How psy-trance artists 808 State got me hooked on producing electronic music because of one album, Gorgeous.
Tag: reflections
Stuck in a Creative Hole for 3 Years
It’s been a long time.Probably about three years (or more) since I last produced a new Acid42 track.Here’s how circumstance and collaborators brought me out of the creative hole I was languishing in.
Creativity Lessons from a Nine-Year Old Boy and His Cardboard Arcade
Nine-year old Caine Monroy built an entire game arcade out of cardboard boxes, tape, brown paper bags, calculators and string — because he wanted to own and manage his very own arcade. And that goal pushed him toward a creative endeavour that fulfilled his artistic need.
A Season of Protest
This March is #BLACKMARCH. Join others who will STOP buying products from big media and instead, will purchase from independent producers, from netlabels offering creative commons music, from websites with open source materials, from the artists themselves.
Generating Electronica Song Titles
Someone ought to make a song title generator just for electronic music tracks. But no one did. So I went and made my own.
3 Lessons That Orbital Taught Me
The British dance music duo of Phil and Paul Hartnoll, who came to be known as Orbital, were critically and commercially successful in the dance music movement of the 1990s — and famed for their live improvisation during their gigs. But listening to their studio tracks taught me some important lessons. One track in particular “The Box” encapsulates these lessons in a single tune.
Musical Dissonance or Purposeful Chaos?
I had been listening to some amateurish Middle Eastern electronic music borrowed from the public library which set some bellydancing rhythms to breakbeats and drum patterns. The results were far from stellar, prompting me to post my disdain for a lot of dissonant music which strikes me as lazy rather than artistic. A chat conversation soon followed with fellow musician and music producer Mark Redito (aka Spazzkid) of MyParasol who reminded me that some of it is done on purpose and we ought not to judge. Here is the edited transcript:
Influences: Suzanne Ciani’s New Age Melodies
I’ve decided to take a look at some of the tracks and music that helped shape my musical taste and style. This category of posts will be called Influences. First up, the melodic new age instrumentals of Suzanne Ciani, which can be summed up in this one track: “Mosaic.”
Cult Of The Amateur and Netlabels: Mediocrity Will Kill Us
For those of us closely interested in the future of internet and culture in general, the book The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen (Random House) is riveting reading most of the way through. Keen tackles how the democratization of the Net is producing tons of crap on a daily basis and slowly killing off the production of meaningful art.
Art Now: Do Something With What You Have
While it’s good to ask around and find out what others use, don’t get so hung up about gear and brands and tools and materials that you forget that dynamic energy that wans to burst out of you because you have something you need to say through your art.
The point I always try to stress to those starting out in any creative endeavor, whether in visual art or music, sculpture or writing, is that you already do possess tools right under your nose that you can utilize in order to create your art.