Hmm, interesting… Well the first thing you want to do to explore the magic of podcasting is get your self a “pod catcher.” A “pod catcher” is a little devise you use to subscribe to a podcast, here’s some free options:

podcatchers:

iTunes
Juice
Doppler
A page with a more extensive list

Once you got your self a pod catcher, what you want to do is explore “podcast directories” which are places where you can search for podcasts in subjects you might be interested in.. Here are some popular podcast directories:

Podcast directories

Podcast Alley
Podcast Pickle
Podcasts.Yahoo.com
Digg.com/Podcasts

also visit Podcast 411’s Directories, for a huge list of podcast directories.

If that’s not enough.. I thought I’d provide you a list of a few of my favorite podcasts… I full list of my favorites is probably 5 times the length of this list.. but I think this represents a reasonable survey, covers a number of bases and um… well dig it.

Podcast 411

Podcast 411 is an “inside the actors work shop” for podcasters.. each episode involves interviewing another podcaster, and talking about there podcast.. what its about, blah blah blah.. It’s a great why to find out about podcasting and discover new podcasts.. Rob’s website is also a great source for information on podcasting..

12 Byzantine Rulers: The History of The Byzantine Empire

Some groovy Roman history for ya…. It’s really fun hearing about how power used to roll in the old days.

Alan Watts

Alan Watts is a pretty cool philosopher who deals very well with eastern philosophy

Ask A Ninja

A Ninja answers question about Ninja’s, its a comedy video podcast. It’s a must see! (you should have seen it at the top on “what is podcasting.”)

Boagworld: Web Design Podcast

Web design with a standards / accessibility centric perspective.

Business Week: The Welch Way

Jack Welch is a Business Guru who’s worth listening to if you’re interested in business.. kinda gives you a few from the top of the business world.

CreativeXpert Design Interview Series

Really great interviews with “creative experts” aka creative pros..

Design Matters

On the intersections of Graphic Design, Branding, and Culture, and Business.. and interview series with, mostly, designers.

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders: Stanford Technology Ventures Program

A seminar program with business thought leaders give little lectures with interviews.. It’s an amazing series… can’t recommend this one enough.

FLOSS Weekly

Interviews with folks involved in the Free “Libra” Open Source Software movement… you should know about the open source world.. so check this out.

HBR Idea Cast: Harvard Business School Publishing

The HBR Idea Cast is a brilliant place to turn for “High Mind” business thought. good stuff.

Media Artist Secrets with Franklin McMahon

Media Artists Secrets is the first podcast I started to listen to.. It’s basically on how to make it as an artist / media artist.. It’s good stuff.

Project Studio Network

A favorite podcast on the subject of music production… You’ll probably want to already know the 101 before you start in on this podcast, but it’s good stuff.

Thew Web 2.0 Show: A podcast about the “new” web

Kinda a web application developer centric view of the net.. interviews with movers and shakers.. and all sorts interesting stuff.

This Week In Media

If you’re a Media artist you should probably be listening to this podcast. You got folks from ILM whom are very sophisticated about there craft, the talk is always a hell of a lot of fun, and its a great help in keeping you up on a broad range of stuff.

Thelema Coast to Coast

“dedicated the exploration of Thelema, Aleister Crowley, the New Aeon, ceremonial magick, and the occult,” and has the further tag line “Occultism without apologies.” I’m not an occultist, but these folks are amazingly sophisticated.. or I say this from a Jungian perspective.. and thus I say “thou must check-ith this out-ith.”

Diggnation

Digg.com is a “social news web site.” Basically the users of the site vote on what they digg, or don’t digg, and that guides a stories ranking in a system.. in relationship to the front page. In Geek / tech circles Digg is…. well its very big.. the podcast features a couple of podcasters getting drunk while they read the news.. and its really funny and good for getting in touch with geek culture.

For Immediate Release: The Bobson & Holtz Report

Twice weekly commentaries on public relations and technology by Shel Hotz & Neville Hobson There’s a huge revolution going on in areas of marketing, pr, publicity, corporate communications.. as a

History 5: European Civilization from the Renaissance to the Present

This is a class from the University of California Berkeley… A history class.. its one of my favorite college course lecture podcasts… which is to say a college course where the lectures are recorded and turned into podcasts. It’s very good.

Ok, so now onto the media critique stuff: What’s wrong with the media

One of the things I talk about in the podcast is the relationship of the new social media.. podcasting, blogs, and what not.. to old mass media.. Talking about this on a structural level…. the relationship between the systemic forces of Mass Media and those of Social Media, and there Implications: This is what I think is most exciting about this new media of Podcasts.

I’m not sure if I’m actually a leftist or not, but I do believe that leftist critiques can offer powerful insights to what’s really going on now.. I believe that it makes sense to listen to these figures for your self, to see what you think of what they have to say.. and decide for your self. Further, I’ve had this idea that the symmetric Biz Cult is at least in part about the struggle between the prophetic and imperialist traditions.. and this represents something of a prophetic view of things… So check it out:

Noam Chomsky

Manufacturing consent: This is a documentary that, among other things, explores structural problems with Mass Media.. which is excellent for highlighting the difference between mass media and social media.

Concision: If you want to do marketing, publicity, or public relations, one of the things you must try and master is concision.. how to speak in sound bites.. the problem is.. how does a world where all arguments and thoughts have to compressed into sound bites.. how does that effect our collective consiousness? (Of course social media doesn’t have this limitation.)

Howard Zinn of Civil Disobedience: If you look at political history, “the good stuff” happened when the people got together to make something happen… Social media empowers this sorta thing.

Public Enemy: Fight the Power: Yea, Boy! I figured we needed a good anthem.

Foucault versus Chomsky Part 1: This is some exerts of a famous debate between Foucault and Chomsky where Foucault famously out flanked Chomsky by going to his left (most people think of Chomsky as on leftist extreme) I suppose Foucault is to the left what the Cato Institute is to economic conservatism… In the podcast I talk a good deal about “power relationships” and this conversation gets into this in some interesting ways.. so check it out.

Part 2

Ice T - The Tower: I thought this was good to throw in there because it shows a kind of continuum of these kinds of critiques… (editors note, since this episode was originally published it was taken down for copyright infringement. It made sense in relationship to the this entry’s theme of power in society. In search of a replacement.. the lyrics of this track, one a user generated video, seems to speak to similar issues from another angle)

Tom Friedman’s case for America going green (Tom is no leftist you understand):

I wanted to find some better stuff with Tom Friedman.. on his “world is Flat” stuff, because this is where things would get interesting… Globalization is.. well its a kind of economic reality that tends to not be well liked by folks of a more leftist persuasion.. the out sourcing of American jobs to India, China, and the like.. is not something American’s dig too much.. however globalization does have it’s plusses… one of the interesting things about Friedman’s work is that he refers to Globalization as something Karl Marx more or less prophesied in his Communist Manifesto.. Which is to say that there’s this strange way where leftist critiques seem to have certain prophetic systemic insights, I would argue.. further it shows us that globalization does have a way of leveling the playing field where size, money, economies of scale, market position.. and other things.. don’t give the big established companies the same sort of advantages they once enjoyed.. And of course his book is about nothing other then the kinds of systemic shifts that I’m trying to talk about here… I just wish I could find a clip that went into this sorta thing better!

On the subject of power: This podcast does talk about power and I did want to offer some further reading on the subject. So here’s some good stuff on the subject of power:

Michel Foucault: Philosopher Historian of Power.

Theodor W. Adorno: Composer, philosopher, social theorist of the FrankFurt School

Alfred Adler: Adlar was the first psychologist of Freud’s inner circle to break with Freud.. Adler say power, instead of sex, as the core driving force of human nature.

Carrl Jung: Jung’s ideas on psychology types, which are an important part of modern management theory, balances the Freudian view of the sex drive as the central force of human nature with Adlar’s notion of the power drive..

Something that might also be interesting on the subject of power is the subject of Chakras.. which comes out of Hinduism.. which talks about stages of consiousness inside of which we see both the power drive and the sex drive as being early stages of development, prior to spiritual awakening.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Nietzsche is a rather bad ass philosopher who deals in large part with issues of power (a big influence on Foucualt, it should be added)

Two of Nieztsche’s major works that I would recommend on the subject of power are:

Beyond Good and Evil
On the Genealogy of Morals

The Asymmetric Biz Cult podcast has been a little faded lately.. basically I need to post the show notes, and all that, of all the old episodes.. and then get to the knew episodes… 3 of which are done.. minus show notes.  In the mean time my other podcast is active.

The Matt Searles podcast and blog is sorta more personal, at least theoretically.  It’s kind of the story of my life as an artist.  A story who’s plot, as you might imagine, has just grown a hell of a lot thicker with my mom’s passing.  What might be valuable for you over there is..

Well you might say its PR for myself as an artist.  But what I’m talking about is very first person as I go about stuff.  So for instance I’ve been doing a lot of music production lately, so I’ll talk about that production..  In a level of detail that basically makes it sorta like tutorials.  What’s special about it, I think, is that these are tutorials that take you into the creative process of an artist.  So its like.. the creative choices of your vision often have various technical ramifications..  so lets go explore those issues..  I think all too often tutorials, and what not.. are technical without the art.. and ultimately the technical is a part of the language that its the artist’s job to make poetry with.

Another thing that ought to be interesting in that in the Asymmetric Biz Cult podcast I try and talk about art, philosophy, and business.. in the social media context, and what it means for us as artist.. or creative content creators.. but over there, at the Matt Searles podcast and blog, there you can see it in practice.. or you can see me trying to execute on these ideas.. So my hope is that these things go together in a way that makes the whole more then the sum of the parts.

On that note I should tell you that I have free music to give away.  Music who’s production, as you might imagine, I talk about over in the other podcast and blog.  I just finished a CD project to make a CD in the month of November.

The journey now will be to try and get as many people to hear that as possible, and hopefully get feed back on it.  The other challenge is for me to bring my music to the next level.  And of course, eventually, to actually make some money from these efforts.

So anyway, wish me luck..  I wish this post was a little better written.. But I’m a little out of it on account of loosing my mom a few hours back.. I’m still kind of in shock..  So to say I’m a little off may game is a little bit of an over statement.

Actually.. our next episodes, to one extent or another, will probably deal with the subject of my mom.  Part 2 of a trip to Mark’s land features me sorta breaking down at the thought of loosing her, and suggestion that Mark and Evan are family.. and how I’ll need this.. which is a part of that thicker plot.  It seems like this is probably a useful topic of conversation.. because social media is about a lot more the monetization, and this broader spectrum is something that we need to explore as artists.

Another episode that I just did some recording for, just before the news of my mom came, was on the importants of humanity in social media..  Humanity from a strategic point of view, kinda sorta… That its my belief that developing our humanity will make us more successful in social media…

So I view all this stuff as interrelated… and what to approach it in a holistic kind of way… So tell me what you think….  feed back is always welcome here.

Ok, so with that I’ll publish.

I bought a Zoom H4 which is a portable digital recording device.. which allowed me to create a podcast that was kind of.. well recording “out in the field.” So the idea was to go out there and record an episode while I live my life, so to speak..

There was also this idea of… “capturing the moment.” You go out and record a lot of stuff… take it back into the studio.. and sorta put together the moments that you think really work.. to create the podcast in post production. This is sort of a radicle departure to the way we’ve been making the podcast..  and I hope this leads to making it a whole lot better… This is a new beginning for the Asymmetric Biz Cult.. it has evolved into a whole new animal.. this being the first episode of this new animal.. I thought it might be best to start off on the subject of who we are, who I am, etc…

Who am I?

Allan Watts on the subject:

On the hero’s Journey:

A video from Joseph Campbell:

On Modes of Being:

Heidegger.

I should probably also note that a lot of my thinking on the subject of “modes of being” comes from the Philosophy 6 - Spring 2007: Man, God, and Society in Western Literature Podcast out of UC Berkeley.. well its actually the lectures from this class. You can sign up through iTunes by clicking here. What you end up having in our podcast is something like a synthesis of eastern mysticism and philosophy with… well western philosophy, certain schools of psychology, and modern business theory…. And I guess I’ll leave the show notes at that.

This episode takes us into the music production of the asymmetric biz cult podcast, as well as my more personal sound work…. It’s another flawed struggle at trying to make a good podcast.. Though I believe it is not without it’s virtues and redeeming value.

Today’s show notes will include 2 things. #1 Links to resources, #2 A talk about process and technology.

Resources:

The BAM Audio School

Podcasts I recommend:

The Project Studio Network Podcast — Intermediate to Pro Music production podcast.

Home Recording Odyssey Podcast — Music production on the cheap.

Magazines: (many of which you can read for free online)

Keyboard Magazine: Though it’s called “keyboard magazine” its pretty good for anyone dealing electronic music production.

Electronic Musician: Was a favorite of mine for a long time.. on electronic music production

Virtual Instrument Magazine — This is a fairly new magazine that I’m rather fond of as it really goes much deeper into many aspects of electronic music then any other magazine I’ve found.

Sound On Sound: I subscribe to Sound On Sound, its probably my favorite.. A good well rounded music production magazine.. glossy and big.. and just a pleasure.

Mix Magazine — Good magazine on mixing (surprised?)

Free Plug in Database

On process:

The main sound project that went into this episode was the intro. The intro, as I listen to it now, points to where the production of this podcast should be going..

I think of the process like film making: A film maker goes out and shoots a lot of stuff.. and then goes back into the editing room and puts the film together. The editing is where the film emerges.. is really made.. it is here where we discover what we have.. the shooting, to some degree, is a process by which we gather our ingredients for our film.. we are collecting colors and what not..

For the intro I had two main recording sessions where I captured raw materials.. The first was a jam session that happened right around the time of the recording of episode 1.5…. The second was recorded a couple weeks prior to putting the intro together.. where Evan, myself, and Mark, all improvised these little descriptions of what Asymmetric Biz Cult might be.

Now I should tell you that I have a crazy amount of hard disk space on this computer. . I have content on here that goes back to… I don’t know.. 2000? I have my college work on here.. which may go back as far as 95? So I have a huge library of stuff, from which, I can use as building blocks for new projects.. This is an important idea.. that you can reuse your old work, when you work digitally.. and there’s a strange sort of surrealistic continuity that it can add to your work.. (you get this, like with Frank Zappa, when you see a lot of the work together with different treatments of the same materials, concepts, and compositions… etc)

One thing to think about in relationship to this sort of thing is copyright: If you do work for clients.. if you want to reuse source material that you created doing projects for clients.. you need to make clear, in your contracts, that you intent to hold on to the right to make future derivative works from these files.. you need to communicate with your client about this sorta thing.. you want them to feel comfortable in knowing you’re not going to reuse this stuff in such a way that would undermine what you’ve done for them.. and of course.. you work a little cheaper if retaining a little more of the copyrights.. and I would advice you, in all cases, to at least hold on to the right to use your work in the context of a portfolio..

Anyway.. so what I find powerful about the recording sessions was there energy.. How alive they felt.. A mad enthusiasm… How they capture certain qualities of the asymmetric biz cult vibe, if you will.. This is in stark contrast the way my music usually works:

My music creation process.. is like a painters in the sense that it’s this lonely introverted kind of journey. A painter just goes out there somewhere.. and paints, and that’s it.. just the painter and the canvas. And that’s what my production is like: Just me and the tools of my trade.. So my music is, in a certain sense, a kind of chamber music.. a kind of labyrinth of secret things.. its like some deep investigation of “the metaphysical this that and the other things”.. explorations of consiousness.. thoughts on organizational principles.. aesthetics.. and on and on it goes….

So what is special about the intro in the scheme of my larger body of work, has to do with the raw materials for my music creation… Which is a very exciting new twist to my work.. because my work can be as deeply self reflective, analytical, self critical, and whatever else.. as it ever was… but it also can be full of life.. So it can have a kind of balance between introversion and extroversion psychology types..

Ableton Live

The intro’s production took place in Ableton’s Live. I’m not a master of Live yet: I’m to some extent fumbling around in the dark. Live is in some respects a kind of tool of aliens, and my job is to figure out what it might have to offer my art.

To some extend “music production is music production.” What I mean by this is that there’s a whole lot to music production that is universal and doesn’t change just because you’re working in a different area of music production.. or a different style, or a different digital audio work station. Right now.. a lot of my sound production efforts are directed into thinking about mixing / the mix engineer’s roll. So some of the first things I’ll try and get a handle on in working with a new DAW is EQ, Compression, Reverb’s and Delays.. and the various effects that you’ll normally use to try and carve up your mix.. And if we where to explore in much depth where I’m at as a mix engineer, we’d probably also want to explore where I am as a composer, musician, or just all around sound artist.. and how all these things interrelate.. and come together in the production.. at any rate, more or less, this is the “music production is music production” and our job, when stumbling around in the dark, is to figure out how to breath this stuff into a live production.. so that it might benefit from what we know.. and where we’ve been in the past.

But Live is a very strange tool. It works in ways that are counter intuitive for someone coming to live from other DAWs… which is part of why I fumble around in the dark so much.. There’s a way to approach new tools, or at least there’s my way: You start out with “the basics” that you need to operate.. “What do you need to know how to do in order to be able to do what you want to do.” Once you get that worked out, you can start working on projects.. and along the way you can start experimenting with learning other features, and kind of expanding..

There’s what I’d call “The Uber Hard Core.” This happens where #1 You know all the key commands.. so that instead of going to menus you’re hitting key commands to make stuff happens.. #2, When there are multiple ways of achieving something you know which way is fastest, and perhaps whatever pros and cons might go along with whatever route you might take to achieving whatever it is you are trying to achieve. When you are at this kind of level you are able to work in a way that is a lot faster / more efficient… and the faster you can work, the more you can get done in less time.. and the greater your level of craft can then be…. and the higher the level you’re work will be at. So to some extent.. when you start with a program you have “Uber Hard Core - dom” in your mind as where you might like to go with this, and this helps to set your trajectory.

With Live, for now, I’m struggling with.. well mastering the basic basics… I’m pretty sure that Live is more powerful that I’m really fathoming right now.

Day or two latter:

Live is designed from start to finish to operate effectively as a live performance tool.. which is a little different from how you normally work with DAWs.. So I basically end up working with Live as if it where a conventional DAW.. Part of this is because I have a slow computer that’s not really up to taking full advantage of Live, particularly not in a live context…

Days latter:

This is getting pretty long, ha? Well I suppose this is sorta good enough for now.. lets just end it here….

I don’t know that this was our most successful episode… but basically what I try to do is give you an overview of the wonderful world of music production… from a somewhat “prophetic” perspective.

For starters, what sorta tools might you use? Here’s a list of what you’ll find in my studio:

DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations):

Cubase SX3 Digital Performer 4 Live

Other music production software:

Reason (kind of a synth work station) Storm (somewhere between Reason and ReBirth)

Digital Instruments and Effects:

Native Instruments Komplete 3 (Bundle of Software Instruments and Effects) Model E (old analog synth) Waldorf Attack (percussion synth) LMR-4 (drum sampler)

Hardware:

Motu 828 (audio interface) Alesis 5.1 surround sound monitor system. Sennheiser HD 280 Pro (Head Phones)

Also in my studio is a 16 channel digital mixer, a digitech guitar effects processor, 2 hardware synth modules, a couple mxl microphones… and a few other odds and ends…

============

I thought for the show notes I would talk about equipment from the standpoint of my studio.. and from the stand point of my collaborators. This is about building a kind of road map to where we want to be moving forward.

————-

Currently I suffer from having a computer that just isn’t fast enough… I don’t really have a lot of money to pour into a new system.. so I’m feeling stuck with making do. At the same time, Mark and Evan are in the same sorta boat in that they don’t really have enough money to invest in the sorta equipment they would like to invest in..

One of the ideas for this podcast, and other projects, is… what if we all had the equipment to put together segments… What if we all had the equipment to edit, mix, produce, etc.. stuff. Also there’s some thought of “wouldn’t it be great to put together a CD” and to do that, my feeling is, we all need to be able to work on the production end of things, as well as the other ends.. Not only this but.. but we may be doing video work and I’ve been thinking deeply about rethinking sound design for video.. particularly stuff for the internet.

So.. currently in my studio is the following (with little clips that show you into aspects of the software):

Cubase:

Digital Performer:

Reason:

Live (this is probably one of the best of the clips, as it give you the quickest overview the fastest):

Native Instruments Komplete (Bundle):

Dwezil Zappa playing with Guitar Rig (a fav as his dad is a huge hero of mine):

FM8:

Absynth:

Battery (drum sampler):

Reaktor (one of the coolest tools in the bundle, but hard to find a video on, in here they’re just basically playing around with some ensembles):

Also worth mentioning is Kontakt:

There’s whole lot more to this bundle, and more to this studio, but lets move on, shall we?In terms of sound work.. the biggest current limitation to my studio is my computer hardware, which is to say that it generally doesn’t make much sense for me to continue upgrading software as long as my hardware is so far behind that its not really able to take advantage of the new software.. (do you feel my pain?)The above software probably retails for a little under $4,500.. (the street price is much less then that), but then that doesn’t include things like microphones, audio interfaces, and all the other stuff that can go into you’re studio..

Anyway, so in planning out a studio you want to think about a number of things: #1, What is it that you want to use that studio for, and #2, how much money you got.. along with this you might say.. well you might create a long term plan.. so that over the course of 5 years you’ll get to some place that you wouldn’t be able to get to in one year. Make sense so far?

Both Mark and Evan have some experience in music production but probably not enough so that they would take to modern tools like fish to water…. so in the short term, if we where to plan there studios we’d say “we want something that can both cover all the bases, not require to steep a learning curve to get into, they can grow into, and fits into a larger long term plan.” Oh yeah.. and there not as given to putting crazy money into there systems as I am.

My thinking is… for an album.. I’m kind of attracted to the idea that “everyone should have Live.” To explain this let me tell you the tail of both what what Live is and how it works in my studio:

Live is a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), but unlike other such work stations.. it’s designed to be played like an instrument, as well as work as a DAW… It’s a great DJ tool, a great way to play around with music.. And its very cool.. Also it has the best tools for working with loops that I have in my arsenal.. in practice this is kind of amazing:

I was just working on these new intros.. that I lost in a hard drive crash.. oh the pain of it! But a couple of weeks ago Mark and Evan came over to the studio and we played around with laying down some intros.. that could be the raw materials for intros and promos for the podcast… All this recorded in Digital Performer..

Now months ago we had a little jamfest.. where we all had instruments and decided to kind of make a podcast where we talked while we played.. and while this was a good deal of fun.. the results where.. not without there problems.. So I didn’t really feel comfortable in making that work public.. (although episode 1.5 is one of those recordings)

Anyway.. so what Live was able to do was to tempo match the jamfest with the project tempo.. I could very easily add in loops and other craziness to the jamfest.. I mixed this in with one of the intros.. along with some guitar and bass playing.. plus some drum loops.. and a whole lot of mixing / production stuff.. and came out with this kind of end product that really sorta blew me away..

What blows me away about Live is how easy it is for me to take audio content from all sorts of projects I’ve worked on in the past.. in many cases projects that I’m not really happy with.. and sorta use it as the basic building blocks of new projects. What seems to me to be exciting about this in the context of our group is how easy it would make it for us to collaborate together in productions where we are all creating stuff… and sending that stuff back and forth and what not.

In my view, one of the weaknesses of Live is it’s MIDI implementation.. It’s just no where near where Cubase or Digital Performer is at.. I mean its not where those programs where at 7 years ago! Which isn’t a bad thing.. it just highlights that the modern production involves the use of a number of different programs.. so… if you need sequencing, where should you turn?

I don’t even know the likely hood of Evan or Mark really getting into sequencing.. but its so fundamental to modern music production that you kinda feel like “well, we need it.” I don’t talk too much about MIDI sequencing in this episode.. but it is a pretty central thing to how I make music.. or I mean I program notes into sequencers that tell other stuff what to play..

The Major Daws., Cubase, Digital Peformer, Logic, etc.. that are the strong sequencers, tend to run close to $1000 on there list price… In many cases, however, there are “toned down” version of these programs.. that will run for just a few hundred dollars.. which also have an upgrade path to the more full featured versions…. And are very strong in there own right, so basically.. perfect for starting out. Also.. if you own some sort of competing tool to Digital Performer, there is often a “competitive upgrade” that you can get that makes it, in practice, as inexpensive as some of these toned down version… When looked at from this angle.. it seems like DP might be the best choice, particularly because we’d all be on the same tool.. I already know it to a certain extent and thus can help them along… and it is a great piece of software.

It’s also worth considering that they will need audio interfaces. An audio interface is how you get your audio into your computer.. Interfaces run from under $100 to over $1000… depending on any number of variables. They are also frequently bundled with software.. which is yet another thing to consider…. For the purposes of Evan and Mark, they can probably go with some of the cheapest interfaces on the market.. the main thing is they’d probably like an XLR in.. and maybe the ability to record more then one track at a time.. at a reasonable sample rate and bit depth.. So they don’t really need to spend too much money here unless we are thinking seriously about software.

One of the interfaces I find myself checking out is the MBox 2 on Musician’s Friend’s website. It runs for about $450 and comes with a sorta toned down version of Pro Tools, Reason, Live, Sample Tank, Amplitube, Tracks EQ, BFD, and other stuff.. which really makes it kind of ideal and cheap, in many ways… but again.. we don’t see really strong sequencing in there…. (Protools has historically not been strong in MIDI)

The Next Day:

Well.. I’ll continue on this rambling tale of thinking through studio issues on some of the upcoming show notes.. so stay tuned for that.

Coming up shortly in the podcast is a series of episodes on music production. As a part of entering into this area I thought it might make sense to share some of my adventures in music production… In part because it might help give you a road map that might, in one way or another, be instructive to your own adventure. And of course.. don’t be afraid to ask questions… (url @ gmail.com)

So, allow me to give you the story of the ISO Egg production:

1. On the Philosophy of Production:

ISO is a horribly flawed piece of music… as I listen to it today I can see in it what I take to be a certain brilliants… it sounds to me like “out sider art.” Outsider art would be art that is not produced by “the in crowd.” It’s all wrong from the vantage point of established thinking on anything.. and there in lys it’s brilliants to my ears.. There is a kind of experimental exploration… of things that the in crowd’s morality, to put it a certain way, keeps them from exploring…. What strikes me as brilliant about it is that.. even in the world of what is horribly wrong with it.. it’s like some… . its like a voice from far far out there… speaks to us from this other reality.. truths that our reality, perhaps, wouldn’t quite get.

Latter:

As of my writing this I’m listening to Cornel West’s Democracy Matters. To get a feel for what sorta public intellectual West is, you can watch an interview with him for Book Notes on his Cornel West Reader, by clicking here. Democracy Matters is one of my favorite books of West’s as it gives me hope for democracy.. it wrestles with the darks side of “The American Empire.” This is a somewhat long and complicated story.. that would seem to swerve far away from our subject of music production.. but it speaks to the question of art.. Basically.. in West’s views you have these two posing strands which he calls the Constantinian and the Prophetic traditions.

Basically the Roman Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official state religion… Where as traditionally Christianity was suspicious of power (having the living embodiment of your God dying on a Roman cross will do that to a people.) Constantine’s assimilation of Christianity into the Roman Empire was at least in part a way of dealing with the rise of a political threat to the empire.. aka Christianity. (Which the trusty Roman cross, apparently, wasn’t quite powerful enough to put down.) So, as with anything else that started as a good thing, the story goes that Christianity was forever corrupted by the power influx made possible by Constantine. The prophetic Christian tradition.. the sorta thing you’d find in the Gnostics… with there Gospel of Thomas and what not… had a more buddhist idea about the nature of Christ then the one we’ve generally grown familiar with. Without getting too deep into this, basically the ramifications of these sorts of ideas is that the prophetic tradition is less able to be assimilated into power.. less given to a situation of power concentration.. more interested in a kind of “freedom of religion.”

The tension of these two traditions, West see’s at the center of “Democracy Matters.” We see the constantinian tradition embodied in the George Bush administration, in various strands of Christian Fundamentalism.. and any place where we see an American Imperialist / nihilist tradition masquerading in Christian garb.

That I use the tag line “America’s Favorite Mystic Prophet Philosopher Artist” ought to tell you something of where I stand in these things. My relationship to concepts of right and wrong with things like production values.. are an expression of a prophetic longing.. and to some extent ISO EGG becomes my cross baring..

All of this is terribly complicated and I don’t think I could quite explain it all here.. But there is a sense where I am rethinking everything from music composition, production, business, etc.. in part in order to find a new existential relationship between art and market place, with artist and market place.. in light of social media… That is, what we are talking about as central in all of this social media stuff, it seems to me.

To further talk about this I’d like to link to an episode of “Philosophy 6, God, Man, and Society in Western Literature” which is a course given at Berkeley.. In particular Tue 3/6 Gospel of John. Where we learn about “reconfigures and Articulators.” ISO Egg is my attempt at reconfiguring… the challenge we face in listening to it.. is that there are no articulators. So I may just seem crazy…

The Technology Used:

As far as I am able to understand ISO Egg was finished off in 2001. It was made on a G4 Power Mac.. in OS9. With Cubase (Digital Audio Workstation), ReBirth (early virtual synthesizer / pattern sequencer / drum machines, effects), Reason (sorta like a more powerful version of ReBirth), Unity DS-1 (Software Sampler), the LMR-4 (Drum Sampler), The Waldorf Attack (percussion synth), Model E (analog synth emulation).. all of which are virtual synthesizers that run on your computer.. Also, there was a digitech guitar effects processor on my guitar.. a motu 828 audio interface… the Korg NS5R synth modual, and the Kawai GMega synth module.. an Epiphone Les Paul… and Pluggo (effects software)… and there’s probably some other odds and ends.

Artists, Influences, and people depicted in the show.

Def Leppard
Megadeth
Black Sabbath
Ozzy Osbourne
Jake E Lee
Zakk Wylde
Rhandy Rhoads
Frank Zappa

Scott Dakota (who’s currently in the Valhalla Kittens)

Matt Sencio — I was having trouble finding a good link on Matt.. but he is mentioned on this wikipedia thing for The David Lee Roth radio show..

John Sencio

Joe Maneri
Mat Maneri

And I suppose we’ll leave the madness at this!

Track List:

ISO “The Place”
Likes it Rough
This One’s For the Kiddies
Ed Speaks
Walls
Rock and Roll-E
Journey
In The Woods
A Star Is Born
Little Fairy Boats
Funk-A-Delica
Alien Wake Up
Y God Lets Evil Roam Free
Space Out

The subject of corporate culture is pretty close to the subject of industrial psychology… and what we do, a little bit, is explore the relationship between the “corporate culture” that folks work in, and the sort of out put that becomes a kind of systemic result of that culture…. On this journey we explore the issues of the creative process, and how culture can impact that process.. we do this in a way that is to suggest how you organize your life has a lot to do with what you produce.. we try to make this connection… that how you organize your life, in a sorta of introverted sense, is a mirror of the issue of corporate culture.. or that corporate culture is a kind of “extroverted manifestation” of this… and we attempt to take this all the way into a certain mystic perspective..

What exactly is elitism? Perhaps elitism has a bad rap? I take a somewhat technical view of elitism… (which is a little different then just the arrogant dick.) Basically this podcast is in defense of social hierarchy in the social media space (as well as others spaces) My view is that there are systemic forces that lead different people into leadership position in different areas. It might be that we are all leaders in one or another space in our lives. Maybe you are an opinion leader among your friends about issues of politics, what good music is, or who knows what.. In these places you are a leader among the folks of your social networks..

I don’t really go into this, but there’s a sort of interface between this way of thinking and social biology……. this related to things like “idea market places” self organizing systems, and what have you.

There is a natural tension in America between the political sense where in “we are all equal,” and the economic sense where inequality is at the heart of what drives markets. At the heart of Asymmetric Biz Cult is an exploration of new possibilities for the existential relationship between artist and the market. So the notion of “elitist apologetics and the new hippy capitalists” is clearly at the center of what we are trying to explore…. which is to rethink this…

Basically social economic hierarchy, of its self, is perhaps not bad, is my view… its just that all too often it is not an expression of meritocracy…

For further reading:

Apologetics
Peter Drucker
Tom Friedman on Wikipedia
A Tom Friedman article in Wired on the world’s Flatness
Adam Smith

I suppose this episode ought to be dedicated to Franklin McMahon.. who’s Media Artist Secrets was an influence on me doing this podcast.. and doing an episode on self doubt just somehow reminds me of something he would do.

This episode ends up being a fairly deep episode where we explore the roll self doubt plays in forming our consiousness decision making process. We, as you might expect at this point, do this via a journey into Psychoanalysis, Jungian Psychology, Buddhism, Nietzsche, and other fun stuff.

At a particular point in out journey we take a look at 3 musical school of thought.. Lets call it the “old school classical music” Jazz, and Chance based composition.. here’s some fun links that add to this conversation:

John Cage Indeterminacy
Modalism in Jazz
Stochastic Music
Algorithmic Composition

Jazz

Sun Ra
John Zorn
Xenakis
John Cage

The Wheel of Fortune
For the business types in the audience, I should like to suggest that since musical composition is about “organizing sonic elements” studying composition can teach us something about business management.

An Over View

In this episode we try and give you the Art School 101 which is to talk a little bit about color theory, some of the basic elements of design, how to draw realistically, what sorta art making software tools are out there, and things of this nature. We believe that with a little dedication anyone who wants to, can become an artist, can do commercial design, and can be a fine artist… or that talent is something that we are all in possession of, its just a question of developing.. and we try to show you the path to developing these talents and skills to be a great artist.

Even if you don’t aspire to being a visual artist, we think this episode can have value for you. This podcast can help you communicate more effectively with artists and designers, as to think visually.. it can also help you to appreciate art a little more then you might have been able to otherwise..

If you are a visual artist we hope you’ll at least find the entertainment value in listening to Evan and myself (Matt), try and talk about what it takes to become a serious artist…

This episode is founded on some ideas, about identity and divisions of labor, that I believe to be prophetic in nature in the sense that I believe we are talking about a part of the skill sets you might be in need of tomorrow, once disruptive technologies have radically shift conventional notions of reality and labor divisions. At the moment of time that I write these words, it seems to me that to make statements like this you have to be a little crazy.. because of how at odds with the current conventional notions of reality some of these statements, but we believe if you stick with us, you’ll eventually come to know we weren’t crazy after all.

Color Theory:

Here’s a good wikipedia article on color theory.

The PhotoShop / Adobe Color Picker Graphic

This is by far my favorite color picker as it works in a way that helps to facilitate how I think about color when doing design work. The big Left Hand Square.. From left to write shows the range of saturation for a color, while up and down shows you the value.. or from dark to light… Next to this big square we can long rectangle that shows you what hue we want to work with.. Focusing on just these two areas, working with this color picker, is how I developed my ways of working with color..

Color Ecology Graphic

I made this little graphic to illustrate the issue of color ecology, as we talk about it in the podcast. The gray background is a “neutral gray” meaning that it doesn’t have any color in it; it is a pure gray about half way between white and black, and as such is most sensitive to the ecology issue. When you look at a color against this gray you will best be able to see that color.

Interestingly, whatever color you put next that grey, will turn the grey into its opposite / compliment… So red will make it look green, yellow will make it look purple, green will make it look red, and blue will make it look orange. You will notice that where the grey meets the red, the line of that articulation is it’s self seems almost 3 dimensional, or it all most feels like its vibrating a little bit. This is the effect of simultaneous contrast.. this is what happens when red buts up against green.. the red is making the grey next to it look, in an extremely subtle way, green… You will also notice that where the red overlaps the yellow, the green, and the blue.. the red seems to subtly shift in color.. In this way we can see how “the color ecology of a painting or graphic” influences our sense of what color we are looking at.

Software

Photoshop $650 — Photoshop is the grand poe bah master digital bit map graphics editor / creator / etc.

Photoshop Elements $80 — Evan seemed to think that elements was “essentially” PhotoShop.
I’m not sure if I agree.. yes, the core functionality of PhotoShop hasn’t really changed all that much since its very early days.. and I’m sure elements captures that.. But if you are a serious digital graphics person.. my feeling is Elements probably doesn’t cut it.

Illustrator $500 — Illustrator is what we call a “drawing program” that centers around “Vector
Graphics.” Illustrator, like Photoshop, is a must have for all serious graphic designers. It’s a little more difficult to come to grips with then photoshop, but don’t let that discourage you.

Fireworks $300 — Fireworks is a graphics program that specializes in web graphics. Fireworks combines bitmap and vector graphics editing, creation, and manipulation.. is all you need for web optimization.. it even writes code for you.. (although not the cleanest code, from a developers perspective.)

Next we are going to talk a little about the “Bundles.” If you’re serious about working with digital graphics, there is no question that you need PhotoShop and Illustrator, which will cost you well over $1000. On the other hand you could look at a bundle like Adobe’s CS2 Standard.. which not only includes Illustrator and PhotoShop for under $1000, but throws in InDesign along with a few other odds and ends.

If you are doing graphic design for print, not only do you need Photoshop and Illustrator, but you also need a desktop publishing program, like Quark or InDesign… so you can see how this bundle becomes really attractive.

Adobe Creative Suite 2 Standard $900 (includes Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and some other odds and ends.)

The Next bundle to look at is “SC 2.4 Premium.” Essentially its the same as the standard edition plus GoLive, Dreamweaver and Acrobat. The question for you is “is that worth the extra $300?” The answer is probably.. GoLive and Dreamweaver are essentially redundant… They are both program you use to put together websites… so graphic design for the web.. Dreamweaver is probably the better of the two, and GoLive is about to be discontinued.. Acrobat is a very neat kind of authoring program, for authoring things like e-books, brochures.. and what have you.. You can now even put 3D content into Acrobat PDFs..

My feeling is, if you are looking to be a graphic designer who works in interactive design.. you probably want to go this way, at least.

Adobe Creative Suite 2.4 Premium $1200 (includes Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, GoLive, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, and some other odds and ends.)

Adobe’s Web Bundle is.. The whole Photshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat thing, plus Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Flash. In my view, if your serious about interactive design for the web, you probably want Flash in your tool box, and Fireworks in not undesirable. I suppose the question is, “is the web bundle worth $700 more then the Premium bundle?” and I think… Flash Professional’s list price is $700.. so you know.. you do get Fireworks and other odds and ends like Contribute and Flash Paper but.. I think we are, at this point, getting into the world of overkill a little bit. I mean one thing I can tell you.. if you haven’t worked with these tools before.. it’s going to take you more then a year to become proficient with them all… And now for something different… Painter. Painter costs around $430, and what is really powerful about Painter is that it’s a digital tool for emulating “Traditional / Natural Media techniques,” which is to say things like oil painting, charcoal, water colors, etc.. I LOVE painter… It can give you results that no other program can come close to.. and its great for sorta distinguishing your work from the pack.

The last tool we want to talk about is Gimp. You can find out more about Gimp here. I don’t know too much about Gimp, accept that its free open source software, that’s.. well basically its a graphics program that specializes in creating graphics for the web. Because its free, its probably a great
place to start off. Finally Evan mentioned a place on Apple’s website where you can find free downloadable stuff.. well, here’s the link.

Artist’s mentioned:

Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein… see some of his work
on Goggle here.

Roy Lichtenstein on
Wikipedia here.

And, of course, we have to mention the
Roy Lichtenstein Foundation.

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso on Wikipedia.

The Official Pablo Picasso website.

Further reading / listening / viewing

I haven’t had any luck finding any good books on the subjects talked about here… or at least I’m not remembering the classics of the fields.. I did, however, find a book in my personal library that is a classic on the 101 of Interactive Media Design. It’s a book called MTIV: Process, Inspiration, and Practice for the New Media Designer by Hillman Curtis.

Hillman curtis is a New Media leader.. who’s work I respect a great deal. Check out Hillmancurtis.com for some very interesting and exciting work… I’m a particularly big fan of his artist documentary series.