Electronic Music

"In the year 3030, everybody wants to be a DJ," a lyric from Del the Funky Homosapien's album 3030. Delton's work is a concept hip-hop album about living and producing music in the year 3030, and fighting off the huge corporations that rule the Earth. As the years have progressed, it's easy to say, that when it boils down to it, 3030 is now! The ability to create through a variety of tools and resources is at the layman's finger tips, and the term DJ has become a household terms with programs like Sound Cloud and Band Camp, where users are able to post, exchange, and sell their work with the feedback from a large user community, extending to even some larger producers.

This continuous evolution of music has been bubbling ever since humans learned how to create auditory art, but it's been moving light speed just like everything else, since the ability to record sound was discovered in the late 19th century. I see a combination of the two main branches of popular music, classical (more straight forward, pre-created, hard...) and jazz (more impromptu, soft)*Obviously, there are more differences than just these, but I feel as if they are parallels in terms of music*, occurring through rock music, with metal being a direct extension of classical, and then into this strange, new super-genre of dance music, as well as hip-hop. It was like the song was always built on a certain 4/4 template, a basic drum track that seems like the foundation for a create-your-own song program. The magic in this format is that it's continuing today and branching into something wild and revolutionary! We've encountered Delton's prophesized (or maybe witnessed) age of individual creativity, especially through electronic music.

Words and music are inevitably strictly translation. You can never translate an emotion or thought as purely as the mind alone can, for we can exhuberate anything within a dream, but to channel it is to cut corners, for the experience becomes partially inauthentic in its nature. It's impossible to truly translate between languages, as each dialect interprets spoken work in a different light. It takes a unique and individualized skill to switch between languages easily, and a special gift to fluidly translate out loud for other people. I'd call it being a link between poetic tools. This is why we regard superb artists with so much respect at their abilities, for they are translators of the divine and they sculpt the flow. Imagine a sculptor, cutting away into emptiness to form his piece. Everything already exists, for mind and creativity is existence itself. It just takes the special artist to dig it out of the void. The coolest part is that anyone can be a poet, an artist, by learning how to maneuver whatever makes them happy, learning how to configure the flow through life and compassion.

That 4/4 back beat is the tip of the iceberg that brings together most electronic music, and it allows a certain style to be configured in our heads, with the ease of simply switching from track to track, like CDs. Not just everybody can access this self-mastery of music creation, but it's available for the world to mess around with, and lots of music making software is around from Garage Band on Apple computers to Ableton Live, a popular program for music creation and real-time production. I've seen friends of mine, some with not as much musical experience pick up a program and develop their own sound within months. It's pretty rad hearing the translations of the unique minds of young musicians, and with practice comes growth! If I find things that I like I tell people about it, so I can help talented artists gain popularity, and it's awesome to help promote your friends! Here are some beautiful sounds, created by good friends of mine from high school:

(((shwex)))Ω Mumukshu Ω
Codemeist
(((ॐPatchFooTॐ)))
Tree͒Bone
Aaron J Levin
Profesher

The history of music has alternated between being independently minded to working through collaboration, and often a combination of both. The bard is an archetype, with singer-songwriters throughout history. Conductors are the puppeteers behind classical music, big band jazz, and also visible in certain bandleaders, but the contemporary playing the same role is most definitely the DJ. He or she guides the flow like a wizard, with each individual song controlled and modulated by the work of the fingers acting as an extension of the mind. We've already it in certain artists, but I think the future of music is in collaboration, and therefore an exponentially quick paradigm change in culture, with parents in both of the two genres previously mentioned, classical and jazz. EOTO revolutionizes this, a band consisting of the two drummers from jazz-bluegrass jam band, The String Cheese Incident, based out of Colorado. Michael Travis and Jason Hann create improvised electronic music on the spot, traveling within their own style of infinity with Travis on on various keys and instruments and Hann on a drum set, both of them linked in real time through individual computers using Ableton Live. The best part is that they tour essentially every night! I highly recommend attending one, if not more of their shows, as just being there allows you to help participate and mold the experience. The crowd controls their shows, communicating with the two on stage as they channel the music and speak back to the crowd in dirty bass and funky rhythms. Their ability as a group has been constantly evolving too, and they're easily able to access whatever genres of electronic, and music in general, that they seek out, ranging from dubstep, to down-tempo, to jazz, to bluegrass. The limit is there imagination, and I don't think you can ever really hold that back! As they travel from venue to venue, they seem to represent the magic of each place through flow, and from experience, I can tell you that a show in Minnesota is going to be different from a show in Colorado, which is different from a show in Washington. I've got dozens of their shows on my iPod, and they'll play anything from straight jazz to this 3-day festival that they played in Hawaii! Festivals galore, a whole 'nother story in themselves (See my post 'Portland Ride Share')!

Free EOTO Live Set

Dave Tipper seems to do just the opposite of EOTO live extravaganza. Rather than produce the sounds through live improvisation, he creates the sound using real instruments and messing with waves, to construct the perfect sounds, and then he'll mix on stage using him pre-recorded material, at least, not until he's released a killer album! Tipper doesn't tour nearly as much as EOTO, as he's generally in the never ending of his own musical laboratory. His sounds are naturalistic, and they're so crisp they could fit in your pocket!

Tipper

I like EOTO's idea, and they throw an unbelievable party, yet they know as well as anybody else that they are still searching for the perfect balance between live and digital, to create the ultimate improvised experience. DJ tracks, like Tipper, have no limitation in their spacial quality besides the artists themselves, as the sound is all coming from one place. To see a DJ live is like seeing someone playing with a musical box on stage, the ones where you crank the handle and the music comes out. As odd of a concept it is, the DJ controls the crowd as if he's playing with a marionette. Everybody has a different experience as we all have separate perspectives, but maybe the future of collaboration and music will allow each viewer to form the show and sounds in a way where they can channel their imagination at the same time, and even with, the artist. Whatever it is, I think that electronic music and all of the artists behind it deserve respect in the same manner that any visionary, poet, and creator does. It's an auditory painting, but it doesn't have to be limited to just that! Painters will sometimes accompany the musician on stage to draw their own expression of the music, and there are even shows that are designed to be visual experiences as well (like light and laser shows). The Zebbler Encanti Experience is an audio/visual duo, whose work appeals to more that just one of the senses. Zebbler, who also does the visuals for EOTO's tours, works with producer Encanti to make some pretty fat tracks.

Zebbler Encanti Experience

It's cool to be a witness to musical evolution in progress, and to see the ties that contemporary rhythm & funk has to worldly music of the past millennia. We'll all see how it progresses, at least within our own lifetimes, but to participate and create is to partake in a revolution. There are not limits to creation, so I believe that any art form has access to reconstructing and interpreting music in its own way. The revolution will not be televised, so cut out the middle man that is your consciousness and sense of doubt, and upgrade your grey matter through imagination, creativity, and the balance of universal collaboration!

I have more to add to this/edit when I have some time.

"If Twitter Is a Work Necessity"

Apart from channeling the drive to construct this blog, and my Flavors.me account (http://flavors.me/edwotica), the class that I'm currently taking, Digital Humanities, is a continuous conversation regarding the merging of the digital world and the ability to think, create, and interact as human beings. I really like this, as the internet not only represents this vast tool, but it also can be how we relate, network, and communicate within the moment, with both ourselves and our global community.

Over spring break, our assignment, besides the construction of our personalized 'Flavors' pages, was to read the article If "If Twitter Is a Work Necessity", and write a response using quotations from the writing to support the use of a unified web presence.

I think, that like most contemporary human beings, there is a division between this idea of too much and too little interaction, and sometimes the difference can be either under- or over-whelming, depending on the mood, and desire for socialization of the individual. It's a world of opportunity, but it's easier now than ever before to get swept away in the collective network of the digital age. I wrote this response to the article, and I really like what I had to say. This is only a snippet of writing, but I'd like to continue on this topic on and off whenever I have some time! Society has become the internet, and in terms of creativity, collaboration, and paradoxically, individual freedom, we are entering a golden age of interaction:

In a quickly moving world, it takes a sort of dedication to be able to ride the flow of technology and mass social interaction, however, at the same time, to be able to represent yourself as an individual in a world of seemingly group consciousness is an ability that can entertain, as well as enlighten, becoming more of a hobby in addition to a digital skill. In reading the article “If Twitter Is a Work Necessity”, I saw several examples of people, both young and old, becoming informed in how to best present themselves, and mingle within the digital world. I especially liked the timelessness presented in the article, as it reigns true. The Earth, in both nature and technology, is an organism with no boundaries or limits. If a direction must be labeled, it’s constantly moving forward, but the ability to be and grow through individual effort and connection with others stems from the singular, and networks to create a vast image of humanity and a digital society. “He emphasized, ‘There is no timeline tweeting me questions.”

“The timeline is the rest of our lives,’ he said.” A quote from the article by chief executive officer of Likeable, Dave Kerpen, he is implying that an individual’s timeline for networking has no bounds, as it exists within the vastness of the internet and their own mind. As we live collectively on planet Earth, we are able to treat our lives as a chance at collaboration, and therefore, we essentially live one communal life, helping each other to learn and grow, and allowing our artwork of progress to represent humanity. It’s what excellent story, threaded by the individual’s desire to accommodate to the whole, string by string.

“As part of the course, industry leaders, who often appear at major digital conferences, deliver their presentations online during a webcast. At the same time, she says they still offer students small online workshops and one-on-one guidance with instructors who give them advice for whatever specific social media project they are doing.” This is another excerpt from the article, and it shows how people are able to connect by whatever means that they wish. Online interaction is getting smoother, and differences in location are becoming meaningless. With programs like Skype, Facebook, various chat rooms and other social networking sites, we are able to collaborate face to face, and even face to face to face to face, etc. There are no limits, and a team can easily go from somebody working alone, to somebody working as a group, sometimes even still from the confines of their own home. This constant ability to interact can seem golden, but as we continue to shape and glisten our connecting abilities, I think that the next big step will be coming back to our roots, and finding a means of isolation and true independence throughout a world easily cluttered by group thought. When a balance is created, home will become a synergy between introversion and extroversion, and the ability to turn on and off on a whim, and truly ride with the wind, shifting with the smallest, yet most significant vibration.

Earth and Co-creation

Seeing Earth 'in' space, not 'from' space!

Absolutely stunning! This paints the composite image of our shared experience on our home planet. Just watching this video gives me a feeling of co-creation with my fellow human being, collaborators with nature on Earth and in our Universe! Being alive, we all have the ability to see whatever we're supposed to see as individuals, and then the opportunity to unfold our soul and share.

Every action is significant, as it rides into each and every reaction, and so on... Taking that apart, life is a masterpiece-creating through imagination, improvisation, interaction. It's becoming thoughtless and timeless, reveling in the unity of collective experience. Isn't that what true creation is? The ends and means existing as one in the same, cause and effect blending into a unified being. I'm in a class called Tantra & Alchemy right now, and we're learning the differences between yoga and tantra. I think that yoga is the individual practice of concentration, essentially training the mind to let go through exercise and focusing on the null, while tantra is the flow manifested in life-everything as nothing, and therefore, nothing as everything. Tantra is the cumulative image of art, that constant creation process that stems from existence itself. Visual art, music, writing, cooking, conversation, sex, and as a whole, life on planet Earth. To follow the Tao is to be neutral, the middle ground between thought and action.

A way to perceive non-duality is by acknowledging your own thought process. When you look at something, say, a tree, do you view the tree and then think to yourself, "Hey, a tree!" If there is a dog about to be hit by a car, is it appropriate to think "That dog is about to get hit by that car!" when there is indeed time to act and rescue the dog? Whenever I've read about people's experiences with situations that demand instantaneous reactions, like car crashes, they become almost super-human, and act without thought. It takes training, or better yet, unlearning, to trust yourself. Rather than to think in response every time your senses are stimulated, become instinctual instead, riding with the flow, rather than placing barriers between every interaction with yourself and with the world. Become one with the world, and one with the flow! Not only will you become a direct manifestation of you, letting your action define your experience (blending of cause and effect), but you will have rediscovered the childlike innocence of not doubting yourself and your creating abilities. This flow is where musicians and artists find themselves when they are jamming with their instruments, creating beauty and harmony on Earth. As Mahatma Gandhi stated, "Be the change that you wish to see in the world." Do not think, for thinking wastes energy that could be better spent. Nike has got it right: "Just Do It."