Issue Five : Creating Your Own Headaches by John Book
esides listening and writing about it, I also create my own music. Is this part of the "music junkie" process? I honestly don't know, but I've been creating my own sounds for over 20 years. The true definition of this is "I have my dad's cassette deck, it has a record button, let's see what I can do". I sang, spoke, and made noises with my mouth all through the mic. The Panasonic cassette player I had access to ran on a power adaptor where you could adjust the amount of power being used. Had a calculator, you could adjust it to low power. Something bigger, you could go up higher. It wasn't meant for it, but I used this as pitch control so I had a few tapes of me talking like a chipmunk when the tapes would play on regular speed.
I had a friend in intermediate school who was a religious chap. Apparently his church used to unscrew cassette tapes and flip the physical tape the other way. When put back and played in the deck, the sound would come out in reverse. This was the cheap way of backmasking, the practice of finding hidden backward messages on albums. The quality sucked, since the actual recording was on the other side of the magnetic tape, but it was just one of many early experiments that got me fascinated with the world of recording.
My dad had a great Sony cassette deck with a pause button that worked on the money. If you wanted to make a mix tape for the car, you could do it precisely and accurately. Every cassette deck I ever had afterwards all paused weird, so I couldn't make nice tapes. This pause function would also lead to me making my own custom tapes in the early 80's. I remember trying to extend some Austrian waltz. Through time I could do it well. I got better when Art Of Noise's "Beat Box" came out, I could extend that song to a full 15 minutes with my pause button alone. I would let the beat go, and maybe squeeze in Yes' "Owner Of A Lonely Heart". I never knew what I was doing, it just sounded good to me. I later found out that thousands of musically curious pre-teens were doing the same thing across the world, a practice called "pause-tape mixing". DJ Premier has confessed to making his first beats in this manner, way before samplers were ever affordable.
I continued to record myself, only for myself, up until 1992, when I decided I should try to become an artist. Becoming an artist, in my mind, meant that this was going to be heard by others. I looked to The Residents for inspiration, who always said that they made music without an audience in mind, then they released it. I had my rock star dreams, and while the lifestyle was inviting, I didn't want that. I didn't know what I wanted, but I liked to create sounds and hoped that my silly experiments would amount to something.
I started Crut, and made up stupid scenarios about this non-existent group. I used different voices in my songs, and each voice had a character. There were four main characters, one who only spoke with his hands (ode to Terminator X). Then there were other characters who I felt should have a voice, and just added them to the mix. All my beats were done with whatever shitty cassette recorder was lying around, and for two years everything was done on an old Sony 2-track reel-to-reel. This was in 1993, at a time when Prince Paul, the Dust Brothers, and everybody else were using the latest in modern technology. I had no money, no access to money, so I created with what I had. Definitely a hip hop thing. I didn't have two turntables, I had a Montgomery Ward record player. It was a challenge, so I worked cheap. My music sounded cheap but I was attracted to lo-fi recordings.
In 1994 I finally got a computer, and I've never looked back. There weren't many sampling programs in 1994 but the audio programs that did exist provided a looping feature, which was more than what I needed to make continuous beats. The last seven years have been a lot of trial and error, and my setup is still very basic compared to others I know.
As for my music, it hasn't sold millions, thousands, or even hundreds. It would be nice, as I know I have the potential to create music that moves people, but until then I create songs that move me first. When I put together songs, I sometimes am inspired by an idea or even a person. Or in the case of one song I recently completed, it was influenced by an e-mail she posted to a mailing list. It came off not as a personal observation, but something that could be interpreted into something more than polished poetry. Or maybe you imagine what might be going in your head if you watched a sunset, or to view a woman who is dancing and is just lost in her own world, or the hectic feelings during a mid-morning traffic jam.
Anyone with a sense of rhythm can make a drum loop, but it takes a lot to create a song from random sounds on records, and make it fit into the idea that's in your head. My source of material is from records, I have always enjoyed the practice of sampling and had wished for that to be my way of producing records when I had the opportunity.
Creating your own music, whether it's with other records, synthesizers, or real instruments, will always help in the creation of headaches. You can accept the flaws in a song and let it go, or work yourself up for no reason because you want the transitions to be perfect. I've done music for nine years with no success, and by saying that do I wish my music was heard more? Sure, who wouldn't? There are loads of commercials on television where the music is being put together in the same way I put music together. It's that fine line between making a living off of something you love doing, and being called a sell-out. I say create for yourself and let everything else fall where they may.
Fun. The music making process has to be fun, first and foremost. If it isn't for you as a bedroom producer, or the conductor of a community orchestra, the other pieces of the puzzle (whichever path you choose to follow) will never fit. I always create for myself, and the fact that just one individual can say "wow, that song was very beautiful", "that shit was dope", or "you have that old school feel" is motivating enough to make me want to do more.