The Mom Test

I come from a music/audio background. When I was in college, we were taught the Car Test, being budding recordists. The Car Test, for those who are not familiar, is when you take the mix you did on a pair of speakers that are designed for critical listening and play it on the shittiest set of speakers you can find. (This might be the iPod Headphones Test or the Laptop Speakers Test, but I learned it as the Car Test.)

This is Everything I Hate About Music

LOOK WHAT THE GTR CAN DO!!!!!!

No seriously, this is horrible, horrible, shit. Horrible. The people defending this as “noise” are fucking idiots. I’ve had the pleasure of working with some great avant-garde artists in my career as a producer, and every person that makes Noise music and is worth his salt would say the same.

I’m also a classically trained guitarist. The people saying “no but they’re really good technically” are fucking idiots as well. You could teach a monkey to play guitar like that. Can you type? You can play like that, too. Let’s hear one of those guys play Barrios’ “Julia Florida”. I bet it would sound like someone having a colonoscopy.

Lessons I Learned In The Trenches, No. 1

I consider myself very fortunate to be making a decent living doing several different things with music. This morning, I was reflecting on some very simple things I’ve learned over the last 5 or so years of being a real “professional”. I wish it didn’t take so long to learn these things, but I suppose such is the nature of being in a profession where you never stop learning. Here are a few things to start the ball rolling.

If you happen to stumble upon this, I hope it helps.

Something to Put on the Fridge

The track on this video is one I produced/wrote a few years ago with The Bird Cage Theater, called “Depression”. I’m still not sure of the name of the guy who shot/directed/produced this video for us, but it’s brilliant and it just did really well at a film festival down in Costa Rica.

¡Felicitaciones y buen trabajo a todos!

Pro Tools 8

First, a disclaimer:

I am, and have always been, a Pro Tools guy. I am completely aware of all the shortcomings, but I do not hesitate to say that I swear by it. For me, it is an extension of my brain and allows me to keep the size of my “Thought -> Action” buffer as close to zero as it can be.

From what I have read about version 8, it seems like Digidesign finally gets it. The last couple of version updates have been trailing behind other DAWs, but 8 seems to be ponying up and delivering more. There’s more stuff that makes me say “Thank God” than makes me say “Oh. Neat. I might use that someday”.