Let Courage Wolf put it short for you:

But it sure was tough. Working long hours, days and weeks completely unpaid and without rest gets extremely tiring. I was not the only one to suffer from a burnout. Thankfully, I trust in my capabilities to channel stress into creative working and while waiting for my brains to finish a few books on mathematics, romantic scifi and WikiLeaks, I’ve been succesfully writing some pieces of music recently. Here’s one such a case I want to discuss.

I am very much a beginner producer and thus very open to trying out different ways to promote and distribute my works. If you’re interested in knowing what a zero-budget amateur composer has to go through, here’s a quick lookup on the process of composing a piece and what follows after.

Composing

I promise to write more thoroughly about the process and philosophy of composing music later, but to put it short for those interested: it’s not that hard. Some works take years, a lot of people and a lot of money to finish – some hit songs are written in a moment’s craze on a brown potato sack. (The latter here being the rock and roll standard Blue Suede Shoes, written by Carl Perkins.)

It should come as no surprise that all pieces are made different. The process might start with an idea about lyrics, harmony, melody or a catchy rhythm and the rest of the music is composed around it to create a somehow systematic whole that can be understood by the listener, unless of course we talk about the people whose musical understanding is way beyond the average musician or listener. Composing a piece is big cut & paste job. You combine musical motifs and try to make it sounds good. Or maybe convey a story, emotion or just try some composing technique without really caring if anyone likes what the result sounds like.

Among other things, the enormous amount of analogue and digital instruments that we can build our soundscape from ensures we don’t run out of different combinations to try out. The difficulty of composing arises more from the problem of extreme abundance as there are infinite amount of combinations of melodies and rhythms, let alone harmony and dynamics. To be a composer means bravely going through different sound builds, experimenting with the order of individual sounds and just plain listening to what sounds good. To be able to write music of several genres testifies the skill to swim in that vast ocean of musical information and put together something that somehow is familiar and makes sense but nevertheless is unique.

But more about that later. Here’s a case example:

Impromptu of Stress (demo) by JoonasD6

That was Impromptu of Stress which I composed in my tired election depression. It ain’t finished yet, but that is a demo recording not that far off from the final one. There is some polishing still to do on the score and I’d prefer the “final” recording to be a live analogue recording, not with a digital piano that uses samples. Composing the work itself is about finished but writing down one of its manifestations, the score, is not. You can grab the draft score here.

Also, I need to practise it more. Performing is another step in completing the work and then there are the issues of ditributing and maybe even making money from art one day. I could outsource all previously mentioned and just concentrate on composing, but I’m not famous and I have no sponsors, so that’s not really an option if I want to make my stuff available to others. I’m not even sure if I’d want it to be mainly others performing my pieces, so I’ll keep working on that area as well.

As for the composing phase, Impromptu of Stress became to be quite in the usual way. It was not some sort of study of new composition methods nor was it made to be very progressive or modern. In fact, it was driven by very old-fashioned schemes: impressionism, expressionism and conveying emotions through music. Obviously I was not bound by these isms, but based on the theory and history of music I have studied so far, that is one way of categorising and thus understanding better what I have created or was about to create.

I am primarily a pianist, so it is normal for me to sometimes just jam with it. And that’s how you run into new ideas: by bravely testing everything that comes to your mind and enjoying what you are doing. In this case it started with the motif of F minor 7th chords descending a half step lower and back. This motion, which made me feel very calm, repeats in the beginning and in the end of the piece. Compared to some older works of mine, I seem to have a light habit of minimalism – I change passages slowly and only slightly. Nevertheless, the music advances and, combined with several other experimental “Oh, this sounds nice!” sequences, the piece finds its form. It could’ve ended up being very different, but I could have still liked it. There really is no grand plan which a composer has to follow. The structure and feeling of the piece can change very drastically along the way.

When I said that it wasn’t finished yet, I was referring to possible minor upcoming changes. There are some places where I am very stuck to some hundreds of years old musical traditions of harmony and I need to consult some people for that. (Breaking tradition is generally healthy, but all those Bachs, Mozarts, Beethovens and Chopins just went along – using the common tricks just make things sound good.) A chord or two might change a bit, maybe in such a small way that the listener won’t even notice it. I’m also adding slurs and perhaps some dynamics markings to the score so that other potential performers can grasp it better. This has almost no effect to my own performance, because the idea of the work is in my head.

Recording & performing

Choosing instrumentation can be tough. I’m not good at incorporating electronic sounds nor do I have a big orchestra or a recording studio at my disposal, so my options are very limited when it comes to performing or recording my own pieces. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the performing resources available actually drive the composing process quite a lot. If I had a steady band, I’d do stuff for them. If I was hired by a film studio to compose music to a multimillion dollar blockbuster, I probably wouldn’t be writing piano music or songs.

But that’s all I have now – me and my piano. For the recording above I did a few takes on my Yamaha CP-33 stage piano and recorded it all directly to my Olympus LS-10 linear PCM recorder without any microphones involved. Good sound quality and minimal noise are valuable things for indie production. I moved the 96 kHz 24-bit stereo wavefiles onto my MacBook Pro, did some more cut & paste work and put it all together in Audacity. Ideally, I want to practise the piece so well that I can record it in one take with a grand piano in good acoustic surroundings, but this will do just fine for now. The demo quality is more than enough, also taking into account that it hasn’t cost me a thing yet.

I know I still need to work on rehearsing, but I’d be extremely grateful if you could give comments about the recording. Feedback is much appreciated.

File management, hosting & distribution

The final outcome of this all is an OGG file that you can listen to with the player embedded above. (MP3 is so 90s.) When I have a better recording done, I should also provide people with the best quality FLAC files or similar for all those audiophiles. I don’t see a reason why I should refrain from providing the audience the best quality service possible. Selling and streaming only low-quality MP3s is one of the dire mistakes I see online stores and record companies doing all the time: when the customers who want the best service can not get it from the official distributor, they get it from somewhere else – such as cd rips on The Pirate Bay. This sort of customer behaviour would result in me not having good statistics about what’s going on. Partly that is inevitable, but it is of every creator’s interest to be themselves the best service provider.

Individual files don’t really get the love they deserve these days. They’re just copies and the container of the actual work doesn’t really matter, right? I don’t think so. Think about – *gasp* – CDs and their covers. Ugly ones sell less. If there are lyrics in a booklet, many listeners will be pleased. Information about the people involved in making the album and a link to your website helps fans find more stuff they could like.

All the metadata that can be integrated to the files has a great potential: spending time to input author data, licensing info and perhaps a link to this very website will help people find the piece faster and contact with me for future “clienthood”.

I can easily put more information in a freely downloadable OGG file that you can for example see in Spotify tracks. Usually those services only show info about the track title, performer and album, only sometimes (common in non-pop music) identifying the composer. Even if I let my works spread in many different file formats, I can still make sure all the data stays organised and I am credited if I provide a better product than “pirates”.

The most efficient way of marketing and distributing a work (especially when you don’t have money for commercial advertising) is peer-to-peer, people sharing what they like with other people. It would make no sense to try to hinder this in any way. In fact, I want to make sure it’s as easy as possible, and that is why I want as good metadata as possible so people can easily find what they are interested in. Who would say no to free marketing?

Another challenge I noticed is that no matter how distributed you make it, you still need some sort of official centralised place where people can get the work. At the moment I think I’m sticking to SoundCloud for hosting and playback. Then again, I definitely need my own archive of my pieces – something I administrate all by myself. Maybe in the future I’ll put up a webstore on this site.

Copyright and earning

Speaking of stores and selling, the current digital environment provides a vast challenge for business models. Artists are pretty much entrepreneurs who need to constantly try out new methods and be ready for potential failure. The challenges of free markets have been somewhat stalled and ignored by means of copyright legislation, which provides authors of works additional rights over how their work is being used.

To me this is very much irrelevant. I do music because I love doing music. No monopoly laws or business model quirks are gonna change that. But although it is a secondary interest, I’ll cover some of it now (and more later) just in case it’ll ease someone’s mind.

What I want to make clear is this: You have the right to copy my music (both audio and note sheets) and distribute it further without asking me for a permission. This is the best solution for us all.

I use Creative Commons licensing for my works. I’m still rolling over the different licenses at the moment, trying to decide which ones best suit my needs and principles. I think that ideally everything should go straight to the public domain. But because there is some corporate mistrust, I do have uses for the current copyright legislation, such as forbidding commercial use of my works. I’m struggling a bit to allow the commercial use as well since I want to encourage an environment where people acknowledge and respect authorship even without me declaring everywhere what people can or cannot do. Derivative works I of course allow. The world is one big remix anyways.

For getting money from and for my work, I am using Flattr and I’ll put up a webstore up later. (E-junkie seems like a reasonable choice at the moment.) Seeing that making music is something I would like to do for my living and that there are so many things I could invest in, it would be silly not to ask for money for my work. But it would also be silly to prevent people from enjoying it for free. These two goals are not contradicting.

As an artist it is my first priority to make sure my works are available to people as easily as possible. Then I need to make paying for it as easy as possible – may that be Flattr, bulk payments, gigs, commissions, anonymous random Bitcoin transfers or “sold” music files for a pay-what-you-want price. If people don’t pay (and a free copy is not away from paying!), either I need to make better stuff or the paying process is too bothersome. In any case, it is up to me to adjust to the current behaviour of the markets and consumer attitudes. I do not authorise any government or record company association to give me privileges that I do not deserve.

01) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

02) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

03) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

04) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can’t marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

05) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britany Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

06) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren’t full yet, and the world needs more children.

07) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

08) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.

09) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven’t adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

Re-post this if you believe love makes a marriage. 

As a teacher, I’ve ran into students who have succeeded and failed. I’ve seen good and bad students. And you know what? The best students of mine have been those who have been brave enough to fail. Brave enough to fail and learn from it.

In many cases, “failing” doesn’t bear any real negative consequences. If it’s about trying to get the ball into the goal or solving a mathematical equation, there is nothing harmful that can come to you from failing. Such cases should be treated as worry-free zones, where one can freely try out things without being scared of (nonexistent) bad consequences.

Learn from this man, Nick Vujicic:

That sincerely motivates me to actually start putting up videos on my own channel…

I’m Batman

For a short subjective review (just to get it out of the way and to get to the actual topic) I’ll briefly discuss a few elements of the game. Playing the game was delightful for me mostly because of two things, and one of them is purely nostalgic. What initially got me excited about the game was how much it appreciated the canon. Not that this is how things absolutely should be with every video game or film but it helps the player get more out of the story when he or she already knows something about the characters. What definitely delivered a couple of geek orgasms was that the game employed a familiar crew of voice actors known from Batman: The Animated Series, which is one of my favourite cartoons of all time. (Plugging in another Star Wars reference, do remember that Joker is voiced by Mark ‘Skywalker’ Hamill.) Having all those familiar characters with their familiar voices coming alive in a new format felt really special and rewarding, and being able to interact with them in 3D made them so much more tangible and enjoyable.

Another thing I want to point about the game was its visual smoothness of action. Character animations were top notch and fighting scenes seemed to flow so well that taking down Joker’s minions was definitely not like playing Mortal Kombat and striking a high punch or a low punch after another. Whereas I congratulate the animations, it is even a bit silly that it they worked so well that I forgot that I’m watching character animations in a video game. And me being an old game modder and all-analysing technology geek, that sure takes a lot. This was also the first game I played that incorporated PhysX technology, but who gives a damn? Another technological feature that all players enjoy is that task switching actually works swiftly, and taking a little break to check emails on the desktop doesn’t crash the game.

But despite the great execution of specific scenes and the amazing Batman writer Paul Dini being onboard, the storyline left me a bit disappointed. You see, Joker is a criminal mastermind and such vast plans as taking over the whole Arkham Asylum is definitely not a small deal. Thus, knowing Joker’s character I was constantly expecting him to outsmart me, the player. During the game I kept myself in an excited state, waiting for the next twist in the storyline. Whenever Batman found out something about Joker’s plans, my default thought response was: “Naw it’s can’t be this simple. We’re talking about the Joker, and he always has an ace in his sleeve.” Unfortunately, after playing the game halfway through, Batman’s speculations about Joker’s plans were indeed pretty accurate, and I was disappointed to find out that there was, in fact, nothing new and surprising to find out. The developers’ depiction of Joker’s beautiful insanity was brilliant, but even they couldn’t match his level of scheming. It is time to see what they come up with in the sequel.

Why so serious?

Pardon the overused movie quote, but it seemed really appropriate here: Whereas the devs did a great job and the game itself is entertaining, it is now time to damn the publisher and all the consumer-hindering extras to the deepest pits of Hell. With the joy of having a 100/10 internet connection, it took me a mere 15 minutes to download and install the 8 gigabyte game. Setting it up to be playable took an extra hour. From a consumer’s point of view, this is frickin’ serious.

I’ll progress through various layers of DRM. First we have Steam, where I bought and download the game from. It is a digital marketplace for video games (with occasio-regular awesome sales!) and I would be able to get Arkham Asylum by other means so that it doesn’t incorporate Steam if I wanted to do so. While Steam can work as a launch pad for games and I use Steam’s services even inside the game via an overlay, it does not make itself a mandatory component of the game. I simply found it convenient to buy and download the game through Steam and it was what I wanted to do. What I by no means wanted to experience was Windows LIVE.

I’m not sure if I was even told anywhere that when buying Arkham Asylum I’d also be getting obligatory bundled software with it, so I was also a quite shocked when, as I launched the game and got to the title menu, I was interrupted by Windows LIVE user interface coming visible from the top of the screen. (The name’s apparently officially written with an em-dash before LIVE but I’ll skip that for now.) Well, I knew Microsoft had these kind of gaming services for players, especially when it comes to Xbox gaming, so I sort of accepted them offering their gaming platform for me. But they didn’t stop here: logging on to their system was mandatory. In other words, I was forced to register myself and sign in to their online system to play a single-player offline video game that I had bought! I was dedicated to play the game, so I went through all the hassle, almost just to see how far they’d be willing to go.

By default, when I started this and did some clicking in the UI inside the game, it opened me an Internet Explorer window. IE is not my default browser. I don’t like this, being forced to use a browser I do not trust just because I want to play a game I paid 25 euros for! (Would’ve been 50 without the sales.) The number of unnecessary applications I’ve been forced to use so far to get to play my game was now already three.

Sort of fortunately I could use my ancient login details from the times when MSN Messenger was still cool. Nevertheless, for this procedure I had to retrieve old passwords via email for my existing LIVE ID account and then connect it my newly created Windows LIVE gaming account, which I also had to set up right there. A lot of profiling and many emails later, I finally had a working Windows LIVE account, ready for playing. (Oh, and Microsoft: I don’t want an Xbox newsletter, I’m installing a PC game!)

After all this, I was told that in order to continue, Windows LIVE would have to update itself. With no knowledge of what they were going to install on my computer and being desperate about getting to play my game, I allowed it. This required me to close the game and actually reboot my computer. After going through all this, I supposed that all was clear. Well, I forgot the most obvious things that were still to come. I had to register the game with its cd key that I got from Steam. After writing it down on a piece of paper I launched the game and gave my cd key to Microsoft, hoping they’d be happy now. Fortunately they were, except I had to give the cd key twice and there was also a separate online activation program for the game. Phew.

So, let me recap: Setting up the game took around four times longer than downloading and installing it. In order to play a game I had legally bought, I had to use four unnecessary pieces of software (three of which I didn’t want to), give a cd key twice, register myself and my games to Microsoft, make a gaming profile, close and reopen the game many times, browse the internet using an unwanted browser, check my email, install forced updates to external software, reboot my computer and then log in to their system. Microsoft, this is not smart. Your system does not make playing easy or enjoyable. In fact, it hinders the experience and for playing the game it is completely unnecessary.

I suppose I’m just fine with cd keys, but ever since separately activated software like Windows XP came to be, things have gone worse. There should be no need for internet connection for offline single player games.

So, publishers, please tell me: Why do you use DRM and make playing your games so difficult? It won’t stop any pirates, it doesn’t work and it costs a lot of money which is then eventually payed by your own customers who directly suffer from your ignorant scheming. I simply cannot see any reasonable financial benefits for alienating potential buyers away from your products.

Inspired by the idea of forcing warning labels about DRM, I created a Facebook group dedicated for the ideal. Feel free to join.

I would like to point out that hypocrisy itself should not be used as a final verdict to anyone. Giving a person the status of a hypocrite does not, in fact, bear much useful information at all. It merely tells that, compared to certain time frame in the past, the person’s expected opinions, advice or actions have changed. This may come as a surprise to others, but changing one’s mind is not necessarily a bad thing nor does it absolutely imply that there is something fishy going on.

No discussion should end by name-calling. Instead, we should aim at finding out the reason behind all this. Very often the case is that the one using the word hypocrite holds a grudge and the mere notion of someone using the word should be considered alarming. The neutrality of discussion with no excess bias may have been compromised. In some cases hypocrisy is not used that much as a tool for mockery, but the word is instead implying another, deeper issue. This, I believe, is the more desirable situation, which ought to be investigated further.

Realising the real issue behind the word can be tough, but the topic should be brought up clearly and discussed in the open. In the Pirate Party’s case, hypocrisy is merely a vehicle for pointing out someone’s ignorance — in this case, bringing up the controversy that the parties which have actively pushed through tougher copyright legislation, are, in fact, quite oblivious of the system in general. Here the lawmakers are given the status of a hypocrite to subject their competence to wider criticism, and fortunately this worry is quite valid. Without having a reason for their selection of words, it would be just useless mockery.

So people can be called hypocrites simply because of  a grudge and this does not contribute to advancement in discussion. Hypocrisy may be used as a pathway to present ignorance, and while this does lead to further processing of the topic, it may put some people out. All in all, the probability of using the term “properly”, without sparking a fight is in my opinion so low that everyone should be careful not to use the word too lightly, or at least not to make the accusation too serious. If you have encountered some additional motives for calling someone a hypocrite other than grudge and pointing out ignorance, please let me know in the comments below.

What calling someone a hypocrite very easily does do, is something very harmful. Everyone, friends and foes, can give valuable input to any context. By encouraging people to ignore someone based on purely (poor) rhetorical slander, the whole topic is subject to a potential loss of useful points of view or other information. Everyone should be heard. For example, if I was to obtain more information about the effects of smoking on health, I could listen to academic experts (fairly neutral, not ignorant), cigarette companies (not neutral, not ignorant), people who have never smoked (possibly ignorant and prejudiced), smokers (not ignorant, possibly prejudiced) and people who have quit smoking.

If a representative of one of the last two groups, people who have perhaps smoked for dozens of years, tells you not to smoke, would you call him or her a hypocrite and simply omit everything the person has to say? Aren’t these people exactly the ones who know the best? One smoker told me once from experience that if he was to choose between lung cancer and saving fifty thousand dollars, he’d pick the latter. I suppose simply calling him a hypocrite would not have made me look that clever. It’s better to concentrate on the words and not who said them.

In other news, I’m trying out Flattr. Check it out. I’ll blog more about it later.

A little time ago I read about yet another unbelievable copyright issue from Slashdot: Nintendo sent a Cease & Desist letter to a group of filmmakers who had spent four years making a fan-made Legend of Zelda movie based on the story of the Nintendo 64 game Ocarina of Time.

Now, my reaction to this is irrelevant to the actual contents of the film (The Hero of Time), if it was good or bad. I support people making any sort of derivative works, and I believe Nintendo just shot its own feet here. By attacking their biggest fans in the name of intellectual property (which as a word is already a misnomer) big companies are giving themselves both bad reputation and actually directly affecting their own sales by denying free advertising. Surely this fan-made film wouldn’t even compete with anything Nintendo has produced.

No matter how idiotic these fan-hunts are and how many people put Nintendo in a boycott because of this, what follows from trying to stop the distribution of the film is a lot more interesting. After the case was Slashdotted, everyone wanted to see the film, even if they didn’t like it. The fact that Nintendo made a public case wanting to stop the distribution of the film made people all the more interested in it. Suddenly, there were download links everywhere and film started popping up on every major torrent tracker index.

The final result: The film got more viewers around the globe than ever, the crew got comments, critique (and perhaps even donations) by myriads. And what about Nintendo, who wanted to play the role the lawful good guy protecting its industry-lobbied rights? They definitely didn’t manage to kill off the distribution of the film and while trying they turned away many fans and customers. Not such a good deal.

OH, AND NOBODY IS GOING TO TAKE ANYTHING OFF OF THE INTERNET ON MY WATCH, SO HERE YOU GO, GALS AND GUYS:
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5250999/The_Hero_of_Time_%282009%29___Soundtrack

Personally, I believe that when the Streisand effect happens due to strong demands, it is always a good solution. If there’s something you don’t want to get public, don’t release it in the first place, and if someone forced the information from you, don’t be an ass and make a public fuss out of it all by yourself. Most likely hoping to get that something back by just yelling long enough won’t work. And it doesn’t look that good either. (Scientology, I’m looking at you.)

Granted, Nintendo definitely in this case was not the most audible or aggressive entity to demand takedowns, but their motives remain unclear to me…