#creativity (46 quotes)
The costs of publishing an ebook are not zero. That is, if you have any interest at all in a quality product. No one goes around suggesting that everyone should become their own autonomous cheesemakers and cheering the death of the cheese industry. Why? Because that would result in a lot of shitty cheese.
— , The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) There is a similar craftman’s spirit (“shokunin kishitsu” or “shokunin katagi”) in Europe. Yet in Europe I can see it coming alive only from a certain level of sophistication. –In Japan, even ordinary jobs such as cleaning and cooking are filled with this craftman’s spirit. It is common sense in Japan.
— , On Japanese Aesthetics By producing music that’s always aiming for maximum loudness you don’t give people good reasons anymore to properly listen to the music. And that will retroactively shape the reasons for making music, and that will lead to a situation where all music is kind of exchangeable.
— , Robert Henke talks with Rashad Becker about Mastering There is an interesting difference between the computer music presenter and a live act. While the centered tape operator has perfect conditions for creating the best possible sound, for presenting a finished work in the most brilliant way (which might occasionally even include virtuoso mixing desk science rather than static adjustment to match room acoustics), the live act has to fight with situations which are far from perfect and at the same time is expected to be more lively. Given these conditions, it is no wonder that generally rough and direct live sets are more enjoyable, while the attempt to reproduce complex studio works on a stage seem more likely to fail.
— , Live Performance in the Age of Supercomputing Here’s a hint: if I wanted to spend my time marketing my books I’d have gone into marketing. I’m a writer. Every hour spent on marketing activities is an hour spent not writing. Ditto editing, proofreading, commissioning cover art, and so on. This is what I have publishers for. It’s called “division of labour”, and it’s why self-publishing — unless you’re an instinctive sales/marketing genius — is a Really Bad Idea™ for most writers.
— , The monetization paradox (or why Google is not my friend) I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. I always knew it would run out sooner or later. It couldn’t last, and now it’s running out. I don’t particularly care that it is and like the way things are going. The record age was just a blip. It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you’d be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate – history’s moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it.
— , On gospel, Abba and the death of the record: an audience with Brian Eno What is required in our field, more than anything else, is the continuous transgression. Professionalism does not allow for that because transgression has to encompass the possibility of failure and if you are professional your instinct is not to fail, it is to repeat success. So professionalism as a lifetime aspiration is a limited goal.
— , Ten Things I Have Learned For the record, I Cursor Miner have predicted many of the trends in music and culture over the past decade. I predicted the rise of the synthpop/electroclash stuff. I predicted the move towards lower tempos of dubstep, I predicted neo-rave and acid revival. I predicted the fantasy/glam/costumed up 70s bands that we seem to be seeing now. I predicted everyone making more stickers. I predicted the return of aviator shades, beards and hats. I predicted the credit crunch. I predicted the move away from quantisation that I think is ‘wonky’. I predicted helicopters. In fact I know exactly whats going on but do the masses listen and herald my albums as the workings of an inspired prophet? Do they shit. OK, so now I’m going to set it down in timestamped bits and bytes 10 things you’re going to hear about soon, so that I can blog here again in a few years and say HA.
— , The future Music’s metadata could once be ignored. The way we valued music in the 1980s and the 1990s is part of a world that no longer exists: when music’s economic value has to be reassessed, the way we reassess the music as a whole changes as well. The way we value music might be increasingly moving to metadata.
— , of music & metadata I knew giving the album away for free would be a good idea, but still, I’m pretty much unknown, and here are 500 people willing to take a punt. Why the hell should they, even if it does cost nothing? What the experiment proved to me is that there’s a significant amount of passionate music fans congregating around these so-called illegal download sites who are actually willing to take a chance on new music.
— , Reasons why outlawing P2P isn't good for everyone: a musician speaks Mix tapes mark the moment of consumer culture in which listeners attained control over what they heard, in what order and at what cost. It liberated us from music stores and radios in the same way radios and recordings liberated generations earlier from the need to be present at the performance of live music.
— , Mix Tape Kids are time-rich and cash-poor and have an infinite supply of ingenuity and impecuniousness to apply to the job of getting music for free.
— , Illegal filesharing: A suicide note from the music industry It’s better to do something than to do nothing. Even lolcats, even cute pictures of kittens made even cuter with the addition of cute captions, hold out an invitation to participation. When you see a lolcat, one of the things it says to the viewer is, “If you have some sans-serif fonts on your computer, you can play this game, too.” And that’s message–I can do that, too–is a big change. This is something that people in the media world don’t understand.
— , Gin, Television, and Social Surplus If the breathless advocates of “the free distribution of ideas” are serious, they need either a) to come up with a realistic proposal as to how I am to keep feeding myself while giving the fruits of my labours away for free; or b) come out and say honestly that they don’t think any such thing as a “professional writer” ought to exist, and that I should just get a job like anyone else. In a way, I’d respect people who came out and said the second thing. What I don’t respect is people who can’t see that those are the choices.
— , Free your mind Remarkable visions and genuine insight are always met with resistance. And when you start to make progress, your efforts are met with even more resistance. Products, services, career paths… whatever it is, the forces for mediocrity will align to stop you, forgiving no errors and never backing down until it’s over. If it were any other way, it would be easy.
— , The forces of mediocrity In technology, as in art, the probing craftsman does more than encounter problems; he or she creates them in order to know them. Improving one’s technique is never a routine, mechanical process.
— , It takes 10,000 hours of practice to become a skilled carpenter or musician - but what makes a true master? In the travelling Jamaican sound systems of the ‘60s and ’70s, musical duties were split between the selector, who chose the records, and the operator, who played the records. A quarter century later, the selector and the operator have become one: the dj. In the dj, we have allowed execution to overshadow ideas. We have perpetuated the notion that the soul of creation is in the technique, and that, lacking technique, we forfeit the right to create.
— Global Pop Conspiracy Manifesto I remember a time when it felt like, being on a major label, our interests were aligned. At times, it’s a pretty well-oiled machine and the luxury is that I feel like I’ve got a team of people who are taking care of the shit I don’t want to think about. I don’t care about the radio guy, I just want to make music. But those days are gone.
— , Trent Reznor and Saul Williams Discuss Their New Collaboration, Mourn OiNK Unlike Cage’s piece 4’ 33", the Moleskine doesn’t suffer from performance issues – the clicks, taps, pops and coughs of the audience, a badly calibrated stopwatch, or lapses of the listener’s attention. The wind of nothingness blasts, unhindered, from every page.
— , Customer Review of Moleskine Pocket Plain Notebook Rick Rubin – Recording Industry – Rock Music – New York Times
“Panic has set in, and now it’s no longer about making music, it’s all about how to sell music. And there’s no clear answer about how to fix that problem.”
— , The Music Man I explained all of this to the student. When I was finished he replied, "So, rather than just taking on jobs you can put your heart into, you should find a way to put your heart into everything you do." Which was a wonderful way to put it.
— , Creating Short Films for the Web