Rotten People

There are two classes of rotten people. One class see themselves always as undeserving victims; another class see themselves always as deserving winners.

I'm in both classes, because I'm depressed and delusional. ;-D

Drum & Bass

It never fails to fascinate me how drum & bass went from being the most po-faced genre of dance music in the 90s to the most reliable celebration of tear-the-room apart joy today.

Set 33 - Progress Report

Monday begins the final week, or more accurately, half-week of work on Set 33 before it is unleashed on you poor unwitting victims. This is the crazy time, where sleep becomes only a pretty concept.

I'll be spending lunch today making edits per notes made over the weekend, and then I will listen to the set twice on two different heaphones, which will take a total of 7 hours to get through, which means I'll be up until around 2 AM. I may spend the night here in my "studio," an empty office down the hall where three plush chairs in a row plus a snug sleeping bag and two pillows make for a surprisingly decent bed.

Then, I will wake up for a regular day of work tomorrow, spend my lunch break making edits per the previous night's listening experiences, and then drive the set again after work a couple of times until 2 AM or so.

On Wednesday I will make edits again at lunch, and then will likely post the set sometime in the evening--but without announcing the set's presence publicly. This gives me a chance to listen to it once again to make sure that nothing got lost in translation during the posting phase. I'll probably fret about something or other, and so then make another (hopefully small) round of edits and repost. Probably around 2 AM or so (9 AM Eastern European Time, 8 AM Central European Time, 7 AM Greenwich Mean Time) I will officially announce the set's presence, and that will be that.

It's exhausting to think about all this right now on this dreary and bleary Monday morning in Atlanta, but as I get closer to the goal (and see a light at the end of the tunnel), I know I'll find the strength to carry me through. :-)

All Songwriters Fall Into One of These Three Classes

1) Hacks
2) Craftsmen/Craftswomen
3) Artists

(artists further subdivided as:)

a. artists with craftsmen/craftswomen ability
b. artists without craftsmen/craftswomen ability

The hacks aspire to be craftsmen/craftswomen, but fail to understand and replicate the emotional connection between song and a typical listener.

The craftsmen/craftswomen understand how to create an emotional connection between song and listener, but lack the special madness that transforms music from passable to great.

The artists possess that special madness lacking in the craftsmen/craftswomen.

The artists with craftsmen/women ability are the best songwriters, as they exhibit the lunacy that makes a song unique and memorable without losing their ability to communicate and connect with the average listener. They are both visionaries and communicators.

The artists who lack the communication ability are the ones lost in outer space (although they may find an admiring niche audience whose psychologies coincidentally overlap with those artists' psychologies).

DJ King Pigeon - Set 33: The First 20 Minutes

Digital Music Sales and Piracy

Some in the music industry wonder if digital music sales have reached their apex.

Some old fashioned music promotion tricks that need to end:

1) Releasing songs on different dates in different countries.
2) Making songs unavailable for purchase outside of certain countries.
3) Releasing songs to the radio months before they are available for purchase.
4) Album-only tracks on iTunes--always a guaranteed deal-breaker for me (shades of unscrupulous record label tricks from a decade ago, in this case the "single for which there is not actually a single available, so you have to buy the full-length in order to get the song").

I think the first three all fall into the same general category: each of these practices encourages people who have been "shut out" or who are anxious to acquire a song to go looking for a pirated version online. We live in an age of on-demand gratification; if I know a song is out there, I should be able to buy it. If I can't buy it, I'll steal it, since it's quite possible the song I am enjoying will NEVER be legally released in my country anyway.

Regarding releasing songs to the radio well in advance: this "whetting the appetite" theory seems a bad one. The longer you "whet the appetite" without offering the song for sale, the more likely people will lose patience and steal a good quality digital radio-rip. I imagine radio stations are direct sources of many leaks, also.

It would be interesting to see a study tracking the spread of a particular MP3 around the world. I recall that the Atlantic magazine once did something like this, where they tracked a pirated movie.

Set 33 release pushed back to 10 February