Get Stoked…. Read
Many of my online students ask about additional reading once their course has finished. For the most part, they’re looking for additional reference material or reading to get them deeper into the technology. Every year around the holidays I try to stock up on books, not to learn more techniques, but to get inspired. I’d like to share a few of the things that I’ve been reading and will continue to be inspired by in the new year.
The Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music
The Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music is a great place to start if you want to get an overview of the current scene. The book is really a series of essays edited by Nick Collins and Julio d’Escrivan featuring authors who are active practitioners of electronic music. While the Cambridge University Press imprint might imply dry, academic reading on academic music, the authors make no distinction between high art and street art in parsing the roots, trends, and directions in current practices, and the book makes for fascinating, thought provoking reading. There are also a number of artist statements from early pioneers like Max Matthews and Pauline Oliveros to emerging artists like Warp recording artist Mira Calix and chiptune musician Bubblyfish.
Starting in 2000, New York Avant Guard saxophonist and composer John Zorn has edited a series of four anthologies called Arcana: Musicians on Music. Like the Cambridge Guide to Electronic Music, these are made up of essays by a wide range of modern musicians. Their thoughts and perspectives on how and why they make music and how their art reflects the society they live in are totally engaging. While each musician has a distinct, iconoclast view of music and their role in it, it’s remarkable to see the common threads that run through these essays, and taken as a whole this series provides a remarkable look at the fabric of modern music.
Now for beach reading… One of the least documented aspects of post production for visual media is the art of foley, or literally performing sound effects to picture. The Foley Grail: The Art of Performing Sound for Film, Games, and Animation by Vanessa Theme Ament, provides an insider’s view of the full gamut of post production sound. From the historical background to current practices, the author provides a wealth of firsthand knowledge in a very readable and entertaining book. For those of you interested in learning more about getting involved in post production sound, this will be a very useful point of departure.
Your art is the humanity you bring to it, technology is just the tool. Don’t forget to nourish your spirit and imagination as you get deeper into music technology.
