Otto Matta

Hehe. Very funny. That's why I said I wished it weren't that way, because of the whole ego bit - I know that's dangerous territory, and I try to avoid it. But then again, I personally feel that our creating music is an attempt to make contact with The People. So I don't get as excited about individual compliments as those that say they've played it for friends, with positive results, especially from those who've been in the business for a while - like YOU, you superstar, you. So, ego aside, it means a lot, Colin. Meanwhile, I can't be arsed to send a sock. Would you be happy with an autographed beer can I drank from? It still has some glittery Nick Rhodesian lipstick on it.

Yeah, well, I appreciated it. I suppose it's different for me than for you. You've had many years to get used to compliments.

Jesus, Colin, that's so kind of you. You've made my month. In a way I wish it weren't the case, what with getting one's ego tied up in the whole thing and whatnot, but that sort of attention - evidence that one's intended communication with others is taking place, and positively - really makes the effort worth it. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Hehe. Cooooool. Speaking of, I'm currently working on a robot love ballad. It's fairly ambitious for me, but it's coming along nicely. LOL

Thanks. Nah, IDM has that reputation because there is indeed a lot of abstraction in it, but there are also quite a few less abstract artists in the genre. It's a spectrum, and "IDM-ish" means I've got one foot in it. I don't know exactly how to categorize myself to others. IDM-ish, synth-pop-ish, electronica-ish, with an old-school bent? Hehe. Thanks, Colin. One of the sounds I made - a sixteenth blip in the first part - I called "NRhodes". Hehe. Tough to slough one's origins, I guess.

I fell for this last time. It's still only a trial, isn't it?

Thanks, man.

Ha. Cool.

Hey man, thanks again. I agree, it's not great. Part of the problem, I think, is that this time around I've decided to go minimal and not bloat my production with too much EQ enhancement because I intend to get these things professionally mastered. Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I've read, engineers prefer stuff that is fairly flat and transparent. So that's what I'm going for. Trying to look ahead a little. Otherwise, I'd try to get the low end thumping more and the highs sparkling more, etc. Plus, what this track allowed me to do was get in touch with the Cubase program in general (very good for me to get over those butterflies), and it gave me lots of direction and ideas moving forward. So I'm relatively happy with it as a step in the right direction, and I can say with a measure of confidence that my work should be improving from here. Pretty cool.

Good topic. No new gear for me (except for the processor upgrade to keep up with Cubase I mentioned in another thread last week) but I wanted to quickly comment on how the same thing has happened to me - that I've bought way less music since I started making my own. Interesting! Is music-making a transferred addiction? Hopefully the expenditures will even out at some point in a decade or two. Anyway, back to the subject...

Great points, and well said. I agree entirely.

I for one can recommend Cubase 4, especially since the first major update is expected soon: 4.1. Then again, I haven't used any of the other popular mid-range programs, nor have I really experimented much with any of the unpopular programs. I gave Cycling 74 and Reaktor a try, but those are for different brain frequencies.

Moni's the coolest.

Long time, Kiph. Good to see ya. Good points. Of course all of those compositional elements are difficult for most people, but I bet they're easy for some. Even to build a slow train that delivers phat, phunky and phree ice cream sandwiches. Which still makes the point subjective. But maybe this strays from the original point. The thing that I find both fascinating and boring about today's psytrance is the completely psychotic progressions where, for example, a sample is taken and totally obliterated, made into some mind-warping and eventually logical transition. Everybody's doing it, but I don't know how they do it. There seems to be a lot of skill in fucking sound up to make it mind-zapping, and I can't tell whether this is individual talent, talent that is shared among people, or just some helpful VSTs that someone made.

Totally agree. Then again, Mr. Sound Engineer can only do so much with a poor quality mix from Mr. Producer.

I totally agree. Still, melody is sometimes easier than production for some, despite all the literature available on the latter. Also, there's no real standard to production either, right?, making it by itself a sort of applied artform, and therefore fuzzy in the specifics. That's been my learning experience, anyway. So many different philosophies, perhaps depending on which area of the world one lives in, on things like compression, EQ, etc.

The girl has 8 o'clock pants, a green sash, and a convertible hairdo.

Is it? I personally find the technical aspects of a mix very mysterious, despite having read books and websites about the general rules. I think this statement might be subjective.

I'm sure you're right about that.

Damn good question, Symph. And I, too, was just talking about the same thing with a good friend of mine. I personally feel that good art, including good music, is a channeling of the soul made physical. Like meditating or contacting one's intuition, it's a process that involves accessing the unconscious. But that process requires a certain amount of consciousness, because the information needs to be made physical with one's hands and with one's tools. It's a fine balance between accessing the unconscious while maintaining just enough consciousness to record what one finds there. The problem is that as soon as you become conscious of the process, the unconscious shuts down its access. So basically, people who are inhibited will simply not be able to create as deftly or as fundamentally as those who are not as scared of what's in their souls, or scared of what people will think of their souls once they've been brought to light. That being said, I tend to be impressed the most by those artists who have been able, either through character or through practice, been able to really dive deep into their unconscious and bring back some earnest, genuine results. You can hear it in their work, whether it's crisply produced or not. But there's also a point where lack of technical prowess has a diminishing effect on one's material. Similarly, when one's stuff is too polished, I immediately get skeptical, because it's truly rare that we experience a person with both lack of inhibition and technical skill at the same time. We tend to call those people with both in quantity geniuses. I generally prefer stuff that strikes a balance between creativity and technical skill, but I also generally prefer something with soul over something with technique.

Very good advice. And I was very comfortable using Reason with what I had. But going to Cubase caused immediate problems, so basically I'd like to get to a comfortable point with all that. Which means having to feel things out, fall in love with some VSTs, and see what needs fixing. After that, I really plan to settle in for a while, because I really don't enjoy dealing with the technical aspects at all. It all seems aimed, ironically, at non-creators and spoken in some arcane language I don't understand, and basically stresses me out.

Good idea. Maybe I'll eat my high horse, and kill two birds with one stone. Wait, then I should probably eat those two birds, no? See, now you've turned me into a full-on carnivorous killer.

Wow. Yossi FTW. That last pic looks like a cord nightmare.

Are you being sarcastic too, or just abstract? Anyway, I didn't feel like getting banned because Nemo was in one of his lousy moods, for the sake of a mediocre joke.

Yeah, man, I find there's a fine line between conventional musicality and experimental weirdness. Most weirdness doesn't work for me. I cut my teeth on mid- to late-90s stuff like HIA, Plaid, Isan and Orbital, so that's the sort of stuff I tend to like, and like making: Simple yet interesting, with a solid, honest beat. Whether I'm successful with that is a different story. But I honestly think that for the last seven or eight years IDM has just gone too tech-crazy, to the point that much of it is unlistenable for me. Warp Records, for instance, a label I used to worship blindly, has gone away to some place I can, by and large, no longer access, maybe with the exception of an occasional Boards of Canada disc. Maybe I'm just getting old. Anyway, feel free to post something you've done recently.

Goodnight. :drama: