It’s fire season here again in Southern California. As I walked out of my studio today, the air was thick with smoke. It’s definitely not a healthy place to live this time of year. The closest fire was about15 miles away a couple of days ago. Luckily for me, it moved in the opposite direction. I feel bad for the people who’ve lost their homes to it. And I wish the best for the firefighters who face the dangers of the fires and hope all will be safe.
When creating music, I tend to approach it more as “painting” sound as opposed to “composing”. For me, this is a better analogy for what I do. I find my self very attracted to creating mood through sound “textures”. If we consider it, “texture” is a very tactile and/or visual term. It’s important in painting.
And while I’m not really thinking in visual colors when creating, I sometimes get the sense that I’m using a paint brush to create a music track’s landscape. Sound is just color that the ears can hear and these colors can be combined in an almost limitless array.
Composer/Producer Tom Lynn has remixed a track, “Fighting Outlaws”, from the Oddworld Stranger’s Wrath soundtrack. I love it! You can check it out here at the Deep Lever site.
I just got a pleasant surprise this evening while perusing the latest Game Informer magazine (June issue). They covered the last Oddworld game I was working on when the company shut down its game development studio. With the unfortunate closure, the game, The Brutal Ballad of Fangus Klot, was canceled.
The team had been working pretty hard on it. Our timeline for the project was daunting (we planned to finish it in approx. 12-14 months) but the upside was that the team was very familiar with the game engine (it was the Stranger’s Wrath engine). I planned to take the music in a direction that reflected the darker tone of the game and had created a number of early sketches. I wish we had gotten a chance to finish the project, but it wasn’t meant to be.
I’ve recently felt myself drawn to creating music for my own artist releases that has a quieter tone. By “recently”, I mean for the last year or so. My upcoming release, Subway Meditations, is an indication of this.
It partially has to do with the soundtrack work I’ve been doing for video games. Usually game soundtracks require music that is highly dramatic and energetic. I love to write that type of material and get a lot of enjoyment from it, but I also want to explore areas of music that I have an interest in creating that I don’t always get a chance to do in soundtrack work.
That’s not the whole picture, really. A big part is my response to the world we live in, a world increasingly complex and intricate. Sometimes we have an overwhelming amount of information thrown at us. Reading the daily news can instill a sense of the need to be in an eternal state of high alert. It can be paralyzing if we try to digest too much of it.
Creating something quieter and simpler allows me to return a sense of balance. It also allows me to have something positive to share with others.
Yep, I’m still busy writing music, but I also take time to see what’s going on beyond my studio door.
Here are a few things I’ve come across that I’ve liked:
“Braid”–this is a video game by creator Jonathan Blow. In a world filled with high-action gaming, it’s nice to see work that has a totally different vibe. Its pace is slower and there’s decent depth to it. Solid story, simple but dreamy visuals and a very appropriate music soundtrack.
“True Blood”–this series is on HBO. I wasn’t really too aware of it until last week I noticed that the whole first season was available on demand. I started watching it and immediately loved it. Alan Ball, who is the creator of the show, also created the series “Six Feet Under” and also the film “American Beauty”. I’m a huge fan of these, too. Excellent writing, characters and storytelling.
While I’m on the subject of TV (which I don’t watch too much of), another great series is “Mad Men”. I caught the first two seasons a while ago but it just popped into my head as I’m writing this. btw, I rarely watch any series when it first comes out and would rather watch a whole season in a week or so on DVD or on-demand.
“Tycho”–this is a music artist. The style is laid-back electronic music with some undeniable influence from Boards of Canada. Nice for chilling out
Is there anything lately that anyone else has come across? Send me an email and let me know. Or if you just feel like saying hello, you can do that too!
Coming up with good or interesting ideas is never a problem. One issue is not having enough time to develop all of them, but that’s me wishing for the impossible.
What must be done is to slim down the list of ideas to a key few and then to nurture them.
As I’ve said, good ideas are easy to come by. The difficult part is executing on those ideas. It’s much easier to fall apart and fail in the execution, because that is the part of the process that requires discipline, awareness and balance.
Music fans used to pay 99 cents for a single track at the iTunes store, but recently iTunes moved into a variable pricing scheme on their tracks, which has some good points but also a negative side. The scheme has three tiers: 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29. The low end of that spectrum will probably be older or less-in-demand tracks, which is good. The high end ($1.29) will represent releases by popular artists and I think that’s a shame.
Obviously this is a moved forced upon Apple by the major record labels and, to me, it shows once again that the majors are out of touch with reality.
I think that pricing per track should actually be reduced with the top price tier being no higher than 69 cents and the low end tier as low as 29 cents. A lower price point could draw more buyers and therefore sell more copies.
Honestly, digital distribution is so much cheaper than physical distribution (CDs and vinyl). Record labels and artists don’t need to front for the big costs and risks that physical distribution has traditionally yielded. There are still costs involved with digital distribution but it’s not nearly the burden that CDs or vinyl bring to the table.
Doesn’t it make sense to pass on some of the benefit of lower cost to music fans? It does to me.
One of my favorite quotes is by 20th century composer Stravinsky:
“The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self.”
It seems contradictory but I’ve found it to be true. Having a myriad of options in the creative process can decrease focus.
There are no shortcuts to creating or doing something worthwhile. Struggle is an essential part of the process.
Really, it’s no different to become a master artist than it is to become a great athlete or scientist. It requires much discipline and devotion through many, many years.
Certain elements in our culture are constantly trying to sell us the “quick fix” approach. You know the message: “Become wealthy in 12 months” or “Take this 4-week course and become a wildly successful actor” or some other type of nonsense. It’s as if reaching alofty goal or pinnacle requests no suffering. That’s not how real life works. Things that matter require great effort and patience. I’ve really found no exception to this yet.
In struggling to become a master at something, it prohibits us from taking it for granted. At least once a day, I realize how blessed I am to be able to do work I love to do.
I also realize that the better I become as a musician, the more there is to learn. In the end, there is no final destination. The joy is in the travel of the path.