VJ Heaven

A look at the creative process behind the multidisciplinary, interactive live performance featured at the Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors’ Showcase 2011, featuring Warp artist Clark’s “Ted-Bibio Remix”.

VJ set Minilive present by xjosele.com 2010 Version for external link

Puredyne- Powerfull Linux OS for Creative people, it contain all videos editors, audio ….needed by artist for their art works comple info on www.unixmen.com

Summer days and evenings for a lot of us are a perfect time for buying new records, listening to new mixes, exploring new sounds and samples and production techniques. And yes, while pundits worry about the failing value of music, I personally manage to stock up on free downloads and wind up overspending my budget on records, too. It’s good to be an enthusiast.

Here’s just the latest of what’s hit my inbox, for your enjoyment.

Moby recalls the 90s in his “old-school rave mix” for our friends over at XLR8R. It’s good, clean fun, a musical beach book perfect for a retro-tinged, rave-recalling holiday weekend here in the US.

Percussion Lab is a source of endless, fantastic musical mixes, so it’s hard to know whether to begin. For an Atlanta-style take on what summer is about, Sorted prepares an electro/club-style mix. Concept Audio’s Scafolder goes on a headier, ambient-er journey called “Rain Man,” tinged with pianos and Idhren and Lusine textures – good stuff, as well. And if it’s techno you want, that’s covered, too. Check out the full set lineup on Percussion Lab’s immaculately-designed site.

If certain shirtless werewolfs are starting to make you feel like you need to hit the gym, there’s good news. After Australia decided to hike fitness class music licensing by a whopping 1500%, the good folks at WFMU’s Beware of the Blog prepared a nicely-curated set of Creative Commons-licensed, indie music from Dan Deacon to Mochipet. It’s nice listening, too, perhaps as much of a cure to bad music allergies at the gym as it is bad licensing policy.

Speaking of the Free Music Archive, if you’re in the mood for something a little synthy and dreamy, there’s an excellent mix by Tori y Moi live on dublab.

From Spain, various sonic goodies. Want to catch up on what you missed at SONAR? BBC has a graphical, clickable map of all the artists. Need a little dancefloor-friendly techno, and want it from a high-quality netlabel founder? Thomas Raukamp notes the latest work from Madrid-based Dessben and his Offaudio netlabel, and celebrates their move to SoundCloud.

Downloads for Producers

So, that’s some good poolside barbecue and workout fodder for you… but what if you’re looking for tracks to inspire your producer side? (Working on tracks can be a great way to cool off.)

Ambienteer, whose excellent work I covered last month, has been experimenting with contact mics. Learn about how he made music with an electric toothbrush and plastic wrap and hear the results:
Ambienteer blog

Explore some nice new ambient and minimal tracks from East Peoria, USA-based John Koch-Northrup.

SoundCloud has become a hive of free and Creative Commons-licensed samples, from musical tidbits to hardware and software. You could use it to grab new content and decide whether you really need ElecTribe on an iPad, all at the same time. (Make friends! Grab samples!)

SoundCloud themselves have a nice guide to what’s out there – a badly-needed reference, given that SoundCloud has become so busy, it can be downright overwhelming to the uninitiated.
Sample time! [SoundCloud blog]

Via groups and users, there are full, oddball sample collections, like this pool:

Sample Collections / Instruments / Loops

And there are artists like the wonderful Tim Exile, who live samples his crowds at his shows and uses SoundCloud to gather snippets from fans in advance of gigs. I think it’s my favorite set of this post; have a listen to some of his interactive, sample-generated work:

2006 – Tim Exile’s Nuisance Gabbaret Lounge by timexile

What are you listening to / sampling this weekend? Let us know in comments.

And since far be it from me to be accused of saying all music wants to be free, I hope to follow up soon with albums worth buying this summer. Nominations open … now.

Have a great weekend, and happy 4th of July, USA. (Hey, England’s over it, too — the Queen is visiting my neighborhood this week, celebrating the long history of the English here in NYC, and the great ties between our countries.)

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An ASCAP fundraising letter revealed last week that the American performing rights organization is invoking fears of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, and Creative Commons in order to raise money. ASCAP appears to be repeating, now in the more heated language of fundraising, arguments it has had with the Creative Commons license in the past. For its part, Creative Commons insists most of its licenses don’t preclude performing rights bodies like ASCAP from collecting funds.

In the letter, sent on behalf of their Legislative Fund for the Arts, ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers) argues to its members that that these organizations undermine the value of music:

Many forces including Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation and technology companies with deep pockets are mobilizing to promote “Copyleft” in order to undermine our “Copyright.” They say they are advocates of consumer rights, but the truth in these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of our music. Their mission is to spread the word that our music should be free.

This is why your help now is vital. We fear that our opponents are influencing Congress against the interests of music creators. If their views are allowed to gain strength, music creators will find it harder and harder to make a living as traditional media shifts to online and wireless services. We all know what will happen next: the music will dry up, and the ultimate loser will be the music consumer.

Attacks on Creative Commons by ASCAP are nothing new. The organization argued in a 2007 essay (and subsequent report) that elements of the license, which is applied to copyrighted works, meant “artists should give up all or some of their rights.” As noted in a rebuttal by Creative Commons’ Laurence Lessig, some of those claims were incorrect. Among other items, ASCAP said that the “licenses ask creators to waive the ability to collect royalties,” which isn’t true of the non-commercial CC licenses.

The claims in the fundraising letter were more bluntly inaccurate. Creative Commons’ licenses are all built on copyright, and as non-exclusive licenses, they do not in any way prevent artists from being paid for music. They don’t even, as the organization observed three years ago, preclude ASCAP license collection – at least not on works licensed with the non-commercial provision.

Creative Commons licenses do reserve fewer rights for the creator, by definition. All the licenses currently in use include provisions to allow works to be freely distributed via peer-to-peer file services, and depending on the license chosen, may open up other possibilities for use and remixing. But nowhere does the letter acknowledge that an artist must choose to license their work; unlike Copyright, CC licenses are not automatic, nor is the CC organization advocating that they should be. Creative Commons spokespeople have previously told CDM that they aren’t even suggesting that CC licenses are the right choice for everyone in every circumstance. As advocates of their own license, on the other hand, they have explicitly said that their hope is that the license will help artists make money, not that all music “should be free.”

The blog ZeroPaid covered the initial controversy and criticized ASCAP’s take on Creative Commons as an attack on creator choice:

Creative Commons is a middle-of-the-road approach when it comes to copyright and enables creators to tell consumers, in plain language, what they can and cannot do with their content. In short, it’s an option for artists. Any attack on Creative Commons is an attack on an artists right to choose what they feel is appropriate for their chosen distribution channel.

ASCAP Declares War on Free Culture

Creative Commons responded on the same site:
Creative Commons Responds to ASCAP

Additional coverage:
ASCAP Claiming That Creative Commons Must Be Stopped; Apparently They Don’t Actually Believe In Artist Freedom [Techdirt]

ArtsJournal blog Mind the Gap observes that the fictional characters on Glee are in conflict with current US Copyright Law, and expresses surprise that the black-and-white claims of ASCAP’s fundraising letter would target the EFF, Creative Commons, and Public Knowledge. He asks if any card-carrying, royalty check-cashing ASCAP members would share how they feel, and they do – largely to express frustration with ASCAP.
The Right Balance on Copying [Mind the Gap]

ASCAP membership dues can go toward advocacy; only the ASCAP Foundation is a 501c3 charitable organization; the latter supports education and talent development. I’m curious, then, what royalty-check cashing ASCAP members think of these issues, as well.

Thanks to Jason Phoenix for the tip, and incidentally to my friend Mike Rugnetta, whom I was surprised to see pop up in the stories. (Internet: population, one dozen?)

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For an artist, being productive and being happy are often closely intertwined. Whether you’re polishing off an album, practicing your instrument, patching or coding a new musical tool, or managing your career, music requires immense levels of focus and discipline. Then there’s the matter of the stuff that tends to be an obstacle: your day job, your to-do list, your taxes. Most musicians aren’t full-time, but even if you are, sometimes the greatest challenge is simply hurdling everything that isn’t your music, leaving you time for what is.

Digital technology is naturally the bread and butter of the site, but lately, the computer has been blamed for a lack of a focus. Certainly, computers do provide opportunities for abuse: browsers with multiple tabs, always-on Internet connections, and endless capacity to switch tasks could make your computer a distraction machine. But I do have to admit, I’ve found recent allegations about the Internet frustrating. Anecdotally, they just don’t make sense: I doodled and daydreamed in class as a kid long before the Web. I’ve never really needed advanced technology to be distracted. I also can find immense, profound focus using technology. It just doesn’t add up. To make matters worse, a lot of claims that the Internet was “rewiring” your mind made heavy use of blood flow imaging of the brain, long a suspect and incomplete means of modeling the complexity of human thought.

Happily, Science may be on my side. My friend Nick Bilton wrote a superb round-up of the flipside of the argument, pointing in particular to cognitive scientist Steven Pinker’s rebuttal.

The Defense of Computers, the Internet and Our Brains [New York Times Bits Blog]

It’s well worth reading – if, like me, you don’t mind reading on a screen from beginning to end, thoughtfully.

Okay, so the medium isn’t to blame. But that leaves the responsibility square in our court. Blessed with one of the great miracles of the universe, your mind, how can you tap into your deepest channels of creative expressiveness – and get all the business of your life out of the way?

Disciplined focus

Techniques, like computers, are just tools, but they can be useful nonetheless. I’m particularly pleased at the moment with the Pomodoro Technique, in case you didn’t guess from the tomato picture that leads this post.

The idea is this: work on a task, just one task, without distractions or multi-tasking, for 25 minutes. Then take a five-minute break.

It’s incredibly simple – and, to me, incredibly effective. I’ve tried it while working on music and coding, and felt more focused. I find it does two things. For one, it gives me the discipline to avoid checking a browser tab to procrastinate when I get stuck on a task – always with the knowledge that I only have to keep up this level of focus for less than half an hour. Avoiding multitasking is essential: it allows you to make the Internet a powerful tool for inspiration.

Oddly, the other advantage has actually been that it forces me to take breaks. Often, I have no problem plunging into a task, especially something like music. The problem is, over-abundant focus can be as energy-sapping as distraction: sitting at a computer or desk, your body begins to tense up, you forget to drink water and stretch, and so on. Even working with music, that can mean that you begin to lose focus or perspective. Returning to the Internet as a tool, those five minute breaks could be a chance for a quick Internet injection of ideas from off the fovea, off the central focal point of your eye. Creativity is sometimes best stimulated by something that has nothing to do with the task at hand.

Generally, I found the technique had the opposite impact from what I expected: it made me more able to lose track of time, by keeping my body and mind in a rhythm.

See Lifehacker for more:
The Pomodoro Technique Trains Your Brain Away From Distractions

There’s even a Google Chrome extension, which is nice when you’re browsing: Chromodoro Adds a Pomodoro Timer to Chrome

Pomodoro is a native Mac app; it provides loads of configurability.

Focus Booster is an AIR app (also available in the browser) with a nice, graphical progress bar.

For everything else, I just use a stopwatch on my phone. Any stopwatch will do; you don’t really need a dedicated app.

Task management

In addition to focus, though, I’m interested how readers manage tasks. For me, this fits into two broad categories:

1. Elements of big projects, stuff I care about
2. Everything else

Task management for me is taking care of the “everything else” stuff so I can focus on the big projects. And that usually means segregating lists. I like Gina Trapani’s incredibly-elegant command-line todo tool, which I’ve found to be the quickest way of adding tasks, sorting them to find out what you should be doing next with a small slice of time, and getting them done and forgotten about – minimal management required. (I use the Python fork; see a recent happy birthday post. If I ever have time, I’ll whip up a quick Android version to keep my ‘Droid coding skills sharp.)

That’s just one tool, though; Remember the Milk is excellent on the Web, desktop, iPhone, and Android. So is paper.

What about tracking progress on big projects, though? An in-progress music album feels different than a long list of random tasks (send in a tax form, invoice so and so, pick up laundry detergent). But it can be helpful to divide big projects into smaller steps – and it can be essential to remember small details of something like a piece of music as you work. How do you manage those tasks?

For collaborative projects, a lot of people I know are great fans of simple, subscription-based Web project management Basecamp. Years after this was a highly-hyped tool, it remains helpful; it’s what I’m using now to collaborate on an electronics project and to work on an elaborate redesign of CDM.

Basecamp doesn’t make much sense if you’re polishing off your album, though, necessarily. So what tools do you use?

Mindfulness

I’ll close with one simple thought, which is that what binds all these things together for me is a simple sense of mindfulness. It’s a concept from Buddhism, reinforced in Psychology, but I find even without disciplined meditation or something elaborate, basic awareness can have a profound impact on your work and focus. Just taking a moment to take note of my breathing, stop thinking about other things for a moment, or be aware of how my body feels can radically alter my day. As I’ve talked to artists – as I did while meeting with various folks in Germany and Portugal traveling over the past weeks – I’ve heard similar things.

As it happens, the image I found above comes from a Norway-based composer and sound designer named Harry Koopman, who himself focuses on this very issue – and has short films and soundtracks to accompany them. Those films could be ideal sources of audiovisual meditation if you need something online to focus your head before an extended work session.
http://www.mindfulness.nl/

None of this is directly related to music, but for the kinds of music being produced on this site, I think it’s very relevant. Readers on CDM are often assembling their own tools and assembling their own music from scratch, working with the incredible abstraction music production on computers demands, working with scores, and getting close to the most personal, intimate sense of self-expression in musical creation. Without discipline and focus, it’s possible to wind up frustrated and downright depressed fast – and the opposite is true, too. for me is a great time to think about this stuff; it’s the break in the academic calendar (and I still am often teaching), it’s a big seasonal shift here in North America, and amidst travel and occasional trips to the beach, my head is clear. With dissertation research, software to code, documentation, writing, blogging, and music, I know I have plenty to keep me busy. Maybe having the winter mindset in the midst of summer (see photo above) is part of what makes this all work.

So I’m curious what you think. Hopefully we can follow up with more tips for keeping you creative. And digital. And musical. Creatively digitally musical.

So, let us know:
1. How do you stay focused when working on a computer?
2. Does the Pomodoro work for you?
3. How do you manage tasks – little ones, or big ones associated with musical projects?
4. How do you keep your mind happy?

I look forward to your responses.

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