This was originally posted at the end of the Bar Camp Day 1 post but I wanted to set it apart and give it its own place.
One a Week
I thought this might be interesting for someone who wants to get something done. I really appreciated Chris’s talk because I had set myself the goal of doing one new track a week and haven’t done it due to being so busy doing other stuff*. I really like the perimeters he set to make his project manageable and his goal achievable:
- limiting weekly time spent on the project
- scheduling it for the same time each week
- setting the tracks duration to 2 minutes (and allowing himself to go over)
So here are the notes I made during his session:
- Useful tools: PRO CHORDS – iPhone and iPad App
- Used project (for BarCamp talk) to demonstrate how to do a regular project and the benefits
- Giving self creative perimeters greatly enhances productivity.
- The idea:
- to create something new each week
- start from scratch
- complete it each week
- about 2 minutes
- The goals:
- publish the creation online soundcloud.com/ithaca-audio
- somewhere where you can get feedback
- make it useful for people in some way
- creative commons music for use it films, etc.
- downloadable
- complete in less that 4 hours each week
- find a project that you can squeeze into a small amount of time
- Create a sound scape: nice and ambiguous music
- Can be created with existing equipment
- Sounds good as short, self-contained work
- useful for background music in films and such
- Each 4 weeks became bored and was prompted to change something, create something new
- At week 15, things became more melodic
- exploring limited genre requires creativity
- pushed him to come up with different ideas
- Has improved ability to quickly complete projects
Other stuff: Why do I choose to spend my time doing one thing and not another, when I’ve said I want to do the another? To be explored in a future blog post….
http://barcamp.org for info on bar camps in general and how to organize one.
Related articles
- Nothing fancy, just a few audio tracks picked out for @dConstruct 2011 (tantek.com)
- How To Make An Idea Work (knowledgephobia.wordpress.com)
- 5 Ways to Stop Psyching Yourself Out of Your Goals (lifehack.org)
- Balance Your Creativity-Namaste (clubcreativestudio.wordpress.com)
Alison Amazed 
Hey, what do you know? I just happened to discover Ithaca Audio on Soundcloud last week, and am actually working on a film right now that will incorporatate one of their tracks, took a break from it to do some blog-reading, and found this! I really appreciate Chris’ making his work available for otehr artists to play with.
That’s great Dave! Not sure how much you use Soundcloud, but there are lots of free-to-download tracks available. Some really good ambient stuff as well. Another composer you might want to try is Jörn Schipper who puts stuff on Soundcloud as Beat4Poets. Not all Jörn’s tracks are free, but just a couple weeks ago he put some tracks up for free download.
I used Soundcloud regularly now, because so many people there put Creative Commons licenses on their stuff (as do I, for my poetry). Unfortunately, Jörn dosen’t apear to be one of them. I’ve just looked at all his tracks, and I don’t see a CC license on any of them. Sure, I could ask permission, but I prefer working with musicians who are as committed to the reuse/remix culture as I am, if possible. Anyway, yeah, Soundcloud is great. Jamendo.com and freesound.org are my other favorite audio sources for videopoems.
Dave, He made quite a collection free to download. I understood from a notice he had attached to those tracks that he was making them downloadable for the community to work with. I don’t know about his creative commons. I believe I should make my stuff creative commons – I need to look at the various licenses.
Though one of the reasons why I haven’t done it, is because I want to know who is using the work and how they are using it. You say you could ask for permission but you prefer to work with artists who are “as committed to remix/reuse culture as I am.” You can use that as opening or as a closing 🙂 it opens you to the remix/reuse culture and closes you to people who aren’t there (yet). Not sure where I stand on remix/reuse, and that may be why I haven’t got a creative commons license. Right now, I’m more interested in collaboration. I want some interaction with the artists who are interested in using my work. Even if it’s as little as an exchange of comments on my blog. At least that gives some acknowledgment.
Free to download is very different for free to reuse/remix (and in the latter case, one needs to look not only for a CC license, but to make sure it doesn’t specify “no derivatives”).
The CC license at Via Negativa doesn’t close me to anyone except those who want to incorporate my stuff in something with a more restrictive copyright — but as I say at the bottom of the About page, I’m usually willing to waive the “share alike” requirement for anyone who asks. Since most of my creative focus is poetry, it’s not like I’m foregoing any significant money-making opportunities by giving my work away like this; I realize writers in other genres or artists in other media may have very good reasons for wanting to maintain tighter control over their work. I wrote about my thinking on this in a post called “Should poetry be open source?” Of course, collaboration is extremely important, and can and often does happen without the benefit of CC or copyleft licenses. I don’t think, though, that my on-going collaboration with the terrific Filipina American poet Luisa Igloria would’ve happened had I not made it so obvious that my daily microblog posts were free for reuse. We didn’t know each other very well at all, but late last year she started seeing them on Twitter and Facebook (where the posts are short enough to fit entirely within the text accompanying the link), and needing writing prompts, started using images and often whole phrases as seeds for daily lyric poems. Now she’s a co-author of my blog and has generated enough poems out of this to fill three or four full-length books. That’s a win for her, for me, and especially for the readers of Via Negativa.
Dave, Thanks for this engaging dialogue in the comments. I’m going to read your post ‘should poetry be open source’. It’s great that you have been able to connect with someone and develop a win-win collaboration. I’ve been approached by people on Soundcloud to remix my work and I’ve given them vocal tracks but as yet haven’t heard the results. I’ve been thinking about recording some of my poetry without backing and posting it on Soundcloud for download under a creative commons license. It all takes so much time and I am currently spending ALL MY TIME looking for paying work/doing things to attract paying opportunities so the stuff I really like to do – like making audio tracks for my poems and working on my poems, and developing performances with my poems has to take a back seat. My life story.