Mood:
amorousNow Playing: Tool - 10,000 Days
Topic: Music
You are invited to the S+M Collective Pre-launch!
Ok - so this is the coolest email I've written y'all in a long loooong looooooooooong (please note: extra time is denoted by redundant use of the letter 'o')... time.
You can shortcut this email by just click here: the Concept (or if clicking doesn't work, copy and paste this into your address bar: http://tinyurl.com/2n52h7
The full story is as follows. Basically, if you're reading this you are on the "early invite" list for a Collective Music project for non-musicians to make music with no special skills or major investment of time/effort required.
N*gga say what??
Remember 8 years ago when "making a website" was something that "special people" did, after going to special schools or by being home-schooled total uber-nerds* who spoke special code languages and looked visibly upset when you used the word "download" when you really meant "install" or "copy"?
...Although, at the time, you wouldn't have known you were making the mistake and would've thought they were just visibly insane...
Anyway, thanks to Blogs, Wikipedia, MySpace, Facebook, MSN LiveSpaces, YouTube, Flickr, and all the rest, now anyone with 1/110th of a brain and a web browser can make or contribute to a real-live website. The power of instant global publishing has gone to the people! Albeit, maybe some people who shouldn't have that kind of power... but they sure make the Net an interesting place! The way that paradigm shift happened was that the specialists made websites designed such that anyone could log in and use a simple system to get the job done with all the complexity hidden behind the scenes.
Now we're planning to do the same thing to making music! WOO!
Before, making a "song" was something that those with special skills could do. Those who had bothered to learn to do esoteric things like play an instrument or understand keys and scales. The rest of us just had to watch from the sidelines. About 20 years ago, someone invented computer sequenced music, that helped lower the bar a bit. 10 years ago, someone invented computer software composition packages, another big bar-drop. Things got easier, but it was still pretty hard to learn how to make actual music. You needed quite a lot of creativity and drive to learn to make something, and once you did, it often didn't qualify as a "song" in the beginning-middle-end sense. It was usually a bunch of "stuff I did that never quite got finished". It was all basically way too much work...
the Solution + the Machine (me and my buddy Tim) make our own music and have been churning out songs for a while. The quality is debateable, but they exist, and imperially, they are "songs". Tim is "the Machine". He makes the raw concept tracks - collections of loops, melodies, patterns, harmonies, effects, etc.. I am "the Solution" and I do the refinement of these materials into arrangements, mixes, adding mastering, counter-melodies and rhythms, automated effects and sweeps, bla di bla.
Sound a bit foreign? It usually does.
So, to open music making to the masses, we're now is inviting the whole world into the Solution and Machine system. You (whoever) can provide the ideas and materials that are needed to assemble the basic tracks, and then I will produce those into actual songs for the whole world to hear. Tim and I will work whatever you say into a track regardless of whether we actually like it. If the world says "do it" we will comply, and we will return a finished song according to the world's instructions.
We have named this whole thing the S+M Collective (commence childish giggling....) and are inviting all non-musicians to participate. If you are a musician, you can get involved, but please don't annoy everyone by saying things like "you should build this into a classical fugue structure" because it won't mean anything to anyone else.
If you've got this email, we'd love to be involved. So, again, how to learn more and get involved:
Read the Concept (or if clicking doesn't work, copy and paste this into your address bar: http://tinyurl.com/2n52h7, and check out http://www.myspace.com/thesandmcollectivemod.
Questions? Comments? Dont get it? Noticed something fucked up or unclear on the website? Email me back and let me know, PLEASE!
Peace out.
- Noz (aka the Solution)
PS - Please don't use our names on the actual website. We're just going by the Solution and the Machine on there.
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* If you're not sure if you are a nerd, you can take the Noz-patented Instant Nerd Self-Test:
Question 1 - Does this sentence make you wince: "I just got a CD of Microsoft from the store and I am about to download Excel onto my computer."
If yes: Welcome to the party, Poindexter.
If no: Did you know there's a new computer virus going around that can empty your bank account if you click on the wrong email? The only way around it is pre-emptively smashing your computer with a sledge hammer. Better get smashing, dude!!
lyrical