rubken.net - Latest Comments

Re: Towards sensible music licensing for film: Beyond Creative Commons

Norm Loman — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 15:55:27 -0000

If you can't use works with the non-commercial or the no-derivatives clause, just use songs licensed as CC-BY. Is there any obstacle to using CC-BY music in a low budget film? Lots of my music falls under CC-BY ( http://soundcloud.com/normal_i... ), though I'd doubt any serious filmmaker would have use for my garbage.

Interesting idea though about an opt-in directory. Personally, I'd love a single searchable directory of film-safe free music. Or even a search engine that looked up music from multiple directories (or crawled the web looking for links to the CC license next to audio files).

Re: Towards sensible music licensing for film: Beyond Creative Commons

jason sigal — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 12:09:29 -0000

Thank you for this excellent post and to Steve for the inspiration. This is definitely a topic that calls for much more discussion.

I'm writing from the Free Music Archive (http://freemusicarchive.org), where we encounter many artists looking to share their music, as well as filmmakers (and other creative, often non/zero-profit producers) looking for music they can use. Creative Commons is a great facilitator, but it leaves some grey area, especially surrounding music in film.

I agree with Steve that the best advice is to drop the rights holders a line; even in cases where it's clearly covered by the CC license, it is the friendly thing to do. But there are such huge legal hurdles when it comes to music in film when doing things the traditional way, it seems like the Creative Commons Defining NonCommercial study (creativecommons.org/defining-n... could do more to clear things up (or be used as the basis to draw some distinctions).

One important point: whenever music is used in a film or video, that is a derivative work, whether or not it's truncated/time-stretched etc because "synching the music to images amounts to transforming the music, so you can’t legally use a song under a CC No Derivative Works license in your video" (via https://creativecommons.org/le...

Re: Being a professional indie musician isn’t for everyone: Lessons from Charles Ives and Shellac

rubken — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 07:32:53 -0000

You're spot on that time available is the big practical problem to earning your income outside music. The main advantage is the artistic independence you can gain. Different paths are right for different people and I think the most important thing is to be aware that there is more than one way to be a great musician.

Re: Being a professional indie musician isn’t for everyone: Lessons from Charles Ives and Shellac

MySongLife — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 17:34:53 -0000

Great post. I agree that there is a certain liberation in having a non-music income to sustain you. The problem I've found is that for most people, to get good enough to satisfy your own idea of how good you want to be, you need to put in so many hours. Doesn't leave much time for other careers. It gives me even greater admiration though, for those, such as your examples, who manage to achieve it.

Re: Towards sensible music licensing for film: Beyond Creative Commons

rubken — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 05:56:37 -0000

You are probably right that I am expecting too much from Creative Commons. Dealing with ambiguities is hard for any system, but there is a really rich creative area in that middle-ground between the clearly commercial and clearly non-commercial. CC clearing up the grey area of use for clearly non-commercial use is deeply valuable.

I think that there are lots of fertile opportunities for use of music in low-budget film. In my experience of that world many filmmakers are intimidated by the licensing process. My dream is that there could be a clear mechanism, like CC, that would work for this world too. The advice available to young filmmakers is, in my experience, anchored in a for-profit mentality. That's overly complicated and based on fear.

I would like to see a defined middle-space between the clearly non-commercial and commercial. This could be a really fertile space creatively and could fuel collaboration between artists from different media.

Maybe the lack of this defined space is just life, but 10 years ago there was no Creative Commons and there was lots of grey murk to cope with. Perhaps a few years down the road things will have progressed.

Thanks for taking the time to comment.

Re: Towards sensible music licensing for film: Beyond Creative Commons

Steve Lawson — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 05:31:37 -0000

Glad I was able to be part of the inspiration (you'll see I blog about CC licenses this morning too :) )

I think you're expecting too much from Creative Commons licenses :) You're right that in a lot of those situations they wouldn't work, but then we're just back to having a discussion between artists and film... The old way, that had to happen for *everything*. Now, in cases where there is clearly no commercial transaction taking place, CC covers it. If it's ambiguous, drop the rights holders an email and see what happens.

The point of the directory was to allow people working within the terms of a CC license to find music that ffits, not to change the way finding music works. I would hope that anyone using my music would email me anyway. They wouldn't legally have to, it would just be a nice, friendly thing to do. And behaving in a friendly way normally sorts out all of these problems.

Email people, ask permission, be grateful. CC just clears up the grey area around people making slide-shows, home movies and college projects. the borderline stuff between commercial or not still needs discussing. That's not a flaw in CC, it's just life.

Re: The perils of modern music making, part 1: Too much too young

rubken — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:13:24 -0000

Absolutely, I don't want to see the end of music that stretches music technology to breaking-point (and occasionally beyond). The potential comes so quickly now. I wonder if I would have spent the time to learn the fundamental skills I acquired decades ago.

Modern software just comes with so much stuff that I wonder if anyone really learns how to use all the bits. I guess I'm saying I would rather be the master of a few tools than an apprentice with many.

Re: The perils of modern music making, part 1: Too much too young

Mikeypeters — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:57:34 -0000

PJ Harvey - 4 track Demos
ZZ Top - First Album
Johnny Winter - Live, and
Leo Kottke - 6 and 12 String Guitar
Many fine albums were made without even overdubbing. Many other fine albums have been made with all degrees of gimmickry. I'd hate to lose either.

Re: Hearing When It’s Wrong and Using Reverb to Tie it All Together

rubken — Tue, 25 May 2010 05:08:52 -0000

Thanks for the comment Peter. Reverb is a subtle thing. It's easy to think of it being part of a palette of effects but it's an analogue of something we are so used to hearing. Even if we don't think about how we hear consciously we're very good at hearing the subtleties of the sounds around us.

Re: Hearing When It’s Wrong and Using Reverb to Tie it All Together

Peter Farrie — Fri, 21 May 2010 04:29:56 -0000

Interesting insight on reverb and what may make some produced music difficult to listen to. Thanks.

Re: Is Online Harmony Holding You Back?

Emeri Gent [Em] — Tue, 18 May 2010 12:41:03 -0000

Before I write out a ream of thoughts triggered by arriving here, I would like to mention a video from Viktor Mayer-Schönberger

Video presenting "Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

I have Viktor's presentation playing in the background as I write this but I will return to hear it with more clarity for I appreciate that multi-tasking does not work. One can however think one's thoughts which can benefit from intelligent background noise. It is therefore a discovery mode rather than a prescribed behaviour of one more "social animal".

What I hear so often is the phrase "humans are naturally social animals (creatures)" but when I hear it online it seems to parse more as "come to my website". I have even heard people suggest that if one takes human society formation out of the equation then man is but only an animal. This is as if we have never seen social behaviour in the animal kingdom or at least that it something "special" to humans?

Such assertions need to be challenged only to question what the interest of the individual is in making rather obvious statements so explicit. We may then be breeding the idea that anything other than this perspective is deemed "anti-social" or at least comparative to bad body odor or at least "thinking that stinks".

I have not determined for myself what effect this might have on our innovative abilities or how this may or may not subvert our perspective. There are enough meme makers in civilization to occupy large amounts of our brain cells, without duly making a concern of new meme makers who wish to cohabit that part of our mind which isn't already occupied with other competing "social" messages.

Innovation as far as I see it is a due process, has cause and effect and that it might also occur due to the 10,000 hour rule Gladwell and on rare occasions there is a Eureka effect where an idea presents itself. The problem of "social" has nothing to do with the network but the affinity for discovery.

In the case of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule, there is both the idea that we can spend more time than 140 character attention etiquette that can be seen in how people follow each other, or ascribing "likes" or writing short pithy comments, not wanting to appear to "hog" or "waste other people's time". Yet the 10,000 hour rule suggests that this determination is OUR OWN TIME.

Moreover very few people will seek who are Malcolm Gladwell's sources and so never encounter people like Albert-László Barabási who wrote "Linked" and in the case of 10,000 hours, the connection to K. Anders Ericsson:

Expert Performance & Deliberate Practice
1. http://projects.ict.usc.edu/it...
2. http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty...

I need to defeat my own behaviours to learn delayed gratification, to not provide links that populate attention but are never really accessed and to discover in this space filled by people who do this thinking for me. I must learn to think about my own thinking and then realize whether I am really thinking or simply following.

That people view online "thinking spaces" as tribal spaces is probably because there are so many voices reminding us that we are "social animals" rather than explorers (as if human migration or exploration has not fundamentally shaped the human experience).

I would like to think or at least note that I don't want to think I know what I am talking about but that I think out aloud to discover my own affinity to both knowledge and follow my inner calling. Exploration is IMHO natural to the way we personally think. If I look in the mirror I won't learn anything fundamental if I merely assume that I am a social animal. I must migrate and challenge my own thoughts.

What the social animal has taught me particularly looking at the 20th Century is its war-like mentality, even when protesting about the need to have peace. I can hear Viktor's presentation talking about the benefits of forgetting and the role of remembering. I can see the wisdom in this idea of "delete" and "expiry" and the insanity of attention which can accrue from new found abilities to accumulate digital memory.

I write to think not to memorize and memorize only that which key for me to learn and which heightens or adds value to quality of life through a growth of personal wisdom. 10,000 hours is OK as a superficial observation, but to do it, that requires more than a life of one-liners, that requires singular personal discovery.

That means I am writing this for myself. I have just poured out a sliver of my thoughts, I have been thinking out aloud and in the very moment as I did, juggle with ideas and conceptions in the moment they are occurring. This is a unique experience that needs to be backed up with my own life goals and life purpose.

I am not here to live other people's lives and live other people's experience, but I benefit greatly to immerse myself in a new emerging world where the quality of immersion is dictated by the quality of exposure we are prepared to discover . . .

[Em]

Re: Is Two-Track Recording The Best Method? Not Always But Sometimes

TheodoreStreet — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:59:32 -0000

I'm hooked on the technique of recording straight to stereo. I think the idea of recording tracks and then mixing these down to stereo takes away so much immediacy. I marvel at the recordings of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, made by Fantasy in the late fifties. There is amazing clarity -- by adding more tracks and microphones you end up losing something. These days, it's easier to listen to dialog recorded with boom mics than it is most modern music recordings.

Re: Is Two-Track Recording The Best Method? Not Always But Sometimes

rubken — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 08:20:25 -0000

Thank you for taking the time to respond. It is indeed a fascinating topic and as you say a brief piece in Mix certainly can't comprehensively cover a subject of such scope and a short essay on a blog can do little better (if at all).

It is certainly true that recordings like those of Rudy Van Gelder and I would add Sam Phillips have a depth to them. I think that is due to the complexity of the events they capture, a group of musicians creating music together. In doing this they are, in my view, co-creating a kind of ephemeral sonic sculpture. To capture that complexity it makes sense to record single take to stereo (or mono).

The modular approach to music that has gained momentum after the common availability of multi-track recording and became engrained after the use of sequencers seldom has the same power due to the temporal displacement in its creation. It perhaps has other gains, it is possible to create very complex but still cohesive music in this manner, but the magic of simultaneous co-creation is gone.

Machine rhythm kills one of the most powerful aspects of music, the control of the flow of time. The shaping of a phrase is much harder within the constraining grid of a click but that is the price for synchronisation with sequenced parts and loops. It also can be a sop to lazy producers and engineers who know that comping takes in Pro Tools will be much easier for them. The curse of the grid.

It is certainly true that the recording industry crisis has many sources and provides many indicators. One is that musicians get into the studio (of some kind) much earlier in their careers than even 20 years ago. It used to be something earned by gigging and in the process of earning access to a studio you became a more proficient player and a more proficient group.

This is all exacerbated my the loudness wars of modern mastering and that certainly takes some weight of the recording process. A beautiful subtle recording full of nuance will loose much when flattened to a few dB of dynamic range.

Thank you again for your comment Joe, you've certainly provoked much thought in me. Thank you also for so many recordings that give me so much pleasure.

Ruben Kenig

Re: Is Two-Track Recording The Best Method? Not Always But Sometimes

Joe Boyd — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:50:58 -0000

Joe Boyd here with a footnote. A brief piece in Mix is not ideal for what is a complicated subject. I have certainly done plenty of overdubs in my time, but I have always tried to create the intensity of a 'live' atmosphere in the studio. Ultimately, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say, and I personally find ProTools/Sequenced/Machine-Rhythm recordings hard to listen to more than once. I have a hunch that the crisis in the music business has many sources, but one is that the smooth, 'perfect' recordings often released these days are not as desirable as objects of ownership desire as were recordings from the past. Could it be that older records not only sounded 'deeper' and 'warmer' but also more like 'events' and 'moments', even they did involve overdubbing? Just a question. I love Pet Sounds & Sgt Pepper, but the technical limitations meant that even on those concoctions, there was more urgency and immediacy in performance, even if that performance was with cans on in a booth.

From a sonic point of view, it is unarguable that multi-track recording followed by mix-downs gives a less immediate listening impact than 'straight-to-stereo' - hence the cult of Rudy Van Gelder's 1950s Blue Note recordings etc. (which are mostly 'straight-to-mono'!)

To each his own - but I do enjoy provoking the discussions.

Joe Boyd

Re: Ideas are like piles, sooner or later every a**ehole gets them

rubken — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:39:21 -0000

I do know what you mean Andy. There have been lots of things that I wrestle with for ages before I can call them fit for human consumption.
One of the things I took from Derek's post was to try not to worry too much about the individual ideas. If one doesn't work that's OK I'll find another one, but all the time I'm trying I'm working on my execution. The main thing is to keep going and to take at least some ideas through to their conclusion. That way we can judge the idea and the execution and try to do it better next time.

Re: Ideas are like piles, sooner or later every a**ehole gets them

Andy Mort — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:39:22 -0000

i really like the song analogy. I had read Derek's post and this really put it into perspective (giving a good reference point!) The fact that a song is essentially an idea is cool - the real hard work comes when trying to turn that idea into something that sounds great and then something that people want to listen to and tell people about. Also gives an indication as to how poor songs/artists get so far, because they are moulded by masterful executioners. Sometimes, i have found an idea (song) has taken years to fully develop - they are things that can't be forced or rushed, rather nurtured and wrestled with until the time is right to unleash them on the world! I don't know if you know what I mean.