Archive for October, 2009
An Autumn Symposium: Lesson #1
We’re playing our next show at Piano’s on Wednesday, Nov 11th at 9:00pm. The show will be Lesson #1 in a two part symposium that we’re presenting this fall and will feature a companion course reader for attending guests.
The Flying Change Live
Wednesday, November 11th
9pm
Piano’s
158 Ludlow Street
New York, NY
Don’t Listen To Your Customers
Your customers won’t tell you the truth. And they won’t tell you what they really want. And they won’t tell you what they’ll really pay for. The customer is, of course, always right, when they’re expressing a paid opinion. But, for businesses, and bands, there’s an important lesson that they’re not always going to tell you the truth and the things they say they want or need won’t always correspond to what you experience, objectively, to work and to sell.
I think Steve Jobs talks about that concept. Training people to understand what they will need or like and then leading them to that place. As many have said and written, mp3 players had been done before the iPod and nobody was saying they wanted one. And yet there one was.
Here’s a controversial example from the music world. Email.
People say they don’t want email. Some people unsubscribe. Some people tell you you email too much. Some people, if they have a sense of humor, should comment on this post and simply write, “You email too much” and that would be funny. Some people say you can get kind of annoying.
But, don’t listen to them. They’re lying. Or they’re not lying. It’s just that they’re not that helpful.
Here’s the truth. Strong, repetitive signals work. And they work because there’s already so much noise in the atmosphere that, until you have a immutable brand, something solid and permanent with widespread recognition and acclaim, you need to broadcast the signal as loudly and clearly as possible to get people’s attention.
While I know it can be annoying. And I know it can be irritating. It’s far better to fail because you’ve sent too many signals and turned a few people off, then sent too few and not pierced through the collective consciousness of your fans or your audience.
Meaning, if you’re a band or an artist, while I might annoyed, and maybe I’ll unsubscribe, I encourage you to make absolutely 100% certain that people know what you’re up to rather than err on the side of being too docile, too quiet, too pliant.
It’s important that people know.
People I know will get as many as 7 emails through Facebook and my mailing list before this next show at Piano’s. And I know it’ll be annoying. And I’ll always try and include something in the email like a song or a remix or a cool image. But the truth is, some people will get annoyed. And some people will unsubscribe.
And more people will come than if I had tried to be polite and not told them.
Structured Collaboration
If you ever watched that movie documentary about Metallica, “Some Kind of Monster“, you might remember the part where they’re all in the studio. Their idea for writing the songs is to just get in a room together and jam. Then, afterwards, they’re all sitting in the control room with their yellow legal pads writing awful lyrics. And every time someone throws out an idea, there’s this kind of tepid acknowledgement of it and then, to avoid hurt feelings and sensitivities, maybe they adopt one or two of these bad ideas.
The scene is a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at a band that seems to have clearly lost their way.
As I think about making art and I think about what makes great art, I think back at the process of recording this record, and I think about the time we spend in rehearsals prior to shows. And I also think about the ways that I try to interact with other people that I create art with, whether it’s Chad designing posters or Nancy doing a remix or, really, any kind of activity that involves creating something. And maybe it’s not even about art, but about groups of people and what groups of people can make and how they should make them.
But for these purposes I’ll stick to art.
Playlists To Sell Your Music
So there’s a way to make money on the internet selling music that requires a tremendous amount of work. What you do is you create different user accounts for yourself on iTunes and Lala and other services and then you make a bunch of mixes and you see these mixes with your songs.
Here’s more information from Music ThinkTank
On the one hand, it’s a clever gaming of the system and you gotta do everything you can these days to make a buck making music. And on the other hand, it seems like a tremendous amount of work and it seems rather dispiriting and soul-crushing.
And then the voice inside my head proclaims rather loudly, “Sam, enough with this soul-crushing nonsense. It’s time for you to man up and get your soul-crushed a little bit if you want to make some dough. Stop being such a nancy.”
These things are all true. But it’s nevertheless, more fun when someone makes a mix of their own and puts one of your tunes on it and it’s especially fun when they don’t know you and you don’t know them.
Interview: John Patrick Hastings
Today, we released the Processor Remix of the song, The Mayo Clinic, by John Patrick Hastings. Hastings is an LA-based experimental composer and musician. As part of the remix project, I’m going to do short interviews with the remix artists to give people some background on the song and the music. I didn’t do one for Nancy Hess but I’m going to and then we’ll get to Alex Lauterstein and a bunch of the other artists that are working on these tunes.
Interview with John P Hastings
1. Describe your background and how you came to be working in music?
I grew up in the Washington, D.C. area and starting playing music when I was 13 years old. I was initially influenced by punk music and the D.C. scene and eventually started my own band in high school. That band played and toured throughout my college years before breaking up about 8 years ago. I drifted about, playing in other bands and such until realizing that playing rock and pop music, while certainly enjoyable, was no longer what I was really interested in. I went back to school and began studying music again and now I primarily compose longer form music to be performed by various ensembles.
2. Who are your primary influences?
What sparked my initial move into different realms of music and music making was Brian Eno (as he is for many musicians). Just from him you can move to so many different places, his work with Bowie and U2 obviously, but also Krautrock bands such as Neu! and Harmonia, minimalists such as La Monte Young and Steve Reich, and even to modern art and design. So he was a biggie for me. And since going back to school two composers have influenced me in a big way, James Tenney and the previously mentioned La Monte Young. The influence of Young is music as life, literally. He creates tonal environments, these sound spaces that people’s lives move through. With some of his works lasting 4 to 6 hours you really are experiencing your life in a musical fashion. James Tenney, who died in 2006, was someone who created music conceptually wound into the physical properties of nature. His influence has instilled in me a sense of logic and structure that might not have been there before.
3. What ideas were you working with on this remix? What story or stories or images were you evoking or conjuring?
The Mayo Clinic (The Processor Remix)
Today, via the mailing list, we’re releasing a new remix of ‘The Mayo Clinic’ dubbed ‘The Processor Remix’ and conceived and composed by John P Hastings. We’ll be posting an interview with Hastings later today. In the meantime, sign up for the mailing list to grab a copy of the tune.
UPDATE: Here’s the interview. Dig it.
