Experimental music – Cornerman

Research, into everything, fueling the creative process

Past week has not seen any musical activity, apart from some patches without sound. As I needed a recovery week after a pretty busy week traveling, visiting cities and social interaction. Which always takes a toll on my cognitive energy levels. That is just how it works when you have permanent brain damage.

It’s all worth it, being among friends, family and visiting cool places and soaking in art. All the while trying and stretching my limits a bit. That part of the equation did not go as planned. So this week I had to dial down on some activities like making music in order to recover as quickly as possible.

One of the things I try not to do, is break the chain. Or in other words, I need to stay active in my music making process or creative process on a regular basis. As I have mentioned before, there is no point in going all out for a couple of weeks and then not do anything again for months. That is not how you build habits and get better at anything.

So I have devised a few other activities which I can do and are related to making music and or the creative process in general. One of the things is research.

Applying research to the creative process

What do I mean by research? Well I don’t mean it in the scientific sense. But rather finding books, gear, interesting topics that can spark ideas. This week I have been thinking about design in a broad sense. Architecture, beautifully written code, visuals, and so on.

So I just started out writing some search options, and see where I end up. I love all sorts of mathematical things, most of them go way above my comprehension but there is something beautiful about it. While searching I stumbled upon the book, The nature of code , interesting and added it to my reading list.

While looking around the internet for visuals I found Generative Art. Going further I got into the wormhole of visuals and coding I reconnected with a long term interest in live coding of music, among others there is the coding language Tidal Cycles. Which I watched some video’s on.

Another interesting book on music & coding is Fundamentals of Music Processing.

What do I do with this?

So while we all browse the internet on a daily basis and find cool stuff, it’s hard to do and try everything we see, as there is simply too much. I always get inspired by simple seeing all the stuff people do with all the things out there. And even by just going tru the index of a book I get triggered for new ideas which I can apply to my own set of tools.

It always sparks an idea and an approach which I haven’t thought of or something I can try with my own setup.

I am in no way inclined to start learning something totally new like live coding when I am just getting my head around Max MSP for example. But in all these resources there are pathways you can apply to your own creative process or way of thinking about your workflow. And the most important thing. It keeps my process going even if I don’t have the energy to work on the ‘core’ which is making music.

Eurorack patching adventures

Last week was all about the new proces. The idea was I make a patch on my eurorack, record it, make samples and make a track out of it. I already encountered some time difficulties getting all this work done in a week. So I let go of the fixed time table and started at the first item on the task list.

Patching the Eurorack synth, it’s a pretty basic setup, think of a single voice mono synth with some extra modulation. The great thing about Eurorack, or any other like-minded system like Max MSP, Reaktor or VCV is that you can construct your own path of sound & functions. This is a double edged sword as it can lead to just patching and nothing further. Which is always a dangerous thing with me, being limited in time.

It’s also a way to escape the limitations in processing sound by my brain, I can patch without sound and audition the results later. Perfect for me. So while time flies when patching, it’s a great way for me to learn more about developing sounds, signal flow and other sound designing stuff without over extending myself.

The second part of the week was spent learning max map further and reading about design in general. Which is always interesting. Max MSP has a high threshold for me in getting fluent with it so it will take time mastering it to a degree I can write ideas without spending time in books and manuals but its fun and has the added benefit of not having to have sound on all the time.

All in all a good week spending time doing music and music related things. Looking forward to next (technically this week as I am a bit late writing this blog) week.

First week with the small setup & new process focussed mindset

Working with my small setup has advantages, After spending a week working with it on a consistent basis. It’s easier to get going and I am far less distracted. My first idea was to work on a patch for a few days, then record loops and then finish a track, all within a week and build a catalog of work that way.

This timeline was a bit over enthusiastic, as I am with a lot of my planning. But given the focus and shift from goals towards the process of working on my skills, I am still happy with my progress this week.

I have also build in a learning and education bit into the process. So I am studying Max MSP again. Which is great fun and pretty difficult. But it’s very promising as I have tons of ideas already for merging Eurorack with Max MSP and building a set of tools for it.

I need to focus on the proces first. And not jump on and trying to get all these ideas out as fast as possible. I have to leave the pressure out of the equation.

I do pencil my ideas down in my notebooks, and work on them by working them out in the notebooks. So I keep working on ideas while doing the work. It easy to dream away and imagine great goals ahead and try to reach them as fast as possible and burn yourself out. It’s hard to focus on the small incremental gains and work on your skillset. At least for me.

Showing up is half the work, or battle. But it’s hard and not easy at all. At least for me. Just twiddling knobs and enjoying the hobby is nice, but doesn’t get me towards my goals. There is playtime reserved into the process, don’t worry there is fun to be had. But I also need to choose the harder path. In the end it will be more fore filling and rewarding.

Let’s see what this week brings.

A simple setup, more focus

Some time ago I have decided to take a smaller set of instruments to make my music with. The bigger the setup, the more problems I have making decisions. It might be fun to know what I have chosen to work with. First choice, an old samper, the Emu ESI 4000. Floppy disks operated. Who still knows what these things are?

A drummachine, The under appreciated Elektron Machine drum and a small selection of eurorack modules and a sequencer. The eurorack is basically a single voice mono synth and a reverb.

To record and arrange everything I have made an Ableton template with 8 tracks with some effects, which I will not change. This gives me some sound design options after recording.

The simple idea is, I design a patch, make loops in the sampler, record them in Ableton and divide them over a maximum of 8 tracks. Then I will try and make something interesting with it. I will take a fixed amount of days to try and make a track out of it. Whether it is a finished product or not, I will publish the result.

That last thing might seen a bit strange, but if I don’t publish it, I will not get used to sharing things. When I write a blog I have no problem of hitting the publish button. I might get over my fear of sharing my music this wat.

Quantity over quality

One of the things I doubt is the quality of my creative output. Whether it’s my writing, my pictures or my writing skills, I often have doubts about the quality of the work. Especially with my music, and the main reason I almost never share anything.

I really want to change this. I strive for perfection in everything and while pursuing perfection I often trow away ideas or keep tweaking to find it. For some reason I am more easy going in other areas, like writing. Probably because I feel I am somewhat better at it which makes it easier for me to share.

Society teaches us that everything must be ‘perfect’, what this ‘perfect’ is nobody tells you. And while striving for perfection a lot of good ideas are lost and the art of experimentation is lost.

Science teaches us something else. If you want to be good at something, you need to practice a lot. You increase your skills by doing and while doing you learn from your mistakes. By sharing your work you give others the opportunity to give feedback, which is another opportunity to learn.

In Japan it’s very normal to accept the beauty of imperfection, wabi-sabi, the acceptance and transience of imperfection. In art it’s often described as ‘imperfect beauty’ or ‘flawed beauty’ it emphasizes the process of making a piece of art resulting in an art piece that is ultimately incomplete.

We don’t have this in western cultures, which is a real shame. Our need for perfection puts the break on our output. Or as Voltaire said it “the best is the enemy of the good”. Things don’t have to be perfect. In life and especially in all forms of creative output perfection is a debatable concept.

So why do I struggle so much with sharing my music? I think it is because music is very valuable to me. I have so much great memories attached to music. and music has gotten me through some hard times that all my musical output seems pale in comparison, will it ever be good enough to evoke any emotion?

This sounds a bit heavy but that’s how I feel about it. I need to let this feeling go and start sharing my creations. Even if it’s just a loop or an unfinished piece of music. Striving for perfection is something I need to let go and focus on improving by making a lot of stuff. Quantity over quality, in order to improve my skills and let go of my fear of sharing. The quality will come over time.

Max MSP a learning journey

As some older followers of this blog know I have been learning Max MSP. Which now has more focus since I can work on projects without sound. I have been looking at various ways to keep it going and not having to stop due to insufficient cognitive energy.

I have been working on a new way of daily planning which involves shorter time frames and more of them, which has some advantages and disadvantages. The biggest advantage is the continuous workflow. The short instances the biggest drawdown.

Max MSP itself for me has a steep learning curve, although the help files and the various books on it are great, I am going to try and fund some one on one teaching to get up to speed. Hopefully this will help.

I have dusted off an old looper project, my first idea for building tracks based on loops recorded from a Eurorack system. It was a pretty big system I had in mind which I now scaled down to make it functional as soon as possible.

Momentum is key now, otherwise I will keep trying to bite off more than I can chew. I will also try and compose and share some stuff from this setup.

Less is more

The larger the setup the more options I have. Which I absolutely love. However this also has a time implication, more of my limited time and energy will go into setting up and learning how to use it. I have tried to use a limited set of tools before which quickly escalated into much larger setups.

I am not very good in keeping a small setup and focussing on just that setup. Which is a bit weird as my discipline is pretty good. I can keep to my planning. I suppose this is because I love my toys. I am like a little kid in a toy store which is allowed to play with anything. And this does not yield any result. Just a lot of unfinished sketches.

So this time I absolutely need to keep my setup small and learn it inside out. which will be my focus the coming month. I keep my timelines a bit wider as last time I got frustrated with not achieving my goals. In retrospect I had too many things I wanted to get done in too little time.

This time that has to change. There is a lot to do which will take time. That’s just how it is.

The music journey – Making an album (week 27)

Still going, this was a hard week. Most of the time showing up is not that hard. This week however it was. My cognitive state didn’t allow for much activity at all. Most of the time I am good enough to be able to switch between activities.

If reading is a problem, I switch to editing samples, making a patch or just messing about with loops. This week was different. I could not perform any of the tasks I normally do. I did however give it a go a few times. So I managed to read a chapter in this phenomenal book on ~gen in MAX MSP. It’s called Generating Sound & Organizing Time by Graham Wakefield & Gregory Taylor

I probably mentioned it in another post, but it’s recommenced reading. Even if you are not into Max , it’s just good getting an understanding of what this does in terms of musical ideas and seeing things in a different perspective.

It’s about working with the ~gen functionality within MAX and what you can achieve with, and it’s a lot. For me a bit difficult to get my head around but it’s really intriguing. And I will probably have to read it a few times and work with it to fully get to grips with it.

So it was a bit of a frustrating week and not what I had in mind. Eventually that is life as well.

The music journey – Making an album (week 25)

This week I made a good start in building the sequencer for my Eurorack in Max Msp, for now it’s aimed specifically at the Morphagene and what functionality I need for that. Already done a few tests and still have a lot of work to do.

That’s basically it as far as progress goes. while designing the Max patch I got to think about how music touches all of my interests. It satisfies my technological curiosity, I can think about design concepts and I can dive into musical history.

From reading manuals, via biographies and watching documentaries. Without even making any music. So when I have a good day cognitively speaking I can read and think about music, and if I have a really good day I can make music. It’s an integral part of my life, and weekly activities. There is always something to do which drives me forward in the direction of my goals.

As I touched upon last week, getting those goals in to fruition isn’t always easy and sometimes an activity doesn’t seem to contribute anything towards the goals. But if you look at it from another and wider perspective there is always something in the things you do which moves you forward, inching closer to your goals.

The music journey – Making an album (week 22)

This week I have been jamming with a small setup and researching how I can get the most out of it. I have also had the recorder running so the tapes are there. I have planned another two weeks ahead with more of these jam sessions. So I am consistently making music. And get my focus back on the main event, making music. Hopefully my brain can keep up with it.

Another topic that I have been working on some more is figuring out the possibilities regarding releasing the music. For me the easiest, well not exactly easy but most comfortable way is to see release it. Getting stuff out there via a few platforms so I don’t get lost and see if I can create a constant schedule in releasing my music. Let’s see how I get on at first, I can always expand later.

Visuals are increasingly important as a way of getting music out there, especially with things like Youtube which are a source of new music for lots of people. In my original plan for my album project I had come up with the idea to integrate Touchdesigner for the visual component. And the fun bit about this is you can connect it to MAX MSP. I am now figuring out how I can incorporate this into my patches and generate a nice visual to go with my music.

A very good week, but I still fall into the pitfall of loosing my focus. As everything is fun and the joy I get out of researching stuff. But I feel I return to my original idea much quicker than I used too. So that’s a win. Now all I need to do is finishing music, and find the confidence to release it.