spinning drum blog

I’m listening to the week’s takes, finding the mixes I like, snooping around for signs of improvement. In partial denial over dropping my pc tower, I had forgone recording for awhile. It was a good thing really! Just get into the art form instead of soft tooling around with sound forge and the like. But the hiatus is done. I’m now resigned to record on my lap top (loath to do it all on one machine though)

So I’m back in the audio file game. I’m back to watching levels and retapping into the rewards of review, which means the site’s audio pages have a future, and thus 2006 mixes can emerge from the ethereal mostly mandala-like audio wonderland of my studio.

Wav editor by default Peak, and I’m no big fan of its entry level simplicity. Bottomline, it just doesn’t feel like Forge, doesn’t have the same easy flow and big file friendliness Forge offered so unobtrusively. I mean I had just mastered the hot keys when my pc and content took a dive. So I’ve returned with a Mac attack, believing in the power of G4 to handle all my digital necessities.

Anyway, I am in the process of seeing what I want to put online, the presentation of the audio file portion of the site is going through a bit of a mental remix. Somehow I am trying to visualize a way to mix album cover aesthetic with digital dynamism, file friendly functionality and byte wise feng shui. So it’s another visit to a photoshop intensive weekend – screen clung and digitized. Lucky I have a new scanner, on indefinite loan, and a ton of mixes to get through…

It’s how I feel, but I’m back. Sat in the comme ci comme ca of the unexpected inertia October has brought, the blog is resurrected from underneath writer’s block and has found its way back online.

Yes, practice has been the same. It’s become a rock. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t step into my musical routine, week’s highlight- discovered or should say perfected a new scratch. My juggling feels solid, but plateaued, and I am slowly finding a way to digitze my analogue experience, but this month circling in mars retrograde and an apathetic mood, as I work my vinyl and mixer, I am forced to ask what is it all for?

No doubt it’s my destiny to insure the turntable’s survival into the next century. No doubt my experience here will serve many of my goals coasting upon my mortal horizon, but invariably, I wonder a times why bother. Truth be told I’ve always had a romantic vision of beautiful losers. While I am blessed to work within the performing arts community, sometimes when surrounded by so much talent and creativity, it seems the only really exceptional thing to accomplish is failure. Sure, there is no uniqueness to mediocrity, but out and out failure, well that has a dramatic glamour to it.

I saw the film “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.” It was quirky, funny, bittersweet in an understated way. Suprisingly what stayed with me past the closing credits was its main character. I truly identified with Zissou. So what would I have in common with a 52 year old veteran oceanographer dealing with a mid life crisis? Me thinks, it was the subjectivity of success. Admidst the chaos of human relations what was such a thing anyway.

Earlier this week I wrote in another forum that success is a mental state and cannot be determined by numbers.

Really we achieve what, for what or whom?

I recall a friend who was so passionate about woodworking that he devoted his life to it. Always in the process of practice and perfection, always striving for greater communion with the form and feel of good wood and fine structure, eventually he achieved some note as an exceptional carpenter. However, after achieving the recognition, and subsequent career he had longed for for so many years, a crack appeared in his dream. For when he had it all, and looked around and realized that he had no one to share it with, he found it began to crumble.

To me his passion and devotion was inspiring, and in some ways he was a role model, and when pale faced one day he told me alas his accomplishments had lost meaning within his solitude, I took a big note to beware of this with my own pursuits. Remembering that my human relations still must take precedent, I must keep in check that the turntable is an inanimate object, and it will be there when some people are no longer.

But I, like many, am so entrenched in my artistic pursuits, I question to what extent one can mediate them in favour of balance. For artists, whose passion must fuel them through hunger, long winters, lack of sleep, self-doubt and neverending creative quests, how does one find the nourishment in the day to day. How does one find the creative spark away from collaboration but merely in relation?

2 days off the tables infront of the computer. 2 days dedicated to the spinningdrum site, dedicated to design and information gathering. A bit obessive about it really, which means I was at it all day & night, formulating, shaping, mixing, reformulating remixing and tweaking the site repeatedly. It was much needed, as was the practice break. Wednesday, I hit a wall after an intense practice stretch, Hard to explain, but I needed a breather – a step back before re-attack.

I remember some jazz great musician/producer saying that he only took the first two or three takes of a song in the studio, and then after that he didn’t feel the musician’s were fresh anymore. Must be the same prinicple at play – repetition good for motor control and memory, but bad for freshness and peak performance? So what gives? What is the freshness factor?

Well, upon my return I felt better than ever, don’t know if I actually was, but things did feel quicker, faster and sharper: chirp more reliable, juggling more precise. I was easily and fluidly finding rhythms within rhythms and every stroke was backed by a stronger percusive sensibility – one that was quicker and more intune.

So while dedication and routine do pay off as the working musician invariably becomes a small muscle athlete; apparently, it’s not all about motor control. It’s not only about building mental and muscle connections for complex and relentless scratching, but also about the fluency and harmonics of your musical tongue – the one that plays through your fingertips.

One Theory:
Perhaps it’s about dreaming – organizing cerebral data floating in the mental ether.
Maybe it’s how the sponge between your ears expells fresh contents into coherent thoughts and abilities.
Maybe it’s how the blocks of your knowledge and ability base are laid.

Anyway, I know I dreamed lots last week – lots of dreams and some of them causing me to wake from what should have been sugar plum slumber. For instance, I had one in which I lost my mixer. I lost it in a huge dj store full of mixers, and I kept picking up every mixers turning it over then saying, “Nope this is not my mixer!” Anyway, I forced myself to wake from the dream just to cease the stress. Weird! What does that one mean?

Well, too much time behind the Xone 02 were my thoughts.

So like I said, I’m back after a break for 2 days.