Post-cocious

Skipper Greer (1945-2012)

2012-01-05T08:06:00.000-08:00

Skipper Greer, age 66, died Wednesday night January 4, 2012 at 10:50 pm Pacific, due to complications arising from brain surgery.

Joe Kirk (L) and Skipper Greer (R) in Sienna, Italy, in 2011

Skipper was born and raised in tiny Grandfield, Oklahoma. After attending Oklahoma State he moved to Los Angeles. He acted in films alongside talents like Raquel Welch. His love of the movie business and Hollywood glamour enabled him to segue effortlessly into behind-the-scenes roles, including working directly for a number of famous actors and a long stint at Disney.

More importantly, he was charming, sweet, funny, sincere, and caring. The impact he had on my father's life is impossible to articulate. I am grateful for the chance to have known him.

To remember and honor Skipper, my father has established a scholarship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology named the Skipper Greer and Joseph L. Kirk ('64) Scholarship Fund.

In lieu of flowers or other remembrances, you can make a tax-deductible contribution to the fund. Checks should be made out to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including a designation to deposit it into fund account #347-4500.

Mail the check and designation to:

MIT

Recording Secretary's Office

600 Memorial Drive, Bldg W98-300

Cambridge MA 02139

All contributions will be matched by my father or me.

2011's Music of Merit: Ambient

2012-01-01T09:36:00.000-08:00

I listen to a lot of quiet instrumental music these days. I call it ambient, because it's too dark and interesting for "new age". I started and ended most of my days in 2011 with one or more of these records, and worked and traveled to them as well.

Tim Hecker "Ravedeath, 1972" and "Dropped Pianos"
Masterful work from Mr. Hecker, who keeps sharpening and improving his palette. "Dropped Pianos" are the quiet piano demos for the massive, delicate album "Ravedeath, 1972", which is all pipe organs, processing, and pianos. A quiet album that sounds even better loud!

Fennesz Sakamoto "Flumina"
"Cendre", the previous collaboration between guitar processor Christian Fennesz and pianist Ryuichi Sakamoto, is currently in a "cooling-off period" because I overplayed it. This double CD will, for better or for worse, end up in the same place eventually!

Beautiful pianos and electronics.

Harold Budd "In The Mist"
Harold Budd and Robin Guthrie "Bordeaux"
Harold Budd, John Foxx, and Ruben Garcia "Nighthawks"
Harold Budd, Robin Guthrie, and Eraldo Bernocci "Winter Garden"
Harold Budd supposedly "retired" in 2004, but has produced more music since retirement than he did in the decades prior. It may be kinda samey, but it sure is nice.

"In The Mist" is actually divided into 3 different sections. The first is reminiscent of his masterpiece collaborations with Brian Eno, but the rest of the disc is equally as strong in its own way.

"Bordeaux" is a collaboration with guitarist Robin Guthrie in the vein of their previous works. It is distinguished by a brighter mood, slightly faster tempos, and a bit more melancholy than mystery.

"Nighthawks" features John Foxx (who created one of my favorite rock albums this year) and Ruben Garcia with a series of piano pieces. Only available with Budd and Foxx's previous collaborations "Translucence" and "Drift Music" (previous favorites). "Sad piano music", as my friend Lauren would say.

"Winter Garden" just came out, and it's lovely. A bit more modern and fresh than any of the others on the list. Complex and rich. My current favorite.

Clive Wright "Deluge"

Live electric guitar improvisation. But it's not wheedle-wheedle noodling, it's processed, pitch-shifted, looping, droning, soaring tones.

The last track is called "The Return of the Sky Whales". Perfect.

2011's Music of Merit

2011-12-31T17:50:00.000-08:00

Without much preamble, here are albums I found particularly notable in 2011.

Album of the Year

PJ Harvey "Let England Shake"
(alternative rock)

Without a doubt the best record of the year. A strong (but not strident) anti-war record. Beautiful songs and great production. Perhaps the only artist who articulated anything truly compelling and powerful this year.

Lots of people don't like this record because it doesn't sound like "Dry" or Harvey's other earlier work. Me, I respect her more for being willing to stretch, reach, and change, and for trying not to repeat herself.

It's also a record that holds up to repeated listening. It is not necessarily a record I want to put on every day, but I expect I'll be listening to it for many years. It avoids sounding contemporary in favor of sounding timeless.

Gavin Friday "Catholic"
(pop/adult contemporary)

This is what pop for grown-ups should probably sound like. Many of the hipsters and "cool" listeners I know may point and laugh, but I thought this record was great.

Friday has a rich, lovely voice and writes songs that are unabashedly "pop" with big choruses, clear sections, and strong beats, but they're also adult, complex and ambiguous in their meaning and emotion.

You can hear the first single "Able" on Gavin Friday's website.

Chancha Via Circuito "Rio Arriba"
(electronic/cumbia)

Sort of DJ Shadow for Argentinian music. Loops and electronics working with samples and/or acoustic instruments. One of the more unique things I've heard over the last few years.

Not necessarily life-changing, but far cooler, more interesting, and more fun than many of the records you'll hear about on everyone else's lists.

You can hear the whole album on SoundCloud.

Little Dragon "Ritual Union"
(electronic pop)

When I first heard this record, I assumed it was a debut record from a few talented kids. It has a combination of hooks and weirdness that is usually lost in older artists as they learn how songs are "supposed" to go and records are "supposed" to sound.

This record is just polished enough to be palatable, and is plenty catchy to boot. I probably won't be listening to this in a year or two, but I really enjoyed it this year.

You can hear the whole album on SoundCloud.

80s Revival

John Foxx and The Maths "Interplay"
(electronic)

John Foxx was the original singer for Ultravox (He wrote "Hiroshima Mon Amour"), and his legendary solo album "Metamatic"inspired Gary Numan's early work. This year Foxx partnered up with Benge and his famous studio full of vintage synths.

"Interplay" was the result, an album simultaneously futuristic and retro. The songs are strong, tight, and catchy, and the production is vintage electronica, all flanged chirping Roland drum boxes and buzzing, thrumming, swooping, and grinding synthesizers.

Ultimately the record shows that it is possible to make something fresh, solid, and real with what most people would consider a dated palette.

You can hear single "Evergreen" on SoundCloud.

Ford and Lopatin "Channel Pressure"
(electronic/indie)

There were several albums by new or young groups this year that tried to either capitalize on "the 80s" or falsetto-based synth-funk from the 80s. Artists like John Maus and The Weeknd made watery, cargo cult records which failed to make any positive impression with me.

Ford and Lopatin's "Channel Pressure", on the other hand, takes those elements and signifiers (parts were recorded at Jan Hammer's studio!) and does something great with them. Memorable songs and modern, glitchy production are interleaved with instrumental bits to create a Floydian whole.

It took a few listens for me to understand it, but I appreciated the challenge and depth.

You can hear single "Emergency Room" on their label's website.

Old Sounds

The Cars "Move Like This"
(rock)

It sounds just like old Cars albums. Many bands struggle to achieve a return to form and fail. Many more achieve it only to find it's an empty exercise.

Given that, hearing The Cars (minus the late Ben Orr) do this so well was quite satisfying. Songs like the wistful "Soon" are easily as good as anything they've ever done.

Thievery Corporation "Culture of Fear"
(90s revival/downtempo)

Remember the Golden Age of Trip-Hop, back in the late 90s? Thievery Corporation do. Their new album, "Culture of Fear", is a clear throwback to those days of yore. For better or for worse, this album would mix seamlessly with Morcheeba's "Who Can You Trust?", Massive Attack's "Protection", and Air's "Moon Safari".

This record is an easy listen and is nothing new for Thievery Corporation, who were a part of the Golden Age of Trip-Hop and have been more or less doing the same thing for a dozen-plus years. It's still enjoyable, as long as you skip the title track, soured by Mr. Lif's tedious rapping.

Mastodon "The Hunter"
(metal)

My appetite for metal continues to wane, aside from the occasional unimpeachable classic. This album fulfilled my quota this year.

Mastodon is a great band, not just a great metal band. Their music is arty and powerful. This year, Mastodon made a U-turn from increasingly elaborate concept albums to make their version of a "concise pop" album.

Despite the p-word, this record still growls, punches, and kicks like a bar fight. It sounds great and doesn't wear out its welcome. I will be listening to it again and again!

You can read lyrics and hear this album at the band's website.

Jen Fitzgerald

2011-12-23T01:00:00.000-08:00

My friend and teaching partner Adam Tober told me that Jen Fitzgerald had passed away. 4 years ago today. She wasn't even 30.

I'd fallen out of touch with her after teaching at TIP in 2006.

You can read some details here and here, and you can hear some of her music on MySpace.

What you really need to know is this: She was a sweet, funny woman who did a better job of teaching in the few hours she "guested" in my class than I did in the whole week. She was a talented and passionate composer. She kept me excited about teaching and music, and inspired me to keep writing and practicing.

Miss you, Jen.

Echoes, echoes

2011-12-07T23:29:00.001-08:00

I'm on a Virgin America flight to Seattle. Self-upgraded to first class.

Just like old times.

I look out the window. I see a sprawling cloud landscape in blue and pink-yellow, stretching off to infinity. It's a whole different planet out there.

I put my hand to the window and feel the cold seeping through the hull as we rocket over the cloud cover.

As the plane turns and descends, the sun sets. Colors blossom. I see the moon appear suddenly over the pastel bands of the horizon. The cloud layers are translucent, and I marvel at the complex beauty that results from them sliding across each other. Seattle's lights gleam below.

As we start our descent and drop through the white-out, I think of my good fortune at having seen such a thing. Truly wondrous and beautiful, a special moment.

A woman calls my name. I turn to look at her and it is several seconds before I'm able to recognize a friend. We used to work together. Kindred spirits in many ways. She's got different hair now and new glasses. We are separated only by a few miles back in the Bay Area, but it's still been two years since we've seen each other. She's also on her way up to Seattle for the Rhapsody party. We share a cab and catch up on the way in.

Of course, I'm staying at The Edgewater, as I did many times when working for Rhapsody. Many of our peers wonder why, preferring newer, flashier places. I'm still taken with its slightly faded Kubrick/David Lynch/Twin Peaks.com vibe. In the last 2 years, they've tarted it up a bit, but it's still funky and unique. Hanging on, literally and metaphorically. And so many memories.

The old RealNetworks building is on the other side of the train tracks. Rhapsody's offices aren't there anymore, having moved to a hipper part of Seattle some time ago. But the party is walkable from here.

I ride up in an elevator with 3 middle-aged professionals, talking to each other about their alcohol intake the night before and how it impaired their ability to participate in their management offsite meetings today.

I find my room, change into gym clothes and hit the fitness center. I'm alone in there for most of my workout.

Just like old times.

A great remix I did of a friend's song comes up on my MP3 player. Their album never came out, but the track and the remix are good. It's a shame. They really could have been something if they got their act together.

I clean up, eat some dinner, and roll out into the cold Seattle winter night.

The last time I recall walking this way - in this kind of cold and dark - was many, many years ago, with a woman whose life has changed even more than mine has. Our paths crossed briefly but profoundly. I remember seagulls over the bay, their cries echoing off the buildings and water in the sun. She's not here in Seattle anymore.

I wonder how she is doing, and I think of another woman I know who's moving to Seattle with her boyfriend in the next month.

I pass many homeless people on First Avenue. I am reminded of my long walks through DC after high school winter evenings volunteering for The Jamestown Foundation. It must be hard to be homeless in Seattle.

There's a line around the block to get in to the party, but I'm on the VIP list, so my line is shorter. I shuffle in next to a few former colleagues and watch as more arrive. There are lots of people here, most of whom I don't know. It's very crowded and loud.

"So, what are you up to these days?"

I chat up the people I recognize. I'm surprised at who is there, and who isn't. Everybody seems very happy - there are new children and new relationships and new jobs. All the trouble and hassles of the past are forgotten, forgiven, set aside, or buried under very convincing smiles.

"Are you still at MOG?" "How's MOG doing?"

Bands play. Drinks get drunk. The food is demolished. Hours slip by.

Look, there's the CEO, next to the billionaire. Look, there's my old boss. Hey, there's the guy who laid me off. There's the guy who replaced me. There's that guy I always passed in the hall.

There's Peter Buck, guitar player for recently-disbanded REM. I tell him "Thanks for the music!" He smiles and nods and thanks me back.

I look around. I am reminded of my high school reunions. It's time to go. Aches and pains and fatigue are creeping up on me. There's a lot going on in my life right now, a lot of things in motion. I push my way through the doors, out into the winter cold again. I say my last goodbyes to the smokers and stragglers out front.

As I walk past all the closed storefronts, I think of doors opening and doors closing, separating inside from outside. People walk in, people walk out. You were here. Now you are there. This used to be the future. Now it is the past.

A train rumbles past, horn blowing. The moon shines down, and its reflection shimmers in the bay.

The seagulls' cries echo across the water.

Rhapsody, 10 years later

2011-12-05T17:54:00.001-08:00

The original Rhapsody 1.0 interface

It's rare in life to have a good idea, the means to execute it, and actually manage to bring it to fruition.

About 10 years ago, Listen.com launched Rhapsody 1.0.

I was the product manager. One part of a team of talented, hard working people who brought it into being.

The thing I remember best was the feeling of excitement - we were building something nobody had ever seen, and we were going to beat the competition, and we were going to beat the major labels and companies 10 times our size.

And it was going to be amazing. And it was.

Rhapsody created a new way to think about media consumption, more or less. For better or for worse, it's spawned a legion of imitators, copycats, and followers. So far, they all copy the Rhapsody template, and nearly every "new" feature they've brought out or added was something we had already thought of and had to put in the "do later" pile. Unfortunately, the other guys copied most of Rhapsody's mistakes, too.

It's become fashionable recently to bash subscription services for "not paying enough" or something like that. Most are still struggling to get by. It's still a far cry from just a few years ago, when people were wondering whether or not it was a dumb idea.

I've become a much better product manager and designer in the years since. I've worked at other companies, with other people. On bigger projects, smaller projects...you name it. I even worked at Rhapsody a second time as the General Manager of Product Management and made their first iPhone app.

But nothing I've ever worked on felt as good as shipping Rhapsody 1.0.

In retrospect, the best part has been the people - all the amazing people I've worked with and learned from over the last 10 years. Too many to name individually, but you all know who you are!

Protest

2011-11-19T12:06:00.000-08:00

The alarm goes off at 4:30 am. Today's going to be a long one.

I silently slip into my gym clothes, grab my bag, and head off for my morning workout. The sky is black and the autumn chill makes me shiver.

As I finish my workout with 30 minutes of cardio, the news is showing the Oakland Police forcibly removing the "Occupy Oakland" protestors. The news calls them "squatters".

The scene is Orwellian: helmeted, armored, and gas-masked police in dark uniforms and jackboots kick down tents, drag people away, and eventually, start firing rubber bullets, "bean bag" shotgun rounds, tear gas cannisters, and flashbang grenades into the crowd.

If the police were American soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan, using these tactics and this behavior towards other soldiers, much less civilians, would result in courts-martial.

The sounds, images, and storyline could be straight out of any number of video games. It is surreal and disturbing.

I watch the senseless violence and will later listen to the mayor talk about "protecting public safety". I wonder how protected the hospitalized protesters feel.

Pop music from the Reagan era plays over the gym loudspeakers, plastic, oblivious, and upbeat. Everyone silently sweats, running on treadmills, watching the footage.

I drive home in the dark, try to get cleaned up, and wolf down a quick breakfast before climbing back in the car. I have an early meeting with a very large tech company down south.

I ease onto the freeway, past the traffic chokepoints, and am soon cruising down 280. I watch the sun slowly creep into the sky. A new baby blue Tesla roadster whips in and out of traffic, dodging the furry bags of roadkill littering the otherwise clean freeway.

280 is a beautiful drive once you're past Serramonte, and as long as you don't have to do it every day. All you see are trees and fog and the sun and canyons. The wide, fast road seems to embody the California mythos. The morning's nightmarish science fiction dystopia seems far away.

A few days later Oakland's mayor will deliver a statement, no doubt carefully crafted by Luntz-style language manipulators. I marvel at its clever, diabolical brilliance. She says all the real and peaceful protestors left a long time ago, and all that's left is the criminal element for Oakland to clean up.

Shortly it will be revealed that 18 mayors of "occupied" cities had a conference call, planned, compared notes, and agreed to disperse the protestors (conveniently, while the President is out of the country). The mayors get their story straight. They lock out the media and other observers. They send in the riot cops, who mace women and kids in the face. Who beat people with truncheons. Who harass and assault bystanders.

When this kind of crackdown happens in a single city overseas, there is government outrage and media support for the protestors. Think of the "Arab Spring". Now it's here in the USA, and it's happening nationwide. The crackdown is fierce and harsh, and the media is largely silent about the parallels, focusing on the sensational surface rather than the deeper drives.

The mayors complain about how these protestors are costing the city money. The bitter irony is that we are all literally paying for this.

There have been reports of horrific things (including beatings, robbery, and rape) happening in some of the camps. The police provide little investigation or help. They are implying (and sometimes stating outright) that it's what happens when you protest, while simultaneously using these incidents as justifications for the crackdown.

This all sounds implausible, and yet every bit of it is true.

I have mixed feelings about the "Occupy" movement. I have yet to discuss it with most of my friends.

But it is easy to see why people would be upset. (If you read nothing else about the "Occupy" movement, take the time to page through that article. Maybe this, too.)

And a few things seem very clear to me as I drive back home, the sky darkening fast at day's end:

Whatever Occupy stands for and may have done, the reaction from the establishment - from the local mayors, from the banks, from the cops - is extremely telling. Occupy isn't setting cars on fire and smashing windows en masse (yet). They're marching and chanting and drumming and holding signs and...sitting there. But they've been subjected to a fierce crackdown. It's not clear exactly what Occupy's goals or demands are, but their existence is obviously terrifying the existing power structure.

Scott Olsen, Iraq War veteran, shot in the head by OPD.

Thus far, the Occupy people have been largely peaceful and non-violent, especially given the shockingly excessive police response. That won't last much longer. Young people with nothing to lose (and little grasp of consequences) won't take much more beating, spraying, and tasing before they start fighting back. Hard. First defensively, then pre-emptively.

This will not end well. We all think of Kent State.

When I look at the news footage, I see a small number of old, fat, clean people in suits behind the microphones defending the status quo, and many young, hungry, dirty people on the other side. Historically, in these types of conflicts, with those sides, the young, hungry, and dirty win. And when they do, there are lasting, violent, and painful repercussions for the old, fat, and clean.

The dialog and trajectory of employment in America in 2011 feels like a return to feudalism. You have a very small number of extremely rich "job creators" (the lords) who claim they need to stay rich and privileged so they can "create jobs" for everyone else (the serfs). Nobody wants to admit they're a serf, and in America we believe we can rise up (through hard work or luck) to be a lord and have our own serfs, so why rock the boat?

Since Occupy doesn't have simple, clear objectives, it's difficult for any negotiating to happen, especially at the municipal level. The Mayors have no power to force banks or Wall Street to change. It's difficult to see how Occupy itself can actually accomplish anything, other than serve as a very potent symbol of public unrest and increasing injustice. Because Occupy lacks a specific agenda, it risks losing control over its own narrative. Or worse, simply turning to violence and property destruction.

I don't know that I understand or agree with everything Occupy stands for and does. I don't think they understand or agree, either. It's something of a Rorschach test for everyone.

But when I see ordinary Americans harassed and physically assaulted by the police for exercising their right to free speech, or even for merely attempting to observe what is going on between the protestors and the police, it makes me angry and fearful for the future of our democracy. And if America can't make democracy work, what then? For us, and for the world?

Somehow we ended up in a country where "corporations are people", "money is speech" and income inequality is quickly increasing. The result of combining those elements is as chilling as it is clear. If that is what our own government, police, and employers are protecting, it's time we all head down to the barricades.

Waits and Coldplay vs. Music Services

2011-11-07T19:00:00.000-08:00

Recently Tom Waits and Coldplay both released new albums.

Tom Waits' "Bad As Me" is basically more of what you buy Tom Waits for. It's a great record if you like what he does. It's been getting stellar reviews.

Coldplay's "Mylo Xyloto" is also basically more of what you buy Coldplay for. It's a great record if you like what they do. Arguably, it's been getting stellar reviews as well.

Neither album was made available on the major streaming services (MOG, Rhapsody, RDIO, Spotify) in the United States.

Both albums sold very well in their first week.

Coldplay, of course, cleaned up. Their album "Mylo Xyloto" debuted at #1, with sales of 447,000. Coldplay is one of the most popular rock bands in the world. It's not surprising they debut at #1. What's surprising is how small the sales figures are, for what is one of the world's biggest bands, releasing a new album with a big promo push.

Waits sold 63,000 copies and his album landed at #6. Yeah, it's only 1/7th of Coldplay's numbers. But look: Tom Waits, Top 10 artist. Something that would have been unthinkable back in the 20th century. "Bone Machine" (my favorite Waits record) was released in 1992 and peaked at 176 on the charts, and it even had a "single" with a great video.

Make no mistake - Tom Waits hasn't gotten more commercial or watered down his sound, although "Bad As Me" is a more conventional record than some of his other work. His record is great. It's also not substantially better or worse than the last 5 he's released. I don't mean to diminish the genuine talent or artistry of Mr. Waits. I believe he's the real deal. He writes beautiful, perfect songs. I hear him coughing all night long, 100 floors above me in the tower of song.

So why did he crack the top 10 this time, and not with "Bone Machine"?

To paraphrase Norma Desmond, Waits didn't get big, the charts got small. It only takes 63,000 albums to debut at #6 now.

A movie that only sold 63,000 tickets on opening weekend is considered a dismal failure, and at this point, that movie theater ticket costs more and provides less entertainment. Let's not even talk about what 63,000 viewers gets you on TV. 63,000 puts you in the realm of books.

Some industry pundits are pointing to the Tom Waits and Coldplay sales numbers and are trying (incorrectly) to correlate those “strong” sales to Waits and Coldplay choosing not to make their new albums available on streaming services.

This is not clear thinking. Both of these records were going to log strong sales no matter what.

In Waits’ case, he’s got a very loyal group of fans and this is his first album of “new” music since 2004 (2006 if you count the b-ssortment "Orphans"). It got excellent advance reviews, not that it matters, since Waits' albums are more or less predictable, consistent, and critic-proof for his fans now.

That said, Tom Waits has been hitting his audience-appropriate promo circuit hard. I heard him with Terry Gross on Fresh Air. I read an article about him in the New Yorker. I'm sure he'll turn up in a few other places, despite being somewhat reclusive by nature.

As for Coldplay, they’re one of the most popular rock bands in the world. Of course their new album is going to sell well. It has been accompanied by the promo equivalent of a full-court press as well, including what is becoming the de rigeur appearance on the Colbert Report.

Streaming, or lack thereof, had nothing to do with it. If "lack of streaming" played a part, it was only in the blogosphere lift that comes from people like me burning additional electrons on covering that part of the story.

Put another way, there are 8 other albums in the top 10, all of which are available in streaming services and doing just fine.

One could argue the story should be "Waits and Coldplay sell well despite absence from streaming services", but again, the same logic would apply.

One wonders what kinds of sales these artists would have generated if they had made their music available on streaming services. Personally, I'm not buying either album until I've heard it first!

Music and Musicians in the 21st Century, a brief summary

2011-11-07T12:28:00.000-08:00

Here's what I think about music and musicians in the 21st century:

If you are an artist or hobbyist (defined as someone who cares more about the specifics of what you're creating than getting paid), it is a better time to be alive than in all human history. You can make great recordings for cheap and distribute them globally with minimal effort. People are more interested in live performance than any time in the last few years, and willing to try new things. So there's a big potential audience and lower friction than any time I can recall.

If you are someone who expects to earn a living from music, (and thus fundamentally cares more about getting paid than the specifics of what you're creating)

...the good news is it is easier to get started because there are all kinds of tools for creation, distribution, and feedback you can use that didn't exist even 5-10 years ago.

...the bad news is that making a lot of money is probably more difficult than it has ever been, and you must think like a business person first and foremost. You are going to have to work. Being a great musician isn't enough - it's just table stakes, just like being a good chef is not enough to have a successful restaurant.

You have to either be a businessperson or surrender a portion of your revenue to one. (If you are not prepared to do that, I'd argue you're a hobbyist/artist.)

Artist/Hobbyist or Careerist, in either case, there's far more music out there now than the audience can take in.

You'll be competing against not just the 200,000+ albums that will be released this year, you'll be competing against the 200,000 that came out last year. And against Lady Gaga's album. And Britney and Nirvana and Duran Duran and Led Zeppelin and The Beatles and Eddy Cochran and...people who think whatever they did with the "T-Pain" app is a "real song".

And when I say "compete", I mean that you are highly unlikely to even make minimum wage as a full-time musician:

In 2009, there were 98,000 new albums released (Soundscan, does not include Tunecore-style digital only releases)
Only 2% of those 98,000 releases sold more than 5,000 copies over the entire year.
Only 1% of those 98,000 releases sold more than 10,000 copies over the entire year.

In the late 90s, the average band on a major label, with a national promotional push, sold about 1,000 copies of their album.

This is the price of democracy - everyone can contribute, everyone has a voice, everyone is competing.

Musicians shouldn't expect an audience to find them, and shouldn't expect any individual or company to wave a magic wand and solve their problems for them.

This is good advice for anyone in any industry, and is certainly how my own career (in every part of the music business) has been.

Really, musicians are like any other person in the 21st century:

You can't coast along doing whatever worked last year or last decade or last generation and expect success or even survival. It is a cutthroat, competitive world out there.

If you run a business (say, a restaurant or a digital music service) and it fails, mostly people will say "You probably did it wrong. You probably weren't good enough. You made mistakes." Complaints about how rough the industry is and how people won't pay for quality will fall on deaf ears.

Is the music business any different?

In the Rolling Stone

2011-10-25T15:36:00.000-07:00

I have achieved a lifelong goal: I'm finally in Rolling Stone magazine.

Appropriately enough, it's in an article about technology, music, and economics - my life in 3 words I guess.

This quote refers to the talk I gave a few weeks ago, and the number in question refers to the "PurePlay" rates. These are what most large "radio-only" webcasters play. Pandora may be paying out something slightly different given their size, but for the purposes of the presentation I gave, it was close enough!

The Reaction to "Making Cents"

2011-10-11T11:09:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, I was in Los Angeles to participate in Digital Music Forum West. I gave a presentation adapted from some of my writings about subscription service payments to artists called "Making Cents".

I wanted to get people thinking, and I accomplished my goal. I've been to too many of these conferences (including this past one) stuffed with uninformative, shilly, boring presentations from dull speakers, or discussions that meandered from stock topic to stock topic, or worse, were empty of any controversy ("Music is great! Who agrees?").

This morning, Dave Allen made a nice, inflammatory tweet:

At least @Mog 's @AnuKirk is honest about paying musicians pennies but spreads the blame. #BadDefense bit.ly/px9poK

...derived from his reading of this article about my talk.

Well, actually, I was talking about fractions of pennies! I'm not happy about Dave characterizing my talk as a "bad defense". That's not at all what my talk was about or intended to be. I didn't see Dave at the show, but maybe he saw the talk on the web.

The Fast Company article isn't exactly accurate either. I wasn't interviewed for it, and didn't have a chance to talk to writer Austin Carr. It also leaves out some very important points I made.

You can guess what buttons the author wants to push - there's a big photo of a nice hip band (upright bass! banjo! washboard!...it's even called "610-working-band.jpg") with all the right signifiers (bike in the background! recycling bins!)

Photo of anonymous "working band" by Flickr user jonathanpercy

Recently a number of articles have come criticizing subscription services for how little they pay artists for plays. (This is after years of articles questioning when or if subscription services will ever be viable).

As I said repeatedly in my talk, these small amounts don't seem fair. So what is fair?

I could summarize my rather brief talk as follows:

Determining "what's fair" to pay artists for a single play is complex. It involves the artist, the service provider, and the audience. Presumably "fair" means all of these folks get something out of the transaction: the artist gets some cash or other benefit, the service provider is able to survive, and the audience/fan/listener has a service they're willing to pay for.
Artists traditionally have accepted a wide range of payments for their music, including very small amounts, zero, and even negative dollars (artists have paid FM radio or other outlets to play their music). Hell, the band in the photo is effectively playing for free, and the author didn't even tell us who they were!...though he did tell you who took the photo: Flickr user Jonathan Percy (who doesn't identify them either)
If rates are too high, businesses cannot survive.
The audience's willingness to pay for a single play is highly variable. Pro tip: They don't want to pay a lot.
There's often a mismatch between what artists think their music is worth and what business and the audience think it is worth
The "real problem" is how we get more people to listen to more music, and value it more.

Take a good look at that photo again. You see the band playing. You don't see an audience. If you look to the right, you'll see a bunch of people. With their backs to the band, looking elsewhere. This is what I'm talking about. This is the problem.

Now, addressing some specific points in the Fast Company article:

I did not create the estimate of "$0.04 per album play" - I specifically attributed that to its original source, Uniform Motion's article on HypeBot. (The SiriusXM and Pandora numbers are approximations from publicly available data).
I did not imply that payments to artists could get worse. I noted that many of the businesses paying higher rates had folded or were struggling. It's certainly possible. They could also get better.
I know services pay labels, not artists. I started with a disclaimer that I would be simplifying terminology and models due to the limited time, but that the gist and magnitude were accurate.
There is no "per-play rate" for many subscription services. They operate like performing rights organizations, collecting a pool of money and disbursing it to "members". The amount paid "per play" varies depending on factors like the number of subscribers, the number of plays, and the number of participating labels

I strive to create compelling presentations. I am not a bomb-thrower, however. It's easy to shock and provoke, harder to really talk about issues in a serious way. So note some other points I made:

Most subscription services pay labels/artists even if users play nothing in a given month
Performers get paid nothing for plays on FM radio
Selling CDs is hard - it's far more difficult to convince people to pay $10 for a CD than it is to get them to click a play button on a service they've already paid for
According to Soundscan, in 2009, there were 98,000 CDs released (double or triple that if you include digital-only releases)

Of those 98,000, only 2.1% sold more than 5,000 copies for the entire year. 1% sold more than 10,000.

According to the "Information Is Beautiful" chart I referenced, a solo performer on a label needs to sell 1,161 CDs per month to earn the equivalent of minimum wage. 13,932 CDs for the year.

So by that math, even in the "selling CDs" world, very few artists on labels are earning minimum wage.
Being totally independent makes it a little easier: 1,716 CDs per year. But that means the independent artist is doing all the work.

Ultimately I said the same things I've been saying for years: The music business is tough for everyone.

The Wreck of Hewlett-Packard

2011-09-22T20:00:00.000-07:00

An early Hewlett-Packard Oscillator

Hewlett-Packard is sort of The Rolling Stones of Silicon Valley.

The early HP was a groundbreaking, innovative company that didn't just kick out great products, they helped create and validate a whole new way of doing business.

They were the original "garage-based start-up", a scrappy pair of guys who had some incredible hits in the early days. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard had impeccable tech cred. They were also smart people who studied under Frederick Terman (whose father, Louis Terman, is a pioneer in gifted education).

They espoused The "HP Way", a noble and empowering mindset which many successful Silicon Valley companies still emulate.

But much like the Stones, middle- and old-age haven't been kind to HP, and they've never been the same since the founding members left.

The company went from cranking out its own innovative products to slapping a brand on mediocre-at-best Windows boxes. It has made some incredibly bad decisions over the last few years, and despite (or perhaps due to) being enormously large and recognized, HP seems locked into a long-term death spiral.

I heard today from one analyst "the company is just too big for any one person to comprehend". Yet there are other big companies that are more successful and still comprehensible.

HP used to be awesome. What happened?

Partying in 1999
HP was founded in 1935. It went public in 1957, after a long slow climb. Its early decades were somewhat unfocused, but the company managed to bang out enough success to keep going.

It missed a few great opportunities (Steve Wozniak designed the Apple I while at HP, offered it to them, and they passed), but by the mid-80s was going strong. They did manage to get on the internet very early (1986!).

The 1990s marked a big shift for HP, as they moved into consumer markets, instead of just professional tools and devices. This culminated in 1999.

1999 was a big year for HP. They spun off all of their tech businesses not directly related to computers, storage, and imaging. That spin-off (Agilent) was the largest IPO in Silicon Valley history.

They also appointed Carly Fiorina as CEO. Carly Fiorina was the first woman to lead a Fortune 20 company. Her most notable achievement at HP was the acquisition of Compaq, which helped establish HP as the largest shipper of personal computers - most of them being middling Windows boxes.

She was quite controversial and not very popular at HP, and eventually shoved out the door with a $20 million severance package. The stock price dropped 50% during her tenure, though much of that was arguably due to overall market conditions and not her leadership. Regardless, she's been called one of the worst CEOs of all time by Conde Nast Portfolio (whoever they are).

Making a Small Fortune on WebOS (out of a large one)
Once upon a time, there was a company called Palm Computing. They created something called the Palm Pilot, which was a pretty kick-ass little "personal digital assistant", or PDA. It was stylus-based and an excellent combination of (then) state-of-the-art technology and solid product design. It did what it was supposed to, reliably, and quickly displaced the paper Fil-o-fax as the weapon of choice for biz people.

It was a big hit. But like many companies (and bands), after the first big flush of success, Palm sort of lost their way and became complacent. They stopped worrying, even as other devices came after them aggressively.

In a few short years, Palm was the worst-performing PDA manufacturer on NASDAQ, despite having revitalized the category. Their stock lost 90% of its value in a single year. Many corporate shenanigans ensued, but the end result was a "new" Palm dedicated to building a new OS and new devices to compete with the now-dominant Blackberry and iPhone in the smartphone market.

The new thing would be called WebOS. The OS was highly thought-of, even if the hardware it was initially presented in was lacking.

But good reviews alone don't matter. A little over a year after WebOS launched, the struggling Palm sold to HP for over a billion dollars.

And then, in a single phone call, HP destroyed much of the value of the ecosystem. Once then-CEO Mark Hurd said HP "didn't buy Palm to be in the smartphone business", pretty much every independent developer working on the platform threw in the towel.

Without 3rd-party apps, platforms don't make sense for users, especially as Apple developers kept cranking out hit after hit.

Less than a year after the sale, HP backed out of offering OS updates to devices in the field and then turned around and announced a bunch of new devices.

6 months later, HP would announce they'd be selling their consumer devices group, and not shipping any new devices for users.

The Unstoppable TouchPad Crash-and-Burn
Despite having irreparably damaged tech faith in WebOS, HP announced the TouchPad: their "tablet" computer based around the now-irrelevant and unsupported WebOS. You may have heard how that turned out: The company launched it on July 1, 2011 and 7 weeks later, on August 18, 2011, announced they were going to discontinue it and all WebOS devices.

This was only 5 weeks after launching in the UK and other Euro countries, and only 3 days after launching in Australia.

They started blowing the inventory out at $100 (for a device that had been priced at $500 and which, by most estimates, cost over $300 to build, not including the costs of developing and designing).

Even after the company canceled the product, I kept seeing lavish TV ads appearing everywhere I went. Apparently the marketing juggernaut was unstoppable, even after the head had been cut off.

But it gets better.

Not even 2 weeks after announcing they were killing all WebOS products, HP announced it would do another production run of the TouchPad. This might be a way for HP to mend relationships with component vendors, but it sure looks like a poor business move.

Rotten at the Top
Mark Hurd was CEO for 5 years. He resigned in 2010, not because he had totally blown up WebOS or mismanaged the company. He resigned because "expense account irregularities" were uncovered and sexual harassment alleged.

Of course, a company's culture comes from the top. That doesn't just mean senior management - that also means the board of directors. If the board is wise, they choose good management and provide appropriate feedback, controls and guidelines. If the board is foolish, they let management run unsupervised, or micro-manage product details based on their own preferences and whims.

The behavior of HP's board of late is appalling. Not that long ago, HP's board engaged in activity that was not just immoral and unethical, but illegal. That should have been enough to clean house.

But the culture was set. A new HP way, I suppose. That culture is ultimately responsible for the wreck that HP's become. To give you an idea of how that negligent culture manifests, HP's board didn't even bother to interview the CEO they hired a year ago and then dismissed.

Now, the board is supposedly considering Meg Whitman as the new CEO. One hopes they'll actually talk to her this time.

Bad Products
My own experience with HP shows what happens when marketing passes innovation:

In the late 90s, I needed a fax machine, scanner, and laser printer for my recording studio and record label businesses. I went to my local Fry's electronics and purchased a multi-function HP device. It did everything I needed, it was compact, and it carried the HP brand. And it was the right price - about $400 if I remember correctly. A tiny bit more than I wanted to pay, but it seemed like a substantial investment.

Took it home, installed it. Worked great.

For about a year.

Then it stopped properly feeding paper through, either to scan or print. The roller just slid over the paper. I started trying to track down issues on HP's disaster of a website. It became clear many other users were having the same problem. HP's response was to shrug and say it wasn't built to last.

There was a class-action lawsuit. HP agreed to ship out a "fix kit" to all users who jumped through hurdles. I jumped through the hurdles. I got my fix kit. I carefully, properly installed it. It sort of worked, though not reliably. Still better than junking the thing.

About 2 years after that, Microsoft released Windows XP, a big step up from Windows 95, 98, and 2000. I upgraded. My HP device no longer worked. Back to the website.

Turns out you had to BUY a driver disc from them for about $20 in order to get XP drivers. So I bought it (since I couldn't find the drivers online anywhere). I used that device for a few more months until the toner cartridge ran out. HP charges a lot for toner and doesn't want any competition in that market.

I was happy to be rid of the device, and I vowed I'd never again purchase anything from HP.

Conclusion?
What can you say? HP is huge and profitable, for now. Companies that big achieve a kind of failure-proof critical mass. They'll be around for a long time barring complete catastrophe, but it's hard to see them ever innovating again, or ever having hits again. They're just another big, dumb, slow company.

There's worse things for a garage start-up to end up as. There's better, too.

Uniform Motion, Subscriptions, and Lady Gaga

2011-09-13T23:13:00.000-07:00

The band Uniform Motion has attracted some attention in digital media circles over the last couple of days by posting a list of how much they're getting paid by various digital sources.

The message seems to be "Spotify is bad for artists"...and by extension, so are other subscription services like Rhapsody and MOG.

But like the last time this argument was made, this is an unfair comparison, presented with an incomplete analysis.

So let's look at a few points:

1. It's far easier to get someone on a subscription service to listen to your album than it is to convince someone not on a service to buy your album.

Subscribing fans have already paid their subscription fee, so trying something new costs them nothing but their time and attention.

On the other hand, getting people to buy music without having heard it first is extremely difficult. This difference in effort/risk is partially why the pricing or payment structures are different between downloads, CDs, and streams. (It also has to do with "just listening" as opposed to "getting a copy").

2. Subscribers still buy music, and they buy more than non-subscribers!

Subscription listening and purchasing aren't mutually exclusive. Research shows that subscription users tend to buy more music than non-subscribers. Individual subscribers frequently talk about how they use services to decide what to buy.

3. What's a "fair" per play rate?

Let's assume the quoted "Spotify rate" is too low. So what should it be? What's a fair price to play a song once? The 25 to 50 cents a jukebox charges? A penny? What's fair to the artist and to the fan?

One of the bits of data that guided my thinking when developing Rhapsody was a NARM statistic:

The average CD is listened to fewer than 10 times after purchase.

So taking that, let's look at a single track. You can buy it on iTunes for $1. So let's say you'll play it 10 times. How about 10 cents for a single play?

Well, Lala.com had that model, charging users 10 cents to "buy a stream" (which actually gave you infinite plays for 10 cents), and they went out of business and sold themselves to Apple for peanuts because they couldn't make a profitable business at those rates. So charging the fans 10 cents (and paying the artist less than that) wasn't workable, at least for Lala.

Sirius XM satellite radio pays about $0.002 (1/5th of a cent!) per play. Pandora pays about $0.001 (a tenth of a cent). Other Internet radio stations pay similar, or even lower rates. Both Sirius XM and Pandora had to spend substantial sums and took a long time (nearly a decade) to get to massive scale, and even now they're both just scraping by. So it would seem either all those radio stations are badly managed businesses, or those rates are still on the high side.

If you get played on terrestrial/broadcast radio, you get nothing unless you wrote the song, and then it depends on whether or not your PRO was sampling that particular station, and how the arcane math of the PROs happens to shake out that distribution period. Broadcast radio has been a strong business for a long time, but its listenership has eroded and now the sound recording owners (artists and labels) are starting to think they should get paid.

But at a payment rate of "nearly nothing", not only was FM radio a successful business, artists and labels would literally break federal law repeatedly to pay radio to play their songs. (I will note here briefly that "payola" laws do not apply to internet businesses, and I have speculated in the past that it is possible artists and labels would pay Pandora or other services to slip their music into programming it wouldn't otherwise be in. This may already be going on!)

So my takeaway is a realistic rate for businesses to pay today is somewhere between zero and $0.002 per play, and potentially the artist should be paying the business for exposure. In that light, Spotify's rates don't seem unreasonable.

Of course, it also goes without saying that piracy - what people will turn to if there are either no alternatives or only alternatives they think are unreasonable - pays the artist nothing.

4. Music has different values to different people, or even the same people at different times.

If you're a fan of Coldplay, you might pay $50 to be the first person to hear their new song.

If you're not a fan of Coldplay, you might have to BE paid $50 to listen to it. And Coldplay might be willing to pay you to try it to see if you like it.

If you've heard the song hundreds of times, you might want to value it less than the first time you've heard it.

Or maybe you didn't care for it the first time you heard it, but now, after 10 plays, it's started to click with you.

Or it reminds you of college, and the added nostalgia makes it valuable.

The song remains the same. Should the pricing? Plenty of other businesses charge different prices for the same product to maximize profits (it's called price discrimination).

It's Up To The Artist To Decide

Ultimately, every artist looking to distribute their art has to decide if what they're getting paid for it makes sense to them.

Some bands will play night after night for little more than 2 cheap beer, $20, 4 guest list slots, and the hope they'll make a few fans. Some don't tour at all. Some only do it if there are minimum guarantees.

Some, like the aforementioned Uniform Motion, even let people set their own prices to own the band's music, including ZERO DOLLARS. If Uniform Motion is willing to give their own music away for nothing, does it seem reasonable for them to complain about how "bad" Spotify is for paying them so little? At least Spotify is paying them something, and providing accounting.

Uniform Motion admits they produced more physical product (250 units) than they believe they can sell. They don't expect to break even, but so far, they're also not planning on dropping the price to move the inventory. This is their third album, so they've manage to get this far somehow.

Even looking at how Uniform Motion values their own music, one walks away confused. The band themselves seems to think their music is worth something between zero and 15 Euros. The pricing seems to be largely determined by the packaging it comes in, rather than any intrinsic value in the product itself. (I will also note I haven't purchased or heard any of their music, so I can't comment on the quality of the packaging or the art).

Ultimately, the pricing isn't the issue. The issue is a disconnect between what the artist thinks their work is worth and what the audience thinks it is worth.

Lady Gaga "sold" her new album on Amazon for $1. What does that say?

9/11/01-11

2011-09-11T09:53:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit uncomfortable joining the ranks of people and organizations "looking back over the 9/11 decade", because it's an extremely depressing exercise. As practiced by most, it's also excessively sweetened and adulterated with an insincere and shallow analysis of how the USA has reacted, and what it's all meant.

Where Was I?
I had been working late. Very late. Rhapsody was racing towards its initial launch. My small team (myself, another product manager, a developer, and a designer) were working hard to complete an HTML-powered demo of Rhapsody for a presentation to the Listen.com board of directors. We'd been working late all week, and on September 10, 2001, we worked until about 3 AM.

As I rode my motorcycle home, I thought about how long it had been since I'd stayed up that late working, and I wondered how I would function the next day. I got home, slept until 7 am, and then stumbled into the shower. As I was getting dressed, I checked my e-mail. This was before RSS feeds, so I had set up CNN to e-mail me about any notable events.

One email headline said a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I figured it had to be a hack, a joke, or spam. Then, scrolling up, I saw a message about another plane. And another about the Pentagon. I turned on the TV as I finished getting dressed. I watched the news for about 20 minutes, seeing the footage of the crashes and the shock of the anchors.

I left for work.

At the office, people were mostly standing around in shock. One of my coworkers came in the front door, saw everyone milling around, and asked me what was going on. I said "someone has crashed jets into both towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon." He laughed. I said "no, really. I'm serious. This is bad." He took off for the TV room.

I sat down at my desk and started working.

Around 10 or 11 am, the CEO gathered the company together and told everyone to go home and be with their families. Except me and my team. We were supposed to keep working to finish our demo.

At lunchtime I walked several blocks, trying to find a place open to get food, watching the empty skies for planes. I was listening to the quieter pieces on "Drukqs" by Aphex Twin, and that album continues to summon a kind of desolate, fatigued, melancholy when I hear it.

We kept working. Around 7 or 8 pm my girlfriend called me. She was upset and wanted me to come home. I told her I had to finish up and I would be a few more hours. I'll never forget how scared and alone she sounded, and how bad I felt when I hung up the phone. I left about 3 hours later, told the team to knock off for the day.

We finished the demo the next day, and of course found out the board meeting had been cancelled since no planes were flying.

While at work during those next few months, however, I'd spend a lot of time thinking about what had happened. I was moved to tears several times - watching the footage, looking at photos of the reactions from around the world, and hearing various stories of the survivors, the people around the world. I was fortunate in that I did not have any direct connection with anyone killed in the attacks - surprising given how many people I know in both DC and New York.

History and The Gulf War
My family has a strong connection to the United States military and government. My paternal grandfather fought in many wars for the USA and devoted his life to advanced military technology for its benefit. My father worked for intelligence agencies, helped stabilize the nation's faltering economy in the 70s, and worked to clean up many of the USA's most toxic sites in the 80s. My maternal grandfather worked to supply military bases around Europe.

I remember turning 18 and driving myself to the post office to register for the draft. . The woman behind the counter accepted my card, checked it over, and said "Hey, happy birthday!" I understood that part of the price of living in the USA was being prepared for military service.

I wasn't happy about it, but I naively felt the world (at least the USA) existed in a time beyond full-on war. But when I was attending college in 1990, President Bush attacked Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Operation Desert Storm, or The (Persian) Gulf War (I).

My fellow students and I were worried. We understood that "this aggression cannot stand", but there was a lot of debate about whether the USA (as opposed to the UN) was obligated to do something, or whether or not it was even worth doing anything. The USA was not in direct jeopardy, and Kuwait was hardly a top-tier ally.

The liberal professors were aghast. I was taking a video class at the time and the instructor was really upset about the US invasion, and the possibility of war. He had us write essays about it, and the possibility of us going off to Iraq to fight.

I remember this well because I felt it was somewhat inappropriate (this was a class on "creative video", after all), but I found myself moved by thinking through everything this meant. I wrote something to the effect of "I don't want to go to war, I don't want to kill people, especially under circumstances where our country is not in direct jeopardy...but it's part of the price of being a citizen. If I don't like it, I need to stand up and tell our 'leaders' and end the war. Not because I'm afraid of killing or dying, but because war is irresponsible and stupid."

I recall my peers saying "it's going to be Vietnam in the desert - the resistance will be dug in, and we'll be there for years. We won't win. "Victory" is impossible in those conditions."

Miraculously, though, the Gulf War was short and contained, and none of that happened. My peers and I figuratively and literally dodged a bullet.

After 9/11
The USA's societal and political responses to 9/11 have been depressing and frightening.

When I was in grade school, I read "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" by Mark Twain. I thought of that story repeatedly over the next few years as the USA, which had long prided itself on being tough, stoic, and fair, became frightened, emotional, and paranoid.

The passing of the PATRIOT act was unreal. The ensuing curtailing of civil liberties was made worse by the general attitude of "if you don't go along with this, you're supporting 'them'". What little we do know of what the government and private industry have done is positively Orwellian and chilling.

Hearing government officials actually say "watch what you say" was creepy. Hearing them suggest people be rounded up pre-emptively or put into internment camps was infuriating. But watching the rest of the country go along with all of it (either reluctantly or worse, with chest-thumping vigor) was heartbreaking.

I didn't want to go to war. I don't know anyone who did. People marched in the streets, wrote angry letters. Blogged. Called. I became more politically active than I have ever been in my life. It didn't do any good. Our leaders threw us into not one, but two wars. Changing Presidents and parties hasn't helped. The wars continue. Gitmo is still open.

I could write extensively about the minor inconveniences and idiocies we've imposed upon ourselves in airports, but they're ultimately insignificant. They're annoying and ineffective, but the net result has been making sure I have an extra hour at the airport instead of an extra 15-30 minutes.

What I've really noticed at all those airports is the soldiers. They're everywhere I go. And so very many of them are kids. 18 year-olds. They're not in a fancy college. They're going to, or coming from, the countries we're occupying. They will probably endure longer service and more tours of duty than any prior generation of soldiers.

I look at these...children, and my heart breaks. I want to approach them and say many things. I want to thank them for their service, and apologize for not being able to prevent them from having to endure it.

In the past, the hardship of war was shared and helped create a bond and common cause. That's no longer true in the USA of the 21st century. The Selective Service System hasn't been used to draft people. The country has chosen to deploy the National Guard. Instead of sharing the burden, we've extended the obligations of our "volunteer army" while denying them equipment, decent care, and benefits.

In the 21st century, the press is locked down and co-opted. The news media barely even reports on the wars, and the public is barely interested. If I were a reporter covering the White House, I'd ask every damn day "when will the USA leave Iraq and/or Afghanistan?" Instead, the reporters ask dozens of questions about the President rescheduling a speech on jobs. Neither party will take a stand.

There's no "TV war", like Vietnam, on the news every night. It would hurt ratings. There's some great reporting going on outside of the evening news, but nobody's watching it. If it is put in front of you, it's so outrageous and sad, it's hard to not just shove it out of your mind. People compile their own news sources, and are able to choose those that reinforce, rather than challenge, their own assumptions and beliefs.

When knowledge, debate, and truth are no longer respected, learning anything becomes difficult.

Conclusion
As a nation, we're still reeling. I hope we will continue to learn and grow, to respond with the things that make us good and strong, rather than reacting with fear and anger. Like Hadleyburg, our values and virtue have been tested. How will we answer?

Personally, my relationship with work changed. I have a better understanding of appropriate priorities now in both my day-to-day life and in a bigger picture. I am grateful to be alive.

I am also more cynical about and disappointed with our government. It's difficult for me to envision a future in which things get markedly better. The current state of the 2012 campaign does not leave me particularly optimistic.

As bad as I feel about government, my feelings toward the electorate are worse. We cheer governors who execute people, even innocent ones. We focus on trivial issues around our candidates rather than focusing on their ideas and plans. We don't hold our leaders, and by extension, ourselves, accountable for anything.

At these debates, these town halls, these meet-ups, why are we not asking "when will the wars end?" I guess we're all too worried about when we're going to get paid.

I'd like to end on a happy note, somehow. Wouldn't we all? I'm just at a loss. How do you hang a happy face on an ugly event that bred more ugliness?

I still love my country, and I'd rather be here than anywhere else. As I look back over the last 10 years, I wish we all had more to be proud of.

I think of my grandfather. He was at Pearl Harbor on a destroyer when the Japanese attacked. I wonder what he would say about all this.

TIP reunion, part 3: Precocious to Post-cocious

2011-09-06T22:34:00.000-07:00

It's been over a month since the 30-year TIP reunion. I've had some time to reflect on my experiences and synthesize a bit of what I learned. I've managed to keep a few of the friendships I renewed at the reunion going and keep in touch with some of the people I saw there.

The reunion had a bit of a dark side, as most reunions do. In some sense, reunions are like going back to your childhood home - you are put into the mindset of being a kid again, or in this case, an adolescent. And that's not always pleasant, as there are parts of childhood best left behind. And of course, you're reminded of exactly how far from childhood you are...

One of the things I remember about being a gifted kid was a near-constant sense of inadequacy. No matter how smart or talented or bright or witty I was, there was always someone who exceeded my abilities, while making it look easy.

In a band? Some kids were in a better band. Putting out albums. Got a great score on the PSAT and SAT? Guess what? Only 2nd best, stud - that congressman's daughter scored 50 points higher and got the best score in the school. And so on.

TIP was the same way. I scored decently on the SATs as a 7th grader. But I met more than one kid there who got perfect scores on the SAT as a 7th grader. I was distracted, I goofed off, I didn't always do my best work. Other kids managed to focus and did. Even when I did do my best work, there were kids who just seemed to leave me in the dust. I taught myself geometry in about 2 weeks, passed the standardized test and got credit for it. But I did it while sitting next to kids who, in the same 2 week period, taught themselves algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus.

Part of me wanted to try harder, to excel, to be not just "the best I could be", but "the best", or at least "better than that kid over there". Part of me knew it wasn't going to happen, because of ability or will or both.

Over the years I learned to deal with that longing and frustration. Perhaps I simply got better at justifying why I wasn't the best at everything, or even best at anything.

And yet, there I was, at the reunion, and suddenly it all comes rushing back.

I'm in the hospitality suite. I'm talking to a former classmate. She's got a Ph. D., and a lovely daughter who is not even 8 years old and is already asking her mom questions like "does an electron have mass?" Her life is dialed in.

Another of my former classmates is an economist contributing to a famous economics blog. Another is teaching economics at the Ivy League school where I majored in economics. Nearly everyone at the reunion had an advanced degree. They just seemed so damn smart and accomplished. Maybe I need to go back to school, do something meaningful. I ruminated and compared my own meager achievements to these people and found myself lacking.

But I start talking to them, and it begins to dawn on me: we all feel that way.

A guy who has started 2 successful businesses on his own feels like he needs to get a Ph. D in physics just so he can have one. And some of the people with one Ph. D feel they need to get a second one, because they don't feel like they've done enough. The people in academia wish they were out doing stuff in "the real world" and the people in the working world all think they should be teaching or researching.

When you're identified as having great potential, people tell you outrageous things. They say "you'll rule the world" or "you'll change everything" or "you'll be rich". You don't have to hear that too many times to start buying it when you're a kid. You want to believe it. You want to be the hero of the story, just like in all the books you've read.

But those expectations are unrealistic, if not misleading, for many reasons.

The presentation by the TIP researchers unintentionally referenced and reinforced those unrealistic expectations and dredged up all this stuff for everyone. After talking about gifted kids and how we grew up and what we were like, the researchers showed us photos of some other notable "gifted" people: Sergey Brin. Lady Gaga. A lady who'd won a big-deal physics prize.

I could feel all of the formerly precocious around me wincing in their seats as they thought "how come I'm not up there? Where did I miss my chance? Is it too late? What's wrong with me?" I saw the parade of faces and research as a kind of indictment: "How come you're not running the world yet?"

It was something of a surprise to find I wasn't the only one who felt that way. It was also a relief. And it was sort of funny, too, in how predictably everyone continued to want to (over-)achieve. It was a subject that came up repeatedly over the next day.

Of course there's something to be learned here. If I can look at these other high achievers and say "Hey, look, a second Ph. D? Dude, you really need to recalibrate your expectations"...well, maybe I need to look in the mirror and take some of my own advice.

"Diminished expectations" was a phrase kicked around a lot from age 18-22. That was when I and some of my more cynical classmates began to realize that hard work and raw talent were insufficient to guarantee success.

There were other factors at play that were just as much or more important than aptitude and effort, and often those other factors are the ones that really matter. Things like "who you know" and "how you look" and "being in the right place at the right time".

That was also around the time we began to realize there was also more to life than just work. I think of "Real Genius", a movie that affected my outlook in many ways. There's a scene where the two main characters are discussing a mysterious third person:

Chris: So, I talked to him.
Mitch: You did?
Chris: Yeah, and he used to be the number one stud around here in the 70’s. (whispers) Smarter than you and me put together.
Mitch: So what happened? Did he crack?
Chris: Yes, Mitch. He cracked, severely.
Mitch: Why?
Chris: He loved his work.
Mitch: Well what’s wrong with that?
Chris: There’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s all he did. He loved solving problems, he loved coming up with the answers. But, he thought that the answers were the answer for everything. Wrong. All science, no philosophy. So then one day someone tells him that the stuff he’s making was killing people.
Mitch: So what’s your point? Are you saying I’m going to end up in a steam tunnel?
Chris: Yeah.
Mitch: What?
Chris: You are, if you keep up like this. Mitch, you don’t need to run away from here. When you’re smart people need you. Use your mind creatively.
Mitch: (smiles) I noticed you don’t study too hard.
Chris: (smiles) Bingo.

You shouldn't compare your life, your self, or your achievements to anyone else. They are coming from a different situation, with different priorities. They make different sacrifices and are driven by different demons.

I will never forget the dark circles under the eyes of the girl who scored higher than me on the PSAT. She did very well in high school, but it was obvious she paid a substantial price for that success.

I think of my fellow TIP students, all of us considered precocious at one time, and now clearly "post-cocious". Potential is not a guarantee of anything. Achievements do not bring more than fleeting happiness. Aspire to being happy with who you are, not just what you do.

Use your mind creatively. Don't study too hard.

Steve Jobs, Inconsequential Details, and Bass Players

2011-08-29T08:52:00.000-07:00

In the wake of Steve Jobs' resignation from Apple this past week, hagiographic posts churned and bubbled. One of the most popular was a story by Vic Gundotra, about how Jobs called him to discuss the Google logo on the iPhone, specifically the gradient in the yellow "o". It wasn't right, and he wanted it fixed.

People have been citing this as an example of how great Jobs was/is, noting his miraculous attention to detail.

I completely disagree. Jobs had many fine moments. This was not one of them.

This was a completely inconsequential detail. I doubt most people, seeing the two images side by side, could even tell the difference. And yet this top executive felt the need to spend time with another top executive to discuss and resolve the situation. On a Sunday morning.

Jobs has an army of some of the best visual design folks on the planet. They've not only gone to school for precisely this thing, they've executed design in the field. Google's design team isn't as good, but they're no slouches (and they're getting better).

Steve Jobs, on the other hand, is a guy who tucks his turtlenecks into his rather unflattering jeans, and wears running shoes with them (and not cool running shoes, either). His personal clothing aesthetic could perhaps be described as "successful sysadmin who once went shopping with a girlfriend".

So Jobs or professional designers: who's going to make the better design choice?

One makes many aesthetic decisions designing products or making art. Most of them are arbitrary, and collectively they create the overall feel of the thing. If you believe the reporting and hype, Apple's products are basically the result of Steve Jobs' personal aesthetic. There's nothing wrong with that.

Even if you think Jobs made the better choice and had the right to, imagine how his designers felt. Why are they even there? (And yes, I understand it's entirely possible one of them noted this issue and passed it up to The Steve so he could pass it over to Vic and get approval - you can't just arbitrarily change a logo asset for a company like Google, but I'm assuming the story went down as people are choosing to interpret it).

In the big picture, this detail was inconsequential. CEOs are supposed to stay focused on the big picture, and leave the details to the folks passionate and expert in implementing the details.

Far more important were the many other design decisions made - the size of the device, the weight, the screen resolution, how the system looks in general. Jobs (and more importantly, his toiling, faceless legions of workers) should be lauded for their attention to detail and understanding how important some of those things can be. If one has any doubts, go look at an Android phone or a (shudder) BlackBerry and see what lack of attention to detail looks like.

When you add someone to your band, you want them to bring their aesthetic and contribute. As I like to say, if I want you to play bass in my band, I want you to play what you think are good bass parts. If I'm standing in front of you constantly saying "no, not that note, play it exactly like this", I'm not looking for a collaborator. I'm looking for a robot (and should have a robot playing the part).

Looking at Jobs' take on this, he's got designers and he's not using them. He either hired the wrong people (they couldn't do the work to the level of satisfaction required) or he didn't empower them (he didn't let them do the work they were hired for). Neither of those speaks well of his decisions!

It's important to call out when design overrides are worthwhile or not. Looking back to this post, I'd cite Vic's story not as an example of Jobs' brilliance, but rather an example of how most CXO-level executives focus on the wrong things and take away the wrong lessons from Jobs' leadership.

Over the last few days, I expect many designers have received emails from their CEOs critiquing their visual design. Sorry to hear that, guys. Maybe you can call Vic Gundotra and get his advice on what to do.

Who Uses Your Tools?

2011-08-20T08:30:00.000-07:00

Two of the most important records in my life I heard when I was very young. Tomita's "Kosmos" and Jean-Michel Jarre's "Oxygene". They both had extensive lists of the gear used to make the album, which to a young man, seemed mysterious and futuristic.

Tomita's list was huge, and featured things like:

AKG BX20E Echo Unit
Binson Echorec "2"
Roland Space Echo RE-201
Eventide Clockworks "Instant Phaser"
Eventide Clockworks "Instant Flanger"
Eventide Clockworks "Harmonizer"
Fender "Dimention IV"
Fender Electronic Piano
Hohner Clavinet C
Mellotron
Leslie Speaker Model 147
Roland Rhythm Arranger TR66

Jarre's included:

ARP 2600
Eko Computerhythm
Eminent 310
EMS AKS
EMS VCS3
Farfisa Organ
Mellotron
RMI Harmonic Synthesizer

At the time, these might as well have been spaceship components (hell, Tomita had an actual phaser!) - incomprehensible and beyond expensive. Over 30 years later, I am familiar enough with gear to know what nearly every single one of the devices on both lists did and sounded like. If I wasn't, the Internet provides endless photos, samples, and emulations.

More importantly, even if I didn't know what exact gear was used, I can now listen to those old records and know how to make those sounds using other gear.

I enjoy learning about the creative process other people use. Studying how others work inspires me to try new methods. I read a lot of blogs and books about how painters paint, musicians write and record, and writers write. I also read a lot about tools.

One of the more commonly-asked questions on these blogs are things like:
"What synths did [artist name] use?"
"Which famous artists used [instrument]?"

People ask these questions to help determine what gear to buy, or if the gear they have is any good.

I think using the exact same tools to make the exact same kind of work is a recipe for uninteresting art - you'll inevitably make bad copies of the things you love.

Using the same paints and brushes as Magritte won't make you a good painter, and it won't make your painting better. Using the same typewriter as William Gibson won't make you a better writer. So why should using the same equipment and sounds as [your favorite band] make you a better musician?

A better approach is to try to emulate feel, vibe, or style with radically different gear. Or if you love the gear, use it to make very different music. The differences are what make it interesting.

There's nothing wrong with copying as a form of study - Arshile Gorky famously copied paintings by his colleagues as part of his art self-education. But when you're ready to express yourself, pay less attention to who else uses your tools and more attention to how you're using your tools!

Talent, Art, and Fun 2: History

2011-08-16T08:20:00.000-07:00

A tangent to my follow-up to this article about a woman and her relationship with playing guitar and music...and how everyone reacts to her artistry.

A bit of my own personal history, through her words.

I wanted to play guitar ever since I could remember. I did have a sense of how great it might feel to perform and sing, but I had no idea how long, convoluted, and confusing the path could be.

One of my earliest childhood memories is of my father playing the acoustic guitar. I can honestly only recall him doing it this one time. I was around 3 years old. I'm pretty sure he sang "Suzanne" by Leonard Cohen, and "I Think It's Going To Rain Today" by Randy Newman, both of which Judy Collins had covered, and he had some of her records.

I just thought it was awesome.

Other formative childhood experiences were seeing The Monkees on TV at my grandmother's house in Texas as a young child. Discovering these new things called "synthesizers". Finding out that FM radio was broadcasting rock music for free all the time. And then seeing my first music videos.

I started playing instruments in the 4th grade, but that was band/symphony/orchestra. I wanted to play rock music...but how? With whom? There weren't any books that I could find. But one day my parents hooked me up with something called "RockSchool". Books at first, and then a whole TV series on public TV, no less.

On the one hand, they made it look easy. And yet it was still mystifying. It was a start. (In later years, I'd realize the keyboard player they added in season 2 (Alistair) played keyboards on The Chameleons UK's album "Script of the Bridge", a favorite of mine.

But all of this was before the Internet, and finding out all this stuff was next to impossible. Learning how to do it required lots of driving to little Mom and Pop music stores in the middle of nowhere.

None of my friends had any interest in it, and my parents were not musicians. My Dad never played the guitar again after that time when I was very young.

With rock guitar, it helps to be shown a few tricks.

Chris Haines ("Chaines") taught me to play guitar. He was the main guitar player in my college band, a long-time musical collaborator, and for a while, my best friend. He gave me tablature books. He played me records. He showed me the critical importance of alternating up-down picking ("None of that rake bullshit!"). He taught me the open G minus the third on the "A" string ("Mute that 'A' string with your index finger, because the third sounds like shit!"), and how the metal guys all played the open A with one finger and muted the high "e". I still use those faster, cleaner chord versions today. He showed me barre chords. How to tap. How to play harmonics. Really, everything I needed.

I took some lessons not long after, just to learn the "unified neck" and get some fancier chords under my fingers.

“Your brother is good at music,” the rap went, “while you are good at drawing and and other things.”

My brother is good at music. He's always been good, and it's always been a source of pride and envy for me. He's a much better guitar player than I am. I think he's a better pop songwriter. I'm probably a bit weirder, and tend to finish more projects, though.

His band had a record deal, made a record in a real studio. Got on a movie soundtrack. If you caught them on the right night in the late 90's, they were the best band in L.A. I still listen to their records, and much to my brother's chagrin, some of his solo work.

I remember the first time I borrowed Michele Deppler's 4-track recorder to do some early synth noodling. I came home and found my brother had recorded a guitar instrumental called "Ebb Tide". I wish I still had a copy. But I instantly understood he was always going to be "better at this" than I was.

I don't think my parents really understood how important music was to me until I went off to college. My brother went to art school. He was the "creative one", I was the "smart one". My brother is brilliant, in fact. And I believe I've demonstrated some creativity. I think my folks figured I'd "grow out of it". Must have been a bit of a surprise when I took my fancy degree and drove out to L.A. to be a rock star. To their credit, they were supportive as long as I was doing what I wanted.

I also went to school with a bunch of other kids who were ridiculously talented. They inspired me to start my own band and influenced me for many, many years after school ended.

to me rock’n'roll was writing your own songs and playing your own instruments.

My first real band started writing songs at our first practice. We only learned covers to fill out our set. I still think bands that don't use backing tracks are hands-down "better" than those that do. The funny thing is I spent many years in L.A. playing live with sequencers and drum machines, and nobody thought it was OK. But somewhere around 2000, it became totally acceptable. I played with a few bands in San Francisco that used backing tracks and and nobody batted an eye.

I gave myself permission to ‘suck’. And with permission to suck comes the ability to rock, and to overcome all the fears and insecurities that had been holding me captive.

Once I left L.A., metaphorically and literally, I started a new creative phase. Personally, I feel I've produced consistently stronger work in the last 6 years than in my entire previous creative career.

If there's one thing that has helped, it's been removing any sense of "pressure" or worrying about "hits" or "success". The best work I've done has come from trusting myself, following my own vision, the weirder, the better.

It's good to remind myself of that every now and then. You should trust your artistic vision and intuition. It's what defines your work as yours!

Talent, Art, and Fun 1: Just Play

2011-08-15T08:42:00.000-07:00

Since I'm writing a lot about being "gifted" lately, it seems fitting to comment on being "talented", another subject dear to me.

If you have ever made art outside of grade school, or if you've ever contemplating making any kind of art as an adult, you should read this article. It's about a woman and her relationship with playing guitar and music...and how everyone reacts to her artistry and efforts.

The gender issues addressed in the writing have captured most of the attention, but I think that's the least interesting thing about the piece. I was struck by her comments on making art independent of notions of "talent" and why you might choose to do it at all.

I really didn’t understand the nuances of musical practice, advancement and plateaus, muscle training, etc.,

Learning to play an instrument - any instrument - is difficult. Gaining enough facility and comfort with the instrument to play songs harder still. I'm not even talking virtuosity or finding your own voice, just getting to a point where you can play. And unless you are very lucky, you're probably walking this particular road alone, with either modest encouragement ("sounds like real music!") from your friends and family, or something ranging from bemusement ("you're weird", "I thought that was for kids") or even active discouragement ("you're wasting your time", "you suck").

Getting good at music takes a long, long time. Like anything. There are plenty of people who quickly master emulation of their particular idiom (that kid sounds like an old bluesman! that lady sings jazz that sounds like that other lady that sang jazz!), but in some sense it's just a cargo cult. As I've noted before, moving beyond simple imitation or being a pastiche factory takes time, skill, and guts.

There's always going to be people "better" than you at whatever you do. You can either let that deter you and beat you down, or you can let it inspire you and give you some guidance. Most of the time, I've been able to focus on the latter. Sometimes, people are just so damn good I want to give up!

...only some would ultimately be deemed worthy to publicly perform music: those who were ‘musically talented’. And that talent was determined by one’s ability to imitate, precisely, music written by others.

John Philip Sousa called it. Since the invention of the recording machine, the culture of the amateur musician withered and was replaced with "professional executants" and a passive audience.

The re-democratization of production and distribution of music in the late 20th century began to reverse this trend. But it's still more common for people to say "I am not creative" and "I am not good at music".

Being "good" isn't the point. Having fun, or expressing yourself, or working your brain in different ways is the point. (And "good" is one of those ridiculous subjective judgments that falls apart under close examination.).

Recording also changed how musicians worked. Musicians could now study their own performances as well as others, playing and replaying. This led to a certain homogenization of sound in addition to the split between "performer" and "audience".

When you start making music, people will give you "complements" such as "Hey, that sounds like a real song!" What they're really saying is "you almost sound exactly like what I hear. Almost."

This is nothing new - art is culture, and people make their judgments based on what they know best. Presumably that gap between the familiar and you is a bad thing? It's not.

When I listen to the radio, I hear stuff that sounds like music but isn't music. I hear bands that have the superficial characteristics but no depth. The guitars buzz appropriately, the singer's nasal "punk" whine is a perfect distillation of Blink-182's distillation of Green Day's distillation of the Buzzcocks. The songs all go ABABCB and so forth. But there's nothing...exciting about any of it. It's simulated woodgrain veneer on top of particle board.

This is what happens when your primary criteria for merit is "resemblance to what came before": Stagnation. Let you be you.

I gave myself permission to ‘suck’. And with permission to suck comes the ability to rock, and to overcome all the fears and insecurities that had been holding me captive.

There are plenty of artists who have made "great art" while having either rudimentary skills or only using the very minimum of their substantial skill set.

And having objectively great skills is absolutely no guarantee of making good art. There are countless "guitar noodling" records, plenty of classical musicians who play like robots, and lots of technically competent, even excellent, painters who produce bland work.

Whether you're looking at Abstract Expressionism or listening to punk rock or electronica, the key is the ideas and passion matter more than execution. Execution is important only in that it not substantially detract from the ideas and passion.

And since much art benefits from limitations, if I have to choose between lack of "talent" and lack of "ideas", here's my "talent". Keep it! You'll always benefit from better technique, however. Never mistake lack of skill for "authenticity". It's just lack of skill!

to me rock’n'roll was writing your own songs and playing your own instruments.

Write your own songs. Maybe they'll be terrible, maybe they'll be great, but they'll be yours. And that is magic and priceless.

You will be clumsy when you first start your art. Try to think of this less as "I am awful" and more as "I am expressing myself". Do it for yourself!

TIP reunion, part 2: Closing Remarks

2011-08-01T10:45:00.000-07:00

The following are my closing remarks presented at the Duke University Talent Identification Program (TIP) 30th Anniversary Reunion on July 24, 2011

In applying for TIP in 1982, I had to write an essay on Montaigne. It seems appropriate to open with one of his quotes:

“Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible.”

When I was a teenager, Dr. Robert Sawyer asked me to join him in Washington D.C. for a presentation to some members of Congress. Even as a kid, I was a passionate advocate for TIP. I am honored to speak today, and grateful for the opportunity.

It is wonderful to see so many people here, many having traveled far to be here. I keenly feel the absence of some very important friends who were here the last time we got together: Ramon Griffin, Bill Bevan, and Greg Kimble.

Duke University East Campus

Gifted.

My freakish intelligence was recognized literally almost the day I was born. I was tested by scientists doing perception studies on newborns. They kept asking my parents to bring me back in because I was the smartest baby they had seen.

Many children are precious, I was precocious. We were precocious.

Gifted.

Being gifted wasn’t easy, as everyone in this room knows. There were academic, social, and emotional drawbacks, and few resources available to help me or my parents cope. It's easy to forget what that was really like, and how horrible it could be.

I was often lonely, alienated, and unhappy. Teachers tired of my answers, energy, and enthusiasm. Other students treated me with something ranging from contempt to bafflement. Special programs and magnet schools meant I didn't go to school with the kids in my neighborhood, which made me an outcast at home, too.

I preferred the company of adults to kids my age, but the novelty of a kid who could beat them at Boggle and Scrabble wore thin quickly, and most adults aren't that interested in talking to kids (even gifted ones) for more than a few minutes.

My parents did the best they could. A family friend (Dr. Colin Blaydon) suggested my parents enroll me in a new summer program at Duke, the university where he taught mathematics.

I was accepted and took Writing I in the summer of 1982, taught by Mark DeLong.

I had no idea what to expect, but by the end of that first term, I knew what "gifted" truly meant. I worked hard and met students and faculty that were really smart.

I met kids who were obviously far more brilliant than me. I met kids who were more mature, together, and accomplished. And I met kids who were far more messed up, struggling in ways I found hard to believe. I still recall one fellow student who managed to lose his shoes in a tree while trying to retrieve a Frisbee. Others seemed barely capable of normal human interaction.

TIP was the first place I felt a true sense of belonging, of friendship, of welcome. That sense of home has been the heart of my involvement with TIP. That, and the delicious Union food and the wonderful temperate weather.

I don’t remember exactly how I met Dr. Robert Sawyer, but I did meet him that summer. I don’t need to recap all the things he did for TIP, or all the things he accomplished for gifted education.

However, I will tell you why Dr. Sawyer felt there was a need for something like TIP.

He wrote extensively about how terrible most “gifted” education programs and activities were. Sadly, he could simply change the dates on many of his earliest writings on gifted education and they would still be relevant today: the lack of academic rigor, the games masquerading as curricula, the slashed school budgets, the gap between rich and poor students…

Dr. Sawyer believed we could all do better.

He wanted a serious program for gifted kids. Something that would truly challenge and stimulate them. And perhaps he wanted a bigger audience for his square-dance calling.

More importantly, Dr. Sawyer told me he was concerned about gifted children in the more impoverished parts of the country. The phrase he used was “intellectual starvation”. He wanted to provide sustenance for these gifted children. To cultivate their nascent love of learning, so society wouldn't lose the benefits of their brilliance.

I remember being keenly aware of arguments that gifted kids, being already naturally advantaged by their giftedness, did not need any special programs or extra help; and that programs like TIP were just providing benefits to those already privileged. “Elitism”, they said.

Yet we all know how essential TIP was for our intellectual well-being. I can't imagine who I would be without it. I had a gifted and easy life and I struggled. How difficult were things for kids in more extreme situations?

The author's TIP residential group, Term II 1985.

Several reunion attendees are present, including Stacy Gardiner (front row, far left), Vernon Apperson (front row, 2nd from left, navy shirt), Dean Karlan (front row, center, white jacket), Colin Delany (back row, red shirt) and Elizabeth Sellars (front row, far right). The author is in the front left, wearing the bowtie and gray pants.

In the intervening years, I have seen some first-hand examples.

Boredom corrodes minds. Without opportunity and direction, kids' talents wither and evaporate, or curdle and turn destructive. Usually self-destructive.

I was a good kid. I played by the rules. My life’s turned out OK so far. Looking around the room, I'm guessing most of your lives turned out OK, too.

But I wonder about some of our peers…the kids who taught themselves calculus in a week but were incapable of getting to class without losing their shoes in a tree, who couldn’t interact. I know not all of them had the G/T classes and other advantages I had waiting when they got home.

As its first director, Dr. Sawyer worked hard to insure TIP reached out to minorities and girls, and spent as much money on financial aid as possible. The only thing worse than not having TIP exist at all was having it priced out of reach of those who needed it most.

TIP was expensive even back in those days. I was lucky – I never had to worry. In my time at TIP I met kids from every economic level, from big cities and backwaters, thanks to Dr. Sawyer. Many would never have made it to TIP without financial aid.

I attended TIP for 4 summers and a total of 6 terms in the 80s. I served on the advisory board in the 90s, and I taught in the last decade. I've had more of an opportunity than most students (and perhaps even most faculty) to see behind-the-scenes during my nearly 30 years' association with the program.

TIP has changed quite a bit since we were students. Organizations, like people, must grow and adapt in response to the times and their own needs. Today's TIP is not exactly the same as it was back in 1982. The world is not the same. Nor are we…but our original shapes are still recognizable, even as we've adapted to life, changed, and aged.

Dr. Robert Sawyer (right, white t-shirt, light blue pants) addresses former (and future?) TIP participants

TIP is a human institution, and is thus imperfect. Like all of us, it's made some questionable moves over the years. Been in a bad relationship or two. Maybe even said and done a few things it regrets with the hindsight and wisdom that comes with age.

You don't learn if you don't make mistakes and try new things.

TIP has never stopped trying to make a difference for those children at risk of intellectual starvation.

As you leave here, I would encourage you all to reflect on the impact TIP had on your life and consider a few things.

First, maybe give TIP some money.

TIP doesn't talk about this much, but they spend every spare dollar in their budget providing financial aid to students. They would give every kid a free ride if they could make the numbers work.

TIP also faces a number of surprising fundraising challenges due to their affiliation with a major university. They can't approach most companies or "compete" with Duke for funds.

TIP needs us. It needs our help so it can help those in need. Think about it, or better yet, do it.

Next, maybe teach. If I can do it, you can. I guarantee you will learn more than you teach, and you will find it to be a rewarding – if exhausting – endeavor. Teaching will also give you a new appreciation for the TIP staff and what they have to do every year to make the magic happen. And how challenging and satisfying dealing with gifted people like us can be.

Finally, think about your own life. Perhaps it hasn't turned out exactly as you'd hoped, planned, or feared. Or perhaps it has.

I know a lot about being a gifted kid. I still don't know much about being a gifted adult. After all this time, even Lewis Terman’s research doesn’t tell us much. We’re still figuring it out.

So here we are. It’s been quite a weekend. At most reunions, you meet old friends and reminisce about what you did.

Perhaps here you can remember who you were. How you felt. What you wanted to do. What kind of person you wanted to be. What kind of life you hoped to lead. How it felt to be excited about learning, excited about living.

Seeing you all, talking to you, learning about the incredible things you’re doing, and meeting your amazing kids has been a rejuvenating and humbling experience for me.

We were all gifted kids. Now we're gifted adults. Precocious then, post-cocious now.

As Dr. Wai said, “mostly normal, with some exceptional accomplishments”. That’s as fine and fitting a description of us as I can imagine.

Yesterday, Dr. Wai talked to us about the “black box” of TIP: Student goes in to the black box, something happens, better student comes out.

Why? Where’s the magic? Dr. Wai is looking into it. In true TIP fashion, some of you offered your own thoughtful suggestions and insights.

I offer this:
It can’t be the classes and teachers – we all took different classes with different combinations of teachers.
It can’t be the years we were there – TIP has continued on year after year, and had the same results.
It can’t be the campus – as we heard, TIP has spread to many different locations and still has the same results.
It can’t be the food or the shoelaces or the weather.

I eliminate the variables and I am left with the following inescapable conclusion:

The black box is empty. The only thing in it is…you. You change you.

We call that experience “TIP”.

This weekend and these past many years, we’ve heard over and over again that TIP made you who you were. Changed you.

Well, you just spent a weekend in the black box. You were here on campus. You sat in classes, talked with instructors. You ate the food. Experienced the weather. Wore the shoelaces. Danced the Time Warp. Were told by TIP about all the rules you were supposed to follow. You broke them. Caused the staff to revise them.

Dare to let this brief moment in the black box of TIP change you again.

To remind you not just what you did, but what you can do.

To remind you not just who you were, but who you are.

Gifted.

TIP's entire Term II student body and residential staff, 1984.

(Special thanks to Iran Narges, who provided perspective and guidance in shaping my words to best convey my feelings and intent for this very special event.)

The Collapse of BlackBerry and When To Be Nervous

2011-07-26T10:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Research In Motion, a.k.a. RIM, the company that pioneered smartphones with the BlackBerry, announced they are laying off 11% of their workforce.

Several years ago, I read Jared Diamond's totally depressing book "Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed". The title says it all. Diamond offers a rather bleak analysis and looks at a number of societies which collapsed and a few which managed to survive.

One example is Easter Island.

Easter Island used to be covered with trees and forest so dense it was nearly impassable. Humans arrived and set up a society. In a few decades, they leveled the forests, and their society quickly died a gruesome, futile, bloody death. The environment still hasn't recovered from the humans. The only things that remain are the creepy statues.

One of the most powerful passages in the book is when Diamond asks "What was going through the mind of the person chopping down the last tree on Easter Island?"

Why did the people continue to destroy the very environment they needed to survive? And how and why did they keep going when it was beyond obvious?

Diamond also covers the first Viking settlers in Greenland. They starved to death, resorting to eating their horses (down to the hooves), the meager vegetation in the area, and eventually each other. All this while the native people were literally next to them pulling fish out of the water with their bare hands. See, the Vikings didn't eat seafood. Not part of their culture.

The Easter Islanders and the Vikings had one thing in common. Neither society would change their way of life - their "values", even though it they were not sustainable and obviously not appropriate for the world they inhabited. Quite literally, they chose death over changing how they lived.

I've been working on a BlackBerry application for several months. Previously, I've worked on iOS and Android, and taken a very close look at Windows Phone 7.

I hate working on the BlackBerry platform.

The tools are difficult to configure and painful to use, so much so that even finding them on BlackBerry's site took one whole day, figuring out what I needed to install them took 2 days, and in the end, I've had to resort to using a freeware 3rd-party software.

I've been reading a number of articles about RIM lately, notably http://www.bgr.com/2011/07/13/rims-inside-story-an-exclusive-look-at-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-company-that-made-smartphones-smart/ and http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2010/10/whats-really-wrong-with-blackberry-and.html

They're fascinating reads, and have inspired me to write notes and memos to myself and my fellow employees.

BlackBerry is very much like the Easter Islanders and the Vikings: it chose not to acknowledge the reality it inhabited, doesn't want to change, and it is slowly collapsing as a result. If they survive, it will be as a niche player in an industry they inspired, if not created.

Things to consider:
Don't be worried when things are rough at your company - you usually know what needs to be done. The problems are often obvious: we need a feature or this piece of technology is broken/out-of-date or our marketing sucks.

The challenge is typically in the execution (more on that in the future).

Be nervous when you're on top. That's when hubris tends to rear its ugly head, and that is when you start making fatal mistakes.

Being on top is seldom something that lasts, but being there seems to blind people to that fact. Look at IBM or Xerox or Microsoft or GM or anyone. Who's next? Google? Apple? Facebook? (I'd say "all of the above").

When you're on top, especially if you're the person who brought your company there, it's hard to be objective. It's difficult politically and culturally to say "we don't know what to do next" or "we can't find any more users".

"We need to revisit our fundamental assumptions" is toughest of all. It's a fancy way of saying "we need to change who we are" or "we need to change our way of life".

Things happen. The world becomes different. Your original assumptions are no longer valid. Changing them is akin to "abandoning your identity" or "principles".

But companies ultimately have no identity or principles save making money. Anything beyond that is the result of what you choose to impose. Having a strong identity or principles will not guarantee you users, sales, or existence. And clinging to them in the face of a changing world all but guarantees you will go extinct.

By values I don't mean things like "honesty" or "making a difference". I mean things like "our products will never have a camera or MP3 player" or "8086 architecture only" or "rotary engines" or "we only do black and white".

When you find yourself wondering why the market can't see how incredible your product is, you have 2 choices:

Spend a ton of money in consumer marketing to "educate" them as to why they're "wrong" and your product is awesome
Realize you have built the wrong product. In the vernacular, "Y U NO C U R DOIN IT RONG?"

Choice 1 is inherently arrogant and fighting against the entire world. Very few companies and products manage to turn this type of perception around. It also costs a lot of money and all your competitors get to ride free on your expenditures. Frequently senior executives prefer to go this route because it is psychologically safer and easier than saying "we are doing it wrong".

After everything falls apart, they can blame bad execution or incompetent minions or lack of cash. These are all ways to deflect thinking about whether or not it was a sound plan in the first place.

Choice 2 is difficult. It requires some amount of risk (which can be mitigated). But I believe it is the best thing to do. Truly successful companies are asking themselves if they're doing it wrong all the time, and frequently have small research projects looking at alternatives to their core products all the time.

Adapt or die. Face reality. It's really that simple.

It's hard to believe RIM is based in a town named "Waterloo". Come ON!

TIP reunion, part 1

2011-07-25T08:14:00.000-07:00

I went back to Duke University for TIP's 30th reunion and to bestow thanks on Dr. Robert Sawyer.

Saw this for the first time. True in so many ways:

More to come...

42

2011-07-16T11:58:00.000-07:00

I wake up slow. My wife has brought me bacon donuts and is making me an espresso. I am groggy and torn between the certain deliciousness of the donuts and espresso and the potential comfort of sleeping a bit longer. I close my eyes briefly and feel my body, relaxed, creaky, a bit sore. I weigh my options, considering multiple variables.

The espresso wins. I pull myself up and into some clothes. By the time I've made it to a comfy chair in the living room, Fennesz/Sakamoto on the stereo, she's got me covered.

Does it matter where you're going
Or where you're coming from?
Or is your life just like a grain of sand...

(Love and Rockets, "Sweet F.A.")

42 today.

"Seven times six is forty-two...seven times six is forty-two..." I am 7 years old and hopping around the dining room table, holding my left leg. I am in the second grade, having recently been moved from one second grade classroom to a combined 2nd/3rd grade one next door. My school desk is full of crumpled-up math homework which I have no intention of finishing. Long division is hard and boring. I am having trouble memorizing my multiplication tables.

My mother has decided the fastest way to get me to remember is to do this. For better or worse, it works, though I will think of hopping around this table for the rest of my life when multiplying many numbers. And will always have an easier time with 7 × 6 than 6 × 7.

A few weeks from now I will empty my desk of all the failed, incomplete homework and start fresh. At the end of this school year, my parents will argue with my teacher about whether or not I should be in a gifted program. Tests will be taken. Shrinks will be seen. Parents will win, Mrs. Weimer will lose, and I will spend the rest of my school career working hard and going to different schools every year or two.

42.

"The answer to the life, the universe, and everything." I am 12 years old and sitting in the small TV room in the Great Oaks Way house in Fairfax, Virginia. I am watching the end of the BBC "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" show on PBS.

I've enjoyed the show, even if the reception is poor and I haven't been able to catch all of the episodes. I love the multiple smaller characters and throw-away bits. "Disaster Area". Marvin the mopey robot.

I want a Hitchhiker's Guide for myself some day - a handheld computer with all the world's knowledge at my disposal.

Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect have landed on ancient Earth, in a kind of time-travel apocalypse, and have apparently ruined the purpose of the entire planet. I am only slightly amused by this finale, and more bummed out. Seems like a terribly lonely and awful way to die, trapped in a prehistoric past with a bunch of telephone cleaners. And a pointless existence for an entire planet. It will take me many years to realize this may have Douglas Adams' point about life, the universe and everything - something about "there is no point" and "it's kind of sad" and "it's a bit silly."

I am a nerd in a world that does not yet appreciate them. I am a rather lonely and misunderstood kid. I spend a lot of time on the Apple ][ in the attic or sitting in my room listening to music. I have recently discovered rock music and am learning as much as I can. My favorite records are Tomita's "Kosmos" and Jean-Michel Jarre's "Oxygene". Next year, my parents will ship me off to North Carolina for the summer to attend something called the "Duke University Talent Identification Program".

42.

I was rolling down the window of my car
And I was thinking where the game had got me so far...

(Love and Rockets, "Sweet F.A.")

21 × 2. I am in a car, heading for California and my future as a rock star. A beautiful blonde girl sits next to me. I graduated from college with an economics degree three months ago.

All of my worldly possessions are jammed in the back. A guitar. A stereo. A P.A. Some clothes. A desk. Music. Some hand-me-down cups and dishes. It seems like a ridiculous amount of stuff to lug around, and yet it will only take me 90 minutes to unpack. Except the music and a microphone, all of these items will vanish from my life in the next few years.

The girl and I pass through multiple states each day. We stop at Graceland to pay our respects to Elvis, drive through lightning storms in Oklahoma, and eventually alight in Santa Fe, parting ways before I head for Los Angeles. Against all odds, she will remain a part of my life and become one of my best friends.

I am certain I will succeed in the music business. I have no idea what's ahead of me, what the music business means or is, or that by the end of the 20th century, it won't exist in the same fashion. And that all of that is probably the best thing that could happen to me.

42.

I have lived in San Francisco for 11 years. California is more home than Virginia now, San Francisco more home than L.A. or DC or Fairfax. I look out the window at the gray July skies. Sip my espresso.

The news says the 405 freeway is closed this weekend. Only people who've lived in L.A. know what a big deal that is. I used to live right off the 405. Fucking Sepulveda, indeed. I don't miss being in L.A., but I think fondly back on my youth there. Floating in the pool at 3 am. Laughing with my brother and my bandmate. Z, before, during, after. "Days filled with music, nights filled with music, music all the time". Massive fires, turning the sky gray and orange with the ashes of trees and homes. Earthquakes. Floods. Riots.

The memories flow, converge, and split off, like L.A. traffic through the freeways and city street grid.

And, as the song goes, I remember leaving, and the feeling of a great weight lifting from my shoulders as I drove up the 5, the city shrinking behind me in the rear view mirror. I will return to visit friends, but probably not as much as I should.

I sip some Pellegrino, hoping to take the edge off the vague, floating headache lurking. I flip through the self-portraits I shot yesterday. I think I look like my Dad and my brother more each day. I particularly like the mutiple images caught at different angles in the mirrors. My wife says they're incredibly unflattering. I say they look just like me, and what I see in the mirror. I suspect we're both right.

Next week I'll return to DC to visit some family, and see Claire's baby, the vanguard of the extended family's new generation. My brother and his wife will be contributing before the end of the year. More multiplication. I'll see my Mom, perhaps a few old friends, and see how the place has changed.

After that, I return to Duke for a "30th anniversary reunion" for TIP. I've been asked to give closing remarks. I'm looking forward to the trip, if a bit apprehensive about the numbers involved. I suppose I could say the same thing about this birthday...and life in general.

I glance at my email. 5 birthday greetings, all from robots. A sign of the times, I suppose. I'll take some ibuprofen, hit the gym, play some bass. Nice dinner with Iran later. Nothing too elaborate. At this age, I find I enjoy giving presents to others more than I enjoy receiving them, and that I am buying myself tiny presents all the time. My father and I have agreed to some birthday gift détente this year.

42.

I have learned much. I believe I have changed, or at least the knowledge I have won informs my decisions and behavior.

I know I am incredibly lucky - not just in the usual "born in upper class white America" ways, but in other more significant and personal ways. I have a wonderful life and a wonderful wife. My body is a little banged up and imperfect, but for all the years and miles on it, it's in pretty good shape. I have a good job, and one I really enjoy, and one with some very cool colleagues. I still work in the music business, having more of an impact than I could have possibly imagined in my youth.

I'm still making music, too, and feel that my recent work is by far my best. I have 2 completed albums ("Reflection" and "The Ghost Town") in the pipeline waiting on artwork. I have a new Captain Kirk album underway. Plans for the next Anu album. I'm also helping my friend Sid with his next record.

I'm imperfect. I wish I was less of a jerk, less impatient with myself and the world, less prone to being lazy. I am trying. Every day. I expect the people who know me best would both laugh at these statements.

But I also have great appreciation for the progress I've made, for what I've got in my life, and for who I am. In the last decade I've learned to enjoy life moment-to-moment. To savor the delicious certainty of now while still planning for the uncertain future.

I am grateful to be here, for as long as it lasts. At this point, I've probably got more days in the rear view mirror than on the road in front of me. That makes each memory and each new second precious, valuable, special.

I review what I've written this morning. I don't think it's gloomy - it's like the weather outside. These clouds are what July mornings are like in San Francisco. It won't last. It will get better.

42.

It's going to be a nice day.

There is always sunshine above the gray skies.
I will try to find it, yes I will try

My mind has been wandering
I hardly noticed
It's running on its own steam
I let it go

Oh, here comes my childhood...
A penny for your secrets...
It's standing in the window
Not out here where it belongs

There's a fire in the forest
It's taking down some trees
When things are overwhelming
I let them be

I would like to see you
It's lovely to see you
Come and take me somewhere
Come take me out

There is always sunshine far above the gray sky
I know that I will find it
Yes, I will try

(David Sylvian, "A Fire In The Forest")

The Wrong Users: Targeting, Testing, and Design

2011-07-08T08:17:00.000-07:00

This blog post is causing a lot of hand-wringing and discussion in the product design world.

To summarize, the author was doing a test on tabbed browsing usage at a mall, and he found a man named Joe, aged 60, who claimed he'd never used a computer before. Unsurprisingly, Joe had a terrible time using Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome. He was confused by the most basic operations and did not have a grasp of the fundamental metaphors in use.

The original blog post does a decent job of teasing obvious conclusions out of the experience, but all of the commentary around it and all of the coverage I've read is of the "oh my god, computers are terrible, people have failed to make good designs, can't we make them easier, the first person who figures out how to make computing culturally relevant will be a billionaire" and so forth.

I think this is all misguided and silly.

In my opinion, the author made a huge mistake and wasted 3 hours of his time working with Joe in the first place. I'm sure it was interesting from an anthropological perspective, but it didn't really help him with the problem he was trying to investigate. Joe was the wrong user to test.

One would no more expect useful feedback on tabbed browsing from someone like Joe than one would get asking questions about dashboard layout for someone who's never driven a car. And in 2011, finding someone who's never used a computer is a bit like finding someone who's never been in a car before.

I'm not saying there's absolutely nothing to be learned - there's always something to be learned - but this is a terribly inefficient way to gather data. Makes for a good blog post but not a much better product (perhaps like my own scribblings!)

The design community is also overblowing the state of computer interfaces. Let's set aside all of the tedious anecdotes about how toddlers can manipulate the iPad and other touch interfaces (toddlers can also turn the stove on, but that doesn't mean they know how to cook). Toddlers aren't the right users for these devices, either. Point is, computer interfaces have made tremendous strides in a fairly short period of time.

Computers are still not "easy" to use without prior context and education, but no sophisticated tool is. I would argue most people don't know how to properly use a hammer or knives, and training would benefit them. Clock radios are still so confusing that hotels have to put "1-2-3" instructions on them, and most guests still either use their own or arrange a wake-up call. Hell, we have to keep reminding people to lift with their knees, not their backs. Some degree of education is always important.

More importantly, when doing user testing, you must pick the right users to test. Someone who's never used a computer before is generally the wrong user to be testing. Someone fundamentally uninterested in your product is the wrong user. Even the wrong demographic is not worth talking to or considering. You're wasting your time (at best) and drawing the wrong conclusions which leads to bad design decisions (at worst).

Knowing who your users are and who you want them to be is critically important for your business and for your design. If you or your company does not have a good idea of who your desired users are, you need to figure that out or you will flail and fail. You must target and test with the "right" users.

Saying things like "it's everybody" is a sign of naivete and/or hubris - tragic flaws. It's not everybody. If you're doing software in 2011, it's people who've at least used a computer before (or whatever your product is). Probably have to have broadband or other "always-on" connectivity. Have to be interested in what your product is about.

I've worked on a number of streaming products in the music space. I always write out a list of assumptions at the start of every product describing the potential users. For example:

Desire to listen to music beyond current solution
Broadband connections where they listen to music
Smartphone owner (Android or iPhone)
Willing to pay for music
Enough disposable income to pay regularly
Not afraid of technology

This list may not include specific demographic information, but it's already starting to filter out significantly from "everybody". 10 years ago, the "broadband connection" item was a big filter. 3 years ago, the "smartphone owner" was a big filter. The other items are also important filters to consider.

These items can be used to start building or inferring a demographic profile. They may seem stupidly obvious, but it is extremely important to understand these to combat the "it's everybody" argument. It's not everybody. Focus on the right users.

You can make reasonable assumptions about users based on their existing knowledge and experience. If your target user is an iPhone user, it is probably safe to assume they know the basics of operating an iPhone. This also means if you hew to most existing iPhone conventions, you don't have to worry about the user understanding them.

However, it is not safe to assume they know to experiment with every arcane gesture or mystery UI element. Unlike you, the designer, the user does not spend all day experimenting with every new, trendy, weird app. They'll know how to scroll and tap. If you make your app look like the other apps the user works with, they might pick up things like pinch. But in my own testing, I've found very few users even know about "swipe to enable delete". Android users seldom hit the "menu" button unless really stuck, and they typically expect the menu options to be the same through most of the app.

Know who you're going after. Don't chase down Joe. Don't run after the wrong users.

Seven Fake Candidates

2011-06-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

I saw some of the fake debate* of the Republican contenders so far. It reminded me of a post I did the last time we went through the election cycle. So here's who you've got on the Republican side so far this time around...Meet the seven fake candidates:

Fake President

Fake smile and fake laughter!

Mitt Romney comported himself like he'd already won, literally acting like he was in charge. I kept hoping someone would turn to him and say "who died and made YOU President?" He's taking the Hillary Clinton path of just assuming he's already got the nomination. Remember how well that worked out for her?

Romney has the superficial qualities of a leader. But he's a shell, missing the internals - the drive and passion to lead. Romney doesn't want to lead, he wants to be President. These are different things.

Someone truly Presidential wouldn't back away from past successes because they're unpopular now, and wouldn't constantly be trying to figure out what other people want his ideas to be. That's what a consultant would do, and that's what Romney is.

Fake Tough Guy

Tim Pawlenty made an early ad that was mocked for emulating an action movie trailer, with himself as the pseudo-action-hero:

During the debate, Tim Pawlenty proved to be the kind of person who talks smack behind people's backs but denies it and acts all buddy-buddy when confronted by it. In other words, a fake tough guy.

If Pawlenty can't stand up to the relatively unfrightening Mitt Romney, how can he possibly stand up to someone actually frightening like, say, Vladimir Putin? Or Mitch McConnell?

Fake Sarah Palin

Fake backdrop!

Michele Bachmann is a woman. She's got brown hair. She smiles. Midwestern accent. She hangs out with the common people. She's opportunistically hopping on the Tea Party bandwagon. And she's got some crazy, crazy ideas.

In other words, she's a lot like Sarah Palin...but missing Palin's literal and metaphorical killer instinct.

Pros: Unlike Palin, she will actually serve out her complete elected office terms.

Cons: See above.

Fake Black Guy

I'm not saying Herman Cain is not black. I'm not even saying he's as awkward as Michael Steele when talking to young people or describing himself as "a streets guy". What I am saying is: Dude, you're a Republican. Take a good look around the next time you're hanging out with that crew and think about what they're saying and who they are.

Mr. Cain, it is really disturbing to see you be asked a question about having minorities (in this case Muslims) on your staff and have you answer to the effect that "they ain't all bad, and I wouldn't mind so long as I have one of the GOOD ones, you know what I mean?" We expect that from someone like Trent Lott or Strom Thurmond or Haley Barbour, not you.

Fake New Ideas

I don't know what bothers me more about Newt Gingrich - his cynical self-marketing disguised as a presidential campaign or his great "new" ideas which are a) awful and b) old.

Hearing Newt Gingrich pitch his legislative genius is like watching Aziz Ansari's Tom Haverford character on "Parks and Recreation" brainstorming business opportunities:

A baby tuxedo line
A department store with a guest list
White fur earmuffs for men
Contact lenses that display text messages
Invent a phone that smells good
Replace workers compensation with a rehab program that focuses on retraining people to do whatever they can with whatever they've got left.

Pro Tip: While it may be "innovative" or "different" to try running a campaign without a campaign staff, it is probably not going to be successful.

On the plus side, if people buy Newt paraphernalia, that's less money they have to spend trying to get one of these clowns actually elected.

On the minus side, since Citizens United passed, this election is more or less officially owned by corporate interests anyhow.

Fake Small Government Guy

Probably fake books.

Rick Santorum likes to say things like "the bigger the government, the more repressed the individual". He is referring to Democrats, who, in his view, are "repressing" your freedoms with things like making sure you can afford healthcare, making sure your peanut butter doesn't contain E. Coli and feces, and presumably, having armed forces (since our government is basically an insurance company with an army).

But Santorum proudly proclaims himself a "social conservative". Social Conservatism isn't about small government. Social Conservatives believe "government has a role in encouraging or enforcing what they consider traditional values or behaviors."

In Santorum's "small government" world, your personal, private, intimate activities get regulated according to what the government considers "traditional" and "moral".

We're talking things like who you can marry (one man, one woman!), when you can have sex (only if married!), how you can have sex (no "sodomy"!), how you can start or terminate a pregnancy (no premarital or extramarital sex, no abortion!), whether or not you have the right to choose when you die (you don't!), what you can do with your time (no gambling!), what you can watch or read (no porn! only "good" books like the Bible!), and what you can put in your body (no drugs!), and so forth.

If you think that Republicans or government in general should be making those types of decisions for you and everyone else, you want Santorum. He's your Fake Small Government candidate!

Fake Republican

Fake flag!

Ron Paul is a not a "real" Republican. He's a Libertarian.

Since American politics only has 2 "different" parties, Ron Paul operates under the Republican flag. Because he can't pass as a Democrat, and as a Fake Republican he can get elected.

But he disagrees with the Republicans on a number of their key issues, agrees with Democrats on some of their key issues (which in and of itself gets you booted out of the Republican Yacht Club in 2011), and alienates most of mainstream America when asked about the usual Libertarian "gotcha"controversial topics like prostitution (fer it!), right-to-die (fer it!), gambling (fer it!), marriage equality (fer it!), and helping the needy and less fortunate (agin' it!)

...but sorry, ladies, still no abortion for you! (that might even make him a fake Libertarian...)

In some ways, he's the Anti-Santorum. But that doesn't make him pleasant. It's sort of like having to choose between your steak arriving covered with broken glass or covered with the E. Coli none of these fakers want government to regulate out of our food supply.

So there you have it. Your seven fake candidates so far. Let's see how long they last!

* It's a fake debate because there's no discussion, no back and forth, no argument, no investigation of ideas, and no intellectual challenge. Nobody calls anyone out on poor reasoning or sloppy thinking. It's basically a stilted, boring, utterly predictable interview.

They even had an absurd "This or That?" set of questions. If the questions were inane, the candidates' responses were worse. Most disappointing is the thought that there will be voters out there deciding to vote for or against one of these folks based on the answers they provided here.

Modern televised debates are somewhere between a Japanese tea ceremony and kabuki theater - it's a stylized ritual, and the "thrills", if there are any, come from waiting for some kind of breach of etiquette, a "gaffe", or a bad outfit. We have got to do better, people!

The daily pastiche

2011-06-15T00:38:00.000-07:00

7:10 am. The car silently rolls back to its spot in front of the house. I slowly, creakily emerge, sweaty and tired from my morning workout.

I see our local raven across the street in the neighbors' driveway. He is cawing and eyeing a nice piece of aluminum foil. Something shiny and new for his nest.

I watch him through the living room window as I sip my morning espresso, alternating my gaze between this solitary creature's glee and my daily internet. I come across this essay and bookmark it for later.

We become involuntary bricoleurs, scrambling to cobble together an ad hoc identity from whatever memes happen to be relevant at the time.

I read Facebook, check Twitter, and start writing a blog entry for both myself and my has-been rock star friend. I am pretty sure only about 5 people read these things. But I write anyhow, and feel bad when I don't. I think it's like a journal - it has more value for me years later, to go back and read and remember who I was then, what seemed important, and see how that compares to the present moment.

The raven caws. I look at the clock. It's after 8 now. I need to get cleaned up and get to the music factory. I have a great job. I wonder how long it can last.

social media hope to convince us that we always have something new and important to say—as long as we say it right away. And they are designed to make us feel anxious and left out if we don’t say it,

8:30 am. I think of all the things I've had to spend money on in the past week, all the things I've chosen to spend money on, and the giant, unending list of errands and things I should do.

I clean all the dishes in the kitchen while NPR gently tells me about how fucked up everything is. I gear up and motorcycle to work, parking in the secret locations I've found near the office where I don't have to pay.

it’s plausible that all other sorts of immersive knowledge by which we might invest our identity with meaning will become subordinate to the practice of clever sign manipulation, to adeptly choosing material and affixing it to one’s persona online

12:30 I'll have lunch with a friend. Talk about work. Get fired up about things we can do, projects for fun or profit or career enhancement or what is even the difference anymore? Food is good and I'm all charged up. I can spend the afternoon tracking bugs and banging on wireframes and inventing something good.

My iPod shuffles and Peter Murphy howls in a song called "Too Much 21st Century".

Too much selfish
Too much fake
Too much computer
Too much to take

4:00 pm. I'm looking forward to going home and practicing fretless bass. I'm starting to get halfway decent on it and I love the challenging simplicity of the thing. My regular bass seems weird now with frets all over it. I'm cooking up some ideas for a new record along with my other multiple albums-in-progress.

The personal brand, in its concatenation of fame hunger and dismal self-exploitation, is the evolutionary end point of a tendency implicit in fashion

6:20 pm. I am the last one to leave the office. I close up the windows and contemplate vacuuming the floor. I'd rather just get out of here. I fight my way through the crowd of people streaming towards the stadium to watch the Giants play.

I find my motorcycle and ride back home, weaving through traffic, tired and trying to be lost in thought while concentrating on not getting killed by drivers texting at 80 mph. I'm good about leaving work at work, as long as you don't count reading and responding to e-mails or thinking about things or talking about things "work".

7:30 pm. I make modest efforts to help prepare dinner. My strengths here lie in clean-up or in operating telephones generally, but I can open wine pretty well. This bottle is tasty. Probably a wine club selection.

10:00 pm. I try to stretch out my crunched spine and de-knot my leg muscles on a ball and roller. I feel the vertebrae shift and click and the knots in my legs thump as I roll over them again and again.

he encourages us to ask ourselves, “What have I accomplished that I can unabashedly brag about?” and “What do I do that I am most proud of?” and then promptly put these achievements up for sale, inviting capitalists to exploit them. He admonishes that we must be eternally vigilant about our personal brand

11:30 pm. I think about what I did today, what I must do tomorrow. Am I getting better or worse? Smarter? Slower? More patient? Am I a better human today than I was yesterday? Last year? In my 30s?

such bald self-promotion as one typically encounters on Twitter and Facebook would have been in questionable taste, and the idea of explicitly leveraging one’s network of friends in order to maximize one’s notoriety would have seemed preposterously alienating

So much of what I look at online now and much of what fills my inbox is a kind of meta-content. It's mostly links to things, which are in turn links to other things. A friend forwards me an e-mail he got from someone who saw a YouTube video on Facebook. The YouTube video is a "supercut" of some other program. All of these various elements and how they are transmitted are signifiers, stacked up, towering, awaiting a response, preferably blasted out on all channels.

I don't care about this stuff. I care about the friend I had lunch with, the people in my band. My wife. Real contact with a real person.

I think about that raven I saw this morning, picking at that shiny foil this morning. It's not really going to help him at all, but he can't stop himself from liking it and wanting it and taking it home.

It's after midnight now. I close the computer, turn off the lights, and get in bed. Alarm will be going off in less than 6 hours. Another day.

Melophonic: Classical/Rock Posters

2011-06-12T22:41:00.000-07:00

Melophonic is a site which hosts imaginary rock-style gig posters for classical debuts:

So far there's a lot of the real classics. I am hoping they get to the Futurists' Art of Noise, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, and Antheil's Ballet Mecanique!

Courtesy of the always interesting MetaFilter.

Anu 1, Apple 0!

2011-06-09T11:37:00.000-07:00

I'm internet-famous for a day thanks to this story on Business Insider about Apple's subscription plans for iOS.

Here's the literal money quote:

"While it is fair for Apple to charge whatever they want for the value of their platform, it is reasonable for someone like me to argue that Apple does not add more value to MOG than MOG adds to MOG," said MOG vice president of mobile Anu Kirk, after Apple first announced its plan. "For Apple to basically claim a greater share of revenue than MOG or, say, Rdio, or Rhapsody, or any of these folks are actually getting from their own products is not a sustainable position for us in the space."

I am now officially claiming responsibility for getting Apple to back down. ;-)

Art Thought of The Day

2011-06-08T17:34:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of this thoughtful essay from AVClub.com:

"...if you love art that makes you better in some way, whether it’s smarter, funnier, or more understanding and caring of the world around you, then you must also hate art that seeks to keep you mired in the muck of stupidity and ugliness."

Yes, I do.

On Security Theater

2011-06-06T08:00:00.000-07:00

Recently several writers have noted the USA could help close the budget and deficit gap by eliminating the TSA.

Between that and my recent travels I recalled this post I read [edited for clarity and typos]:

Anon in reply to Shivv

The reason it's labeled "security theater" isn't just because of how ineffective it is, but because the whole idea of a threat in the first place is imagined. It's playing into people's fears, convincing them they're in danger, and they're saving you from it.

In reality, there are countless other targets that terrorists could strike.
They could do more damage in a large subway system, yet you don't have pornoscans at turnstiles.

Bridges would be great targets, but you don't need to strip naked to cross a bridge.

The Unabomber and the anthrax scare were committed in post offices, yet you don't have to have your crotch fondled in public to mail a letter.

The Oklahoma City bombing was caused by letting a truck park within a block of a government building, why don't we search everyone that comes within a 2 block radius of any building?

It's called security theater because it actually protects no one from anything.

The government can't save you from the bogeyman, but if they convince you they are, they can take whatever rights they want from you.

You have a higher chance of getting struck by lightning on a sunny day than you do of being victim of a terrorist attack.

Why not protect people from car crashes instead? Something that's hundreds of millions of times more likely to happen to you?

Why not spend millions of dollars and cripple your travel infrastructure to save people from slipping in the shower and breaking their necks? That happens thousands of times each day, whereas terrorist attacks happen once a decade.

After 10 years, we're stuck with a terrible, inefficient, expensive, and ultimately worthless airport security experience. Nobody can speak up about it because we're either too busy or too afraid (of terrorists, of the government, of being accused of not caring about people).

In the early days of the TSA, I used to joke about how we'd eventually be taking our pants off for security after some failed "ass-bomber" attack. Then the "underwear bomber" incident occurred. We may not be actually taking our pants off "for security", but we're doing it digitally, virtually, and metaphorically.

I've also heard accounts of supposed "freeze drills" where the TSA will yell "CODE BRAVO! FREEZE!" and actually expect and demand that everyone stand still like we're playing a game of freeze tag, or that we're all grade schoolers. I imagine they have everyone put their heads on their desks.

I hope to hell this is an isolated incident of TSA overreach. Otherwise I come to the conclusion that we are in fact living in an Orwellian science fiction future.

So far, way more TSA agents have been arrested for crimes relating to theft and abuse of power than terrorists have been caught. I think about that every time I shuffle along with the rest of the cattle through the line, angry with myself and my fellow Americans for letting it come to this.

Soldier's Dream by Wilfred Owen

2011-05-30T10:47:00.000-07:00

Soldier's Dream
by Wilfred Owen

I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears;
And caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts;
And buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts;
And rusted every bayonet with His tears.

And there were no more bombs, of ours or Theirs,
Not even an old flint-lock, not even a pikel.
But God was vexed, and gave all power to Michael;
And when I woke he'd seen to our repairs.

Self-improvement and the Culture of Elitism

2011-05-21T09:40:00.000-07:00

I found this article thought-provoking. Long, but worth it.

The mark of superior people, in Ortega’s sense, is that they consider themselves inferior to what they may become. Self-improvement, for all that it smacks of the self-help shelf at Barnes and Noble, is also, in this way, the rallying cry of the only kind of elite worth having.

Every day, I try to make myself better than I was the day before. Fretless bass, working out, reading, thinking, being a decent human being.

Doing anything well requires some hard work. Daily practice, usually, and a focus on the process rather than the outcome. Science has shown people don't value things that come easily to them, and that even modest effort increases perceived value.

Yet our society has evolved to venerate those who are simply gifted, rather than those who put in the work. Somewhere in the 80s, the hard work became a short montage set to a pop song.

Malcolm Gladwell's recent book "Outliers" pushes the idea that 10,000 hours of practice are required for expertise in something. That may be simple to understand, but it also underscores that it is not easy. That kind of time investment requires passion and discipline.

If my previous post was about not taking others for granted, perhaps one can see this one as saying "don't take yourself - your core self - for granted, either."

No Coasting

2011-05-15T05:15:00.000-07:00

In the weightlifting world, there is an axiom that one is either getting stronger or getting weaker - the idea being that either you are regularly training and improving, or you are not, and you are sliding downhill. Over the years, I have refined this idea into "No Coasting".

The second law of thermodynamics tells us the universe tends towards maximum entropy over time. The only defense against this is literally putting energy (or work) into a system. I think about this a lot.

From a Facebook conversation with a struggling musician:

"Ultimately, if you are in the business of selling music, you (or someone in your "organization") have to be somewhat excited and willing to invest/work on the business part, not just the music part.

This is why many bands hire managers, agents, PR people, and the like. It's also why a lot of mediocre musicians succeed - they know they're not the best songwriters/performers/whatever, so they expend effort being the best marketers/salesmen/promoters.

You can't just sign up for TuneCore or drop CDs off somewhere and go "OK I'm done with that part!" any more than you can write your first 10 or 20 songs and say "OK, done with the songwriting part!"

You have to invest time and energy in constantly improving the business side and looking for promotional opportunities. You wouldn't coast as a creative person/artist, and you can't coast as a businessperson, either.

The artists who are most interesting keep challenging themselves by changing and improving their craft. The financially successful ones also continue to look for new business opportunities. Somehow much rock music got the idea into its head that doing that is a bad thing.

I also think about the problems of nuclear waste. In the wake of the Fukushima reactor problems, waste disposal remains a big issue. We need to think about the problem differently: Don't assume today's storage solution is tomorrow's storage solution.

Storing any kind of hazardous materials is seldom a "bury and forget" proposition. You do the best thing you can think of today, and you keep looking for a better solution and move it up as needed. It is ludicrous to assume that WIPP and Yucca Mountain are the best humanity can possibly develop over the next 10,000 years. It's just the best we have right now, and is far better than current temporary storage practices.

We must keep investing effort in the things that are important to us.

Today I have been married to my wonderful wife for 7 years. Every day I see her I feel like the luckiest man in the world. I am so fortunate to have her in my life.

It is easy to "coast" in a relationship, to stop trying to have new experiences, to stop making a bit of effort every day to make your partner's day special, to surprise them. But this is often the beginning of terminal relationship entropy.

Don't coast. If you bring your best effort and attitude to work or the projects you value most in life, why wouldn't you bring it every day to the things that really matter most? It is not a guarantee of success, but not doing this is almost certainly a guarantee of failure.

Mick Karn, fretless bass, and finding your own voice

2011-05-03T06:00:00.000-07:00

As far as I'm concerned, there's only one bass player that really mattered in rock music: Mick Karn.

Nearly anyone who plays fretless bass cites Karn or Jaco Pastorious as the inspiration. These two people created a language and style that made every musician in every genre think about bass in a different way.

Karn was originally a bassoon player. He credits learning classical bassoon and other wind parts (he played all the wind instruments on Japan's records, too) with shaping his perspective on bass playing.

It's fairly obvious - Karn's bass lines have far more in common with symphonic wind parts than the typical "play 8th notes on the root" that passes for bass playing in most popular music. If nothing else, Mick Karn proves that being educated about different styles of music is critical to making your own music more interesting.

Mick Karn achieved something rare in music, and especially instrumental music: he created a unique, instantly identifiable voice. A recognizable sonic entity. You hear him playing on a record and it is unmistakable.

Finding, or more accurately, developing that voice is difficult but rewarding. It is part of how you stop being a mere copyist or pastiche factory and start being a true artist.

Painters spend entire careers looking for that kind of presence and signature. You know them when you see them - the painters you can identify from across the room. Franz Kline, Magritte, Rothko. I'd put Mick Karn up there with any of them.

That voice can be limiting, I suppose. If you speak with a distinctive accent, people make fun of it. And you end up being reduced somehow: "The guy who plays fretless bass THAT way". "The person who paints everything with dots". "The idiot with the sponges". But I'd rather be made fun of for being unique than blend in with everyone else any day.

I still remember first hearing the sound of fretless bass in Rock School videos and on the Japan compilation "Exorcising Ghosts" that my friend Jen DT gave me (and for which I am eternally grateful, Jen!). I thought it was beautiful and mysterious. I also understood it was very difficult to play and compared to the synthesizer, somewhat sonically limited.

I used to practice instruments a lot, striving for proficiency. But I eventually realized I was more interested in songwriting and composing than being a virtuoso (not that they are exclusive!). For many years, I said fretless bass was the only instrument I'd consider practicing on to get good.

Mick Karn's untimely passing had me listening to his work and I was inspired. I'm not getting any younger, and there's no time like the present. I recently bought a Squier Vintage Modified Jazz Bass Fretless and am teaching myself to play many of his bass parts as well as some things by The Police, Gary Numan (Mick Karn played on "Dance", and Pino Palladino played some great fretless parts on "I, Assassin"), and many of my other favorites.

Fretless bass is a wonderfully expressive instrument, like the human voice in many ways. I don't expect to approach Mick Karn's level of eloquence on it, but I hope to perhaps belch out a few phrases on an upcoming recording project.

Thank you for the music, Mick Karn.

Japan. "Visions of China"

Dali's Car. "The Judgment Is The Mirror"

Japan. "Swing"

Japan. "Gentlemen Take Polaroids"

Keep It Simple, Sell!

2011-05-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

Helen DeWitt is a wonderful and brilliant writer. Her book "The Last Samurai" introduced me to the Japanese word "jinsai" which quickly became my nom du jeu (and is part of this blog's URL!)

This post she wrote discusses notable classical composers writing simple pieces.

"It was Beethoven who felt that the desires of the amateur -- or even of the average professional -- were not worth attending to except when he wrote an easy piece to make a little extra money."

My friend Sid Luscious would say "Beethoven is a dope. Making 'a little extra money' is the whole point! Keep It Simple, Sell!"

I'd agree with keeping it simple, but for different reasons.

For most of my artistic career, I have made a conscious effort to write simple songs: no fancy chords, no tricky rhythms, no odd time signatures, and no compositions that rely on technical virtuosity.

Some of this is motivated by a Sid Luscious-esque desire to "sell out". Because that is part of how you make pop songs that endure - keeping it simple. "Simple" songs are more frequently covered, and can be picked up by people just starting to play instruments.

Some of my pop song simplicity is motivated by my own limitations. My instrumental technical skills are modest. I have relatively short fingers for a guitar player or keyboardist, and this affects my ability to conjure some of the more elaborate chords and parts from my instruments. I compensate by using computers, either to play the difficult parts or to allow me to combine 2 simple parts or chords to create a more complex one.

But most of it is the challenge and discipline of staying simple. Simple songs are difficult to write. It is easy to keep a listener from being bored if you are constantly surprising them with new parts and tricky rhythms. It is more difficult to write a short melody that is both instantly memorable and holds up to repeated listening.

For my instrumental/electronic/ambient work, simplicity goes by the wayside, or is at least less overt. Instrumental music by definition has no vocals, and this allows people to listen to the music differently and deeper. This in turn requires instrumental composition to be more rigorous, layered, and tricky.

The Analog vs. Digital Distraction

2011-04-30T15:02:00.000-07:00

Many musicians and listeners assume analog recording (tape) and reproduction (vinyl or tape) is better.

They claim it is "warmer", "more accurate", or that digital is inferior because it "slices sound into tiny pieces".

Mostly this is the music fan's version of wishing for the mythical good old days.

Analog is not better. It's worse, or at best, it's different than digital.

Those who actually lived and worked in the analog days, have a less-romanticized, more realistic perspective on this issue.

Analog wasn't that great. It was limited, it was noisy, it distorted, and it was expensive to use and maintain.

Noise sucks. Noise isn't a "sense of reality", as one blogger claimed. Noise is unwanted signal. As for "the ear-pleasing nature of analog distortion":

Not all analog distortion is the same
Not all analog distortion is"ear-pleasing"
You may not want distortion

The "new type of silence" noted above has been available in music since all-digital recording and gating of channels on mixers were available. Certainly from the late 80s, and arguably earlier.

The original poster argued that people are more tolerant of "noise" in music now. I disagree. People used to tolerate a ridiculous amount of surface noise on recordings. They had to, because listening through it was the only way to get to the music underneath. (Though I suspect the poster was referring to what he considers "noisy music", which is basically music with slightly more abrasive timbre)

In the last few decades, recording technology has removed surface noise and improved quality of reproduction. This means artists can now work with noise and more subtle sound treatments and have it heard.

Just as the first recordings favored loud voices and instruments, the newer, quieter, clearer technologies allow for softer voices and using sounds that would have been previously hidden behind tape hiss or vinyl surface noise. In fact, entire electronic pop styles have evolved out of using timbres that sound just like tape hiss or vinyl surface noise!

The relentless march of instrument technology has also put "noise tools" in the hands of composers in ways that allow them to precisely shape and sculpt any sound. The artists working in so-called "noise" genres are still addressing a niche audience, comprised largely of people looking for something different. The people listening to this music have always been more tolerant of non-traditional timbres.

Reasons people think "analog sounds so good":

They don't have it. You always want what you don't have. 20 years ago everyone wanted to ditch their 1/2" 8-track Otaris for ADATs and DA-88s, because the 8-track analog machines distorted and were too noisy!
People like what's familiar. Most of the "great records" people are familiar with were made on analog gear using old-fashioned methods. Digital recording and instruments allows for a whole different kind of music to be made, and neither the artists nor the listeners have a grip on it yet.
Mythology and a grain of truth. Early CDs and digital recordings did sound relatively less awesome when compared to top-quality analog recordings. But in the 21st century, the quality of analog/digital/analog converters is quite high even at low prices. The myth persists, however.

I can't think of an "analog" recording that wouldn't be just as good digital, or vice versa - when the tools are properly used. These days, digital sounds great - if you know what you're doing. Same with analog. You can make "clean" or "dirty" recordings with both technologies.

My issues with analog are that it's very expensive, power-hungry, and challenging to maintain. In other words, it's elitist - and that may explain why it is so popular amongst some musicians.

At least in my case, the problem with my music isn't that it's being recorded (or created) digitally instead of analog. I can best improve my music by improving the quality of what I'm creating, not how I'm creating it.

In the end, people listen to music, not recordings.

Interview in the Berklee Music Business Journal

2011-04-28T07:32:00.000-07:00

The Berklee College Music Business Journal did a short interview with me about the digital music business and MOG.

[This interview was transcribed by Berklee from a phone conversation and as a result contains some typos.]

I have been rather busy lately working on several new projects, including learning to play fretless bass. I will try to post more frequently.

Thanks for reading!

Interview with Jon Appleton [updated]

2011-03-26T10:19:00.000-07:00

Jon Appleton taught me nearly everything important I know about music and composing. Here's a wonderful interview he just posted on YouTube. Enjoy his creativity and warmth!

I feel incredibly fortunate to have learned from him and remain grateful for the opportunities he provided, the wisdom he imparted, and the challenges he set before me.

His pedagogical style, what he taught, and why he taught were main drivers for my own educational efforts at the Duke University Talent Identification Program and related projects.

[Updated to include the latest version of the video. Thanks, Ray!]

The Ghost Town: Status and Preview

2011-03-17T11:33:00.000-07:00

The album is being mastered by the incredibly talented Michael Hateley of Lotus Mastering, who has mastered such illustrious bands as Green Day, Built To Spill, Mastodon, Slayer, Neil Young, The White Stripes, Tegan And Sara, Josh Groban, Circle Jerks, Rise Against!, Linkin Park, and Sid Luscious and The Pants.

The artwork is being created by the amazing James Carrière, who has done the artwork for 2009's "Overcast" and the yet-to-be-released 2010 "Reflection". ["Reflection" is taking a long time because the book design is both complex and spectacular.]

The book is being designed by the lovely and award-winning Iran Narges, who has been a favorite collaborator for a decade.

I expect to have a listening/release party in a month or two.

For the time being, you can listen to these low bit rate, unmastered MP3s.

Jinsai's player:

RPM 2011: The Finish Line

2011-02-28T17:58:00.000-08:00

Day 28 - 7 Songs, 37 minutes

It's done. RPM 2011: "The Ghost Town".

The Empty Sky
For the Love of Mary Lee
Tumbleweed
Interstate Wasteland
The Ghost Town
What The Wire Said
The Crossing

Total running time: 35:56

That's not the cover image, that's a picture of my cowboy boots, used for my "method recording" technique.

CD mailed off to RPM Challenge today at lunch. As per usual, there will likely be some minor tweaks to mixes and mastering, but the record is, for all intents and purposes, done.

I will have an "official" release once I have cover art.

My 2010 album "Reflection" will also be officially released soon, as the cover art for that is taking a bit longer than planned - but it is so totally worth the wait!

RPM 2011: Week 4

2011-02-27T20:28:00.000-08:00

Day 21 - 6 songs, 32 minutes
Great to have a holiday. Slow start with houseguests, but I did get to work at last. Worked on finishing up tracks that were close, and started the heavy work on "The Empty Sky".

After the gym I made final tweaks. "The Crossing", "The Ghost Town", "Tumbleweed", and "For the Love of Mary Lee" are all in the can. That leaves "The Empty Sky" and "What The Wire Said".

"Empty Sky" needs some major work. I really like it (even if no one else did!) but I have to polish it up, and that means throwing out nearly all the recorded tracks. I got pretty far on it today.

"What The Wire Said" needs vocals and a bit of structural tightening. I can probably get that done tomorrow.

Then I just have to write one more track before Sunday ends...

Day 23 - 6 songs, 32 minutes
I fly to New York for work. I listen to the existing mixes and make a few notes. Can't do anything else, between working and flying I have barely any time to think

Day 24 - 6 songs, 32 minutes
I fly back from New York, the return trip taking almost double the time the outbound leg did. I get home after midnight, my body tired and on the verge of being sick.

Day 25 - 6 songs, 32 minutes
I spend the day working at home, and the evening doing some touch-ups on the existing mixes.

Day 26 - 6 songs, 32 minutes
I spent the morning working on "What The Wire Said", redoing the vocals, adding effects and a few percussion parts, and editing and tightening.

I spend the afternoon struggling with a new track, which will be called "Interstate Wasteland". I sketch out a bit, laying down a beat, some chords, and writing far too many lyrics.

Day 27 - 7 Songs, 37 minutes
After my usual slow Sunday, I went down to the studio and started working on "Interstate Wasteland". I quickly edited the lyrics down to just 3 verses and changed the chord progression to allow for a nicer melody. I had to do a bunch of vocal experiments before I got a take I liked.

I had a few brief flashes of panic - was this totally awful? - but I powered through, adding some nice guitar parts and a few simple production touches.

I reached a point where I couldn't think of anything else to do - I was noodling on guitar, noodling on keyboards. Clearly the song was finished. Well, maybe after some backing vocals.

Touched up the mixes for "Empty Sky" and "Tumbleweed" and went to the gym for a quick workout and to listen.

Sounds pretty good. Some final touches, and "Interstate Wasteland" is probably finished. I render out WAVs, install WaveLab 7 demo, and build a potential master CD.

Tomorrow, final touches and mailing off!

RPM 2011: Week 3

2011-02-21T19:32:00.000-08:00

Day 14 - 4 songs, 23 minutes
Today was Valentine's Day. My lovely wife is far more important than my RPM Project. I spent my free time with her.

Day 15 - 5 songs, 27 minutes
Tonight I quickly assembled the foundation of a new song - "Tumbleweed". Clip-clop trip-hop at its finest. Needs vocals and a bunch of other fixes. But the basics are there. Have a rough melody in place. As always, wondering if the melody is any good.

Day 16 - 5 songs, 27 minutes
Extended "Tumbleweed" out to nearly final length, though it's still missing a few important sections. I laid down some vocals with rough lyrics and put a few harmonies down. Sounding pretty good. Sort of like Cowboy Shriekback rolling through Las Vegas in Massive Attack's muscle car.

I need to re-do the guitars, finish the lyrics, and maybe write a bridge and riff.

Looking like this record might have fewer songs than previous ones, but they'll likely be longer songs. That's not so bad. "Meddle" by Pink Floyd is that way.

Day 17 - 5 songs, 27 minutes
Stayed up late working on "Tumbleweed". Got Tumbleweed to correct length, including adding a longer 2nd verse and some other adjustments. I finished writing the words but it was too late to lay them down.

Day 18 - 5 songs, 28 minutes
Today I laid in more vocals for "Tumbleweed", adjusted the mix, and added a Spanish-sounding guitar solo to the bridge, and some more twang to the outro. Fixed some problems with the bass, too. It's not bad. Sounds very clip-clop trip-hop!

Day 19 - 6 songs, 31 minutes
First day of a three-day weekend, and a lot to do, as this is the penultimate weekend and I have to travel next week.

I had a bunch of clean-up to do on some of the other songs, but I wanted to get some new things down first - clean-up is good to save for short bursts and/or when you aren't feeling too inspired.

Sometimes creativity and songs just do what they want to do. I had intended to work on a faster new song, but "For the Love of Mary Lee" just wouldn't leave me alone. I spent the morning working up some flamenco-style rhythms, studying Spanish guitar YouTube videos, and by mid-day had started to pull together a nice 6/8 feel for the track, complete with handclaps.

When the Muse pulls you in a particular direction, it's best just to follow - the guitar parts came effortlessly (well, the writing - I am still a terrible acoustic player) and sounded very nice.

Melody was going to be a bit of a problem, as my original draft of "Mary Lee" was in a different key and major. I worked on it, wrote the lyrics, had something that would probably work overall.

My voice was pretty tired, and I'm not sure I like singing in the higher register for this one. So much of the rest of the record is in the low-voice/Johnny Cash vein, and the higher voice seems a little too "Broadway". I intended for this song to be one of those fado-ish extremely "emotional" types of songs, and I wanted it to be like "El Paso" and "The Streets of Laredo" in terms of its melody, content, etc. and those are on the pretty side as well. I just think it sounds weird right now.

Tomorrow I'll probably take a whack at vocals in the low octave. Might be too low. I dunno. Maybe I'm over-thinking it. Like the last few records, at this point I worry the latest song isn't as "good" as the other songs already completed for the project.

Day 20 - 6 songs, 32 minutes
Sometimes, when you think you've gone the wrong way creatively, the right answer is not to go back, but to go farther in the "wrong" direction.

I tried redoing the vocals in a low octave. No dice. And the chorus already sounded good. So I redid all the vocals in the original octave, and worked until I had a nice solid performance. I added some handclaps, more guitars, and added some subliminal Wall of Voodoo drum machine. I think it sounds great.

Went to the gym. Did some errands. I adjusted a couple of other mixes and then some unexpected guests showed up, which more or less ended my day a bit prematurely. Good news is I am within sight of the finish line.

Bad news is that even though I have 1 week left, none of the songs are finalized yet. There are some that are very close to done, but they all need tweaks ranging from minor (shaker down 1 dB!) to major (re-track all guitars and vocals, re-do drums).

I will finish. It will be a good record. But it's going to be a busy week and tight weekend...

Why Products Really Suck, Part 2

2011-02-17T08:48:00.000-08:00

Your Team Is The Enemy
If you're like most product managers, you don't get to choose your team. You get whatever resources the company has available - engineers, QA, design, project management, and so on.

Sometimes you get a team of great people. Sometimes you get so much deadwood and burn-out cases you're afraid a spark may ignite the whole bunch.

You will almost certainly have fewer people than you'd like, and you may have fewer people than you need.

But regardless, they are your team. They are the ones who will be doing most of the actual work of creating the product.

Your job is to make sure they make the right product. And it's tricky, because without proper guidance and structure, your team is the enemy, and they will wreck your product.

Lights, Camera, Action
In many ways, Product Managers are like directors, and products are like films. The products have themes. The participants need to understand their motivation - why are they doing what they're doing? And the Product Manager needs to make it all happen.

If you don't direct them, your team will wander, literally and metaphorically. Good products come from teams that know exactly what they're building and why. Teams need to know what's important about their product - what makes it worth building? They need to know the most important use cases (things users will do with the app) and invest development effort there.

They need to know where the value in your product is coming from. Is designing a new kind of scroll bar a good time investment? (probably not, because it's not what's driving your product's value) How about a whizzy new database? (only if it's something your product relies on). Many teams wander because the individuals have their own agendas...because the product manager wasn't clear about what the team's agenda should be.

Imagine a bunch of actors on a set. They all have particular goals and takes on their characters. They may even have different acting styles. In good movies, the director works to blend everything together and pull it in service of a common goal. Gratuitous, unnecessary, or inappropriate elements are cut. The same should be true with products.

Focus
Once I worked on a software product intended for audio playback. The engineers had a very cool interface technology that allowed for some very ahead-of-its-time customization of the UI. We all thought it was neat, so we included it in the player. The code was solid, and it had minimal CPU impact...but it was a mistake.

The feature did not drive the core value proposition of the app, and actively distracted users and the company from the app's true value proposition. The sales guys were showing off that part of the product because it was visual and different. People got excited and wanted enhancements. But improving that part of the product didn't help the business. It was a huge distraction.

If you let your team drive the product, you may get a bunch of cool features and designs, but they won't cohere, and they may not drive your core value proposition.

Democracy Is Bad
On a movie set, the director makes all the decisions. Right or wrong. In most of the successful rock bands, one person makes the final decisions. Same is true of the best product teams. And that person is the product manager. YOU are responsible for whether or not it's any good.

Product management is not a democracy. Many people have opinions and perspectives, but only one person has responsibility. Some refer to the Product Manager as the "one neck to wring". The trade-off for that liability is "final cut" or final approval. Use it.

If you don't, you are not likely to end up with a great product - one that has a vision, a theme, and some bold direction. You'll get oatmeal. A bunch of things that are OK. Or you might get a bunch of stuff in a box which sort of works.

I believe the best design visions, the best products, the best art all come from single perspectives. They can be made richer via other input and may require other people to execute, but there should only be one "designer".

Don't Be A Dictator
That is not to say you should be dictatorial. You should strive to build a harmonious team. And you must listen to everyone with great care, and take their comments and concerns seriously. Build consensus where possible.

The key words are "where possible." Despite best efforts, you are going to reach a point where your team disagrees. There are many ways to drive consensus ("Fist of Five" being a good one). Don't be afraid to make a call. Just make sure you have reasons for doing it, and make sure the team understands.

Alienating your team is a fast-track to failure. You cannot succeed without them.

Fires
Most of the time, you work with grown-ups. Even if they aren't in love with the project or your decisions, they will bring their "A-game" (or at least their B-game) every day and get stuff done. But sometimes you get stuck with a bad apple.

This can be the person who simply doesn't pull their weight. It can be someone who undermines the team explicitly, by being a jerk to the team, being overly negative about the project, or who constantly argues with you about direction. This can also be someone who is talking to people in the company above you without your knowledge.

These are small fires. If you don't put them out, they can grow quickly and result in product wreckage. It might be cancellation, reduced buy-in, or just demoralization.

The first and best approach is to find out what's bothering the team member and see if you can mollify them.

But do not be afraid to request their removal from the team. Often it's best just to get them out of the picture.

Feedback
Provide lots of low-latency feedback to your team. In other words, talk to them a lot, and talk to them as the project is in motion.

Important things to do:

Talk to all team members every work day. Not just to pester them about "are you done yet?", but ask what obstacles they're encountering. What can you do to help them succeed?
Know your team. If you want to understand your team, get to know them. Maybe your developer is slow this week because he's having personal problems.
Eat lunch together. Buy your team lunch every now and then. Even if the company won't expense it, you can get everyone a sandwich somewhere for not that much money. It's hard to be a jerk to someone you had a sandwich with yesterday, and everyone likes the surprise of a literal free lunch. Plus it fosters communication. And I don't mean "bring in a pizza and keep working." I mean get OUT of the office, go sit down somewhere, and relax.
Regular reviews. Periodically review the accomplishments. Praise hard work. Look for things causing problems. This is most important early in the project and at the conclusion of the project.

This stuff may seem overly basic, but I am always surprised at how often people don't do one or more.

Up next: YOU are the reason.

RPM 2011: Week 2

2011-02-14T13:42:00.000-08:00

Continuing updates on my progress with my RPM 2011 album "The Ghost Town":

Day 7- 3 songs, 12 minutes
More tweaks to "What The Wire Said". Lots of writing and thinking. A bit of experimentation around a new track with a kind of old English melody. Sounds a bit too cheesy right now, but I have a verse and a chorus. We'll see how that goes.

Day 8 - 3 songs, 12 minutes
I played some of the tracks in progress for James (the amazing photographer) and Iran. Feedback was generally good. Surprisingly strong responses to "What The Wire Said", which I was not expecting. And rather muted or tepid reactions to "The Empty Sky", which I think is rather good. I think "Sky" needs mix tightening and some palette changes. The melody and underlying structure are good. Just needs refurbishing.

Still, that bit of feedback sort of knocked me off my game a bit. I had hoped to balance the moodier, slower tracks with some more upbeat stuff. Will anyone want to listen to 35 minutes of slow(cow)poke music? Will I want to make it? Will it be interesting?

Hard to tell.

Day 9 - 3 songs, 19 minutes
Today I extended "What The Wire Said". It's a bit too long now but the general shape is there. I added acoustic guitar in some nice ways and a tiny bit of JX-3P (gotta use that gear!). At 11 minutes(!) this might be the longest track I've recorded. I think it's sounding pretty good.

With the 3 songs I have so far, this feels like about 15 or so minutes, which is really great progress for such a short time.

Day 10 - 3 songs, 19 minutes
Listened to the tracks some more, but aside from some notes scribbling and a brief bit of morning picking, the rest of the day was burned with work-related activities.

Day 11 - 3 songs, 19 minutes
Had to go in to work early today for meetings and had to go to a friend's birthday. Aside from some listening, no work on RPM today.

Day 12 - 3 songs, 19 minutes
Frustration and false starts. Being Saturday, I had hoped to get a whole track done and work out. I started on one track, but realized it was far too derivative of Wall of Voodoo. As in: it sounded exactly like Wall of Voodoo. There's a fine line between homage, influence, and derivative rip-off. I was on the wrong side of that line, but it took a long time to figure that out.

I started on another track, but it felt very stiff and I couldn't get it to feel right. I pushed through sheer force of effort, but I kind of hate it.

By the end of the day, my back was hurting and I was frustrated. I can't remember so many total wipe-outs on tracks in past RPM years, but maybe I'm just selectively remembering. Went to the gym and hoped for a better day tomorrow.

Day 13 - 4 songs, 23 minutes
Got off to a typically slow Sunday start today, but I was determined to finish a track. I went downstairs to the studio and started picking on the guitar. I rather quickly came up with a nice guitar pattern for a verse and chorus.

I sketched out some words and a melody. I tried to focus on the emerging themes and vibe of the record and decided this needed to be the title track. This also forced me to lock in a title: "The Ghost Town".

I struggled to lay down the acoustic guitar - I really am a poor acoustic player. Thank god for digital editing. I think it has a nice, loose vibe, though. I spent the next few hours building up the track, adding in some low synth rumble, melodica, fake lap steel, shaker and vocals.

Lots of time spent experimenting with different acoustic samples and background ambiences.

Finished the track shortly after dinner. I think it's a good one.

RPM 2011: Week 1

2011-02-06T20:19:00.000-08:00

I will be posting some short notes each week about my work on RPM 2011...

Day 1
Fought with Cubase. Couldn't get the metronome working in Cubase 5.52. Still got a skeleton track down. Many pages of notes about what to make this year.

Also realized I didn't have the 1.0.2 version of ValhallaShimmer - important because 1.0.1 didn't support presets!

Beginning track is the first idea that came into my head, currently just a verse/chorus outline.

Day 2
Cubase 6 arrives. Installed. Normally I would never upgrade software in the middle of a critical project, but these can be run side-by-side. Fortunately so far it is way better than 5.52.

More guitars. Song stretched from initial ABCD structure to a more fleshed out IABCD_ABCDDDD type-thing. Started on lyrics.

Feeling extremely tired again, so this is about as much as I can accomplish, other than working on some notes in the notebook.

Day 3
Lyrics for first song finished. Not much done today other than sharpening melodies on the commute - I have to be at work extra early (8 am) and will be staying extra late (leaving after 8 pm). TIRED.

Day 4
Vocals put down in early morning before going off to work.

Can't do much else because of work and tickets to see The Church play 3 classic albums at a nice small venue. TIRED.

On the motorcycle ride over to the show, I start singing some parts for other songs. Hope I remember them.

First song is probably going to be around 4:30. Not a bad start.

Day 5
Pushed a bit further on track 1 (working title: "The Empty Sky"). Burned most of the day having a nice visit with a friend (plus two hours of driving and errands).

After dinner I started a new track ("What The Wire Said"). I am intending for this to be a long epic, but I only have time and patience to sketch it out.

Day 6
Today after a typical late Sunday morning, I expanded on last night's track, building it up to about 5 minutes. I have a long punch list for both tracks so far, and need to keep making progress overall.

Went out for a run and thought about another song. Wrote some words and a melody in my head. Got back and picked out some nice chords on guitar.

TIME names MOG App in 50 Best of 2011

2011-02-02T18:00:00.000-08:00

The MOG app I designed and manage was recently chosen by TIME magazine as one of the "50 Best Apps of 2011". This puts my work on the same list as Brian Eno's!

Coincidentally, MOG just released a very nice update to the App which went live on Monday.

The TIME magazine citation joins the Billboard "Best Streaming App" award MOG won in 2010. It is quite satisfying to be recognized (albeit abstractly), especially considering some of my history in the business.

Credit is due to the fantastic developers, visual designers, and quality assurance people at MOG. As one of my friends said, I have the easy part: the "dreaming-up" job. They're the ones who actually make it all happen.

MOG has many more great things to add, and some exciting plans for the rest of the year. If you like music, it's worth checking out. Available for iPhone and Android.

A Brief History of the Music Business: Video Talk

2011-01-31T08:01:00.000-08:00

A talk I gave at Loyola University on the history of the music business is now available online here.

It's about an hour long and is a distillation of a number of things I've talked about over the last few years.

(Note that I am incorrectly identified as the "co-founder of Rhapsody Music". While I was the product manager and wrote the initial business plan, I was neither a founder of TuneTo.com (where the product and technology were born) nor a founder of Listen.com (which launched Rhapsody 1.0).)

UPDATED: The last, important thing? "WEAR YOUR EARPLUGS." (And disabled the auto-start...sorry about that!)

Best Reissues of 2010

2011-01-01T11:13:00.000-08:00

2010 continued the record industry's trend of jamming out reissues, remasters, and deluxe editions. Selling updated versions of existing products is a marketing trick nearly as old as commerce itself. Clearly, it is working for the music business.

Cynicism aside, many of the first CD releases sounded terrible for a variety of reasons. In some cases, the wrong master tapes were used or the best master tapes couldn't be found. In other cases, the tape-to-digital transfers suffered from the (relatively) poor quality of the early analog-to-digital converters.

Most of the top-shelf musical canon has already been reissued multiple times. So now the industry can turn its attention to albums more off the beaten path. Fewer sales but more devoted fans with high willingness to buy.

The good news is that in many cases, the people working on the reissues do a fantastic job, unearthing rare or lost tracks, cleaning up audio, and producing nice packaging. The bad news is these reissues are often harmed by cut-rate packaging, sloppy audio remastering, a surfeit of tracks, and too-high price tags.

Without further ado, here are the awards...

Best Bonus Tracks:
Duran Duran "Duran Duran"

Duran Duran were one of the first bands that made me hunt and search for tracks and inspired the largely lost art of locating the obscure.

Duran Duran released all kinds of remixes, singles, and 12" maxis which were only available as imports. Their first album even swapped out one of the original tracks ("To The Shore") for a hot single ("Is There Something I Should Know?") when it was widely released in the USA.

And many of those early tracks were great stuff - as good or better than what was on the record.

This year, Duran Duran continued rolling out their reissues. The best was their first album. Sonically, it's not a substantial improvement. Some argue that it sounds worse than the original release.

Of course, it includes all of the b-sides from the singles and 12" maxis, and the "Night Versions". This is less of a revelation since the previously-released "Singles" boxes put them all out there several years ago.

What it does include, however, are some demo versions that are really interesting. The demos are simultaneously both more "rock" and more "disco" than the album versions. The early version of "Girls On Film" has an awkward cadence which would be dropped for the final release version. Mostly they sound like what they are - a live band composed largely of enthusiastic young men.

Artwork and photography is pretty and comes in a nice box. Band loses huge points for not including lyrics, however, which they did even on the previous cheap-o standard release.

Ultimately, this reissue serves to validate the quality of the band's early work and the freshness of their sound, without wearing out its welcome.

Too Much of a Good Thing:
Arcadia "So Red The Rose"
Propaganda "A Secret Wish"

Sometimes, reissues rekindle your love for an old favorite. And sometimes it's like having dinner with your ex-wife: too much, and you remember why you stopped listening in the first place.

The reissue of Arcadia's "So Red The Rose" is fantastic. Seriously. It sounds great. It includes rare videos and specials. A whole second disc of bonus tracks including a whole single I'd never even heard before.

The artwork is mostly an improvement, though the credits contain some typos and fail to reproduce the full artwork the way the initial CD release did.

I also like this record a lot - in some ways, it's the best "Duran Duran" album made, even though technically it's not Duran Duran.

But 2 CDs filled to the rim is a bit much. There are a number of remixes of the same tracks (single versions!) which aren't tremendously different from the album mixes - this is the sort of stuff that makes collectors happy, but makes most listeners reach for the "skip" button.

Propaganda's "A Secret Wish" is also a study in obsession.

Originally released in 1985, "A Secret Wish" was the first album by a new band signed to Trevor Horn's legendary Zang Tuum Tumb label (whose name, like his band "The Art of Noise", comes straight out of the Italian Futurist movement).

The album is a masterpiece of orchestral synth pop. The new (at the time) Waldorf PPG synthesizer is mixed with sampled strings and the unusual voices of the singers to produce something dark, Teutonic, and Expressionistic. Their hand is tipped with "Dr. Mabuse", which also features a sly homage to musique concrete at the beginning. David Sylvian played guitar on the record, even.

The band fell apart after this record, losing one of their female singers and most of their momentum. Their much-anticipated second album (featuring Derek Forbes, Simple Minds' amazing bass player) was not very good. And then they basically broke up.

In 1985, I remember looking at the CD version, which I could not afford, and marveling at the technical information presented on the back, including the producer indicating which songs had digital clicks and "overs". Then I realized the mix durations were different from the vinyl album I had...were they different mixes?

I never was able to find out. The CD version I bought many years later sounded just like the vinyl.

This year, Propaganda's masterpiece received the Deluxe treatment. Turns out the producer did a separate set of CD mixes after the "analog" mixes were done and sent off to the duplicator. These CD mixes are considered the definitive versions, and the original "analog" mixes are relegated to the end of disc 1.

The CD mixes are surprising in a few details. They're not necessarily "better", per se, but they show how nuts the producer was going, clearly obsessed with the project and adding breakdowns, build-ups, crazy string sections, and so forth. The songs stretch out, taking their time through their intros. One is over 11 minutes long.

I suppose it's fitting that music that has been so obsessed over by creators and fans deserves this kind of treatment. You get the definitive album - all 9 tracks, now with great sound. It's all anyone could ask for. But then there are the six analog mixes right after. Didn't I just hear this?

And then there's also disc 2, which features all sorts of odds and ends, including "rare cassette-only promotional mixes". 11 tracks, which are nearly all remixes of the same 9 songs you just spent an hour with.

Too much! Back on the shelf for now!

Way Too Much of a Good Thing:

David Bowie "Station To Station [Super Deluxe Edition]"

Start by noting the original album "Station To Station" consists of 6 songs. It barely hits its 38-minute running time due to the long introduction on the title track.

It is a classic of the rock canon and one of Bowie's better and more listenable records.

The reissue costs more than $100.

It consists of 5 discs: the original album, the 1985 remaster, 2 live CDs, and a disc of singles mixes. To clarify, you get the original mastering (too murky!) and a new master from the original tape (too tinny!), a live concert spread across 2 discs, and a disc with slightly different mixes designed for radio.

They throw in vinyl versions of the original album and live set.

There's also a DVD with more than one set of high resolution and 5.1 mixes of the same 6 songs.

Because that's not enough, they throw in a bunch of other junk, too: liner notes with "never before seen photos", a poster, replicas of backstage passes, concert tickets, fan club folders, membership cards, bio sheet, and some buttons.

It's a great record, essential listening. But the rest of it is the definition of overkill.

Most Welcome Sonic Improvement:

The Cure "Disintegration"

When this record came out, I listened to the vinyl and thought it sounded murky. It had the tired rock disclaimer "this music was meant to be played loud", which meant the band had mixed it too loud and due to the Fletcher-Munson curve, it was going to sound weird unless you actually played it back loud as well.

"Disintegration" is a really good record. It took me a while to realize this when it first came out, but seeing the band at Great Woods sealed the deal for me. If you only listen to one record by the Cure (as many recommend), this should be it.

The remaster largely fixes the murky sound of the original at the expense of adding a bit more unneeded compression (an unfortunate trend in nearly all of these reissues, which I suspect will allow the labels to release "full dynamic range" versions in another 5 or 10 years!)

The "Deluxe Edition" throws in 2 more discs. One is the set of demos for the entire record. Like most Cure demos, these are relatively boring: they're rough versions of the album songs, sometimes instrumental, generally nearly identical to the final versions except not as nicely recorded. No real revelations here, nor anything even die-hard fans will revist.

The other disc is a reissue of "Entreat" (called "Entreat Plus"), a live concert where the band performs the entirety of "Disintegration". The Cure are a great live band, and their live recordings tend to be quite solid. "Entreat Plus" doesn't disappoint, but like many of the reissues this year, by the time you've finished this disc you've heard the songs on the album 3 times. That's a bit much for anyone, and while The Cure play well, they do play the songs just like the album, so again, not much discovery here.

The better sound makes it worth the price of admission, but try to track down the single-disc remaster!

Biggest Surprise:

Nine Inch Nails "Pretty Hate Machine"

It's not fashionable to like Nine Inch Nails anymore, and if you do, it's not fashionable to like this record. The remaster, however, is rather exciting.

It sounds great - arguably the biggest sonic improvement and best overall sounding record of the bunch. I couldn't find a playback system that didn't make this sound amazing.

It's also become an interesting historical document. Some of the tracks on the album have not aged well, but the good stuff ("Head Like A Hole", "Terrible Lie") still sounds ahead of its time.

The record sounds unusually drenched in reverb by today's standards. Otherwise its bracing digital textures sound even fresher today than they did back when it was released 20 years ago. It's easy to hear why this record was so influential for so many aspiring musicians. It's also very easy to hear Trent Reznor's influences - "Down In It" is clearly derivative of Skinny Puppy's "Dig It" (which Reznor freely admits), and much of the rest of the album pulls from various flavors of the near-industrial music of its time.

2010's Greatest Hits

2010-12-31T23:59:00.000-08:00

My 12 Greatest Hits of 2010:

January: Started a new full-time job at MOG. As the year progressed, my good fortune was reinforced. Unemployment is high and expected to remain so for a few more years; I am still surprised at how much I'm enjoying my new job. I have great colleagues.
February: Despite a massive computer failure and near-loss of valuable data, I managed to complete my RPM record "Reflection", and people like it! Full release coming soon...
March: Showed surprisingly complete demos of both MOG apps at SXSW to the press, got good reviews
April: Wrote a new song for pop-punk band Victim Nation
May: Attended the wedding of my good friends Rich and Humu; traveled back east to see my cousin Claire get married and see other friends and relatives.
June: Played guitar with The Disciples of Vice.
July: Launched both the MOG iPhone and Android apps!
August: Got fitted for custom shoes and boots.
September: The new and improved Sid Luscious and The Pants debuted at the Portola Festival. Had a nice getaway at a resort.
October: The MOG app I built won Billboard's "Best Streaming App of 2010", beating the Rhapsody app (which I also built!) and the Thumbplay app.
November: Spent a nice Thanksgiving with relatives in Napa and met my brother's fiancee. Congratulations to them both!
December: Celebrated 10 years as a couple with my wonderful wife. And my friend Sid Luscious played a show at the Great American Music Hall.

I didn't write as much as I would have liked, a combination of things like lots of work, Fallout: New Vegas, and various other distractions. I hope to rectify that and my other flaws in 2011!

Happy New Year!

Favorite New Music for 2010 [updated]

2010-12-27T10:49:00.000-08:00

I listened to a lot of music in 2010, including most of the albums on most critics' lists. Some were pretty good. Most were terrible. I won't pretend that my selections here are comprehensive or definitive, but I enjoyed all of these records quite a bit.

Album of the Year: Gil Scott-Heron - "I'm New Here"

This record embodies many artistic virtues. It's heartfelt, honest, modern, and brief. Rather than hiring The Roots and recreating the sound of a classic 70s album, producer Richard Russell keeps it contemporary. Like Gil Scott-Heron himself, the album sits somewhere between rap, hip-hop, jazz, and blues.

There are only a few actual songs on the album, but like the chocolate chips in a cookie, this makes them even more special. The rest is spoken word or mood pieces. It's barely a half-hour long. But I love it, and everyone I played it for loved it as well.

Listen to I'm New Here.

Silver Medal: Neil Young - "Le Noise"

Neil Young is 65 years old, and not in the best of health. He could certainly be forgiven for either retiring or putting out a nice, quiet, lazy record.

This year he delivered "Le Noise", an album that felt like the work of a (forgive the pun) young musician. And I mean that in the best way possible. "Le Noise" delivers the kind of concept and production that typically only new musicians go for.

The album is just Neil Young and guitar. But it's mostly electric guitar. So rather than old folky/fogey strumming, Neil Young (and producer Daniel Lanois, for whom the album is punningly named) unleash billowing clouds and roaring oceans of guitar noise, feedback, and looping delays. Only a young musician would have the bravery and excitement about the sound and material to say "you know what, it doesn't need drums or bass or anything. Release it like that." (though I'm awaiting the inevitable "remixes" where people drop drums and bass on top).

But he isn't some tyro - he's a veteran songwriter, singer, and performer, and that means the album also has a sure hand, excellent performances, and solid songs.

Replace Neil Young's name and voice with anyone's, and this record would have likely topped many critics' lists. And again, he keeps it brief - about 35 minutes start to stop, which makes it easy to digest as a whole listening experience.

Listen to Le Noise.

Pop Category: Robyn - "Body Talk, Part 1"

As a songwriter and as someone who "follows the music industry", I listen to a lot of popular music in different genres. Today's modern pop music is really dumb. Willfully stupid. Awful.

This sort of idiocy is embodied by Kesha. Everything about Kesha - production, image, and overall vibe - is crass, cynical, depressing pandering to the lowest common denominator.

So if you want to dance and you want something that sounds good on the radio and you need a blonde pop tart to present it, what do you do?

Robyn is your answer. Produced in the same Swedish gene labs as Abba and other pop superstars, Robyn released 3 EPs and an album this year, all called "Body Talk".

It's great Top 40 radio dance pop, full of synthesizers, drum machines, and bright, harmonized vocals. No Auto-Tune singing robots.

What sets Robyn apart from everyone else? Songwriting and emotion. Robyn writes wonderful melodies (and unlike Kesha, she writes her own material). She sings with emotion and a big, solid voice. And her lyrics aren't half bad, especially when compared to the scribbling that most other pro songwriting teams hand in.

"Body Talk, Part 1" is a great example of pop music circa 2010. Solid songs, and again, brief. I think it's a better listening experience all the way through than Part 2, 3, or the full album. However, make sure you also check out "Indestructible", which is a really strong song missing from "Part 1".

Listen to Body Talk, Part 1.

Instrumental Ambient: Robin Guthrie - "Carousel"

Robin Guthrie played guitar in Cocteau Twins, and his solo records sound like Cocteau Twins albums minus the keening vocals. I find this to be a great improvement.

Shimmering chorused clean electric guitars twinkle like snowflakes or city lights. There's the occasional synthesizer or electric piano. On some tracks drums splash and crash in the distance. The tempos are slow and dreamy.

It's surf music in space, or at the bottom of the sea.

Yes, it can be a little same-y at times, but it's pretty. I found myself playing this at work a lot and probably listened to this more than any two of the other albums on this list combined. Some of it is quite beautiful, and a few of the pieces are evocative and emotional. Another short record, too!

Listen to Carousel.

Hip-Hop: The Roots - "How I Got Over"

Everyone is gushing over the new Kanye West album. I can only assume that Kanye's hype and obnoxious public persona are what they're really paying attention to.

There's no other reason for the public to continue to ignore or underrate The Roots. Real musicians playing real instruments, writing their own hooks rather than sampling others. They can rap. They have lots of friends. But they don't jump up on stage in front of people and say outrageous things.

They made what may be their best overall album this year. While it doesn't really have a track as immediately arresting as "Get Busy", nothing else out there really sounds like this. It's a rare hip-hop record filled with the joy of making music rather than the joy of posturing.

Like many of my favorite albums, this really grew on me over time this year.

Listen to How I Got Over.

Late To The Party: Iggy Pop - "Preliminaires"

This record came out in mid-2009, but I didn't really listen to it until this year. It's a "fake jazz" album, according to Iggy. It's also a sort of sci-fi concept album, brief, and in some ways similar to the Gil Scott-Heron album.

Iggy's voice sounds wonderfully rich, deep, and weathered. He's got a synthy cover of "Insensatez", a New Orleans-ey stomper ("King of The Dogs"), and a tip of the hat to some of his old stuff ("Party Time").

But my favorites are the slower, darker numbers like "I Want To Go To The Beach" and "It's Nice To Be Dead".

Many people will dismiss this album because they only want to see Iggy smearing peanut butter on his lithe frame and yowling about TV Eyes and his Lust For Life. But Iggy is 63 - nearly the same age as Neil Young - and this is a much more age-appropriate record (for Pop and for me!) without being embarrassing! It's the kind of album that reminds you for all of his stage antics, Iggy Pop is an artist.

Listen to Preliminaires.

[UPDATE] Other Notable Albums:

LCD Soundsystem "This Is Happening" is a more consistent album than "Sound of Silver", but because it sounds almost exactly like the last record, it's less transcendant. Still very good, though
Bryan Ferry "Olympia". I really wanted to like this record more. I dug the remixes of "You Can Dance" more than the album version, though. Still pretty nice.
Underworld's "Barking" started off pretty strong but failed to keep up all the way through. It's also very much "more of the same" from them, which is both very good and very bad at this point. I really liked the first 3 tracks.
Devo's "Something For Everybody" was a great album the first few times I listened to it. Then, like bubblegum, the flavor wore off. The brickwalled mastering hurt my ears. The record runs at least 4 songs too long (brevity is the key in 2010, guys!), and Devo undermines their own breathtaking cynicism with some open-hearted ballading. I can't tell if they're joking or not, and that's a bad thing. Still, when you first hear the robot disco grooves of songs like "What We Do", it's hard not to start doing bad new wave dancing.
The new Kanye West album had a couple of good tracks on it, but these were offset by the relentless hype as well as a few tracks that were so amazingly, jaw-droppingly bad I could not get all the way through them.
I really wanted to like the Big Boi album. I thought it was boring.
Most of the 3rd Harold Budd & Clive Wright collaboration album "Little Windows" was good, but I have a hard time recommending it to anyone who doesn't think Harold Budd is a genius. And many of Clive Wright's tracks should be half as long and lighter on the vibrato.

There's a lack of "first albums by bands" on this list in 2010, which is personally disappointing for me. I want to like new music by new bands. I just didn't hear any that made an impact this year.

10 years after the "digital revolution" little has changed. The iron grip radio and MTV held over taste-making, the public ear, and stardom has been replaced by Pitchfork and other blogs and various internet sites and memes. Look at most of the lists people cite and you'll see a tremendous amount of similarity. This is more due to the effectiveness of PR machinery than a true consensus on how "great" some of this music is.

Still, plenty of good stuff came out this year.

Up next: 2010's bumper crop of reissues!

WikiLeaks Thoughts

2010-12-23T22:39:00.000-08:00

I have mixed feelings about WikiLeaks' recent release of classified information. (Bruce Sterling wrote about it rather well, it's worth checking out.)

However, I have even more mixed feelings about the response to WikiLeaks. Much like terrorism, I think our reactions to the events are both more telling and potentially more destructive than the events themselves.

Here are a few things to consider:

US security for this kind of material is clearly terrible.

WikiLeaks is a relatively small, powerless, and benign organization. If they were able to acquire this kind of material with relative ease, what can a large, powerful, and malevolent organization achieve? What have they already achieved?

If all this material was so sensitive, why wasn't it better protected? Individual messages weren't encrypted. It was all easy enough for one person to access without setting off any alarms, and literally walk out the door with it. Again, this person (Manning) wasn't someone with spectacularly high-level security clearances.

There have been many discussions lately about potential collateral damage:

The WikiLeaks release may put diplomats and other agents of the USA in harm's way
I have heard pundits say the "revenge" DDOS attacks aimed at PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa may hurt "the poor" (who "depend on credit cards during this holiday season") and "craftspeople" (who rely on the big financial companies to process gift transactions)

...and yet there has been very little discussion of the people who have already been actually harmed by actions taken which WikiLeaks and others have uncovered.

I'm referring to the tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis killed, maimed, and injured; of the people rendered by the USA to other countries for torture and interrogation; of the US soldiers killed in 2 wars, with many injuries and deaths propagandized or covered up.

This is not to say these wars are good or bad - that's a topic for another post - but the US media continues to ignore the deaths.

Is it reasonable to attempt to control the WikiLeaks information now that it is available on the Internet? Like any MP3 or movie, the WikiLeaks data is widely available to the general public and will be forever.

People who work for the government or even may want to work for the government are being discouraged or forbidden from reading the (now publicly available and widespread) material, as if it will taint or corrupt them somehow.

The admonition seems ridiculous, and the implied threat (if we can prove you read this stuff, you may be in trouble) seems like something from the Soviet Union's darkest days.

Clearly legitimate news sites like the New York Times are being threatened for covering the material
Companies which provide any services potentially related to this material are being threatened (and are rapidly caving under pressure)
These companies are also acting in disconcerting ways - see Bank of America's refusal to process donations to WikiLeaks. Should your bank be allowed to dictate what you can and can't do with your money?

If all that can happen before any trial or charges, what does it mean for freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and due process? These hammers aren't being dropped selectively, they're being applied broadly and quickly with little diligence.

The criminal charges against Julian Assange for sexual misconduct or rape, while serious, are a sideshow meant to distract everyone from the serious security breach and the even more serious information contained in the cables; and from the corporate and government reaction to same.

Whether he is guilty or not is not relevant or germane to a discussion of the content of the cables; and it's not relevant to a discussion of whether having this information out there is a good or bad thing.

And note that while mud is being slung loudly at Assange, very little is being said about Bradley Manning, who is being held in SuperMax-style solitary confinement. This is considered incredibly harsh treatment, bordering on torture. The U.N. is investigating his conditions. Manning hasn't been convicted of anything, he hasn't had a trial. He's not particularly dangerous. The government is willing to "detain" him in solitary for 23 hours a day. What will they do to you when you protest?

Finally, I would note WikiLeaks and other related groups are being labeled things like "anti-establishment" and "anarchists".

The whiff of 50s-era Red Scare-ism aside, last time I checked, "anarchists" were people who "seek to overturn government, with no purpose of establishing any other system of order in the place of that destroyed."

That sounds a lot like the current USA Republican party and/or Tea Party (same thing), who want to "shut [the US] government down". They've threatened and implied violence if they don't get their way. They haven't come back with any plans.

Troubling times.

The Shape of The Universe, 15 years ago

2010-12-21T08:41:00.000-08:00

About 15 years ago I released an ambient/electronic album called "The Shape of The Universe". Despite being both all instrumental and using some electro-acoustic compositional techniques, this album is one of the more popular things I've done.

It spent nearly 6 months on top of the MP3.com experimental charts and sold enough to convince me there was a future for independent musicians willing to work hard.

I created this record during a one-month stint while I was unemployed. My "job" was working at my rehearsal studio in L.A.

Having broken up my band after several years of trying to write "hits", playing guitar, singing, and trying to please other people, I decided to make some music just for me, without regard for what others might think.

I can still remember working on this project and playing some rough mixes for my musician friends. I was surprised at how well-received it was, and that early feedback from people like Justina Klimkevich, John Kaizen, and my brother convinced me to finish.

You can download the whole thing, or just listen here:

The equipment I had at the time was laughably small and limited compared to what I enjoy today. The entire gear list for this recording project is as follows:

Roland Jupiter-6 synthesizer (thanks, Chris Fudurich!)
Casio CZ-101 synthesizer
Yamaha SPX-90 digital effects unit
Roland GP-8 effects unit
Tascam 488 Portastudio (8 track cassette machine)

...and that's it. Well, I played a china cymbal on one track. And recorded the clothes dryer.

This album was released on cassette. My brother designed an intriguing cover. And we decided to include a random selection of 3 of 24 "trading cards" as well. This was the beginning of my interest in alternative packaging for music.

After all this time, I'm thinking that I should probably do another Captain Kirk album. I'm also contemplating a book that will reproduce the trading cards.

Who's Wrecking Your Product?

2010-12-17T07:00:00.000-08:00

It really does only take one person to wreck a product.

Sometimes they wreck it before it's even started. Sometimes they wreck it while it's being made. Sometimes they wreck it after it's done.

Creating a product requires many things:

Clear vision - this includes what need it should address, why it's being built, for whom, and what the timeline should be.
Realistic goals - this includes the budget and resourcing as well as the expected feature set and benefits to the company bottom line
Carefully balanced trade-offs between all of the competing elements
Discipline

Ultimately, the product manager is responsible for all of the above. But in many companies, product managers lack the authority to enforce those items. In others, the key decisions are either made or overridden by senior management.

Steve Jobs Wrecked Your Product

Why blame The Steve? He's legendarily, heavily, deeply involved in nearly all aspects of product creation for Apple. Mr. Jobs really does make many, many decisions. And he's frequently, annoyingly "right", in the sense that Apple's products have sold extremely well since his return from exile.

Many books have been written about Steve Jobs and Apple, dissecting them both and seeking the reason for their success. I think in both cases it comes down to one thing: discipline.

Apple seems to realize the value of restraint. Less is more, especially in software. They initially launch with a sometimes laughably small number of features...but they all work, and work well. They slowly add high-quality features over time. This approach is very similar to the "kaizen" process that Toyota uses. Developing with discipline beats rushing out a feature-complete-but-buggy 1.0 and then trying to patch it.

Steve Jobs is very good at helping decide what to leave out. He understands that good products are narratives (like, say, Pixar films). They have a central theme which must be supported and reinforced.

Steve Jobs has caused 2 major problems for everyone else, though. And both are the result of being blinded by surface and style rather than focusing on deeper critical thinking.

Steve Jobs Wrecked Your Boss
Nearly every high-level executive I can think of secretly (or not-so-secretly) wants to be Steve Jobs. They admire his panache, life story, fashion sense, reputation, and of course, massive success.

Unfortunately for many, one of their takeaways from Steve Jobs is "I need to micromanage my product team". They insist on arbitrary product reviews with no clear next steps. They make changes without a strategic or tactical understanding, of the project goals. They don't stay informed about the product constantly, and rather like the Eye of Sauron, swing in to focus on it erratically and painfully.

They change the central theme of the product. They move goalposts. They revoke previous decisions.

Steve Jobs sets clear goals at the outset: Who's the ultimate decision maker? (he is, and he stays involved) What's the theme of the product? What are the resources? And so on.

If your supervisors emulate the wrong aspects of Steve Jobs, you may be wrecked before you even start. Getting around bad management is a challenge for the best product managers. Sometimes it is clear that bad management will wreck your product. It's almost always better to ship even a flawed product than to bail out, however.

So, misunderstanding leadership lessons from Steve Jobs. What else? How about misunderstanding design!

The Cargo Cult of Steve (or, Your Company is Not Apple)

I have a kitchen timer that looks like an original iPod. Because it was designed and made when iPods were popular. It is a terrible, terrible product. And it is obvious the company that made it wanted it to look like an iPod to cash in.

While it is superficially similar to an iPod, in practice, it is the antithesis of what made the iPod popular. It takes a relatively simple product (a countdown timer) and turns it into something incredibly annoying and difficult to use.

Reasons why it's terrible? Off the top of my head:

Button layout arbitrary and inappropriate for purpose
Buttons are too stiff
Inscrutable UI
Lack of attention to detail

It feels awful to use.

I don't know the folks who created this thing, but I can imagine the meetings where they decided (or perhaps the boss demanded) to adopt the visual language of the iPod without understanding the product thinking that led to that visual language. It is cargo cult thinking.

Products get wrecked when companies decide to emulate other products' surface appearance without understanding the thinking that created that appearance in the first place.

This is different from following "industry standards", "best practices", or even "trends". Those all have their place when they are conscious decisions made with intent.

Copying Apple is a conscious decision, and the intent is clear - emulate success. But Apple's success (and design) come about because the company makes conscious decisions with intent.

Another frequently cited example is the use of 3D buttons and glossy effects. Apple doesn't make buttons glossy and 3D just because they "look cool". They do it to make the buttons stand out clearly from the rest of the flat, matte interface. Many other OS widgets (Android, Windows 7 for example) use glossy and 3D effects in a gratuitous fashion, and frequently the shiny highlight makes text less legible.

Design elements should never be gratuitous. If you're doing something for no other reason than "it looks cool", reconsider. That said, "looking cool" can add value provided you're not interfering with the rest of your product functionality.

Your boss might misunderstand Steve Jobs. Don't allow yourself or your team to misunderstand Apple and design in general. Make conscious decisions with intent. Think about what you are trying to accomplish and what would work best.

Let form follow function. Or at least make sure the form is informed by function, or you know what your trade-offs are. Innovative and exciting designs frequently spring from re-focusing on what the customer is actually trying to do, rather than merely sprucing up existing design conventions.

Don't let Steve Jobs wreck your product! Be disciplined. Make your own choices with intent.

Up next: Your Team!

SuperWaitress Remix for The Folk Opera by Annie Bacon

2010-12-07T08:28:00.000-08:00

The talented Annie Bacon (late of Sweet Crude Bill and the Lighthouse Nautical Society) recently released her epic project "The Folk Opera". As part of this, she asked me to do a remix of the song"Superwaitress".

It's now available. Go check it out!

Why Products Really Suck, Part 1

2010-12-02T08:25:00.000-08:00

Image from: http://bit.ly/dM9CtS

I recently read this rather glib and uninformative article about "Why Products Suck". It got me thinking. I've made and shipped a number of products. Some won awards. Some were terrible.

I've definitely learned a few things, and I can definitely provide more insight than the above-mentioned article's key points, which were:

1. It only takes one person to make your product suck.
2. Nobody ever got fired for sucking.
3. It’s easier to suck more than suck less.
4. There are more ways to suck than to not suck.
5. Customers demand sucky products.

So I'll be doing a series of articles on making good products. First, let's look at what's wrong with this article.

First point. The author claims "It only takes one person to make your product suck." There are a number of interesting and correct directions he could take this statement. But his actual point is that you need consensus among your "team" that your primary goal should be "not sucking".

It is true that it only takes one person to wreck a product. There's a New Yorker cartoon I used to have taped to my wall that showed a guy at a desk writing on something his subordinate handed him, saying "I just need to make one change that will ruin all the work you've done."

Frequently, that person is not who you expect them to be, and they will be the subject of a future article.

I will also discuss the pros and cons of team consensus.

Second point. "Nobody ever got fired for sucking". This is sadly true, however the point as presented in the article is rather weak. The author is basically saying "you should fire bad people" without clarifying the differences between:

appropriate and inappropriate risk
initiative and running wild
genuine accidents/mistakes and negligence

Good teams and good managers not only get enough rope, they sometimes get tangled up in it. Not every risk pays out, and some risks lose big. That's why they're risky. Start-ups take bigger risks than established companies, and new products take bigger risks than established ones. They have to in order to survive.

I'll discuss risk and failure as well.

Third point. "It's easier to suck more than suck less". His somewhat dippy phrasing covers the best point he makes in the article: Serve the right customer. Don't be so desperate for customers you build features that aren't core. You'll attract the wrong customers and then be beholden to them with even greater costs for getting back on track.

There will be a nice long article about discipline in product design.

Fourth point. "There are more ways to suck than not to suck." His point here is "you need to be careful with your choices and define your product clearly before you start development". This is true, but many of the examples he cites are not relevant to that point at all. There are tactical mistakes one can make. Choosing the wrong user interface widget isn't one. Good UI designers don't really have choices with too many questions if the product is well defined - in those cases, the best (or at least better) tactical choices are fairly obvious.

Strategic choices are much more difficult and much more important, and frequently glossed over in both theory and practice. I firmly believe that making great products is not particularly difficult if the environment is good and the team is competent. I'll cover that as well.

Fifth point. "Customers demand sucky products." This is a rather provocative statement, given the "customer is always right" attitude that dominates. The author's main point is , but he follows it up with a poor, or at least insufficiently specific suggestion:

Trust your instincts and the tiny set of users who use you, and resist advice from the billions of people who don’t.

Good product designers do have instincts, but those instincts are informed by experience, best practices, and lots of research.

Your current users are frequently the last people you want to be talking to about how to evolve your product. In the early stages of a product, your users are likely to be unrepresentative of the larger user demographic, unavailable in sufficient numbers to float your whole business model on, and highly demanding.

For more mature products, your users are again likely to be unrepresentative of the next tranche of users you hope to attract, and will be used to how your product works. They are likely to demand minor iterations or evolutions of features.

The short answer is "talk to people who are like the users you want to have", and the long answer will be coming in a new post soon.

Up Next: Who's wrecking your product? (Answer: Steve Jobs. Seriously).

Apple Shuffles On

2010-09-14T22:00:00.000-07:00

As predicted, Apple has abandoned their button-free iPod Shuffle design for a return to the "ring button" layout of the very popular clip-style iPod Shuffle. It's a much better design.

Overall, it's still expensive and feature-poor compared to the Sansa Clip, which offers more memory, an FM tuner, and a screen, but it is a much nicer-feeling product. The Sansa Clip still feels like a toy, as do most non-Apple MP3 players.

Ultimately, the new iPod Shuffle is a mature, solid product and in many ways, a perfect design.

The new Nano is a bit more baffling. I suspect it's just marking time and covering a price point for Apple, as they can't yet get iPod Touches down to a cheap enough price point, can't charge more for the Shuffle, and are unwilling to leave a gap in their iPod price line for a competitor to fill.

As a technological achievement I suppose the new Nano is rather nice, but as a product, it's sorta goofy. I did somewhat anticipate their grafting a touchscreen onto such a tiny form factor, but after the addition of the camera to the Nano in the previous round of revisions, I expected it to be the Shuffle that got it, rather than the Nano.

That would have allowed Apple to claim they were still moving forward on the Shuffle design rather than "retreating" to a previous one, and would have left the door open for more advancements in Nano land (the lack of a camera on the new one is arguably a big step backwards).

In its current design, the Nano is designed to be clipped onto one's clothing, like the Shuffle. But in practice, this means both the display and the controls for the unit are facing out and away from the user, so the user has to look down at their clothes and/or pull the Nano towards themselves to see and manipulate it. Because the screen is the control surface, and because it is so tiny, it is very difficult to hold the Nano while controlling it, and while you are pushing its surface, much of the screen is obscured.

Contrast that with the "candy bar" Nano design. Its hardware controls and orientation allowed for "blind" operation - you could skip tracks or pause in your pocket, without looking at the screen. Because it was "candy bar"style and size, it afforded gripping in the hand while looking at the screen, without obstructing the screen.

The new Nanos also don't allow users to install or run apps (and I'm glad about that, because otherwise there would be yet another Apple mobile configuration to design for), but their visual interface design picks up many of the cues of Apple's higher-end products, including fancy animations, a pivoting display, "multi-touch", and more. Much of this is simply gratuitous, but goes a long way to justifying the pricing in consumer's minds.

I find the much-vaunted "multi-touch" control silly and inferior to the simple elegance of the click wheel for something like the Nano. The Nano itself is hard to pin down - it's too fancy and fiddly for the gym, the Shuffle being far superior for that.

Eventually, I expect Apple to merge these two products - their design framing shows they're headed this way. Again, I suspect it's a matter of covering price points while they wait for component and design costs to come down, for all aspects of the product line. When they do, I hope they manage to keep more of the ring button design and less of the touchscreen, but past behavior sadly indicates otherwise.

In the meantime, Apple manages to monetize its quirky design choices and its decisions to emphasize the "feel" of products as much as their actual features.

Most people, even hardcore audiophiles, are better off using a smartphone or iPod Touch-type device as a music player. If you need a portable for the gym, I'd still recommend the Sansa Clip over the Shuffle unless you're an all-Mac person. The Sansa Clip may feel like a toy, but that minimizes the pain you feel when you drop it or lose it.

Vonnegut on being an artist

2010-08-07T09:24:00.000-07:00

Today's wisdom:

"So many people think that practicing an art is a good way to make a living. Practicing an art, no matter how well or how badly, is a way to make your soul grow...it's not a trade." - Kurt Vonnegut

Starts at about 6:22. Read him, he's great.

2010-07-26T08:58:00.000-07:00

This is a little old but worth posting.

In a bit of 20th Century music news, FirstSounds.org has figured out a way to play back some of the world's earliest sound recordings. The folks over at Tonehammer, a purveyor of fine samples, made free reproductions available:

Invented in the 1850s by French inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, these "Phonautograms" actually predate Thomas Edisons earliest recordings by nearly two decades.

They were made by projecting sound into a cylindrical horn attached to a stylus, which in transferred the vibration into lines over the surface of soot-blackened rolls of paper. These captures were purely optical.

No device existed which could translate the recorded acoustic information back into sound, until the First Sounds organization acquired the artifacts, with the help of the French Academy of Sciences. They worked with scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and other experts to devise a method of scanning and deciphering the images.

I used some Tonehammer products on my soon-to-be-released "Reflection" album. Good stuff!

MOG for Mobile Phones

2010-07-20T06:46:00.000-07:00

Today MOG launched its Android and iPhone mobile apps. So far, the reviews have been good.

This is the culmination of months of hard work by the MOG team...and also yours truly. I learned a lot and believe this app is superior in several ways to some of my previous efforts. Not perfect yet, but we'll be working on these for a while.

These apps are also the latest step in the music services my friends and I have been envisioning for over a decade: (nearly) Every song in the world is available for your immediate listening. Or download to the phone for playback later without a connection. High quality sound, too.

I've been working in digital media for so long I sometimes forget to appreciate the paradise we've created.

So if you have an iPhone or Android phone, go get MOG! 3 day free trial, or just go ahead and sign up.

41

2010-07-16T08:18:00.000-07:00

Good coffee. A quick omelette. "The Pearl" on the stereo. Through windows jeweled with dew and fog I see the sun pulling itself up. 41 today.

Last year, with the aid of family and friends, I had a wonderful, massive birthday party. I was working at Rhapsody. Had just written a song called "Oh Shit, I'm 40!" (which I will record and post here soon). Much has happened since then.

Not long after that party, my employment situation changed rather dramatically. I managed to start a digital media consulting business before ending up with a new job that has made me far happier than my previous gig. And this in an economy where many talented people cannot find anything. And my phone is still ringing!

I had a computer near-death experience, but managed to retrieve all my data (thank you, TechCollective!) and still finish one of the better records I've made: "Reflection", which will be fully released as soon as Sound and Fury finish putting the book together.

In May, I saw my cousin Claire get married. It was great to see how much she'd grown and changed over the years. Hard to believe this was the same woman who had appeared as a nearly-silent teenager who wouldn't look you in the eye. It was also nice to see the extended family and friends together, many of whom I hadn't seen in decades.

On Monday, July 12 my great-aunt Caroline "Linie" Lushbough died. She was 88 years old. She was more of a grandmother to me than her sister ever chose to be. A wonderful, remarkable woman. True pioneer stock, she had a pilot's license and flew planes, cooked delicious food, and always, always had a great attitude about everything. I was fortunate enough to see her this past May.

On Wednesday, July 14, I saw Neil Young in concert. Neil is 64 years old and still performing a wide range of music. Inspiring. Perhaps I don't have to "retire" from live performance just yet (I'm currently playing in 2 bands, one of which has a show tomorrow).

Life isn't perfect, but that's OK. I'm working on things that need attention and getting better at ignoring the rest. I am incredibly fortunate, and grateful for the life I have. Sometimes it feels like every day merits a celebration. Today is as good a day as any.

Thank you all for checking in here, and for being a part of my life!

Who's To Blame For The BP Disaster?

2010-05-29T15:40:00.001-07:00

I've posted about oil before, and I've posted a few times about other energy sources. I feel compelled to write about the BP disaster.

It's been over a month since the Deepwater Horizon sank, and oil has been pouring into the Gulf of Mexico non-stop ever since. BP's latest effort ("Top Kill") has failed. It is gradually dawning on people that BP may not be able to stop the leak any time soon.

This will be the largest environmental catastrophe in American history. As much as I hate to prognosticate, I expect in a few weeks the phrase "America's Chernobyl" will make its way into the public dialog. And it should. But in the long term, this is worse than Chernobyl.

While Chernobyl was awful, affecting hundreds of thousands of people, it was dealt with quickly. Chernobyl resulted in a relatively small number of direct human deaths, and a minimal effect on the surrounding ecosystem. Now, 24 years later, nearly all of the area is habitable. Wildlife appears to be making a strong comeback, even with the radiation and inevitable genetic damage.

If BP were to stop the oil right now, the world is still facing the real possibility of the extinction of much of the sea life in the area, and the potential collapse of the ecosystem in the Gulf in both short and long term. Each day that passes increases those odds.

There is a very real possibility the well simply cannot be stopped with the technology we have today. With Chernobyl, relatively simple techniques (dropping tons of concrete) worked, and worked quickly.

There are about 3800 offshore drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico alone. The real surprise for the BP spill isn't that it happened - the real surprises are that it took this long to happen, and that the industry remains able to drill in places where there was not a robust plan for dealing with a "black swan" event or total failure scenario.

If you had been told "hey, there's a chance that offshore drilling will absolutely obliterate the Gulf of Mexico", would it still have been OK?

But that's not the real issue here. Right now, everyone is focused on one question: Who's to blame? So far, I've heard:

BP
Halliburton
Transocean
Big oil
The Bush Administration featuring Dick Cheney
The Obama Administration

But this is all distraction and misdirection. Here's who's really at fault:

Us. Me. You.

We ignored the wake-up call of the '70s oil shocks and spent the last 40 years pretending everything was OK
We continued to drive gas-guzzling cars after the oil shocks of the '70s, culminating in the plague of SUVs and The Hummer
We care more about how fast our car gets to 60 than how far it goes on a gallon of gas
We care more about cupholders and DVD players in our cars than emissions
We wanted a ridiculously big, heavy car because it made us feel safer, despite it actually being less safe for everyone else, and occasionally, us.
We knew we'd run out of oil, paper, and fresh water in our lifetimes and we decided somebody else would figure it out
We complain about windmills blocking our view
We fight nuclear power
We are OK with lopping the tops off of mountains and wrecking our landscape for coal, as long as it doesn't happen in our town
We complain every time the price of gas goes up a nickel, despite the fact that we only spend $2400 per year on gas, and the real cost of gas has fallen steadily over the last few years
We couldn't be bothered to bring bags to the grocery store and embraced the plastic grocery bag with open arms
We bought bottled water, buying industry panic and hype while both paying for tap water and infrastructure and not caring about groundwater quality
We leave the lights on
We expect everything to be wrapped and packed in plastic

Most damningly, we feel entitled to a particular way of life: A rich one, where we get to say what changes and what doesn't, when and how. That's delusional. Our way of life is always changing, like it or not.

We should all take a good look in the mirror. Make some changes right now. Find out what you can do. And prepare for a less pleasant way of life in the future.

Music and Business: What The Internet Really Means

2010-05-17T06:00:00.000-07:00

5. What The Internet Really Means (for musicians)
Back to the original graphic that started this series of posts: It seems to show the best way for musicians to make a living is for them to sell CDs directly to fans.

Really? All this upheaval, all these changes in the music business, and the best thing people can come up with is a strategy from 1990 (but as Suck.com would say..."on the WEB!")?

Does anyone really believe that artists should concentrate on selling CDs directly to fans?

First, the CD is dead. At the recent NARM conference, what's left of the irrelevant music retailing business was agitating for $10 CD prices. So the folks selling CDs want the price to go down, which means less money for music.

Guys, you're about 10 years too late. Tower is gone. Wal-Mart is very close to yanking all music from its stores. Best Buy is practically there already. The biggest music retailer now is iTunes, and in case you haven't heard, they don't sell CDs.

Second, there's the part about you selling direct to your fans. Once you've unwisely transmuted several grand into heavy plastic physical goods, you now have to distribute them. Hey, how many record stores (run by the aforementioned irrelevant music retailers) are in your town and immediate area?

Oh, but you're going to sell direct to your fans, right? OK. How many shows are you playing this month? For how many people? How many CDs are you going to move? How many did you move at your last gig? What about your friends' bands? How are they doing?

Mmm. You have a website? Well, you're on the right track. Now at least people can buy your CD whenever they want, instead of whenever you happen to be near them with a CD in hand. But you're either going to have to cut in CDBaby or you're going to handle fulfillment and credit card charges yourself. And your fans will have to wait several days for your CD to arrive. It sure would be better if you could just provide downloads.

And if you are providing downloads, why not have someone else host them, so they're always available? Why not make sure they're sold in the #1 store? That would be (right now) iTunes.

So you're back to selling downloads on the Internet. Because that's how you make your music available in the most convenient way to the most people. And from there, it becomes obvious that you should have your music available on Pandora, Rhapsody, MOG, and all the other services.

Why? Because if people can't hear your music where they want and in the way they want, they won't hear your music at all. And you'll get zero dollars for it.

In this respect, the internet is great for musicians, because it allows you to cheaply distribute your music worldwide, 24/7. Yeah, you make less money per transaction. Big deal. The other folks in the chain are providing value. Personally, I'd rather have 100 people pay me $1 for my album than 1 person pay me $200 for it. But then, I'm not a "professional" these days.

In terms of live music, I'd note that when I fronted a cover band, I made thousands of dollars and could have easily made a living earning close to $100k per year...if I had wanted to sing "Hungry Like The Wolf" in shiny silver pants night after night. It was fun and it paid the bills, but it was not deeply satisfying. It was also a hard life full time - lots of alcohol, travel, bad food, and other work hazards.

The internet made it easy for the cover band to get booked - people could check out videos, MP3s, and photos. We didn't have to doll up expensive physical promo packs. And people from all over the world could check out the band, resulting in a wider range of bookings.

Making my own music, while extremely satisfying, has barely made me enough money to buy a dinner or break even on the CDs. Factor in the gear, time, etc. and I'm way in the red. But I get to make exactly the music I want, on the terms I want, when I want. And with the internet, everyone can hear it.

Ultimately demand for music is lower than musicians would like. Despite the supposedly bleak financial picture for the business, there are more people making music and releasing albums than ever before.

That freedom, that creativity, that power - it's a good thing, right?

If you're interested in making music, the internet is great for you...and great for everyone else. You'll have to try hard to be heard over everyone else's music. But all in all, the internet giveth more than it taketh away.

If you're interested in selling music, the internet is essential for you...but you're in a terrible, highly competitive business. My advice to you: lower your expectations and/or get into a new line of work.

Regardless of whether you're making or selling music, as a vocation it is a tough one. Despite the difficultly, people have been and will continue to be professional musicians. The internet is now a key part of any job requiring networking and communication.

The original graphic and article show just one axis or dimension: what you have to do to get a certain amount of money. It positions all of these actions as equivalents, which is a substantial elision. Selling CDs directly to fans is extremely difficult. That's why you get to keep more money: it's hard to make the market and convince someone to buy your CD. It's much easier to convince them to play your song a few times on a music service like MOG or Rhapsody.

The internet and music technologies have provided a new universe of tools for creators and listening experiences for users. It's the world we live in now. Rather than continuing to decry how little money musicians get (something that is probably as old as music itself), I think we should focus on how to get more people listening to all of us.

All 5 Parts Now Available:
1. The Problem Nobody's Talking About
2. Too Much Music?
3. Now It's Everywhere
4. The Audience Isn't Listening
5. What The Internet Really Means

Music and Business: The Audience Isn't Listening

2010-05-03T23:30:00.000-07:00

4. The Audience Isn't Listening
Many record business executives point to the original, illegal Napster as the beginning of the end. And they blame Napster for mortally wounding the music business. But Napster didn't host files. It just allowed people to share them. It was the listeners and fans who did all the "illegal downloading".

Since the glory days of the music business (let's call it the late 1980s) the world has changed. The business stopped selling singles (or charged much more than they ever had) and focused on albums. The major labels changed how they develop artists (they stopped). They changed their definition of a "hit" or successful record. They focused on selling 2 million albums in a single year over selling many millions over a career.

Music fans grew up. The entertainment dollars they and their kids have can go to music...but they can also go to Internet subscriptions, World of Warcraft, XBox, mobile phones and data plans, iPhone apps, computers, Netflix, DVDs, and fancy coffee. The music business has responded...largely by offering the same product, but "remastered", with a "bonus disc" at a higher price. In other words, "please just go buy it again".

Digital music services came along. The traditional industry responded with piracy concerns and has only reluctantly allowed legitimate services to operate, dragging their feet the entire time.

Simultaneously, the record industry has sent mixed signals about piracy. Some users who upload are sued, some aren't. Some services which offer content illegally are shut down, others are allowed to "convert" to legitimate services...provided the labels get cash, an ownership stake, and a seat on the board. Some blogs which host mp3s get taken down, some don't. It's no wonder listeners are confused.

Music is a niche product. And there's a glut of it.

Listeners are overwhelmed. There's so much music out there, the value for listeners is practically zero, and their ability to wade through it all to find things they're interested in is minimal. In the aggregate, "music" has value to them. But any one piece of it? Probably not so much.

The average annual per capita expenditure on music in the USA is about $35 and it is declining. Most people don't care about music. They just don't. They won't pay. They'll steal or listen for free, and they don't much care to what. There's a ton of free music easily accessible.

Music has a strange, asymmetrical value proposition. One listener might be willing to pay $5 to hear the new Radiohead song. Another user might have to BE paid $5 to listen to it. Perception of value of individual music changes over time.

The labels have been somewhat unfairly charged with assuming that all music fans were pirates. But perhaps on one level, the labels were right: Maybe the problem is the audience. It's not listening and it's not buying.

It's not hard to see why - "so much music, so little time"...and so little worth paying for. That's not to say there isn't great music out there. There is. But it's extremely difficult for any individual user to find. CDs and physical media are dying out, but the digital services have largely been handicapped with Draconian restrictions and aren't able to produce an experience so much more compelling that everyone has to get on board.

To put it in context, the business community gets extremely excited about things like Facebook and Twitter. Regardless of what one may think of these services, they've been allowed to create something compelling enough to attract millions of users within a few years of launching...while the latest and greatest music services struggle.

Sure, it's possible that everyone (except Apple) really has gotten it all wrong. But there are millions of people downloading illegally and listening to music without paying for it. That's not Apple's fault. Or Rhapsody's.

Maybe it's the record business' fault. But it is also the fault of the people doing the illegal downloading.

Up Next: Part 5 - What The Internet Really Means/Conclusion
1. The Problem Nobody's Talking About
2. Too Much Music?
3. Now It's Everywhere
4. The Audience Isn't Listening
5. What The Internet Really Means

Music and Business: Now It's Everywhere

2010-04-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

(Previously: Part 1 and Part 2)

3. Now It's Everywhere
The 21st century and increasing maturity of the Internet made it trivially easy to distribute all these albums. For fees ranging from zero to modest, one can make an album available worldwide, 24/7 in a wide variety of formats at any desired price point.

This is a profound change, making it dramatically easier to get heard. Prior to the Internet, you, the artist (or label) had to physically truck those CDs to stores and then directly manage collecting the revenues from these distributed locations. You either cut a distributor in on your "profit" to manage this for you and just focused on trying to get stores to order product - or you managed it yourself, which frequently meant spending hours on the phone trying to get record stores to pay you $7.50 for the 3 CDs they may or may not have sold.

In short, it was terrible. Managing distribution beyond the trunk of your car was huge time sink for the up-and-coming musician.

Today, there are many options for distributing your music. You can still do the good ol' car trunk and sell CDs or vinyl or cassette or whatever paleolithic format you want to push directly to your fans. You can still lug stuff to your local record store and see if they'll take a few on consignment. You can sell music in a variety of formats and packages off your website directly to your fans (Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead). You can partner up with companies like CDBaby or Tunecore who will handle getting your digital music into as many of the digital music services as you want.

There are a ton of legitimate, semi-legitimate, and totally illegitimate new ways for people to discover, find, or hear your music, too. There are fancy customized radio stations that will mix you in with other things. Or you can run your own internet radio station. You can give away a promo single or snippet totally free...or exchange it for an e-mail address. There are tons of MP3 blogs, aggregators, and sites all aimed at promoting music in specific genres to specific demographics. If you like music, it's hard not to be overwhelmed by stuff you actually want, not to mention the junk.

More importantly, it is now incredibly easy for people to buy music - there's no more "sold out", "out of print", or "where can I get it?". If you hear something you like, purchase is as close as an Internet connection. Buy it on your phone right now. Download it to your computer right now. Order the CD right now. The music is there.

Easy to make, easy to distribute, easy to purchase. That's good, right?

At this point, the veteran professional musicians usually come charging in and talk about how crappy all this new music is. They'll say it's poorly recorded, badly written, and lacks the wonderful packaging and "vibe" that good ol' vinyl records had. They'll talk about how no website feels as good as walking into a good record store (not that any are left anymore).

All they have to do is start with "...in MY day..." or throw in a "get off my lawn!" to complete the picture. People have been saying "this new music isn't as good as the old music" as long as there has been music.

The old guard are upset about the increased competition, to be sure, but I think they're really upset about something else...

Next: Part 4 - The Audience Isn't Listening
1. The Problem Nobody's Talking About
2. Too Much Music?
3. Now It's Everywhere
4. The Audience Isn't Listening
5. What The Internet Really Means

Music and Business: Too Much Music

2010-04-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

2. Too Much Music
The last 20 years produced remarkable changes in the way music is created and distributed.

The 1990s effectively democratized music production. In 1989 making a record or CD almost certainly meant paying thousands of dollars to go to a recording studio for a few hours and hoping you ended up with something good.

By 1999 however you could make a record at home on your computer. In some cases the quality of the recording wasn't quite as good (limited by your gear and expertise), but you could spend a lot more time on it. From the ADAT to PC-based recording, by now (2010), anyone can make a "record".

Even iPhones can make records via apps ranging from simple instruments (the ocarina) to 4-track recorders. (I am awaiting the inevitable gimmick indie record made "entirely on the iPhone").

Not surprisingly, people are making lots of records: About 300,000 per year with the number steadily climbing. The product of the major labels (EMI, Sony, Universal, and Warner) represent about 10-15% of that number, but the bulk of that represents repackaging of their back catalog, not new artists.

Keep in mind this is a cumulative thing - every new album isn't just competing for ear space with the new albums from that year - it's competing with everything ever recorded - Radiohead's "OK Computer" and Nirvana's "Nevermind" and Run-DMC's "King of Rock" and Led Zeppelin IV and The Beatles and Hank Williams and Enrico Caruso. Every year, every minute it gets harder to be heard over the din.

In economic terms, the supply of music is vastly increasing - a result of dramatic drops in the costs of creation and distribution combined with many more creators. It is not unrealistic to assume that demand would fall as a result. And when demand falls, prices fall. Creators get paid less, as does everyone else in the value chain, because listeners are willing to pay less.

But that's still not the whole story.
Next: Part 3: Now It's Everywhere

1. The Problem Nobody's Talking About
2. Too Much Music?
3. Now It's Everywhere
4. The Audience Isn't Listening
5. What The Internet Really Means

Music and Business: The problem nobody's talking about

2010-04-17T08:29:00.000-07:00

The "Information is Beautiful" graphic to the right is the latest buzz around the music community regarding the state of the business. It is attracting attention because it looks neat and is controversial.

But like many "infographics", it is showing incomplete information and only a piece of the picture. The reality is complex and nuanced.

It's based on this article, titled "The Paradise That Should Have Been".

1. It Must Be The Internet
The thrust of the article and graphic seem to be "wow, these digital music services really don't pay the artists enough - they should probably pay them more."

But between the time this article and chart were created and when they were published, Last.FM announced they were stopping all streaming. Why?

Because Last.FM can't make a profitable business out of streaming music - the royalties they pay are too high.

They're not the only ones. The entire last round of new entrants into the digital music business all flamed out last year - iMeem went out of business, iLike sold to MySpace for pennies, and Lala was purchased for a low price by Apple after announcing they could not make their business model viable.

The veterans have not fared much better. Rhapsody has had 10 years of barely scraping by and is now trying to be a start-up again. Nobody's seen Napster in months.

The only company that seems to be making money is Apple, and as I've previously discussed, Apple doesn't care about music - they created the iTunes Music Store (inevitably about to become the iTunes Media Store or something similar) purely as a defense against piracy accusations. Thanks to the industry and other factors, it has now become a powerful tool for perpetuating their near-monopoly on music consumption.

I will certainly admit some bias here, as I am in the digital music business myself, but I can't agree the problem here is the businesses aren't paying enough for content.

Based on what I've seen about consumer behavior from research and experience, it's also hard to believe these services can simply raise prices to pay more and pass the cost on to users. People already feel these music services are too expensive.

When the average annual per-capita spend on music in the United States is ~$35, even a $5 per month subscription seems pricey.

The problem isn't the Internet. The Internet has been a great boon for both musicians and the music business.

So what is the problem?

Next on Post-Cocious: "Too Much Music?"

[Note: I'm trying something new - rather than one really long post, I'm going to break this into sections and post it over the next few days.]

1. The Problem Nobody's Talking About
2. Too Much Music?
3. Now It's Everywhere
4. The Audience Isn't Listening
5. What The Internet Really Means

Coal is still bad

2010-04-06T14:07:00.000-07:00

I am saddened by news of the recent coal mining disasters in China and in West Virginia.

Here is a link to my previous post about coal versus nuclear power, written in April 2006.

RPM 2010: Victory! [Updated]

2010-02-28T22:57:00.000-08:00

I am pleased to tell you I have successfully completed the 2010 RPM Challenge.

Despite losing nearly 10 days to a hard drive failure (and nearly losing incredibly valuable data), despite having several weekend days lost to home renovation, and despite my usual creative and musical challenges, I have completed a 9-track, 35-minute album.

It's called "Reflection".

This weekend I created 3 tracks from scratch and finished all the mixes, mastering, and CD assembly. Two of the tracks are instrumental/interludes. I've considered these "cop-outs" in the past, but desperate times...

Due to the grueling schedule and other conflicts, the album has no cover art and no book. Yet. I am hoping to produce something over the next month. Neither of those things are required for successful RPM completion, so they can be done later.

This is a strange record. Stark and minimal. All of the sounds are acoustic or physical in origin - there are no synthesizers or electric guitars, drum machines, or drum kits. The closest thing to that is electric piano.

There wasn't really a concept this time, just an idea for a sound - "Bryan Ferry in Blade Runner". There are more ideas woven in as well, including the desire to make this record more mysterious than previous releases. It's not all moans and dirge - there's at least one track that's practically danceable.

My friends previewed some of the tracks and said "this is not what I expected you to do". That may be a polite way of saying "this is terrible", but I would rather have a surprised reaction than no reaction at all.

I hope you enjoy it. I can't say making it has been as pleasant as my last few albums, but it feels great to say "I finished".

Some sample tracks:
Another New Me
Write Protect Failure

Update: Full ZIP file of complete album now available.

RPM 2010 Status Update

2010-02-27T08:53:00.000-08:00

RPM 2010 ends 11:59 pm tomorrow night. As of right now, I have 5 songs nearly done:

Another New Me - Needs mix tweaks, maybe vocal fixes
Something Like Love - Minor mix tweaks
Blue The Light - Minor mix tweaks
The Broken Rain - Needs vocal take
Write Protect Failure - Minor mix tweaks

Total running time of the above tracks is about 23-24 minutes. So I need either 5 short bits or 12 minutes of music generated in the next 36 hours or so. It's not impossible, but it will be challenging. Renovation work on the house went late last night and will continue today, making it difficult to be musical.

Having lost about a week to my drive crash, I feel somewhat less bad about possibly not finishing. Not giving up yet, though.

Data Recovery, RPM, Life

2010-02-18T08:33:00.000-08:00

Good news: I'm not dead! Nothing's wrong. I've just been busy and distracted. I started a new job over at MOG, once again in the digital music business. Dealing with that and related items occupied the bulk of the last few months. The new job is great. Really enjoying it.

Warning news: My data hard drive crashed on February 5th. This drive contained the entire 2nd Sid Luscious album (I'm, uh, "producing" it for Sid), photos, my MP3 collection that I spent all of September 2009 re-ripping, and several other tracks I was working on for other people.

I did not have a recent back-up, and in the case of the 2nd Sid Luscious album and other tracks, had no back-up at all.

Fortunately, the good folk at TechCollective were able to fully recover my data in about a week.

The main takeaway here: Back up your data. Go order a backup drive today. Then back your stuff up. Then maybe sign up for Mozy or Backblaze. And burn some DVD-ROM copies, too. Once that stuff is gone, it's gone for good.

Bad news: The drive situation has crippled my attempt at RPM 2010. I'm still going for it, but it is far from certain that I will complete the challenge this year.

As for my RPM "theme" this year, this video is a clue:

My Favorite Albums of 2009

2009-12-31T23:59:00.000-08:00

I listened to a lot of music in 2009, but little of it was "new". I heard most of the releases that will show up on everyone else's list. I didn't really care for most of them. Here's what I did like:

Album of the Year: David Sylvian - "Manafon"

David Sylvian worked with some top-notch musicians known for their improvisation work. He recorded some sessions of them playing, selected sections he liked, and them improvised vocals over the top. Record finished.

He packaged it as digital downloads, a compact disc, or a deluxe hardback book. Built a lovely website, too.

The music is beautiful, sad, and thought-provoking, and the execution is masterful. It's also all completely in line with where I think interesting musical art should be going. Hands-down winner this year.

If you liked Talk Talk's records "Spirit of Eden" and "Laughing Stock", you'll probably like this.

Best New Album by Old Band: (Tie)
Nitzer Ebb - "Industrial Complex"
Nitzer Ebb has long been a favorite of mine, but they hadn't released any new material since "Big Hit" in 1995.

They returned this year with a vengeance. "Industrial Complex" doesn't break any new ground for the band, but it produces a re-cap of their unique take on EBM and industrial. Few bands are both so catchy and so abrasive. The album is solid all the way through with plenty of references to all of the great things about all of their records. I could even hear some pop tart making "Hit You Back" a Top 10 single. Only available as downloads for now. Skip iTunes' AAC format for some good ol' MP3s from Amazon.com.

If you like Nitzer Ebb, Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, or dancing to synthesizer music, check it out.

The Church - "Untitled #23"
The Church has managed to make my lists almost every year they've released an album. They really earned it in 2009 with "Untitled #23", which made a number of other people's best-of lists as well.

A solid, mysterious album with songs that reminded me of my own "Overcast" in places. They stretch a bit here, too, with Steve Kilbey marking the outer edges of his vocal range and style, including one of his more aggressive vocal takes on "Anchorage".

Masterful work from veteran musicians. Obviously great if you are a fan of The Church (or a newcomer). Also great if you like Television, or other post-punk guitar bands.

Best Reissue: Kraftwerk's "The Catalogue"
There was a lot of competition for this slot, with the runner-up being the nicely-packaged and chock-full of rarities re-issue of Duran Duran's "Rio". But Kraftwerk absolutely dominated with "The Catalogue".

Unfortunately delayed several times, and then released in the USA with a "well, this is what you have to buy if you want the good albums" approach, The Catalogue shames most other reissues.

The packaging is top-notch. A 12"-record sized proper box. Tiny reproductions of the albums, using proper 3-dimensional boxes with spines and slide-out envelopes. And then massive, gorgeous booklets with full art and liner notes as the band always intended.

The sound quality is also incredible, to the point where you can hear obvious flaws in the original recordings or sound programming. Well worth the price, and a fitting tribute to a band as influential on the pop music of this century as The Beatles were on the music of the last century.

Essential listening for any music fan. These guys are part of the modern cultural canon. Also essential for packaging designers.

Best Björk Album (Not by Björk): Fever Ray - "Fever Ray"
Or perhaps it's the best album by The Knife. The Fever Ray album made a bunch of folks' top lists this year. It's...good.

In particular, its strengths lie in its production, packaging, and total impact. In many ways it's the Björk record of the year. "Quirky" vocals by a non-native English speaker delivered with a charming accent, a unique vocal style, and funny/mysterious/borderline nonsense lyrics.

Nice synth/electronic production, but overall bearing a very strong resemblance to her other band, The Knife. Not surprising, but I sort of expected more. The record skates by a lot on style. The songs have moods, but don't really go anywhere or lodge deeply in the mind. Lots of reliance on 5ths, weird sounds, and the same sort of vocal processing and effects that made The Knife sound so fresh.

For fans of Bjork, The Knife, film soundtracks, and "headphone music". Not so good for parties.

Fever Ray also gets points for actually making the single "When I Grow Up" available for free download. Try BetterPropaganda, where I find a lot of music.

Video for "If I Had A Heart":

Doubtless part of Fever Ray's success lies in her willingness to use the Internet for promotion.

David Sylvian finally put "Small Metal Gods" up on YouTube, but he's got no free download. Neither The Church nor Nitzer Ebb put up free downloads, and neither of them have "official" videos on YouTube yet. In their case, it may be they simply don't have the budget or interest in such things. To The Church's credit, they haven't pulled down any of the fan-made videos for their new album.

Artists, remember: In the 21st century, you should worry about getting people to pay attention to your music, and less about getting them to pay for your music. The former is becoming more difficult but remains a pre-requisite for the latter.

I look forward to more great music in 2010!

2009's Greatest Hits

2009-12-31T18:24:00.000-08:00

Here's my 12 greatest hits of 2009.

January - My 2009 started with a trip back to Dartmouth for a music symposium and celebration of composer Jon Appleton. An incredible time, and I wish there was going to be another one in 2010!
February - I created "Overcast" for the RPM challenge. I'm still quite happy with it.
March - Saw my brother play a great loud rock show with Farflung at Bottom Of The Hill.
April - Spent a week relaxing in Hawaii with my lovely wife.
May - Was flattered when Dave Allen featured a cover of Shriekback's "Faded Flowers" on his music blog. Dave's been a key part of two bands that were major influences on my musical development.
June - Attended the SFMusicTech conference and got to know some great new friends.
July - I turned 40 and had an incredible birthday party.
August - I got laid off from Rhapsody shortly after completing their iPhone app.
September - Took a bit of time off, smelled the roses, slept in, worked out. Realized "Lost" is awesome.
October - Fielded many, many interesting job offers and interviews while starting some consulting work.
November - Worked extensively on 2 interesting new jobs.
December - Had a great Christmas day get-together with friends and family and spent a fun New Year's Eve at Smuggler's Cove.

I have many resolutions for 2010 and look forward to the next decade, which my friends have christened "The Ten".