anybody want to start a topic about music production feels or philosophy rather than tech

[TubularCorporation]

Yeah, these days I mostly read instruction manuals and internet crap.

[thawkins]

I don't know why my phone capitalized JARON, I've never deliberately typed that word in all caps and have probably only typed it on the phone a few times ever.

 

PRRDICTIVE AI IN ACTION

 

 

Oh hey, it missed the actual typo there, too.

Ryanair is also a pretty good predictive text typo.

 

I probably missed half the points in this thread as I just read through most of it.

 

On the subject of technology & internet & algorithms & everything, I’m also a computer science person so while I totally agree that all the monetizing and feeds and shit is way overboard (and thankfully seeing a growing reaction), on the other hand that tech is just a tool and it’s also being used for good things. Stuff like neural networks and statistical analysis you can use to transform the sound of your house creaking at night into something audible on a totally different scale.

 

My opinion is that right now we are seeing this growing backlash to what has been the capitalism fueled information overflow. On the surface it’s amazing to have all that stuff only a click away but even if you listen to the best music all day you will want silence after a while because it all will tire and become useless noise if there is too much.

 

I think the future will be more human again once people get used to the technology and find ways to filter out all the noise. Small events (even streamed online) that can reach a person intimately and touch them emotionally still are impossible for some algorithm to fake. It’s places like that where I imagine playing my music.

 

I hope people also wake up to the fact that even though digital stuff is so easily editable and malleable, it does not mean that it should be changed all the time just because. Like if sending a letter online was as much effort than doing it with pen and paper, there wouldn’t be this huge amount of noise information. Yet it is so easy not to spam or create something that’s nearly not unique enough.

 

As for style revivals, I think my stuff is totally inspired from psych and kosmische kraut rock, but I am not really trying to ride on some old waves intentionally - I make the music because I like listening to the old stuff and it inspires me and hopefully makes the listener feel good as well. I don’t thinks there is any shame in making the blandest pop music if it truly makes the crowd happy inside - the therapeutic effect overrules any artistic criteria in my opinion. Still I think an artist should both try to innovate and also create stuff that touches the people emotionally.

[thawkins]

Oh and with regard to all available gear and vsts and videos - come on that’s not a bad thing. While the advertising and marketing is pretty intense, nobody is forcing you or anyone to buy or use the stuff. You can get deep with any of that and build whatever machines you want. Sure the amount of decisions on the table is horribly infinite and consumerism is killing the planet, but having the opportunity to use the tools is not bad by itself.

[Leon Sumbitches]

Yeah, 100%, I think it's a net good overall (if you'll excuse the pun), just got to have my old-man-cloud-yelling time

[TubularCorporation]

 

I don't know why my phone capitalized JARON, I've never deliberately typed that word in all caps and have probably only typed it on the phone a few times ever.

 

PRRDICTIVE AI IN ACTION

 

 

Oh hey, it missed the actual typo there, too.

Ryanair is also a pretty good predictive text typo.

 

I probably missed half the points in this thread as I just read through most of it.

 

On the subject of technology & internet & algorithms & everything, I’m also a computer science person so while I totally agree that all the monetizing and feeds and shit is way overboard (and thankfully seeing a growing reaction), on the other hand that tech is just a tool and it’s also being used for good things. Stuff like neural networks and statistical analysis you can use to transform the sound of your house creaking at night into something audible on a totally different scale.

 

 

 

You should check out that Jaron Lanier article, this is one of his big points - the metaphysical pretensions of the "strong AI" people are, among other things, actually getting in the way of the actual real world applications of AI and the advancement of the field. 

 

 

EDIT: I agree with everything else in that post, too, I just didn't want to quote the whole thing and don't really have anything to add.

[TubularCorporation]

Not convinced it's a net good yet, though, I think it's still way too soon to tell. In another century or two people might have some perspective on the real impact of computers but right now nobody has a clue, least of all the people who think they do (myself included).

[Ragnar]

Oh and with regard to all available gear and vsts and videos - come on that’s not a bad thing. While the advertising and marketing is pretty intense, nobody is forcing you or anyone to buy or use the stuff. You can get deep with any of that and build whatever machines you want. Sure the amount of decisions on the table is horribly infinite and consumerism is killing the planet, but having the opportunity to use the tools is not bad by itself.

 

 

I didn't necessarily mean commercial VSTs, among free VSTs it's still a bunch of information overload at times. I think I mentioned already I settled for that Blok Modular thing because it's a nice middle road between SKEUMORPHIC modular synth and total Pure Data anti-aesthetic (which is still an aesthetic in my opinion haha)

 

did I mention the thing, read it before here even but you can change your environment in very simple/virtual ways like changing the desktop on your computer and it might influence your creative output? Windows has a 'desktop wallpaper shuffle' feature or something, not sure if it really helped though haha

 

I do think whether it's jokey or not though, Autechre's stuff is basically the kind of music people are gonna gravitate to when they're looking at a, in my opinion 'oppressive' Max/MSP window constantly when composing

[Ragnar]

there's definitely an element in my music, like if you SET UP the music as 'unhinged' sounding it's an interesting way to.... well like a bunch of non-watmm people who discovered my music were conspiracy-types again, and one nagged me thru email trying to 'sell' me whatever conspiracy. And I just emailed back, well thanks that $10 feels pretty great now, surely I don't feel like ideologically/philosophically, I'm someone on the street, to you, for $10. lol

 

is secretly the band/group that hates 99% of its fanbase

[hello spiral]

I concur

[Ragnar]

 

4thDan see now occam's razor of secrets, what if i told u, I am part of a secret shamanic community who believes in animal avatars, and draws our avatars in a ritualistic way to release 'energies', and some play up images of Baphomet as a parody of the 'duality' of gender, because there is an element of 'not caring' on those issues, in that specific community, flol

[Ragnar]

should I post this in a comment to get him further confused about animal avatar

 

[Ragnar]

 

further confusion

[thawkins]

 

You should check out that Jaron Lanier article, this is one of his big points - the metaphysical pretensions of the "strong AI" people are, among other things, actually getting in the way of the actual real world applications of AI and the advancement of the field.

 

 

I guess you mean his book? I think I generally agree with his take on things, my impression is that the ongoing tech bubble is currently overselling a lot of the technologies and promising self driving cars and algorithms it can not actually deliver, mainly because the venture capitalist investor class is making boatloads of money from selling startups filled with hype (see Theranos, Uber, Tesla, Facebook, etc.). Therefore talking about the underlying technologies and their limitations honestly just is not a thing that happens because it makes nobody any money. For example, a lot of Carnegie Mellon's researchers got outright poached by Uber to develop their self-driving car. My take on this is that right now it is more profitable for a scientist to sell their earned academic credibility to some company instead of working on True Science and hoping to make it through that, and I can't really blame them.

 

To get back to the point of blasting any algorithmic feeds or overhyped AI stuff, if you haven't seen Charlie Stross' talk on the matter, I think it will be interesting.

 

tl;dr is basically this: since we have set up the internet to depend on advertising income, it is now in companies' financial interest to sell us as much shit as possible and manipulate us to buy or consume or click as much as possible. Also, since it turns out that anger/anxiety is one of the greatest ways to activate the click monster in everyone's head, this in turn means that it is in companies' financial interest to make us as angry or anxious as possible so we would buy/consume/click more shit.

 

To me, all this talk about too much crap music or too many choices in gear or software are a symptom of this. So while I do not feel that having all these opportunities is bad by itself, the forces that makes this possible are probably not so benevolent. Because even though it's easy to say "stick to one thing and get deep with it", every day you get ads blasted to you from every possible corner, and nobody's 100% immune to that stuff, especially if you consider all the history of scientific psychology is available for ad companies to use against you.

 

Ragnar, totally agree with the information overload thing - I think I have bought only 1 software thing (Live Standard) and stuck to the builtin effects and some free VSTs so far specifically not to overload myself with all the possibilities that come with all the different stuff that has become available now. I also decided to mess around with Pure Data just because I thought my programming background would be useful there and make the learning curve somewhat ok. Aside from PC, monitors, audio interface, cables I try not to buy any physical gear that's new - always stick to used stuff that's less than $200 or something like that.

 

I have a kind of belief that if I stick to pre-made tools it will not challenge me enough to come up with my own sound or uniqueness, so the more I sweat and mess with trying to make my gear work My Way, the more I can be confident that whatever sound comes out is already something with my fingerprints on it. So after I finish something I do not have to worry too much if someone else has found all the same sounds or something like that. Not sure if all that is enough though, I always feel I got to be working on something gear/software wise to understand design philosophies or just fail and learn something that was not supposed to work etc.

[TubularCorporation]

there's definitely an element in my music, like if you SET UP the music as 'unhinged' sounding it's an interesting way to.... well like a bunch of non-watmm people who discovered my music were conspiracy-types again, and one nagged me thru email trying to 'sell' me whatever conspiracy. And I just emailed back, well thanks that $10 feels pretty great now, surely I don't feel like ideologically/philosophically, I'm someone on the street, to you, for $10. lol

 

is secretly the band/group that hates 99% of its fanbase

 

 

I've had similar issues for years.

[Ragnar]

 

there's definitely an element in my music, like if you SET UP the music as 'unhinged' sounding it's an interesting way to.... well like a bunch of non-watmm people who discovered my music were conspiracy-types again, and one nagged me thru email trying to 'sell' me whatever conspiracy. And I just emailed back, well thanks that $10 feels pretty great now, surely I don't feel like ideologically/philosophically, I'm someone on the street, to you, for $10. lol

 

is secretly the band/group that hates 99% of its fanbase

 

 

I've had similar issues for years.

 

 

I hope you appreciate the $10 comment actually happened then lol. If you want a transcript of the email for lols maybe. I also sent him back a word frequency count of his own previous email

[Ragnar]

re: pre-made tools, getting into tech talk but I'd love to make my own modular synth in that Reaper JS language. Did I mention this already? The coding technique behind 'figure out if a patch is valid and won't crash or feedback', the whole routing logic still escapes me. But the main issue is it's a scripting language (not compiled) and I probably couldn't get very crazy or elaborate with patches either

 

Edit: also I meant email transcript in PM

[Ragnar]

oh God, when push came to shove the guy in the email also said, him and the guy in the youtube said they liked 'two-spirits'. lol the 'occam's razor secrets' thing I said, well I'm sure u guys wouldn't like it if people blew 'secrets' out of proportion with you personally, yet they're obsessed with secret societies. Golden rule, still don't know if that is even the bible or if it's too old an idea and the bible couldn't take credit

 

 

Gay people are def not mutants, and I like the Native American concept of two-spirits, or people born with feminine and masculine traits (Aphex Twin might be a two-spirit...me too in some ways), but there are actually chemicals being researched to alter the sexual proclivities of animals

 

just admit you know 'animal avatars' lol

 

eh I shouldn't share the email in its entirety, too much personal stuff was xposed on both fronts. Just two windows into specific people's conspiritism. Con-two-spiritism, lol

[Ragnar]

I know I joked about Venetian Snares stealth buddhist but this is definitely not total word salad

 

 

We are born, she says, and we begin to disintegrate. These disintegrations give birth to further crumbling forms which plummet and reconstruct themselves into new malformations which in turn fall into dust and simultaneously elevate new structures infinitely. This might be what it is to exist, to shit all over everything before us, to erase it and for a moment, make it ours. Civilization built over civilization over civilization over long tainted ground. Zeus and a demon chiseling away at each other forever. 

 

reminds me of https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/world/taliban-destroys-bamiyan-buddha-statues-in-2001/2015/07/29/8e0c35ca-362f-11e5-ab7b-6416d97c73c2_video.html?utm_term=.3663519ae117

 

I mean it doesn't have to be the taliban, it can be anyone, but isn't there an element of not even 'the group' in doing things like this, just ME, as in 'i can't stand this big buddha, me, /my experience/ is special waaaaaaa Ima babby (mr show infantilist fetish, blows a fart) '

 

there was this cool thing in Iraq I think

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom

 

oh it doesn't say in the wiki

 

https://educated-traveller.com/2016/11/08/the-house-of-wisdom-baghdad/

 

but Muslim Christian and Jewish scholars were allowed there, maybe a pretense of ABRAHAMIC GUYS but it's a start

 

wasn't the Taliban or Americans or anyone that SACKED this one though, says it was the Mongols

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom#Destruction_by_the_Mongols

 

 

this is nice too, regardless of the situation in Egypt somebody got this one through

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliotheca_Alexandrina   /homage/ to the original Library of Alexandria

 

like darreichungsform's signature kind of affected me, like if you just see the Arabic language SCRAWLED on a wall somewhere in some bombed out village, and not in a real ass book, isn't that going to affect your perception of a group of people? Does seeing the Middle East as RUINS CONSTANTLY on the news/the media kind of compound itself in painting a negative picture of the place?

[Ragnar]

 

there's definitely an element in my music, like if you SET UP the music as 'unhinged' sounding it's an interesting way to.... well like a bunch of non-watmm people who discovered my music were conspiracy-types again, and one nagged me thru email trying to 'sell' me whatever conspiracy. And I just emailed back, well thanks that $10 feels pretty great now, surely I don't feel like ideologically/philosophically, I'm someone on the street, to you, for $10. lol

 

is secretly the band/group that hates 99% of its fanbase

 

 

I've had similar issues for years.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an2arlvb1vk

 

(first guy) when ur trying to be chevy chase but people on the internet think you're unironic chevy chase

[TubularCorporation]

Those first two guys were about 1/4 of our repeat customers back in my record store days.

 

EDIT: that's really not an exaggeration.

[thawkins]

To be honest that stuff does not sound so much conspiracy type as just some guy gone into spiritual overdrive through too many new age books and yoga stuff without nearly enough critical thinking. Which to me is just the other side of the conspiracy theorist coin - both sides are detached from reality, but at least the new age hippies see everything in a more positive light. I had a dude I know send me a link to some tantric yoga screed about how a penis is a source of positive electric energy or something. He then kept talking about "presence" or something and my first reaction was that he's just fucked up high or depressed (or both). Turned out that he's studying to be a yoga teacher (knowing what I know about the guy I am still 99% certain he's depressed as hell and that's just the symptom).

[Entorwellian]

Ryanair you should read JARON Lanier's "Who Owns the Future," I bet you'd like it.

 

Reading this right now.

[Ragnar]

To be honest that stuff does not sound so much conspiracy type as just some guy gone into spiritual overdrive through too many new age books and yoga stuff without nearly enough critical thinking. Which to me is just the other side of the conspiracy theorist coin - both sides are detached from reality, but at least the new age hippies see everything in a more positive light. I had a dude I know send me a link to some tantric yoga screed about how a penis is a source of positive electric energy or something. He then kept talking about "presence" or something and my first reaction was that he's just fucked up high or depressed (or both). Turned out that he's studying to be a yoga teacher (knowing what I know about the guy I am still 99% certain he's depressed as hell and that's just the symptom).

 

at least he's like post-ironic even if not intentionally? (is that possible?) Didn't yoga start out as a sex cult? ("Yoga pants" are just keeping with tradition lol)

 

also he was conspiracy type, I implied two spirit and then there was also some negative stuff about masonry being like whether gay or straight some blackmail sex thing going on. (black male sex, is subconscious real)

[Ragnar]

is it in the spirit of 'cut-up technique' or whatever to give no fucks with naming samples, no 'snar2.wav', just [mashes keyboard].wav

[thawkins]

 

at least he's like post-ironic even if not intentionally? (is that possible?) Didn't yoga start out as a sex cult? ("Yoga pants" are just keeping with tradition lol)

 

also he was conspiracy type, I implied two spirit and then there was also some negative stuff about masonry being like whether gay or straight some blackmail sex thing going on. (black male sex, is subconscious real)

 

 

Dunno, I have always seen yoga as just a set of exercises that keep your body limber. Any deeper connection to spirituality or buddhism or things like that are way overemphasised by western interpretations looking for some easy and cheap way to atone for their sins without too much effort ("spend just 15 minutes per day on this amazing workout discovered by this clever yoga mom! gym owners hate her!"). My friend in particular seemed to be totally into that aspect which I would best describe as using yoga and meditation to hypnotize yourself into being happy with yourself without actually addressing any of the causes of your unhappiness.

 

Somebody earlier mentioned psytrance in this thread. I like to listen to psytrance but the events I have been to (and sometimes organized) have more or less put me off. I think mostly because even though the psy rave culture and PLUR on the surface seems super welcoming and all the songs are filled with Terence McKenna quotes about opening your consciousness or whatever, the genre itself is more or less stuck in the same tropes and most of the people seem to only be open to only to slight variations of the "psy" theme. Seems like everybody is trying to relive their own best rave experiences which means that of course the music has to be same in a way. But for me I get really tired mentally of the constant 4/4 blast with the every song having same effects, melodies, McKenna samples just rearranged in a slightly different way.

 

I guess it's kind of the same in some house/techno circles where I have heard DJs and people say "hey I listen/play to all kinds of stuff" and then it just turns out that it's more like "I listen to both Berlin and Detroit techno".

 

Of course in these settings I feel the chemicals also play a large role in getting into the music, maybe I have missed all the subculture cues which sort of define the space or scope of the music played (and also the way it is played - whether full on in your face or more laid back and trippy). On the other hand when talking about a live set at an event I really liked, another person (who was also at the event) in the conversation then started gloating how they went to the organizer to ask to cut the set short because it was boring them or something? What fucking audacity!

 

This incident keeps nagging me because always when I go to an event I have a mindset of trusting the organizers and letting them execute their vision as best as possible even if it does not make sense to me at first. Especially if the vibe and theme of the party is of positivity, togetherness, tolerance, etc. Like it's a place where you put your ego aside and absolutely do not act like a backseat driver if the DJ does not play your favorite tunes. It's things like this why I believe most in smaller events where people can know each other more and it is easier to have a shared state of mind.

 

Edit: boy look at all those words, guess I am still pissed about this. :)