Each week, I first summarize my adventures in making music. Lately, I have been composing tracks for the Disquiet Junto, the Naviar Records Haiku Music Challenge and, this year for the first time, Weekly Beats. I also have other projects and collaborations I will share occasionally.
I also bring together the perspective I shared in posts on social media (currently Mastodon) about the music industry in the section: Music + Tech + Law. These thoughts are intended to come from me as a consumer of, and participant in, the entertainment business. However, I cannot completely separate the thoughts I generate from the part of my brain I use for my day job as a lawyer experienced in technology contracts and intellectual property.*
My Music
I have a set of dice I use to start my tracks. I was inspired to make them after seeing this video. For example, one tells me a percussive element to start with, another tells me a melodic element and the others help me decide on things like BPM and scale. It is not always the case that the track I make ends up featuring the percussive and melodic elements I start with, but this one does with the ride and bass, respectively. One day, I would like to get to the point where I can perform a song like this live with electronics as well as a ride cymbal.
On a personal note, and for context, I am dealing with a very common health issue and taking some medication temporarily to help with the pain. I am not on opioids, but these pills do cause what I would call a "brain fog" - hence the name of the track. This made it very difficult for me to put time into this track this week. I spent most of my mental energy trying to make it through the work day, so by the time I was able to get back to my track in the evening, I did not have much left to give. I am sure there will be ups and downs throughout the year, but this week was definitely a downer.
Back to the composition, after I set up the ride and bass, I built the rest of the beat on my Push 2. I shared last week that my Push 2 was acting up and I thought I had resolved the problem by reinstalling Ableton Live, but it turns out I was wrong. I am in touch with Ableton support to see if I can diagnose the issue. But that just meant I had to flip over to my computer sooner than I might have otherwise. I was not quite done with the lead synth parts that are featured in each of the two parts of the song. If I were to spend more time on this track, those are what I would likely change.
My inspiration from this track came from listening to the SBTRKT self-titled album from 2011. That record has stuck with me and when I revisited it, I realized how much I appreciated the stripped down parts of the beats that have very few elements. I tried to create some parts like that in this track.
Music + Tech + Law
The 3D DAW featured in this article looks incredible. I have only ever worked in 2D so I am trying to wrap my mind around multiple layers behind the linear timeline I am used to. I already lose track of time while making music, so when the camera pans in-between the layers of clips and says, “GET LOST IN THE MUSIC” - I can see myself doing exactly that! I personally do not like toggling between windows, so having unlimited space for all of the different interfaces I’m working with is appealing.
Raccoon Fink posted a thread on Mastodon about going back and forth with the Apple Music support team on the rules around profile photos. The official guidelines state that an Apple Music profile picture must be a representation of an artist, but it also mentions the word “logo.” The disagreement was over the initial rejection of Raccoon Fink’s logo which ended up being reversed. But this made me think of when I started putting my music out into the world. I set up all of my profile pictures on various services with a simple silhouette of my head and shoulders. The only service that rejected it was Apple Music and that was the primary reason I switched to an actual photograph.
Also on Mastodon, Stefan Bohacek posted a fascinating article about a research study that challenges the traditional notions around music theory. It touched on the “tone and tuning” of different instruments and how they vary, but specifically mentioned percussion instruments. As a drummer, this made me think of how drums and cymbals are rarely “tuned” to match a song, and even if they are, a drum will not necessarily hold its tune after being struck over and over again throughout a song. Cymbals are another story entirely. They react differently depending on how they are hit and what position they happen to be in when they are struck. And I love to listen closely to the quiet decay of a cymbal resonating. It is like a hidden instrument playing a secret tone. The science of the article may have been a little over my head, but it caused me to look at my drum kit and other percussion instruments in a whole new way.
There is currently some controversy over a proposal to pay a higher rate to artists who distribute songs in Dolby Atmos format. The pushback comes from independent artists and labels who say that this puts them at a financial disadvantage because it is expensive to create a separate Dolby Atmos mix. This article is about one company that says it does not have to be that expensive and provides such services for “as little as $350 per song.” That still sounds expensive to me for indie and unsigned music artists. I would think that musicians who are already used to doing everything themselves will be more likely to put that money towards a pair of headphones that can be used for mixing in Dolby Atmos. Rather than a divide between well-funded artists who can afford a studio and those who cannot, I believe we will see artists use tools at their disposal to make these types of mixes.
I listened to two great episodes of the Artists and Hackers podcast. One called Lawyers and Hackers which focused on copyright and open source licenses, and the other called Creating In A Commons which focused on Creative Commons licenses and featured Marc Weidenbaum of Disquiet.com. As a tech attorney by day and a hobbyist musician participating in projects like the Disquiet Junto, these topics were very interesting to me. Both episodes were really well done and I highly recommend them.
*My opinions are not my employer’s and this material does not create an attorney-client relationship, is not intended to convey legal or ethics advice, and does not guarantee the same or similar results in all cases.