My love of music spans listening to it, sharing it, seeing it,
writing it, recording it, and (to a much lesser extent) figuring
out how to cover the expense of it.
I arrived at an analogy that I think works
really well for how I engage with creating music. Maybe you can
relate if you fancy yourself any kind of artist. It's a two-part
analogy... or it's two analogies that are related. I don't know.
Anyway, here they are.
-
Sandcastles
You walk alone on the beach. The sun is setting and the tide
is coming in. Oops, you left your phone at home. You suddenly
feel compelled to make a sandcastle. You enjoy the process of
creating it. You admire your work when it's done. The tide
washes it away, and no one but you ever sees it. The purpose
of making it is only the joy of making it.
This is probably what we tell ourselves the ultimate goal of
art is, but deep down you know that's only part of it...
-
Thanksgiving Dinner
Grandma loves to cook. She doesn't love paying for groceries,
doing the dishes, and spending all day sweating over a hot
stove, but it's a package deal: It's all hard work, not all
fun, but some of it she loves. At the end of a very long,
expensive, exhausting Thanksgiving Day, she knows it was all
worth it when she looks at the faces of the people she cares
about enjoying what she made. She doesn't need anyone to tell
her it was delicious, because she can see them refilling
their plates for the third time.
But if she were to ask, "Who is coming to Thanksgiving this
year?" and everyone replied, "I'm not sure what I've got
going on that day. I might come. We'll see." Well, that
changes things, doesn't it? How much should she spend at the
grocery store? How big of a meal does this need to be? Is she
eating alone this Thanksgiving? Because if so, she might make
a sandwich and spend the day watching TV. Or, let's say
everyone shows up, but without any enthusiasm to eat, and
then after dinner the guests give her a combination of
constructive and unconstructive criticism. There is a lot to
not love about cooking in this scenario.
The main problem with this analogy is that the music industry
is more like a restaurant creating a product and service to
sell to customers. In that case, most of my grandma examples
go out the window, and this is exactly why I do not love the
music industry. But the music industry is unfortunately vital
to an important part of the grandma analogy: Every year, the
guests who love her food ask if they can invite their friends
to join them the next year so their friends can also
experience Grandma's cooking. And every year, more people ask
if they can bring more people. And Grandma's home never gets
too crowded, because the more people who enjoy it, the more
she enjoys doing it. And so the goal is, in a way, to invite
the whole world to dinner. And as the number in attendance
grows, people stop expecting Grandma to pay for all the
groceries. People pitch in one way or another.
Because art is meant to be consumed, connected with, enjoyed,
etc., it is easy to look at it as a product through the lens
of capitalism. But while some art is a product, and some
products are artistic, not all art needs to be a product, and
not all products need to be artistic. But in order for art to
be consumed, connected with, and enjoyed, it must be shared.
It needs to reach people, and in an ever-oversaturated world
of content, how can it be done? And so, doing marketing,
getting press, getting distribution, and everything you think
of when you expect an artist to "act professional" is
participation in the music industry, but under duress.
|
Music Tools
-
This is an HTML music theory "calculator" webpage that has multiple features.
It lets the user figure out what chord best describes a cluster of notes.
It gives chord suggestions based on a user's desired key/scale.
It let's the user experiment with adding or altering the quality, extension, and modifiers of the chords.
It let's the user add chords to a progression list, see a suggested voicing based on context, reorder and manually revoice, and finally export a MIDI file of the progression.
Behind the curtain of my HTML file is a javascript and CSS file doing all the heavy lifting. I have micromanaged A.I. to write these, but I do not know how to write javascript or CSS yet.
Please email me with any errors you find! Thanks!
Music Recordings
Music & lyrics written, edited, preformed, recorded, edited, and published by myself or in part ...and with a lot of help from great friends.
-
2019-Current
-
2009-2013
-
2001-2008
-
1996-2000
|
