This might lead you to believe I’m some sort of an Apple fanboy.  This isn’t strictly accurate. The fact is, I’m an Apple Fanboy the way I’m an Indoor Plumbing Fanboy – it’s simply something that’s been an omnipresent part of my life for so long that it almost doesn’t register anymore.

I learned how to use and program computers in 1980 on an Apple ][+, and ever since then, I’ve used and/or owned a variety of Apple products almost continuously, from the first golden era, through the dark Scully/Amelio times when even “The Simpsons” mocked their near-demise, through their second renaissance to today. Without the Apple II, I wouldn’t’ve discovered that I love programming, which led to many opportunities for me down the line. Without the Mac, it’d be a lot harder for me to write the music I do. Without the iPod, it’d be a lot harder to distribute the music I make. None of it would be impossible, but all of it would be a lot harder.

So to say Steve Jobs has had some impact on my life is pretty much a large understatement.

I’ve never aspired to be like Steve. He’s not really a personal hero to me. But then, neither is Thomas Edison or Henry Ford. They’re each guys who had many personal quirks that made them disliked or even feared, and they probably aren’t necessarily personalities to model oneself after. Nonetheless they each made huge contributions to the shape of modern technology and industry. They may not always have personally been the innovators coming up with the great ideas themselves, but they knew how to pick and choose ideas (and pick and choose colleagues and employees to develope those ideas) and bring them to the masses in a way that made the ideas seem self-evident, the resulting products ubiquitous, and their own names immediately recognizable. There were cars before the Model T; there were mp3 players before the iPod. The singular vision was not to respond to the needs of the market, but to anticipate them; to take “niche” ideas and use them to transform society as a whole.

One of Steve’s peculiar gifts was to not merely make these products, but make people excited about them.  What other company gets major-network news coverage from a new phone rollout?  When was the last time CNN speculated on a new laptop that wasn’t an Apple?  Somehow, he could make the ordinary seem extraordinary.  His much-ridiculed “reality distortion field”, that strange mix of charisma, geekish enthusiasm, and laser-like intensity, attracted interest in ways no mere list of product features ever could.

I cannot deny, ever, the profound effect Steve Jobs and his company have had on my life in particular. I owe a lot to Jobs (and Woz, too.  And Linus and Bill and Dennis and Bjarne, and…). Love him or hate him, cast him as angel or devil in the silicon valley story, nobody can deny the fact that Steve Jobs managed to make profound changes to the way we think about computers, helping transform them from intimidating beasts in the domain of eggheads in the back room to friendly appliances we hold in our hands.

Goodbye, Steve. It’s been Insanely Great.

First, he kinda seemed a little hurt that they comapred him to a “snuggie” – you know, one of those blankets with sleeves? – due to the fact that he was characterized as having a sucessful product marketed primarily as a novelty item. He hems and haws about that a bit, but that seemed to wound him slightly. His fans seemed even more wounded by that fact. But you know what? He is. I mean, all pop music is kind of snuggie-like when you come right down to it. I’m a snuggie. We’re all snuggies. We make the product that nobody really needs, but some people want because they think it’d be fun to have. The intent of the artist is sort of beside the point – I’m sure the inventor of the snuggie was thinking he was really on to something useful, too, just as I think my songs express something interesting. It doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, since it’s entertainment at the end and we don’t have any final control over how people perceive it. It’s probably a poor metaphor, but at the core, the Planet Money people grasped one of the painful truths about pop music. We’re not, generally, changing the world. JoCo gets that, to a degree, when he says that the Grateful Dead, Nirvana, and Madonna are also all snuggies. Well, right. Difference between them is, while Nirvana may have appealed primarily to Seattle grunge kids intially, they crossed over into the mainstream because they had a fairly broad appeal.  JoCo writes the kind of folksy alt-rock about DNA, supervillians and giant squid that makes TMBG look downright accessible – the subject matter is specific enough that it will always exclude a larger audience, with a nod and a wink to those that get it. It’s what I call the “XKCD effect.” It’s a very specifically targeted sort of act, and it happens to be towards a fanbase that is both rabidly protective of their pop culture signifiers and also one that is generally underserved in that specific kind of medium – there just aren’t a whole lot of geek-specific singer-songwriters. He’s got himself a stable set of fans for the rest of his life, but  as much as they’re a lot of fun, “Code Monkey” and “Ikea” aren’t about to become the next “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

I say this as a guy who owns a lot of JoCo stuff and likes it, and have seen him live. He’s a good, engaging performer, and I can respect him as a guy who gave up his 9-5 to basically bang out solid songs on a cheap mic and a laptop. That’s cool and all. I wish I had the guts to pull something like that off. However, as awesome as that is, it’s not exactly a lofty vantage point from which to stand and make pronouncements about the music industry. Anyone with a blog can do that. I’m doing that right now.

More tellingly, his blog post turned into a “JoCo’s rules for success!” sort of post. He comes out and says

“I make songs that are good and then I sell them (and concert tickets, and Tshirts) to the people who want them – that’s my business model, and it’s patently obvious that it’s replicable because I stole it from every other recording artist in the world. “

Well, um…DUH. So the business model is “make good stuff people want and sell it.” That’s about as meaningful as…well, it’s not really meaningful.

Dan Clark wrote a lovely response to this.

Coulton downplays the assertion that he “won the Internet Lottery” because “It’s accurate but unhelpful, because it fails to draw a meaningful distinction between me and anyone else who has had success in this business.” The Beatles, after all, won the British Invasion lottery, he says.

That’s where it all falls apart, and comes down to something I rant about constantly. Success in most artistic endeavors depends heavily on one thing: circumstance. Success as an indie artist doubly so. It’s always about winning the proverbial lottery, whether you’re The Beatles or Jonathan Coulton or Rebecca Black. If Brian Epstein hadn’t gone to the Cavern Club on that specific night, the Beatles might never have gone beyond playing german strip clubs.   To assert that chance and timing didn’t play an enormous role in the success of any artist is arrogant.  Sure, talent plays a part – it doesn’t matter how lucky you are if you suck so badly nobody wants to hear you.  Still, you can be incredibly talented and unlucky, too.

This sounds remarkably cynical, I know, but think about it; how many excellent songwriters and artists have you heard or seen over the years that have entirely failed to “succeed” (for some undefined value of “success”, but that’s a different rant of mine)? Rarely can anyone tell me that [really awesome band] wasn’t trying hard enough or wasn’t talented and wasn’t writing songs that people want to hear. It could be anything – they weren’t playing the right bar on the right night, or the guy who would kick off some viral revolution on the internet showed up two songs too late, or something. No matter how awesomely talented you are and how hard you work, you can still never get the lucky break you need. The uniquely transient nature of music and art pretty much ensures that sort of time-based dependence.  

You can go to bandcamp.com and go through page after page of great bands following the same sort of “business model” of Mr. JoCo – indie distro, performer-owned rights, open-source creative commons, etc – who will never sell more than a few thousand albums in their lives. Hell, I’m one of them. The business model will work, to an extent, for anyone, but nobody will ever quite replicate it again, because what got many of the successful artists the press coverage needed to really break was the fact that they were the first ones doing it. Slashdot picked up on Code Monkey because it was a nerdy song about a coder released like a piece of open-source software, and that exposure got Coulton a ton of basically free promotion and downloads. Anyone who tries that now? They’ll get a big “yeah, and…?”

I’m neither incredibly talented nor incredibly lucky, but I attribute what limited success I’ve had to my moderate talent and my being lucky enough to have met the right people at the right times.  I’d love to say “yeah, I sold a few thousand CDs because I am totally awesome” but that’s not it.  I’ve sold what I’ve sold because I happened to meet people like Matt the promoter and Kristy the label manager or Dan the guitarist at times when that benefitted us both.

Those artists that have grapsed that brass ring of indie success?  Sure, talented folks. Your Coultons, your Reznors, your Keatings, your Radioheads. But every single one of them could’ve basically missed it by a day – Trent Reznor could easily have been just another weekend warrior instead of an Oscar winner. There’s the whole Beatles/Epstein thing I mentioned before. Sure, JoCo and Zoe Keating tour incessantly, which helps spread the word, but then, a lot of great indie bands tour incessantly, so it’s no guarantee. “Code Monkey” went viral on the internet – but so did cats asking for cheeseburgers, the trololo guy, and Wil Wheaton, so it’s not exactly something easily predicted and replicated. Maybe someday social science might have a grasp on that, but until then, it’s pretty much luck. Trent, Radiohead and OKGo could go all indie becasue they had the advantage of already being well-known and established.

Basically, lots of this could be applied to pretty much any endeavor, especially when money is involved. At least something like “opening a McDonald’s” has the benefit of market research and demographics. You can’t really do that for a song, not with any degree of meaning. Pretty much ANY advice you’re going to get about the music industry will boil down to “work hard, be talented, hone your craft, and promote.” That’s not exactly a really specific recipe for anything. Beyond that, it’s probably best to be skeptical of anyone who tells you they have some great tips for succeeding in music. Especially if they tell you that the trick is to “go viral.” Yeah, well, if we knew how to do that, we wouldn’t be reading “how to succeed in music” blogs.

What the talent and hard work really get you more than anything is the ability to notice the opportunity when it arrives and take advantage of it at that moment. That’s all. Does that kind of suck? Well, sure. Then again if the only reason you’re putting your talents out there as an artist is to just acheive some ill-defined rock-star paragon of success, ur doin it rong.

Okay, that’s all well-and-good, but he goes on to use some frankly asinine examples.

The first is about a woman who runs a mail-order company, who got a vitriolic email to customer service that made her cry.   This is one of those things that makes me wonder if said person is really suited for the kind of job that requires dealing with customers.  Sivers uses this as an example of how people overreact on the internet, sending angry emails whose bloviating far outclasses the infraction.  I think Sivers needs to get out more.  He’s been an internet gazillionaire for a decade now, so I suppose he doesn’t have to mingle with us peons anymore, but anyone who’s spent time in an airport has probably seen some sweaty, balding businessman from Schaumburg ranting and raving and berating some poor 19-year-old ticketing clerk at the gate because his plane is snowed in in Rochester.  Or perhaps, since it’s been so long since Sivers has worked in traditional customer service, he’s forgotten about the frankly bizarre  angry letters addressed to the “president of the company” or the abusive phone calls demanding to talk to a manager over some perceived slight, like not allowing a customer to pay their bill 5 months late.  The internet may make it easier to send an angry screed to customer service, but it is hardly the only method, and by no means is the angry tirade a new web-2.0 phenomenon.

I also ask…geez, how long have you been on the net now, Derek?  I mean, even when I got started, back in the pre-boom early 90’s, the flame war, the angry message, the name-calling, the invocation of Godwin’s law…these were well-known things.  The third email I ever read was aimed at someone on a Star Trek mailing list I had just subscribed to – “Brent Spiner is not [expletive] German, you [expletive] [expletive] [obscene gerund].”  It became clear very quickly that incivility was sort of the stock-in-trade of internet communication, and it was to be taken with a grain of salt.  This is not to say that this is a good thing, per se, but…geez, it’s 2010, we should all be aware that this is just the way things are and this touchy-feely “remember there are real people out there!” thing that Sivers is advocating seems sort of naïve.  If you can’t handle a flame war, perhaps the internet is not the best place for you to be hanging out.  All the Derek Siverseses in the world are going to have a hard time changing the behavior of a few million people,  so until they do, it’s either grow a thick skin or unplug the laptop.

His other example (he only had two, really.  Statistical analysis, this is not) was of a friend who was trying internet dating, but only lukewarmly, and was deleting a lot of messages from “losers” without reading them.  Sivers saw this as callous and unfeeling, since these guys had clearly spent a lot of time crafting messages to her, hoping to win her attention and her heart.  Um, dude?  Internet dating?  That’s your example?  Yeah, it’s a step up from Craigslist’s “no strings” section, but still, you can’t be so naïve to think that every one of those guys read her profile and decided she was Their One True Soulmate and their fragile self-esteem is riding on her response.  He also can’t believe that she was the only one they sent messages to.  The whole point of an internet dating site is to provide a larger pool of potentials, and get the ball rolling by offering a method of safe, reasonably anonymous contact.  I’m guessing most of these guys have gotten ignored before, and have done their share of the ignoring as well.  And…hell, even in the real dating world, “uh, yeah, I’ll call you!” is the way of the world.  Nobody walks into a bar and politely informs every guy nearby on the dancefloor “gosh, you seem like a nice guy, but I’m really not interested in you” or agrees to go on a test date because a guy clearly put in enough effort to come by and say hello.

I’m not even trying to sound cynical.  I’m not saying civility and politeness are dead.  I’m quite fond of them, myself.  But the cold hard fact of the matter is that in a lot of situations, people act uncivilly, or it’s just not appropriate to do so, and those of us on the receiving end – especially those of us who create subjectively-perceived things open to criticism like art and music – simply cannot expect to be glad-handled by every internet user, customer, consumer, listener or patron in every situation.  It’d be great if everyone in the world were unflinchingly polite and measured in their responses, but never in human history has it ever actually happened, so why Derek Sivers thinks imploring people to “remember that there’s a real person on the other end” of the computer is going to change a few thousand years of social conventions.

 I was in the studio, fussing endlessly over some vocals, while Nori sat purring loudly in my lap.

I was struggling with how to get a vocal take to sit correctly in a mix. I could get it to sit right but it would become very nasal-sounding and harsh, and if I removed some frequencies then the vocal sounded odd over the song. I was very, very precisely adjusting the knobs of the PSP classicQ equalizer to try and find a happy medium.

Nori sprang into action and mightily headbutted my mouse hand, sending the onscreen knob wildly careening to some random extreme setting…

…and damn if it didn’t sound pretty good. How does she keep doing that?

Scene 2:

“Mrow?”

“Mrph.”

 ”Meeow? Prrrrrrrrrrr.”

“Buh.” It’s 4:48am. Nori is standing on my chest desperately trying to get my attention.

 ”MEE-YOW.”

“Bleaarrgh alright alright I’m up I’m up!”

I assume the food dish is empty and I’m being alerted to this fact. I get up, and Nori dashes to the bedroom door. Sure, food dish.  Must be. I follow her.

Surprisingly, instead of heading upstairs to the food dish, she tears down the stairs into the studio. I think this is cute. But I’m tired, and go back to bed. A few hours later, I get up to get ready for work, and go downstairs to grab some laundry from the dryer. I note that my screens are not in powersave mode, and there’s a status bar up on the screen. I walk over to investigate, and see that Logic is cheerily recording audio, and has been since about 4:50am.

Nori has figured out how to press “record.” She’s bucking for an engineering credit, I just know it.

Null Device/The Dark Clan 2010: Goths on a Boat, Nerds in a Van

Null Device/The Dark Clan 2010: The Exchanging Recipes Tour

Null Device/The Dark Clan 2010: I Think We Left The Bassist at a Dunkin Donuts in Somewhere in Ohio

Null Device/The Dark Clan 2010: We Were On Time for Sound Check, Even Though Nobody Else Was

Null Device/The Dark Clan 2010: 100% Grass-Fed, Free-Range Organic Band Members

Null Device/The Dark Clan 2010: We Hope The Venue Has Enough Outlets

Null Device/The Dark Clan 2010: Hey, Douchebag, All Our Female Band Members Are Spoken For, So Stop It
Null Device/The Dark Clan 2010: If You Don’t Like The Music, Eric And Dan
Could Talk About Microphones For An Hour Instead

Null Device/The Dark Clan 2010: Completely Oblivious to Your Scene Drama

Null Device/The Dark Clan 2010: Gassiest Tour Vans In The US

Null Device/The Dark Clan 2010: Sorry, We Don’t Drink Rail

Null Device/The Dark Clan 2010: WTF Is a Dholak and Where The Hell Is New London?

Null Device/The Dark Clan 2010: Increasingly Inappropriate for Goth Clubs

Null Device/The Dark Clan 2010: The Only Reason We’re Playing This Town Is Because Eric Heard There Was a Great Vietnamese Restaurant Here

Null Device/The Dark Clan 2010: We Brought Our Own Beef Jerky, Thanks

Some things have gone quite well, of course.  I’ve re-engineered backing tracks to make them cleaner and punchier in the live environment.   I’ve been able to do this quickly and efficiently with the new machine, since I don’t have to freeze tracks to be able to play back my mixes.   I’ve also got a new rack of DI’s en route, thanks to a lovely tip from Mr. Wade Alin.  They’re not Radials or anything, but they look to have better build quality than the ones I’ve currently got.    Also there’s a new ATA rack to put them in coming.  I decided that the 6-unit full-depth rack I’ve got is entirely unnecessary for my 3 units of shallow-depth gear, so I’ve got a 4U Gator on the way.  Also, being ATA, I feel a little safer about it than I do about my current rack.  Plus that extra space leaves a little room for expansion.

The things that haven’t gone right?  Well, yesterday I opened a newish track that I had recently transitioned over from the old system.  I hit play and…it sounded really weird.  That wasn’t right.  I popped open a few of the plugins I was using and noted that every.  Single.  Instance of PODFarm Plat had switched back to its default setting, which happens to be an emulation of a Fender Jazz amp with reverb.  Basically, the entire song sounded like each part was being played from inside individual cardboard boxes.  And I used PODfarm a LOT on this track to get grungy synth distortion, so the track was pretty much hosed until I could fix it.  I spent much of the afternoon switching as much as possible over to Logic’s native Amp Designer.  It doesn’t always sound quite as nice as PF for some of the emulations, but I can at least be assured it’ll work next time I open it.  I get to look forward to the next few days of recreating settings and rebuilding tracks.  Grumble.

A nasty headcold coupled with my usual overactive sinus-based ick has kept me from recording any vocals for the past week and a half.  This is particularly annoying, since I have stuff stacking up I want to record/rerecord/fix.

Aaand finally, I plugged in my MOTU 828 (mk1) yesterday, to test out my backing tracks and…kernel panic.  I rebooted, and…kernel panic.  I unplugged it and…kernel panic.    Some online searching demonstrated that hey, whaddya know, the new MOTU drivers under snow leopard don’t like the old 828 all that much.  I dug out one of my archived installers and put an older driver on, and it seems stable.  For now.  Nonetheless, this makes me kind of twitchy about relying on a nearly-10-year-old audio interface.  I do have plans to get a new one but…not for a while yet.    I just bought a new car, I’m a little low on petty cash.

Sigh.

Anyway, they posted a challenge: if it’s so easy to record these days, then record a song in a weekend.  They issued the challenge on friday afternoon, and closed it sunday evening.

Surprisingly, I decided to give it a go.  This is surprising because I’m usually the kind of guy who will spend weeks tweaking a track, and certainly several hours re-re-re-recording vocals.

I pulled it off.  The track isn’t great – the lyrics are awkward, the vocals aren’t especially strong, and it needs a bridge, but it still sounds recognizably Null Device-y.  I’m kind of astonished that I pulled it off.

Whether it’ll ever see the light of day beyond this “challenge” is another matter.

Friday was mostly given over to meat. And beer. Courtesy of our bassist-in-residence, Mr. Chuck. However, in the evening Wendy and I went to the CTRLSHFT/Caustic/Babyland show. It was Joe and Maggie’s bon voyage, as they leave for higher altitudes. I’m gunna miss those kids.

Saturday I spent a large quantity of time mucking about at Home Depot. For a while I’ve been of the opinion that I need new/better acoustic treatment for my studio, since my previous attempts have been 1) ugly 2) not as acoustically useful as I’d hoped and 3) did I mention ugly? My previous attempts have been first to wrap OC703 in landscape fabric, which was ugly and hard to mount. Second attempt was to wrap them in canvas and glue them to a board. Problem was they looked silly and the canvas was not especially acoustically transparent, meaning they didn’t really do as good of a job as they could, and they looked funny in the process.

So I bought a bunch of 1x3x8′s – construction grade, not furniture grade, for a savings of about $7 a strip – some angle brackets, and 16 yards of unbleached muslin. The lumber got cut and bracketed into 2′ x 4′ frames. I grabbed all my myriad pieces of 703, many of which I’d cut into smaller traps and the like, re-assembled them, jammed them into the frames and wrapped the whole deal in muslin. The end result looks pretty decent and sounds much better. I made 5 acoustic panels from the bits I found. Then I discovered a sixth piece in the back of the garage, so I have one left over that I now intend to use to make a portable hinged microphone isolation baffle.

I think overall, even with the 703, each panel cost me about $15.

Saturday night, Wendy and I hit Summerfest in Milwaukee, where we got our prerequisite grilled corn, hung out with the one and only Robin (without whom I’m pretty sure Summerfest would collapse into a smoking, chaotic ruin). We had some side-stage passes to Flogging Molly, which was pretty excellent. I was only passingly familiar with them before (“If I Ever Leave This World Alive” showed up on a few shows I watched) but having seen them live, they’re awesome. It’s impressive that they’re all pretty consummate musicians, all the more impressive that they can remain as such without sacrificing any onstage energy. That’s rare. Their opener was a DC fiddle band that was also surprisingly good – and also surprisingly capable of doing “rock leaps” while playing violin, which made me giggle.

I’m totally going to have to try to re-learn irish fiddling. I started once, long ago, and kind of forgot everything I ever learned. I have a book of fiddle tunes I bought in Galway and haven’t really cracked open since. I don’t know if I’m talented or coordinated enough for the crazy Donegal style, but maybe I can learn a Mayo style or something. Plus, I discovered that a jig can overlay a chaal beat quite nicely, so three cheers for cross-cultural fusion, eh?

Sunday, I finished the remix I started on thursday, and I’m very pleased with how it came out. It’s kind of big and orchestral. I like doing this sort of thing, and I think I’ll have to do more. It raises some vexing questions about how to pull this off live, but I’ll deal with that later.

I also spent about two hours playing with mic positioning techniques. For the first time, and only briefly, I got my dhol to not sound like a trashcan. I even got it to sound vaguely taiko-like when mic’ed appropriately. This opens up many possibilities.