Empowering innovation
April 29th, 2007 by dizplayAt a friend’s relocation, I yesterday met a couple of Cologne’s DnB scene key players, and while enjoying a beer in the sun after the exhausting work, we came to talk about innovation. What was remarkable is, that though the persons involved cover the whole range of styles, we all agreed that there is a lack of innovation in DnB nowadays.
We’ve reached such a high standard of production, that it shouldn’t worry anyone if a tune isn’t 100%, but 95% perfect in that technical sense, especially when thinking about the highly unperfect club environment a typical tune is meant to be played at.
Instead, we should take a certain high technical level as granted and focus on the content. We all agreed that Fanu and the Kryptic Minds and Leon Switch LP are very interesting bits of music. Music - this may be the important word here: A lot of nowaday’s DnB output is hardly more than a craftman’s work. Pretty standard, nothing new, no second thought. Built to work, not to last. And though I really enjoy some of those tracks in the club, they are tools and will be forgotten soon. One bad example mentioned was a video interview in which DBridge put together a “tune” from predefined elements, almost like lego. And though this may be exaggerated, it shows the problem we’re in.
I also just today stumbled upon an interview (published in German) with science fiction author Neal Stephenson, and he said that “Innovation takes place, when many normal people get access to the required tools and resources“. Obviously, the digital revolution has marked the basic path to that in terms of music production. More precisely, the “tools and resources” required to produce quality-level DnB are
- a modern sequencer environment
- superb mastering and other plugins
- high-level samples
- production knowledge (EQ settings, …)
Well, those are pretty easy to get. Besides, there now is a huge crowd of people to easily get you feedback. So there hardly is an excuse to build bad-sounding tunes now anymore.
But it seems there is a lot of open space to really utilize this effortless quality production level. Where are the new approaches, the mashups with other genres, a reasonable path to break out of the rigid DnB format? I’m really looking forward to it.
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One of the many things that can make music (or any part of life) great is the introduction of meaning to action, the introduction of intentionality that incorporates higher values. The teleology of what goes on in most of the large music scenes isn’t much that’s spectacular, but you’ll find a few who are probing the realms of the body politik, the existential, and so forth — these are the ones pushing back the frontier. What happens as the masses acquire new technological capacity for self-expression is that the resultant expressions reflect ever more highly specific qualities of the people behind them, so that eventually we have works which run the gamut of human joys and suffering, but each in a unique way.
What you and these other producers are noticing is the tension between habit and novelty (not strictly conforming to any of the rather crazy theories/speculations surrounding them, but bear with me); one thing people can agree on near-universally is that there is a huge outburst of novel happenings each time the public gains a new freedom or a new way of expressing existing freedoms (i.e. through new technologies). Given that the great leaps in technological progress are occurring at ever-shorter intervals, it can be safely assumed that at some point during each of the valleys in this wave of technological progress there tends to be a corresponding peak in public awareness of and productiveness with these new technologies. Hence, we have guerilla journalism, culturejamming, or even the kind of psuedophilosophy or amateur anthropology I’m fond of.
It’s only a matter of time before drum and bass bitchslaps our scene and world with a tsunami of sincere human expression so great we will have no frame of reference for it… perhaps it will come as part of an even larger wave of human creativity itself so grand we will know not what to call it except “the god within” — after all, the One True Faith is not a faith in cosmic caricatures but that everlasting faith in human love firstly, and in our stunning human potential.
Hell yeah! I have always thought of electronic music as the essence of innovation in music. More than that: I thought that DNB was the cutting-edge style. But what do we see now? Banging tunes without soul in them. Same with other things, take minimal techno as an example. There are about 20-30% (not more) people, who are innovative, other are just copying (though they don’t think they are doing it). Now with heavy synths with presets everyone can “bang”.
Nor I think this is dead-end, neither I think this is easy to solve. Quick answers that come to mind is:
1) collaborating;
2) listening to other styles (I listen to IDM, grindcore, ambient etc.) and inheriting from them;
3) learning some kinds of musical grammar (especially chords and arrangement);
4) making your aim to do less but better, untidy but newer; making the music not only for feet but also for soul (That’s why tunes like ‘Embrace (spl rmx)’ by Muffler and ‘Don’t You See’ by ThatSmartGuy@Neurocode =) are f**king good).
@Dizplay: if you have some free time, check out the concepts of postmodernism - this should help in some way.
P.S. How about that ‘Producing with…’ article in Resident? We’re all waiting 4 it!
@fpoole: You’re a Martin Luther King of DNB!!!
@.Des: Thank you! *glowing* :) With the summer coming soon I’ll be getting back into producing… that’s when I’ll be able to exemplify my own beliefs. ;)
@fpoole:
Have to agree with .Des! Awesome writing style ;) Thx!
@.Des:
Yeah, I agree with you. It’s about that soul thing (not in a James Brown manner, of course, haha). Maybe right now would be a good time to push things forward, as a lot of people seem to be bored, yet basically still interested in DnB.
The deal concerning that “Producing with” article in Resident is to wait until the next issue is out. So please be patient, I will def. translate the 3 parts as time is evolving. ;)
my friend makes dnb and I tend to like the raw versions of his tracks before all the technical work is done. I agree that the technical side is not what makes a track great rather the raw effort put into the creation of the music
my friend makes dnb and I tend to like the raw versions of his tracks before all the technical work is done. I agree that the technical side is not what makes a track great rather the raw effort put into the creation of the music
i produce for aboute 7 years and i think i suck, when you look at that long time of doing it:(, besides dnb i make triphop and sometimes it helps me to relax my mind, but it helps to make dnb more different, and some tunes that i made 5 years ago have soul and mood, but some of the nu ones are totally lifeless! man you got some quality words, big up!!!