8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions

A
BLOG
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NOWHERE

  • Amateur Appeal 

    I recently wrote a piece on this blog about breaking from the conformity of rules when we create, suggesting in my two-hundred word blog-conforming limit that stepping outside of the guardrails presented by this idea of your art needing to be so-called “commercial viable” might be a means to escape from a constraint imposed on your feeling of accomplishment and ability.

    I was thinking about this in a different context: the amateur effect.

    That is to say, sometimes amateurs create things that break rules not because they want to break away from constraints of the form, and also not because they are unencumbered by a debt to the patronage of a person or system that limits professionals, but rather, simply because they simply haven’t internalized those same rules that might otherwise limit them. They break rules because they didn’t know they existed, and occasionally stumble upon something worth considering through that process.

    It is, of course, far from given that amateurs can de facto make interesting contributions to an art just because they are new to the craft, and even if we could, it could also be argued that accidental creation is neither consistency nor necessarily something to be proud of.

    But it is interesting, the notion that I might take up a new hobby in a style of music, or mode of painting, or craft of prose and by virtue of accident make something not just reasonably good, but rule-bending enough for someone better at the effort to consider their cherished rules and skills as something that can, on occasion, be bent a little bit.

  • Podcast Guy

    I need to inform you that by the time you read this I will be a podcast guy.

    Ugh. One of those, huh?

    My excuse is such: in early February I embraced a few big ideas that manifested as a spoken audio project, which very much looks and acts like a podcast at the moment.

    Big ideas, you ask?

    First, I have been playing with sound, music, recording, and an array of other tools and toys that are burning a hole in my soul looking for a purpose. 

    Second, I looked at the conformity of what I should be doing and making as a so-called commercially viable product and said to hell with that, I just want to make what I want to make.

    Third, I realized, and you may have seen me write about this a few times already, that stepping away from posting and participating doesn’t make the terrible stuff go away, it just leaves a gap that is destined to be filled with political, vapid, or algorithmic slop.

    In other words, I was motivated to step up and start making more, posting more, and participating, but in a way that suited me. The result so far has been me dabbling in a new podcast-like project, and likely one that will not sound like nor look like the hundred other podcasts in your feed. 

    …or, so I hope.

    Big ideas, small project, and a vast shift towards a new perspective… and if nothing else, you can listen to me now, too.

  • MIDI Controller

    I broke, and I finally bought a dedicated MIDI controller.

    It was not an expensive one. Nor is it a toy. It is, rather, a very basic and simple twenty-five key computer keyboard that has piano ivories instead of numbers and letters. It makes no sound of its own. It just sends electronic signals to another device, as if I was typing musical notes.

    If you had asked me a year ago what I knew about musical keyboards I would have told you there were pianos …and electronic pianos …and—I am reluctantly admitting here that I hadn’t been paying much attention after that point. 

    I like synth music, and growing up we didn’t have a real piano or a fancy keyboard, but rather a simple department store brand electronic synth with a couple dozen built in instruments. In our house now, my wife has (because it is hers from before we were married) a pretty nice digital piano in her office, and a little over a decade ago we acquired a small upright piano, too, which sits in our kitchen and serves little other purpose than to remind me of a decade of the kid doing piano lessons. But, the concept of a bed of black and white keys that makes sounds? That was pretty clear in my head.

    For myself, those pianos were never quite what I needed. What I was craving, musically speaking.

    Instead, I went down the synthesizer rabbit hole a little over a year ago now and learned that a proper synth is more than a piano keyboard that makes funny sounds, but rather a way to generate and manipulate sounds with electrical or digital tools, and for which a piano-style keyboard is merely a comfortable and familiar user interface. 

    Now I’ve gone full circle. I own a small keyboard controller to interface with the synth software on my computers, and I am learning more about how it all works with each visit to this world of music and sound …and most importantly, a new personal exploration of audio creativity.

  • Standards Unpracticed

    There was a realization about music that I recall having when I was younger. 

    See, when I was in my teens and twenties I listened to a lot of punk and metal from the 80s and 90s. And I remember finding it odd that most music from these genres still usually followed the rules of popular commercial music design. 

    I get it. Musical structure. Chord progression. Hundreds of years of music theory, blah, blah blah, but… think about it from the other perspective: these sounds and songs were supposed to be part of a finger-wagging, pearl-clutching anti-social revolution and a counter-culture apparently designed for angsty teens and rebellious youth to rage against the establishment.

    But simultaneously they were entrenched deeply within that same establishment by the basic rule-following and formula-driven style of the music itself. 

    There are certainly examples that don’t fit this observation, but from my viewpoint so much of it seemed to follow set standards: It was composed of phrases and verses, with lyrics, mixed into tracks of four to six minutes long that could be played on the radio. 

    All of it—in the parlance of capitalism—written, recorded and packaged to be commercially viable.

    And, sure, yeah, of course, no kidding, I get capitalism and working with the system and all that, too… but…

    …but the real rebellion it seems was making something that was not for sale, and breaking the rules and standards that guide our creativity towards the end goal of becoming just another product that needs to move in lockstep with the rules, too.

  • Ad Free

    Unless you are particularly sour to such things, you may have noticed that something is lacking on this project: Advertising.

    There are no popups. There are no paywalls. There are no subscriptions or memberships or signups. There are no requests for donations or me begging for money (and no, this is not one of them.) It is not an oversight or a bait-and-switch or a free trial until I get bigger and need revenue. 

    It’s purposeful. It’s philosophical. Probably a little privileged, sure, but it’s what I believe is right for at least some of the work I make.

    It’s not that I haven’t and don’t elsewhere dabble in trying to earn some side cash from my online projects. I’m not independently wealthy or above paying basic bills. Monetization was my mild obsession for a while, actually, to offset costs. But I can tell you the two big things that side-hustle culture doesn’t easily result in for me: cash flow and happiness.

    We have been deceived into believing that everything we make, every word we write, every note we play, every photo we take, every art we create, and every word we utter should be part of a brand, a pitch, our creative time building to some kind of passive income fever dream of pretend financial freedom.

    But it doesn’t always need to. Shouldn’t always need to.

    And I should not need to explain that. I shouldn’t need to justify creating and sharing a thing like this site for the simple joy of it. I shouldn’t need to make an excuse for giving these words out for free because it makes me happy to write them, record them, and post them.

    Making stuff for the sake of simply making it can be an important kind of intrinsic compensation, too.