO A FINAL TWO MIX

TWO MIX IS STUDIOSPEAK FOR A STEREO REDUCTION MIX

- NUL FUXGEBEN

THIS IS ALL DONE IN REALTIME WITH MULTIPLE INSTANCES OF THE GENDY INSTRUMENT IN SUPERCOLLIDER 

THERE ARE USUALLY FOUR LAYERS OF AWESOMENESS THAT ARE CONTROLLED FROM AN INTERFACE BUILT WITH LEMUR 

ALL OF THE TITLES ARE IN GERMAN BECAUSE THATS WHAT WE SPEAK HERE

FOR YOUR NONGERMAN SPEAKING READERS THE TITLE ROUGHLY TRANSLATES TO 

THE GIVING OF ZERO FUCKS

THE COVER IS A PHOTO OF THE BACK OF A FOOTBALL JERSEY THAT ODORBABY NEVER HAD MADE

- GET KILLING

GET MEANS GOAT IN SWEDISH AND 

KILLING MEANS KID ALSO IN SWEDISH 

HAHAHA ODORBABY MAKES ANOTHER AWESOME LANGUAGE JOKE

THIS MASTERWORK STARTED OUT AS A RESPONSE TO ALL OF THE GUN VIOLENCE IN THE UNITED STATES BUT HAS TURNED OUT TO BE A COLLECTION OF TRACKS MADE FOR COMPILATIONS

MAYBE ITS LIKE AN REMIX EP OR SOMETHING

MOST OF ITS DONE IN PROTOOLS USING STUFF FROM OTHER SONIC MASTERWORKS WITH SOME RANDOM INTERNET AUDIO BLENDED IN

ODORBABY WOULD LIKE TO CONTINUE WORKING ON THE ODORTRON WHICH IS A SOFTWARE BASED THING THAT WOULD MAKE IT EASIER TO CREATE AWESOME ODOR IN PUBLIC PERFORMANCE 

SOMEDAY IT WILL GET BUILT BUT RIGHT NOW THERE ARE OTHER MUSIC THINGS THAT TAKE TIME AWAY FROM ODORBABY

ALSO WORKING WITH MICROPHONES AND PEDALS IN THE OLD SCHOOL HANDS ON METHOD OF NOISE PRODUCTION WOULD BE FUN

4. You have quite a unique image. Is this just your personality or is there more to it?

ODORBABY IS NOT A PERSON 

ODORBABY IS SIMPLY ALL OF THE HYPE YOU CRAVE WITHOUT THE BURDEN OF AN ACTUAL PRODUCT TO SLOW YOU DOWN

THERE IS NEVER AN ATTEMPT TO MAKE ODORBABY BE SOMETHING OR SOMEONE OR HAVE A PERSONALITY 

BUT RATHER ALWAYS AN ATTEMPT TO REMOVE ANYTHING REMOTELY RESEMBLING PERSONALITY OR HUMANITY FROM ODORBABY 

EVERYTHING IS ALWAYS THE MOST AWESOME THE MOST INCREDIBLE THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER

ODORBABY IS PURE UNADULTERATED AWESOMENESS PAST PRESENT AND FUTURE

HOW EASY IS THAT

PEOPLE DONT WANT MUSIC THEY WANT MUSIC FLAVORED CONSUMPTION PRODUCT 

PEOPLE DONT WANT MUSICIANS THEY WANT MANNEQUINS 

PEOPLE DONT WANT ART THEY WANT DISTRACTION AND SPECTACLE

THE MUSIC BUSINESS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MUSIC AND EVERYTHING TO DO WITH BUSINESS HOW EASY IS THAT

ODORBABY EXISTS TO FILL THAT DEMOGRAPHIC BY REDUCING PRODUCTION COSTS IMPROVING SUPPLY CHAIN EFFICIENCIES AND PASSING THE AWESOME DIRECTLY ONTO THE CONSUMER

5. What are your musical influences?

ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING

MERZBOW OBVIOUSLY IS A REFERENCE POINT BUT ALSO 

AUNTS ANALOG 

DROMEZ 

PEASANT

POWERMONSTER

BREAKDANCING RONALD REAGAN

^^^ THOSE GUYS ARE FROM THE US

IN EUROPE TRY vvv

BEATSZ 2.0

RPT

AMMERORHEA STRAUSS

SUDDEN INFANT

ANYTHING THAT MULTIVERSAL IS CURRENTLY PROMOTING

ODORBABY ENJOYS SITTING NEAR THE TRAIN TRACKS AND LISTENING THE THE TRAINS GO BY ITS LIKE A NOISE SHOW BUT WITHOUT THE NOISE SHOW

ALSO NATURE ITSELF IS AN INCREDIBLY GIFTED MUSICIAN IF YOU CAN LEARN TO SIT STILL AND LISTEN TO IT

6. Where do you see yourself going musically in the future? Any ambitions?

ODORBABY WOULD LIKE TO DEVELOP INTO A MORE PERFORMANCE EFFECTIVE ENTITY 

AND ALSO COLLABORATE WITH OTHERS PARTICULARLY IN A BAND SORT OF CONTEXT

ALSO DOING COLLABS WITH AV/VIDEO PROJECTION ARTISTS WOULD BE AWESOME

FILM AND VIDEO WORK IS VERY ATTRACTIVE 

ALREADY SOME PEOPLE HAVE USED ODORBABY SONIC MASTERWORKS IN SMALL INDIE FILM PROJECTS

BUT WORKING WITH OTHERS SEEMS LIKE A LOT OF FUN SO YEAH MORE OF THAT

THANK YOU FROM ODORBABY

Thanks to Odorbaby for the interview. Merzbow is the performing name of Masami Akita, a famous Japanese noise artist. 

You can hear the awesome of Odorbaby at http://freemusicarchive.org/music/ODOR_BABY/ 

                                 How Awesome Is That?