as clean as fire

A full resolution preview from 'a funneled stone'

This track I'm releasing under a creative commons license. You're free to download (24-bit!) and share, remix, repurpose, as much as you like, as long as attribution is given.

Thank you.

as clean as fire by stretta


as clean as fire by stretta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at stretta.blogspot.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://stretta.blogspot.com/2010/07/as-clean-as-fire.html.

iDosing and Digital Drugs

By now you've already seen that recent 'iDosing' video about the menace of 'Digital Drugs', audio files said to replicate the effects of acid, peyote, opium and marijuana.

The headlines online were alarming. "Many Teens Now Getting High Off Digital Drugs" It seemed official enough. After all, the the title of the video itself is "Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics Warning Parents About I-Dosing" Wait. Did they? I tried to find the press release about iDosing from the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics web site. It doesn't exist. It never existed. Everything I found leads back to the same news segment.



The only warning issued was a soundbite from the video itself by OBN spokesperson Mark Woodward "Kids are going to flock to these site to see what it's about and it could lead them other places." and "parental awareness is key to preventing future problems, since iDosing could indicate a willingness to experiment with drugs."

Whoa whoa whoa. Kids wanting to alter their consciousness? We should get rid of merry-go-rounds at playgrounds. In my observations, children as young as three years old would spin on this equipment to intentionally induce a disoriented mental state. After use, some children could not walk straight or even fall over. After they regained their composure, often they would go back and try it again to get their 'fix'. Alarmingly, adults in the area seemed unconcerned and some parents even assisted their children.

From what I can tell, the chain of events went something like this. Some kids at Mustang High School in Oklahoma told their friends they tried some digital drugs and it caused some 'physiological effects'. This somehow got to some school officials who understandably are not too found of cell phones and iPods on campus. Shannon Rigsby, Mustang Communication officer, issues a warning letter to parents. Oklahoma Channel 9 News gets wind of this and sends a reporter to bring back the gold. They interview clueless parents and students, (but no experts) and Mark Woodward gives them the gateway drug line and there is the official word.

Despite being debunked by actual experts, or recognized as a danger at the Federal level, Mark Woodward seems to enjoy being on camera. At least here they use the word 'allegedly', something conspicuously missing from the original segment.



We need to hold news organizations accountable for this kind of sensationalist nonsense in the pursuit of ratings. It marginalizes the credibility of official organizations. If the OBN is sensationalizing digital drugs, then how credible are they on the dangers of an actual drug like marijuana? What is their stance on caffeine? The physiological effects of sugar?

This is an issue we as audio professionals know something about, but the technique is applied to every conceivable newsworthy issue - especially politics, and that is something far more dangerous than an audio placebo.

Live music and recorded music

In most people's minds, music is music. We don't distinguish between live music and recorded music as separate art forms, and why would we? After all, our favorite acts go into the studio to record, then support the record with a tour. That is how it is done.

The problem I have with this is the model is tied exclusively to a small subset of genres and performance venues, but used to described the entirety of the music industry, conveniently ignoring all other music that doesn't fit.

I'll use myself as an example, but my situation is not unique. The process I use for creating modular tracks is not real time. It takes about a month to produce 2-3 minutes of finished audio. It is a slow, painstaking process, much like hand-drawn animation. There is no live performance version of what I'm doing in the studio, and that assumes a critical mass of audience in one place, a venue that would support it, and the ability to make a profit (no, no and no). One of the benefits of distributing music on the internet is you can narrowcast your brand of expression to an audience that may total hundreds over the globe. An artist may actually be able to make money to a narrowcast global audience, if we didn't train ourselves to think recorded music is worthless.

There is an obvious element of self-interest to advancing the notion that recorded music should be free and true artist support involves attending the live show, because it makes us feel better about downloading music. At the same time, I'm told that if I don't like the recorded music of artist x, it is because I haven't seen the artist live. So, which is it? Is live music the same as recorded music or not? The justification seems to shift depending on the context.

If the music doesn't hold my interest on record, then I probably won't enjoy the live version, either. What is interesting is how people conflate the non-music aspects surrounding a concert experience and attribute these elements to the music. Brenda Laurel, as a researcher during the salad days at Atari, performed an experiment where subjects were given an opportunity to experience a game with high resolution and low resolution audio. Participants found the game with high resolution audio 'looked' better. What that says to me is this is a natural and understandable response.

I never liked the Grateful Dead. (all this means is I don't like their music. It doesn't mean they're a bad band, m'kay?) I tried to. I tried to understand what it was that enraptured so many other people. But listening to the Dead's MUSIC, I never found anything that impressed me enough to listen a second time. When I'd tell people this, the usual response was, "Oh, you have to go see their live show." 

I'm naturally skeptical about this. The most awesome light show in the world doesn't improve the music, but it may improve the concert experience. Great dancers on stage don't improve the music, but it may improve the concert experience. There may be an amazing community around the act, but this doesn't have anything to do with the music. My feelings about the music; the harmony, the style, the melody, the repetitiveness, the structure, aren't going to magically change if I'm experiencing it live, unless I'm hearing a radically-different interpretation.



I'm extremely dubious about electronic acts live, especially solo acts. Why? Because the easiest and most-reliable path to success involves using pre-recorded material. This could range from improvising a complex arrangement from scratch using software, or simply playing back an entire mastered stereo mix. If the performer is working a laptop, you have zero idea how much 'performance' is actually happening. Un-muting the kick drum or theatrically twisting a low pass filter knob on stage doesn't impress me. 

Even if the performer is a genius of real-time construction, there isn't anything about a performance of mouse clicks that the audience can relate to. Everyone understands how a guitar works. The audience can see a musician set a string in motion and finger the frets. There is a direct correlation between what is happening on stage and the sound that you hear. In the end, creating a compelling solo performance that doesn't involve heavy reliance on pre-recorded material, has interesting compositional movement, doesn't subject your audience to live-looped section-building, and doesn't glue your nose to a computer is exceptionally difficult. 

This is why I feel the monome goes a long way to solving the performance problem inherent in electronic music (it doesn't have to be a monome, I'm just using it as an example) Daedalus gets this, he even positions his unit to face the audience so they understand how the physical gestures correlate to the music. This is a unique moment in time and THAT is why I go see live music. I want to hear a different interpretation. I want to see the performer engage the audience and have the audience press back on the music. I want to enjoy watching the performer execute musical ingenuity. For me, the point of seeing live music is the live music - a little element of danger. I don't want a perfect reproduction of what is on the record. Live music is a separate art form.

If nobody invests in music, we’re all the poorer for it

It isn't easy for musicians to produce great art while also working a full-time job. Musicians are also expected to tour and this is obviously incompatible with full-time employment. It has traditionally been the role of record labels to develop artists, but from where I'm sitting, 'artist development' hasn't been the focus of the music industry in the last 30-40 years or so.

In this Wired article, Tom Silverman proposes 'a radically transparent music business' by creating a joint partnership between artists and music companies that give each a 50 percent stake in the artist’s businesses. Silverman notes the relationship between artists and labels has become adversarial in nature.

But then he goes on to say record labels are more risk-adverse than ever, so how does changing the relationship between artists and labels help this? I seriously doubt record labels believe the solution to their declining revenues is to give more of a cut to artists, and make their accounting more transparent. However, hearing these words from a board member of SoundExchange and the RIAA is encouraging.

Here is a sobering quote:

There were only 225 rookie artists in 2008, and less last year, that broke 10,000 albums for the first time — not that that’s the only arbiter of success, but it’s one of them. That year, there were only 10 new artists that broke through by doing it themselves.

Kooborcim 0.1

I'm back to work on A Funneled Stone. This piece is kind of in the same state that the original 050110 was prior to the update. However, I think I need to let it rest while I work on another piece of music, so here is a peek.

Part of me would like to hear what a supremely talented rapper could do with the drums at the beginning. If dubstep can be a genre, I don't know why a risset rhythm couldn't spawn the same. (no, I'm not hating on dubstep, I'm hating on the unnecessary practice of creating overly-specific genres) This was a throwaway comment, (which subsequently got described as genre-busing hoopla) but after reading some of the hysterical reactions over the use of the term 'electro' at cdm, I'm kind of curious. How would you describe this piece of music? What genre does it sit in?

Aside from the drums, all modular synth.

One other minor thing. I think I'll release my piano ambient stuff under 'Escape Philosophy' as I have in the past, and electronic music as 'stretta'

As always, thanks for listening.

this mortal abolition by stretta

More than the sum of their parts

Roland. Korg. Yamaha. Kurzweil. Ensoniq. Emu. Akai. Remember when the giant names of the musical instrument industry used to make synthesziers? That was awesome. Or, at least it seems in hindsight.

Major advances in synthesis would happen every NAMM show as manufacturers attempted to corner some unique area of the marketplace. Moog defined the performance instrument category with the minimoog, but it was a tough sell. Eventually retailers caught on and more players came to the market, notably ARP and Oberheim.



The next obvious milestone was polyphony. While multiple Oberheim SEMs could be ganged together for polyphony, the Prophet-5 stormed the market with the combination of patches and polyphony. The big names exchanged various salvos in the analog polysynth era until MIDI and the digital polysynth arrived in earnest with the Yamaha DX7.

It was at this time a cottage industry sprang up selling pre made patches for instruments. The D50 arrived in 1987, bringing with it the standard of including digital reverb and other digital effects on board. The Korg M1 quickly followed, ushering in the age of 'workstation' synths with multitimberality and built-in sequencing.

All of these products brought some new key feature or synthesis method to the market. The big names drove synthesis innovation. The market today isn't about synthesis innovation, it is about providing controllers and stage pianos. The people who bought synthesizers were never really interested in synthesis. They played in bands and needed a piano sound, an organ sound, a rhodes sound and whatever generic synth pad patch is required for that one cover song. The synthesizer market was subsidized by keyboard players.



What happened was synthesis innovation migrated to the realm of software where it is far cheaper to develop. This lowered the barrier of entry for the 'synthesizer curious.' No longer was it necessary to spend money on expensive hardware in order to explore. Roland is still under the illusion that they make synthesizers, which explains odd marketing thrusts like promoting synthesizers as a musical 'lifestyle' for bored suburban moms.

There are still people interested in synthesis, but with the proliferation of software and without the earlier keyboard-player-subsidization, the market has reveled itself to be far smaller.

If you look at the history and development of monosynths, you have a variety of manufacturers trying out different sets of features or technologies to distinguish their product. Ultimately, you can't be all things to all people, and if you could cram every conceivable feature into a single synth, it would be incomprehensible.

With a modular, you can take just the features that are important or relevant to you, and come up with an instrument that is entirely unique. Look around at everyone's system. No one has exactly the same thing. Why get an MS-20 when you can basically custom specify your own synth?

I lived though those old days as a synthesizer nerd and spent a lot of time hanging out at music stores spending as much time as possible auditioning the latest gadgets. Like many others, I engaged in elaborate thought experiments (IE: daydreaming) about the ultimate synthesizer. Seamlessly mix analog and digital oscillators. Recreate the voice structure of a Prophet VS. Swap out a vactrol filter with a transistor ladder. Layer four... no, SIX oscillators. Use multiple step sequencers to imply multiple overlapping rhythmic feels. OR, you could make a standard OSC>VCF>VCA bass patch to create a line that repeats over and over and over. The sky is the limit here.



In the 80's, before affordable DAWs and in the new gleam of MIDI, modulars and analog monosynths fell out of favor for obvious reasons: no patch storage, no polyphony, unreliable, tuning issues, etc... all things that matter in the context of performing musicians, but weigh less in the minds of synthesists. No one is purely one or the other, it is our priorities and interests that define the weighting. After a decade of cursor buttons and LCDs, we wanted our knobs back. Cables came a bit later.

Now modulars are booming, but the scale of manufacturing is better suited to a cottage industry. As a result, all the really interesting advances in hardware synthesis are coming from companies that are run out of a garage by one or two people, not the big names.

Now with affordable computers, a lot of those issues that mattered 20 years ago, are less important. Oscillators have better tuning and tracking. Everything is more reliable. Polyphonic patches are actually realistically attainable at some scales, multitracking is affordable and computers provide precision control over any CV input.

I've spoke in the past about why I use a modular, but I have some updated thoughts that I'll share in a future blog post as I continue work on 'A Funneled Stone'. Consider this a preamble.

Deadmau5 demonstrates his modular

The first time I saw a pic of this monstercase setup, I said to myself, "That basically looks like every new module released in one box." In other words, like a analog haven subscription, then all shoved willy nilly into its own monstercase.

It is a tired, sad sport to make judgements about someone simply because they can afford such and such gear and seem so completely lost. I'm sure this impulse would be tempered if I respected what Joel does musically, which I attempted to do a while ago to see what the fuss was about. As I lack a hit on beatport, which, scientifically speaking, is the only true measure of artistic worthiness, I'm unqualified to comment.

The only conclusion I can come to after watching this video is I still have a lot to learn. If you have any information about what the hell he is doing, please note in the comments. Confused!