This section has been re-written recently to try and organize some of my ideas regarding DIY philosophy in electronic music, and the returning trend of home-made-music to modern culture. The section is now broken down into 3 topics that encompass the aspects of DIY as they pertain to my music:
- A Piece Of Your Environment In Your Music (Use What You Have At Hand)
- Advanced DIY, Building Your Own Crazy Instruments
- A Return To Hand-Made Music, The Death Of The Mass Marketed Music Industry
- A Piece Of Your Environment In Your Music (Use What You Have At Hand)
Regardless of where my travels take me, one daunting question always follows me. “What kind of equipment do you use?” and, “What do you think is the best gear or software?”. Understand that I have no intention of disrespect to the nerds and keeners of the world but my answer usually dis-appoints more often then not: “What-ever you have at hand” I reply.
Behind this reply is a lot more than simply a desire not to talk-shop, on the contrary, it’s a fundamental ideal which I stand behind whole-heartedly.
For me, music is the encapsulation of not only an emotion, but also a time and place in this world. The most wonderful recordings have successfully captured a sense of environment that is painted in each of our minds via our own imaginations. Be it as it may, electronic music may currently have the least of all environmental contexts, but it doesn’t have to. I believe that these tell-tale signatures will become more predominant as we move back towards a trend of home-made music and we, as listeners, become more familiarized with the technology involved in making it.
There are many ways of allowing a listener a window into your soul; to see who you are as a musician, where you made the music and the feeling that inspired you, and the larger this window becomes, the better the chance to inspiring them.
So nerds and newbies of this world, please don’t feel like just because you are using a tape-recorder, a 5$ microphone and a guitar-pedal, that you are at any less of an advantage than those with thousands of dollars in “professional” equipment.
- Advanced DIY, Building Your Own Crazy Instruments
This section is less about the ideal of DIY more as it is a literal definition of it. Do-It-Yourself is taken to the extreme when people can think so totally “out-side-the-box” that they can apply a simple controllable action to an infinite number of applications. This section is dedicated to those inventive minds as well as those who simply say to them-selves often: “F$$K THAT, I CAN BUILD THAT MYSELF!”
For those of you who haven’t yet seen the “Contraptions” section of this site, check it out. I always prefer to experiment with real-world objects and elements rather than immerse my-self in technology which few people can relate too and hence understand. My “Electro-Magnetic Chefs Knife” has been a staple instrument in my live show for many-a-year now, and my video demonstration can be seen here. I’m in the conceptualization stage of a few others that I plan on debuting in my live-sets in the near future.
Some external DIY Electronic links for those who find it entertaining and those tantalized by the prospect of participating:
Projects and Artists:
www.monochrom.at
www.steim.org
www.klangbureau.de
www.anti-theory.com/soundart
www.hackawii.com
Tools:
www.arduino.cc
www.highlyliquid.com
www.cycling74.com
www.circuit-bent.net
www.diystompboxes.com
- A Return To Hand-Made Music, The Death Of The Mass Marketed Music Industry
The recent return to home-made and truly independent music in the age of user generated content, comes to us not only via the evolution of technology but also by a demand for a revival of the human touch.
In the last 2 decades, sincerity and truth have fallen by the wayside as tailor-made marketing strategies of statistical generated pop-music icons manifested the media to compete for once valuable CD sales. With today’s primary sources of revenue for the music industry being concerts and the most influential powers of promotion becoming blogs and word-of-mouth, the mass marketing, fake-lifestyle dealers have been stripped of their motivation to tell us we aren’t cool anymore unless we look like … oh, let’s see… R Kelly? or Aerosmith? YIKES! Fortunately for those of us with any sense of self-respect, this Darwin-ian style extinction of major-label executives has allowed an influx of artists with actual Art to offer who have been finally afforded their right to an audience. It’s not debatable that there was always some demand for an alternative to the glitz and glamour of synthetic MTV pop-star-ism. The question is; now that a return to romanticism within our own lives and within the lives of people not so different from ourselves is made, will this trend expand and entice, or can we only be enticed by the unobtainable?