Matthew Supert

.:Pandora.com:.

It is hard to descibe what exactly this site is, because it really is something so new. Basically a bunch of artists got together and broke down thousands of songs and artists to determine their genome.

From this they have setup a website that allows you to input a song or artist you like, and based on the genome characteristics it will reccomend to you other songs and artists that you will like. You then can create playlists based on the song or musical characteristics that you find appealing. As you can see from the above picture, I entered a search for Orbital, and it is now guiding me through perspective artists that share similar qualities. The listener can then vote on whether or not they like the song that is being heard.

Quote:
On January 6, 2000 a group of musicians and music-loving technologists came together with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever.

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.

Over the past 5 years, we've carefully listened to the songs of over 10,000 different artists - ranging from popular to obscure - and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world.

It has been quite an adventure, you could say a little crazy - but now that we've created this extraordinary collection of music analysis, we think we can help be your guide as you explore your favorite parts of the music universe
.:Music Genome Project:.

A Primer On Oblique Strategizing:

I am sure as artists we have all come across those points in time where we creatively, physically or spiritually are exhausted. You find yourself sitting in front of your music gear, easel, or whatever looking at it as if you have never seen it before.

I have recently discovered a fascinating little deck of cards developed by Brian Eno and his friend Peter Schmidt. This deck of cards is a collection of sayings, thoughts and ponderings to help break the creative roadblock and get one thinking again.

Quote
"The deck itself had its origins in the discovery by Brian Eno that both he and his friend Peter Schmidt (a British painter whose works grace the cover of 'Evening Star' and whose watercolours decorated the back LP cover of Eno's 'Before and After Science' and also appeared as full-size prints in a small number of the original releases) tended to keep a set of basic working principles which guided them through the kinds of moments of pressure - either working through a heavy painting session or watching the clock tick while you're running up a big buck studio bill. Both Schmidt and Eno realized that the pressures of time tended to steer them away from the ways of thinking they found most productive when the pressure was off. The Strategies were, then, a way to remind themselves of those habits of thinking - to jog the mind."
Source .:Strategic Aquisitions:.

There were three original versions of the deck, all released in a limited number to Eno's and Schmidt's friends. You can .:purchase:. a new edition from Brian Eno's website.

Alternatively you can find online versions of the deck at .:Hyperreal.org:.
or as a Mac OSX widget .:Here:.

.:Sand Storm in Iraq: April 26, 2005:.

Here is a pretty sweet collection of pictures of a sandstorm in Iraq.

In this day in age software now dominates the music production world. Rooms full of gear are now simply a laptop and a midi controller. Cheap and free production tools have provided artists with limitless opportunities to create and develop a sound palette. Not even ten years ago artists still lived and died by their gear. To be a producer and own more then a few hardware synths was considered impressive.

Artists of their day learned how to make the most out of the tools that they had, and really dug deep into the inner workings of the tools of their craft. They knew inside and out (literally) exactly what functions did what, and how each section of a synth shaped a sound. How many of you now can say the same thing about your synths?

You have a synth probably sitting in your VSTi folder right now, but do you know anything about the characteristics of its oscillators or filters beyond the GUI in front of you?

Ask yourself now, how many software synths do you have sitting on your computer? 10.....50.....100....Maybe even 1000.

The prevalence of limitless tools and limitless synths I believe has made artists lazy. So many have turned into pre-set whores, that they now base the usability of a synth on the presets that come with it. If a synth in their library doesn't have the preset they are looking for they simply move on to another synth in their folder that has a preset that matches.

The sounds that we hear coming out of the electronic scene now are less creative then they were years ago because the same generic sounds are continually regurgitated. Too many artists are coming onto messageboards, forums and chat rooms asking how they can re-create "This sound..." on their softsynth rather then learning it themselves.

The innovators of sound were once the creative minds of hip-hop and bedroom artists hooking up their simple mpc60 sampler with 15 seconds of sample time and creating a twisted beat. A single mono-synth and a sampler years ago was all we had to work with and great music was created from that era.

If you are one of those artists, and I suppose you probably are, who has never used a hardware sampler I would bet that you could not even fathom 15 secs of sampling time.

I think we as artists in the coming decades should take a step back from the overwhelming development of new software and focus more on learning the instruments that we call tools. A synth or a sampler is more than a disposable tool, but rather the lifeblood of what we do. I ask that you try to challenge yourself, and really learn the inner workings of the synths that you use. Do you really need those 15 one osc tb-303 sounding vsti's in your folder? Do you really need the 12 Fm synths, 40 subtractive synths, the synth that does trance pads only, the synth that only makes sound effects, or 40 gigs of samples?

If you really took the time to learn the tools you use, you will find that most often one good subtractive synth can do all of these things and much more.

Good music does not come from what tools you use, but rather the way you use them. Be that tool $400 or free, it is resourcefulness that spurs creativity, not the latest gadget.

Here are links to some places where I have and still keep my music. These links go to 128bit mp3 files of my tracks. My most recent music projects can be found on the Dynamic Interplay Soundclick page as works in progress. I use that site to get feedback on my tracks and help to finalize their construction. Once I finalize songs I will release them as net albums in high quality
.ogg and .flac files through this site.

My old music can be found through the M.A.S. Soundclick page and is in 128bit mp3 files. I also have a myspace page for Dynamic Interplay, so if you want to add me or contact me through myspace feel free.

.:Dynamic Interplay on Myspace:.

.:Dynamic Interplay on Soundclick:.

.:Old M.A.S. Productions Music on Soundclick

Every once in a while a great little unintentional joke pops up during discussions on web forums that I visit. This one in particular made me laugh out loud.
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Konketsu:
Cost me $600.00 CAD, or around 500 USD, give or take.
Now I just have to figure out whereTF to put it.

professor quack:
that's one expensive ink pen. I think I paid as much as $40 for a pen once but never $600. What kind is it?

Konketsu:
It's a vintage limited edition monogrammed BIC with phase-accurate ink tracking and a top-mounted single cycle pulse generator that does double duty as a user-triggerable flow control sidechain.

The owner was a really cool guy, too. After we closed the deal with the pen, he threw in a Soundcraft Spirit Studio 32.8 for free...

I have one of the new tracks I was working on uploaded. The recording is pretty rough and was done in mono (not neccisarily a bad thing).

This isnt a finished product so I didnt bother to really put any post-recording editing into it, but I would like to hear your feedback none the less. The song is on soundclick.com

.:Hifi Stream:.

.:Lofi Stream:.

Some of you may or may not know this but I am a moderator over at .:Serious-Sounds.net:.
About two days ago our servers were attacked and an unknown hacker modified the SQL code of our forums and in essence making them useless. Thankfully the support staff for our forum software was able to quickly bring us back up to speed and repair the problem.

One of our administrators noticed what appears to be a trend of attacks across the music production community target towards music production forums.

Approximately a month ago the popular forum .:Samplecity.net:. was successfully hacked and down for about ten days. That forum has been attacked again about five days ago and remains down at the time of this writing.

Upon further investigation by various people I know we have determined that several other forums have now been hacked as well or are featuring problems.

The ambient forum .:Ambient Collective:. was also attacked about a month ago and went down for a few days.

Last week .:Loopcreators:. mysteriously went down and appears to remain down at this point

The list of other forums attacked the we have been able to uncover thus far is as follows.

.:Loopy.tk:.
.:Fltutorials.com:.
.:FLstudio-tutorials.com:.

I ask anyone who reads this to please pass the word on throughout the community to create awareness. If you are a moderator or an administrator of a music community please make sure your site is updated and backed up.

(Update)- Upon further investigation and posting around some other boards it seems that many other forums are continuing to experience a trend in attacks.

.:midwestmassive:. was attacked.
.:Serious-Sounds.net:. was attacked a second time and was taken down for about 12 hours.
.:VI-Control:. Was attacked and down.
.:Papergoose:. Was attacked

We have also notice that many of these sites appear to have a user named Kampo, or some variation of that name. There is no proof that he/she is associated in any way, with the attacks, but the coincidence begs to question.

.:w w w . n o w h e r e g i r l . c o m:.

I happened to come across this online comic today entitled "No Where Girl" by and artist named Justin Shaw. The currently has two comics online (for free).

This is a great dark little comic following the life of a young girl. It is not an action comic, but does address some nice themes. The artwork is very good and features that modern American style that has hints of anime.

Definitely worth the read for a few minutes of your life.

Well I was not has productive as I wanted to be today. I only got 2 tracks recorded, and to be honest only 1 of them is probably going to make the final cut.

I should have them uploaded by Wednesday of this week.