PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLO7tCdBVrA

good ol' bob ross, and Mr Rogers and Julia Child. Another one I'd like to mention is the remix of a speech by Jeff Goldstein, director of National Center for Earth and Space Science Education.
(Dr. Jeff Goldstein)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haUj3qUncOs

(mr rogers)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFzXaFbxDcM

The writing is all by Melody Sheep, great production, and great simple melodies for everyone. With these great speeches and phrases, I think it puts the meaning back into lyric writing. These lyrics would not have come to be from typical song writing. So autotune definitely bridges the gap, bringing these profound remarks to life in music form. I actually listen to the lyrics in these, and learned a thing or two.

But anyway, all anti autotune sentiments aside, I think this is a viable, artistically sensible context for using it.

Beautiful, I really enjoyed it, very creative stuff. People don’t miss a single opportunity to create something. I wish I had learned this way in school. Definitely a form of art, and there is something fresh to it because you work onto a spontaneous material. In the other hand, of course the sound of the formats sometimes is a bit harsh, but well…, is good enough to have some fun with it and transmit an message. I think the third video gives a strong impression and it is rhythmically pretty cool too.

yes, perfectly acceptable - it's not used to pretend something, but as it's own kind of sound
Bob Ross is cool, and pretty accurate about the morphology of mountains, most could be real
(something virtual reality versions often fail)

cheers, Tom

Definitely. Difference is Bob Ross was stationed in Alaska for a while during air force service. The closest VR guys have gotten to real mountains is probably google image search. And VR guys probably don't have a fro, which, if Bob Ross is any indicator, seems to be a requirement. na, jokes aside, his message is very empowering and I feel like it can bring out the best in anyone.

Encouragement, and positive reinforcement is important especially for beginners and the technically challenged. For me, I've mentored many musicians, several are much more advanced in their careers than I am now. (I'm not even writing commercially anymore) I'm still mentoring one right now.. It's when I see someone who is stumbling take 1-2 good steps, that I realize that I have helped someone overcome the most difficult part, which is to start the journey, and to love it. The technicalities are not that important, but the feeling of "owning" your tunes is super important, and loving the workflow. Once those things are established, the rest follows quite nicely. The ball's rolling.. now you just figure things out as you run into them. If I could be even 1% as effective as Bob Ross in getting people to feel like producing music is easy and free, I would be very happy.

Which ties into Dr. Jeff Goldstein's video on education. His message shot through my heart because he emphasizes the supportive role of the teacher. The most important part is to create the spark, the create the question, and its chain reactions. Once it's started, the students can sort of navigate around. The teacher provides general directions, and stays out of the way.

I think at one point I realized that my prime as a producer writing time sensitive, chart orientated material was over. I no longer cared about how the top 20 sounded. I developed a personal taste, set of ideals, and as a result, my own sound. That sound was no where close to the top 20 sound. Can I write dubstep? If I sat down and analyzed it, probably.. but I don't WANT to. And that takes me off the roster. But that is that, and I feel it is still an accomplishment as an artist. But now I need to pass on my knowledge and experience. Both professional and purely artistic. So even though I dropped out of my music tech master's program, and I don't have a music theory degree, I'm inevitably in a position to teach. If I don't, all that history and people that came before me have taught me will be lost. That's why I don't hesitate to give advice, share techniques, critique, and listen to the most beginner produced music. I never look down on beginners, because if they can get all I have learned a that stage, they can become much better than me. Beginners can potentially be my teachers several years down. That is exactly what Dr. Goldstein is talking about.

But interestingly, I think a lot of folks here share my sentiment anyway, judging from how supportive people are with new users, new composers, in the music forum. Honestly, not everyone here is at the same level of expertise (simply by course of nature). But once a track is in the music forum here, you're sure to get a lot of cutting, very accurate critique regardless of what your career record may be. Most old school users here know that I've had this and that success and some sort of a pro music career.. but I put up a new track, and boy do I get critique (lol) just like I did 10 something years ago, when I was just a college kid writing music in my bedroom. That's the way it's supposed to be. That's how I want the world of music to be, novice, veterans, learning and teaching all together. That IS the journey.

well said, Ken - I don't give much on grades...
so I'm absolutely convinced that your experience will help people a lot
it's more about motivation and how you perceive yourself
just turn it outward and it's likely you can make a living from it and stay in contact with what you love

cheers, Tom

the power of the afro:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_aw90la ... re=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBLhk_3G ... re=related

Wow Ken, you touched me here! If you were to tell me something like: “I finally got a contract for 15.000 a month for 3 years to make commercial music, I am very happy for it”, I would have felt glad for you, sure, but what you have written here makes me feel full of happiness and joy. I understand that you have come, naturally, to find yourself in music, you have reached your musical path, and this is great news! Congratulations for that Ken! It was a long way you have gone through which I had the fortune to follow with interest for about 11 years already.

Being yourself despite the needs of the market and death-liking what you do is the most important thing for a composer.

The “top 20 musical world” does not care about what we feel, they only care about money, and then there are yet some other interests coming from the middlemen between your possible success and your creative journey that conditions your creativity heavily to the point that your music, the most important of all, becomes secondary and their interest for money the first and most important thing...

For those that get into music with the purpose of being rich, it can be a good path, empty in terms of art but good for having and abundant material life, but for sincere musicians there is only one way: genuine music. If you are lucky enough and your music becomes mainstream, well that’s great of course, but this is not always the case. Now, If you were to do something you don’t like, musically, that takes the whole of your time every day, even if you were to earn this 15.000 month and all, you would still be unhappy and even worst, unfulfilled, living like a sleepwalker that eats caviar in his breakfast but with a sad grimace in his face. A musician faithful to his music may only eat a piece of bread, but will still be smiling and swinging since it jumps out of his bed in the early morning, with enthusiasm!

The world not always offers a niche for your “exclusive vocation”, if you are lucky and what you like is out there in offer, you may take it and you’re done, but if what you are and want is not out there, you are in trouble. The range of vocational possibilities is rather short in universities and the so, and they have been created and come from the needs of the market but definitely not to answer your human inspiration no matter how wonderful it may be, so when a vocation has a mixture of things that do not match what the market asks for, you are most probably a profession orphan. Because of fear and because of the ridicule the market makes of you if you are odd to its interests, you tend to follow what the market dictates, and this is how so many great musicians are today doing nothing with their lives musically, and even if they are full of money, they feel empty.

The world will not create this special place you need for you brother, but with strength of character and the wonderful advices of these three videos you are talking about, because the ideas are all there already coincidentally to what you have expressed, you can open your own path and walk it, it doesn’t matter how odd it may be for the world. I praise your bravery on this.

Definitely, to my humble understanding and for what I have asked you and talked in this forum for years with you, your first hunch in life was music, then you came to be prolific in the technological side of music for yourself. I can guarantee that you must be one of the most knowledgeable music-tech persons in this forum, what is saying a lot already, but not because you have many college degrees but because you are so restless, disposed and active when it comes to learning. I once asked in this forum to our Z friends to tell how much in percentage they actually knew and could use of their software and hardware, remember that?. I said about myself, if I remember well, that my range of use was of about 30% to 60% maximum, depending on the software, being the one I most know about Cubase. But you were the only one to answer 100% to all of them! I was amazed at your answer And I am pretty sure you still remain the only one able to say that Then you have these humanistic sparks of communication skills, or how could I call it, this thirst for friendship and communication, sharing, gathering, etc., it probably is simply love for people, which makes of you a good communicator. You must be, surely, a great teacher.

Go on Ken, and take your path even farther! I second Astroman in this, and invite you to quintessence your capacities and possibilities into your own, personal and exclusive vocation

Thanks nestor, you words are too kind. The market is the market, and it is where products are made and sold.

I just watched a documentary about a sushi master in Japan, and he pretty much had the same mentality. (tho much stronger) All anyone has to do, is to think about how to improve, learn more, practice every waking minute, and eventually he will become the best. Of course, I'm not the best, but I seem to have that mentality. It's not even a conscious one, but more like a personality. For me, wandering about how to make things better is mental play, it's fun for me. Like recently, I am constantly thinking about how to become a better cook. Improving my workflow, how I move on the workstation, how I can make my cuts more beautiful, etc. Much like how I think of how to improve my musical skills, researching new plugins, auditioning them, testing them out, thinking about alternate arrangements, alternate phrases and lines.. I don't really force myself to do it, more like I seek comfort in thinking about such things. It's probably less an obsession and more like compulsive daydreaming.

I think it's really the only way to keep things interesting though. If anyone were to get to a certain proficiency, and that was all there was to music, people will fatigue very quickly. But there's always more, much, much more. I reach a certain point, and with that proficiency, I am able to see higher up, and it pushes up the bar. Now I have to do things differently and meet new standards. I start meeting those standards, and then I see even further up. The roads are never the same, and the journey never, ever ends. But the only thing that keeps it from ending, is myself. As long as I keep thinking, and trying to beat my own current standards, the game will continue. And I think that's fun.

I guess this is typical in many fields.. it's something I read over and over. I think it's just the way human cognition works, or how the learning process happens. You keep building up knowledge. More knowledge leads to even more. More skill allows you to do even more. In culinary school, when you're cutting, you make good tranches and you get good batonnets. You get good jardneirs and you get good macedoines. You get good julliens and you get good brunoise. Now you cut precision is higher, so you go back and make even better tranches... and the process happens all over again. And one day, you think you got perfect julliens. How do you make sure? You go back and make more tranches, and find out that you can make even better tranches.. What if some day that cycle stops? You go back and your tranches are about as good as usual. Then you start to wonder.. hmm, what's wrong. Why am I knot improving? Is it the knife? They way I move my hands? The angle that I set the carrot on the board? I think about it when I'm not cutting. How would cutting like this feel? How does Jacques Pepin do it? Actually I'm starting to think about this seriously just now.

You end up with a bunch of carrot julliens and turnip macedoins.. and to me, those are like the tunes that I write. Sometimes they're for sale, sometimes they're not, but they're all byproducts of improving my skills. To learn, I have to write more. To verify, I have to write. There's really only one way to make sure. And I work work work, and people tell me I work too hard. lol