Feature Request: SONAR MIDI quantize

It would be really nice if SONAR's MIDI quantize plugin could also deal with velocity ranges (in the same interface.) Currently, I have to use a separate tool/plugin to do this (in SONAR). It would just be convenient to see note timing and velocity controls together as they seem pretty related in terms of performance.

Here's a suggestion for an easy interface modification:

The Velocity range would be controlled by dragging the top or bottom of the indicator to cover the desired range (0-127), and all notes would be real-time scaled to that range.

Contacts by the thousands

Why do some people have hundreds, if not thousands, of contacts on 'social networking' sites? I see this phenomenon on MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, and recently, my beloved Vimeo. At least twice a week now I'm notified that I've been 'added' to someone's network. To date, I've yet to actually know someone that's added me. Invariably, when I look at their profile, they've got umpteen hundred contacts....

Where's the value in that? Is is simply some psychological tick where people don't feel good about themselves without a large number in the "Contacts" field? Part of marketing efforts (easy to spam large swathes with "send to all contacts" options?) General cluelessness about social networks? Just ignoring social conventions?

Red light cameras coming to a halt?

A judge in San Diego, CA issued a ruling today essentially making certain contracts for red-light ticket systems illegal. Not ALL contracts...just certain ones.

Specifically, contracts where operators (read: greedy corporations) were paid based on the number of tickets generated through the system were found to violate some tiny line of California Vehicle Code.

A couple of years ago, the adjoining city (Roseville) installed red light cameras at a major intersection a couple blocks away. Although technically in another municipality, the red-light cameras (and adjusted yellow/red times) have resulting in traffic backing up into neighboring Citrus Heights. It's made the intersection in question (Cirby and Sunrise Blvd) all but unnavigable during most daylight hours. Bad weather makes the situation worse.

Yet municipalities persist. Highly focused sales teams overwhelm hapless, uncreative city managers into deals that profit corporate entities at whatever cost they can socialize (congested streets, lost time and productivity for all citizens), and we're all the poorer for it.

Did Coldplay steal a song?

On the heels of the band Coldplay's recent 7 Grammy nominations comes news that Joe Satriani is suing the band for infringement, saying they copied "substantial portions" of his song "If I Could Fly" from his album Is There Love In Space.

Earlier this year, a similar claim was made by another band, Creaky Boards.


Joe Satriani is not suing Creaky Boards.

Just for comparison, here's another song that uses the same chord progression.

A music teacher on YouTube has made a quick theory analysis of the two songs.


It's pretty clear the VI VII III I progression has great appeal to writers, as it can accomodate more interesting melodies (IMHO), so the question really becomes about the melody.

The fact that many of these songs share a near identical tempo is interesting....perhaps the combination of tempo and chords/keys lend themselves to certain melody possibilities. And the pentameter of the melodies is very strong, Coldplay's in particular seeming to pulse in a brilliant way (Brian Eno produced the Coldplay album. Eno is a master at his craft.)

My limited legal understanding of Satriani's position is he does not have to prove intent to infringe, meaning he doesn't have to demonstrate that Coldplay *knew* of his music before they wrote "Viva la Vida", only that the music is similar enough to constitute infringement.

I think many people confuse the issue: Satriani's not claiming Coldplay "stole" his music, only that they published a composition that technically wasn't original. He may agree they came up with the chords/melody independently, but that's not the issue: he published it first, therefore, it's his.

As producers, one of our challenges is to create something original, new, and fresh while still familiar and accessible. Sooner or later, chords, melodies and arrangments will collide - it's simply mathematical chance.

I hope this is a case of amazing synchronicity, rather than a case where Coldplay (and by association, Brian Eno) simply pilfered someone else's work.

iPhone Ocarina

SMule: Ocarina [Zeldarian] from SonicMule, Inc. on Vimeo.

Some company has come up with an 'instrument' for the iPhone, but with a twist: it lets you hear what other people are creating with the instrument.

It's only a matter of time before something like Splice ports to the iPhone in a broad-appeal sort of way.

Takin' yer salmon!

Found in my Flickr stream....a hornet/wasp/yellowjacket is flying away with a piece of....salmon.

How awesome is that?

Five things Comcast can do NOW to improve their service.

In no order of importance....

1. The only thing the electronic answering system should really need to know is what language you speak. After that, someone should be forwarded to a service agent that is trained/equipped to deal with *all* aspects of Comcast product support. (along these same lines, increase the pay of frontline support agents, as they REALLY are your brand experience.)
   
2. Drop the happy-smiley sales pitches and pleas for customers to look at your website, Comcast.net. We're calling because we want a human being. If there was something on your site I wanted (assuming my service is operating), I'd already be there looking. The very fact I'm on the phone means....I don't want your website.
3. Allow agents to individually (or by small group) track tickets and manage them through report/resolution, rather then letting the call queue randomly assign customers to support reps.
4. Require field crews to report location and service ETA's as often as possible, and update customers periodically with new information. Yes, this is *supposed* to be expensive..what other way can someone punish a company for poor service?!?
5. Be faster to offer services and/or refunds for service interruptions. The internet is a mature technology now, and it's importance is greater in many situations than working television feeds. Frustration could be eased with as little as a couple free months of HBO or something.

That is all.

Behind the Leap

I finally know what 21 million other people already figured out.

iTunes is awesome.

First and foremost, the ability to encode high-quality, DRM-free mp3's is such a basic function in 2008, I still cannot fathom why it isn't built into OS's. Either way, it's made my music production workflow far more economic (converting high-bitrate wav files quickly....nice.) And the encoder sounds just fine.

Well played, Apple.

Jon Anderson: Making Music

John Anderson of Yes talks about writing.

What is a professional artist?

Some ideas that have been floating around in my head for a while - I think it's time to let some other brains join the thought pool....

Every now and again, I'll find myself re-evaluating the word and idea of being a professional.

• The modern terms "professional" and "artist" seem mutually exclusive.
• "Musician" is synonymous with "non-productive non-worker"

There are many reasons for this... professional musicians lead insular lives due to the commercial music environment (high turnover in management, volatile commercial landscape). Generally speaking, only people inside the professional entertainment vocations associate with professional musicians. Outside, most people know someone who's attempting a commercial career, or has abandoned a previous attempt.

• We have an existential identity crisis as artists, specifically as musical artists.
• Styles of dress once symbolic of societal fringes has been mainstreamed, as has the concept of being "creative."

But not the concept of being "poor" or living in an extremely frugal manner. Pop culture absorbed all visible identifiers of "creativity" (and all it's implicit suggestions: sensitivity, "outside the box" thinking, implied validity, etc) without also imposing an environment that demanded those actual skills. (Pop "Idol" competitions, etc..)

• Many of our musical genres and forms are being replicated by software/hardware (Yamaha "styles")

These factors create a lack of cultural space for creatives to identify each other. (this is what accounts for, IMHO, the high flameout rate on Craigslist, the lowest common denominator of impulsive stabs at creative community.)

• Our commercial world ebbs confusingly in a non-intuitive oversupply problem that defeats most rational economic thinking.
• Ubiquity of music production tools has enabled everyone to participate in the creation of unique aural memories.
• Many standard back-office operations have been moved to web-based services
• "Traditional" music companies thrived by monopolizing "the new".
• Enter technological evolution (Alesis ADAT), scale logarithmically, then exponentially, creates an oversupply of "new".
• Songwriting/performance is the new circus freak. ("Everyone's ugly, but he's REALLY ugly!") The most eccentric novelty wins (2girls, one cup).

I will take some time to flesh out some more thorough thinking. In the meantime, reactions, thoughts, etc, are welcome in the comments.

Google Maps Mashup: Genius Idea Number Trillion

We've all heard of Google Maps.

Wouldn't it be cool if there was something like Google Historical Maps? Imagine if the Maps project could present layers of historical visual data like roads, town layouts, archived aerial photos, etc...

Just a thought. Now back to your regularly scheduled day.

Palin for President!

John McCain picked the wrong Palin.

Schmuck.

Celebrate!

Happy birthday, Constitution!

Vimeo turns one....million!

Vimeo Directors Promotional from Jeremiah Jacobs on Vimeo.

This is a little promo piece I created to market my music library to the Vimeo filmmaking community.

...which is apparently quite large. I don't know how many members exactly, but they're hosting a million original videos/short films on their site, 100,000+ of which are in HD.

Which begs the question....why, exactly, are you paying your satellite/cable provider a huge premium for content that's often NOT actually native HD?

Anyone with a laptop connected to an HDTV tried watching Vimeo HD via that system?

(later: I read that indeed, these "HD" video sites are not "TRUE" High-Definition, and yes, I believe I've mis-used the term. We really should term these by their encoding codec (in this case, I think it's H.264). In any case, Vimeo's hi-res letterbox is a thousand years better than YouTube...)

Film Out

DO AS I SAY - Official Trailer (1080p) from DO AS I SAY Movie on Vimeo.

A combination of cues from my music library and some written exclusively for the film were used in the trailer for Do As I Say.

Braindump: Fixing Firefox Profiles when they die.

Just a brain dump about managing Firefox profiles when they go bad. This post assumes you've familiarized yourself with backing up & restoring existing profiles, and are comfortable using a text-editor (like Notepad.)

Symptom: When you launch Firefox, it opens with a default, run-for-the-first-time profile OR you receive a message saying "Firefox is already running, but is not responding." Bringing up your process list shows Firefox is indeed not running. This behavior usually follows an "abnormal program termination" (which is a little like referring to a plane crash as a "controlled flight into terrain"), although in my specific case it was related to running Piriform's (excellent!) CCleaner while Firefox was still running in the background.

Solution: search your profile folder for the "parent.lock" file, and delete it (this is for PC's - MacOS has a different solution.) Lastly, locate and open (in notepad) the profiles.ini file.

Firefox creates profiles with names that look like a jumble of letters and numbers, a period, and then a profile name (usually "default.") Select the profile you want to use by clicking ONCE, wait a couple of seconds, then click the file ONCE again (as if you were editing the file's name.) This action will cause the filename to be automatically highlighted. Press CTRL+C to copy the file's name to the clipboard.

In the profiles.ini file, paste the profile name over the existing one. Save and close the .ini file, and make sure all instances of Firefox are closed.

Re-open Firefox, and your profile should be restored.

A word to the wise: BACKUP YOUR DATA NOW YOU STUPID F*CK!!

Where to find Bruce Hornsby lyrics

Just a quick annoyance-dump kind of post. I just needed to get the actual lyrics and tabs for Bruce Hornsby's "Mandolin Rain." Typing the phrase "bruce hornsby lyrics" into Google is a sad mistake, as the first god-unknown number of links are complete spam (and have errors, to boot!). What's odd is that Google does not rank Bruce's official site (warning: audio on opening!) or searchable lyrics. So, I'm linking Bruce Hornbsy's official lyrics from my blog in hopes of giving it a bit more Google-juice.

Creative Commons and Derivitave Works - A Question

Let's say I intend to republish or derive a new work from an existing Creative Commons licensed work. For instance, I could be placing someone's text over someone else's photos....a simple CC-enabled task.

What if, however, in the process, I make changes to the text in the form of spelling, grammar, or punctuation corrections.

Have I created a derivative work? A new work? Have I violated any CC ideals? Do I need to obtain a new license to display the different work? Are such things already provided for in CC language?

If anyone has any insight, by all means, leave a comment.

Ira Glass: On creativity

Creator/Producer of This American Life, Ira Glass gives some level headed insight into professional creativity. This video is actually from the online guerrilla filmaking guide at Current.tv.

Personal anecdote: one of the first forms my own website took included a page called the "Bit Bucket" where I hosted a handful of tracks I felt didn't "measure up." Eight years later, and that bucket's much more full.

Flying Backwards: Kid with drum machine

This really took me back. My first drum machine experience was a Roland drum machine, followed shortly by my own Alesis SR16. What a fun, albeit momentary, diversion.

Awwww! Factor

The cutest baby picture you'll see today, courtesy of a random blog Google suggested.

A seriously great shot. That mug could sell zippers to dressmakers.

Pic of the day: Nick Small, aka "Borolad"

Flickr's borolad got a top notch shot from the stage at a UK rock concert. Best viewed at fullsize.

Look at the faces!

How Salmonella contaminates tomato plants

Tomatoes are being pulled from restaurants and markets across the U.S. after an outbreak of salmonella tied to crops originating in Florida and Mexico sickened about 170 people across the country. The FDA considers this trend of outbreaks "ongoing", and adopted a program a couple of years ago to address the outbreaks of salmonella. From the program's statement:

Most tomato-associated outbreaks over the past ten years have been traced to product originating from the Eastern shore of Virginia and from Florida; however outbreaks have also been traced to Georgia, South Carolina, Ohio, and California.

This was June of last year. The program is ongoing, according to the FDA.

I've been trying to find some good information about how salmonella contaminates plants, specifically tomato plants. Some poking about through a few search engines found this report from the NIH detailing how salmonella is transferred to plants via soil contamination. Highly interesting reading, especially if you've assumed (as I had) that people had failed to rinse their veggies and had likely consumed a fertilizer product (animal poop.) A few relevant bullet points:

• Tomatoes are the most common veggie carrier of salmonella.
• Salmonella will outlive a six week crop rotation (lives in plant debris after being plowed under), and can propagate with the next crop generation.
  
• Salmonella can also contaminate carrots, radish, lettuce and parsley
• Salmonella is not deterred if the plant is diseased
• Most likely route of contamination is untreated water via soil. - see update below!
  

I'm curious about homebrew methods of testing for salmonella (is there a cool CSI style blacklight gadget I can get?) in soil; anyone have ideas?

Photo by Pete Lewis.

UPDATE #1: This study by Dr. Mansel Griffiths, Dept. of Food Science, UofG suggests that salmonella cannot contaminate a plant if introduced via irrigation- It *has* be introduced on the flowers.

Human pathogens introduced through irrigation water (drip irrigation) at the flowering stage of tomato and cucumber plants did not contaminate the subsequent fruits, though they persist on the roots of these plants. However, when E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes were introduced onto the flowers of cucumber, tomato and strawberries the subsequent fruits were contaminated.

To paraphrase, contaminated soil got on the flowers. Exactly how that occurred is anyone's guess.

Is flickr's search broken, or just interesting?

Or do I just not know how to use it very well? All I wanted were some stock style photos about journalism or newsmedia. I thought I'd find some closeups of reporter's notebooks, maybe a newsroom interior or something. Searching for "journalism" brings up a hodgepodge of photos, none of which particularly suits the word "journalism."(I noticed a huge number of images returned are photos of young girls with attached text pleas for help...isn't this tag gaming a form of child exploitation?)

Unless, of course, you're Flickr. In Flickr's world, words are being redefined by the community in the form of photo tags. Some thoughts occur:

• This has interesting consequences- how pervasive or "sticky" can these new definitions be? We've seen how a Fark photoshop contests can become international memes. Can redefinitions propagate similarly?
  
• What kind of insight can we get regarding a community's relationships with certain words or ideas?
• How do users game these linguistics to bring higher views to their own kind of commentary?
• Is this a kind of metaspeak?

Thoughts?

McCain has already lost.

This article in the conspicuously pro-White House WaPo contains a number of interesting rhetorical flourishes that if taken as true, present a bleak outlook for the McCain campaign. I've long complained about the tendency of media to impose a fiction of their own via narrative framing (see: horse race). Lately, I've turned this into a tool (kind of a contrary indicator) in an attempt to divine the inherent prejudices of the media as a whole.

While much hay has been made over the media's seeming "free pass" to McCain on many, MANY issues, I believe this article, IF TRUE, betrays a change in the winds for McCain. Put simply, it may turn out Obama sells more papers than McCain. If that's the case, McCain cannot count on the media in the way the GOP has over the last eight years.

A few paragraphs in, WaPo reports:

Two McCain aides said his speech was the beginning of a "great debate" on the direction of the country. It will be followed quickly by a television ad campaign aimed at reinforcing McCain's core message: that Obama's sweeping rhetoric offers little real promise of changing the political culture in Washington.

If McCain's "core message" is "the other guy's a dunce", he's already lost. Not that his campaign actually believes or operates in this manner, but if "the media" takes this narrative to heart, McCain is stuck operating a "negative" campaign. Further, he's perpetually on the defense. As JC Watts famously said: "If you're explaining, you're losing."

Another kind of analysis displays the comical attempts of journalists to imbue their writing with a sense of motion, by employing "action verbs" (not as redundant as you'd first think). This is done by comparing the subject with the attached verb. A few examnples:

McCain wasted - McCain began - McCain said - Obama spoke - McCain began - McCain said - McCain explicitly rejected - McCain highlighted - Obama honored - Obama said - Obama mocked - McCain said - McCain decried - etc, etc.

What leaps out at me is the usage of "said" versus "spoke". "Spoke" seems to conjure a sense of purpose and precognition. "Said" is so broad and general as to be bereft of any distinct meaning, other than it doesn't quite carry the poise of "spoke."

These are only cursory reactions to what I'm reading. To be clear, I certainly have my own political biases (not a McCain fan, that's fer sure!), but I'm incensed that I still cannot depend on the US press to provide anything useful.

What say ye?

Today's Million Dollar Idea

Google Calendar, Farmers Almanac, Google Analytics.

As more people adopt local gardening to stave off spiking food prices, a tool like this would be absolutely critical for high-yield gardening. Imagine your calendar with a planting schedule based on your geographic location, time of year, etc, and the ability to track your yields and other stats over time (and compare with historical data) in Analytics.

Imagine: your cell phone beeps and says: "Time to plant your corn seedlings, and flood your onions."

DCLugi: My Defining Song

Sounds so eerily familiar......

Cashed Checks

"The rise of check cashing places is directly tied to the growth in illegal immigration. How do you think illegal immigrants manage their finances? They can't open bank accounts because you need SSN's to do that. But they have bills to pay like anyone else. So they have to go to check cashing places where the cash they have or the checks they receive can enter the financial system. If you think of the money they collect for work as "illegal", this is how that money gets laundered."

via a MeFi comment.

TED: Rethinking the Music Video

G4TV and Rockband: Can you actually learn to drum?

There are a million ways to fake this, but if its' true that G4tv's "Attack of the Show" host Kevin Pereira actually learned to play this song on Rockband, well, let's just say sliced bread better watch it's back.

Haste Economy

Net Product:			$ 3.99
Tax:			$ 0.00
P & H:			$ 6.95
Total Order:			$ 10.94

Sometimes in my daily haste, I'll simply miss a glaring stupidity. In this case, I paid $7 to send a $4 piece of plastic two thousand miles across the continent.

In a more perfect world, the name-brand manufacturer of this particular plastic would have simply forwarded the order to local supplier, rather than ship across the country.

If you're looking for someone to blame for this week's perpetual increase in gas prices, start with me.

But for one week only.

Brain Dump: embedding fonts in OpenOffice PDF's

This is little more than a brain-dump post relating to OpenOffice Writer, True Type fonts, and the PDF encoder.

I happen to make frequent use of the PDF creator in OpenOffice. One issue I've run into a few times, however, is the rendered PDF's will not display the correct font. When I open the PDF, I find the font hasn't even been embedded, and some kind of substitution (usually MS Arial) will occur. Most frustrating, this occurs with one of my favorite fonts, Adobe's Myriad Pro.

It turns out the issue is related to the way PDF files handle fonts, specifically, fonts that are not freely shared, and not embeddable. Myriad Pro is one of these fonts.

Apparently, a font-maker can decide whether or not they want their fonts to be embeddable. If they choose "no", OpenOffice's PDF creator will (correctly) honor that wish, and embed a substituted font.

If you're on a Microsoft operating system, I'd suggest using only MS fonts in documents that are destined for PDF. There are a bazillion embeddable TrueType fonts available.
-----------

EDIT: 11/2011 - here is a more detailed conversation re: Open Office and fonts in PDF files.

Ironman is going to be a movie.

Wildly Popular 'Iron Man' Trailer To Be Adapted Into Full-Length Film

Last summer's hit trailer is finally going to be made into a movie.

Flight 404: Solar

Solar, with lyrics. from flight404 on Vimeo.

An explanation of how this was put together is found here.

10 years ago (or more), MTV ran a program called "Liquid Television" that would feature clips of computer generated graphics and animations. Watching "Solar" ignited that same feeling of....newness.

Jaw...drops open: Lydia Van De Meer

Drum machine impresario David Haynes is jamming some nice grooves with his group here. As I'm watching I'm completely taken by the bass player.....great, skills. Just...yum. I mean that musically, of course. Is there more of her?

Oh yes, there is.



Covering Eric Benet's "Just My Way." More on her YouTube channel.

A house is sold.....LIVE!!!!

The NorCal real estate market is so bad, the mere occurrence of a home being sold warrants a live, on-scene news feature out here.

Why, oh why can't we have a better press?

Piano on fire.

The Explosion Is Big

Hip hop music describes the plot of "Predator."

Pharmaceuticals in our drinking water.

This just in: Municipal drinking water supplies across the nation are contaminated with pharmaceutical drugs.

The reason has to do with the fact there are no easy, legal ways to dispose of prescription medications. Most people flush them down the toilet.

These molecules are problematic for municipal suppliers. Water treatment facilities are not required to screen these substances, and don't. Medicine manufacturers and dispensaries are not required to provide disposal services, and don't. (In some cases, such services would be prohibited by Federal Law.)

Remember, most manufacturers of bottled water are simply buying municipal supplies (read: tap water), so it's not too far a leap to suppose our nation's bottled water supply is also contaminated with pharmaceuticals.

According to today's revelation, Concord California (has so far) tested positive for sulfamethoxazole and meprobamate. Sacramento does not test it's water supply for pharmaceutical contamination.

Music Library: Fast Forward

New cue in the library: Fast Forward.

Is Google Reader a keylogger?

A recent post on the Google Reader blog got my attention:

The "j" key (which takes you to the next item) is perhaps the most well-known keyboard shortcut. However, there are many more keys to press, and I was curious to see just how much they were tapped in Google Reader. A quick analysis later, I came up with a simple top-10 list, and I thought it would be fun to share. The units here are "milli-Js", where 1,000 milli-Js are equivalent to all the presses "j" received.

The chart that follows is presumably generated by sniffing the keystrokes of Reader users. Google goes on to say:

Partly based on the data we gathered, and in our quest to make Reader as keyboard-accessible as possible, we've actually added a few more with the latest release.

A few questions:

• Can Google log keystrokes in other open tabs (Firefox?)
  
• *DOES* Google log keystrokes in other tabs? URL's?
• What other properties does Google track keystrokes? Gmail? Blogger? Does Google know what I'm posting to my blog before I click "Publish?"
• Can Google's data be used as evidence, exculpatory or otherwise ("My client is innocent, your honor, as Google shows him at home pressing 'J' in Google Reader at the time of the murder.")
• Is my own keylogged activity open to me?

Google's response, of course, is that they're only using this data to analyze the usage of their Reader product. And for most Google employees, this may actually be true. History has shown, however, that every tracking feature that can be (ab)used, will be (ab)used.

Next Nature

Absolutely mind bending look at the relationship between "nature" and "culture" (both in quotes because the way the concepts are used in this presentation), specifically how closely related they are (in essence, our culture is our natural environment).

One highlight is the short film "Metallosis Maligna" which looks at a future where the human body completely assimilates metallic implants. Incredibly creative. (Incidentally, I was fascinated to notice the film's opening score is eerily reminiscent of my own piece, "Declining Light.")

In other news, the inventor of the Segway has a new prosthetic arm device, called the "Luke."

Next Nature, indeed.

Pathway Foods!

An insanely clever take on advertising.

Comment Tracking - Do you?

I'm curious, loyal readers: Do you track comment threads? If so, what method do you use? RSS reader? Do you just revisit the page and see if it's been updated? I think most people do drive-by commenting (myself included) and don't take the time to actually track a conversation. I know on larger communities this is usually a feature, but can also be overwhelming (Digg, Fark).

As Ritholz is fond of saying: What say ye?

The Most Important Video You'll Ever See

In 8 parts on YouTube.

“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” (RealPlayer version, full-length).

For the rest of your life, every time you read something like this:

At this stage, it is impossible to forecast the length and severity of any recession. It is, however, safe enough to predict that the US economy will return to positive growth in due course. Within a few years at the most, income will surpass its pre-recession peak. If the recession brings about an unwinding of the massive imbalances in trade and capital flows that have built up over the past decade, it may even yield some long-term gains.

...or this...

Scientists there [LANL] say they have developed a way to produce truly carbon-neutral fuel and useful organic chemicals at large scale using water and carbon dioxide removed from the air as raw materials.

...think of the presentation above.

World of GoneCraft

I've not been doing a lot of posting lately, nor a lot of composing. The above is why.

Malcolm Gladwell: What we can learn from spaghetti sauce.

An amazing story from Malcolm Gladwell about food, culture, and the art of measuring the ethereal.

The takeaway for my creative brethren is this: diversity is good. There are many tastes, and it's ok to cater to multiples. You don't need to pigeonhole yourself, and don't be afraid to position yourself (or your creative endeavors) as a kind of up-branding. Last, test-market. Give people a chance to participate in the creative process, versus offering a "varnished" (meaning: unchangeable) product. This goes against the grain of contemporary artist thinking, and I'm not suggesting this become one's predominant method, however, adding a bit of this philosophy to your creative process may be beneficial.