What have I become?

October 9th, 2009

Imagine the words “What have I become?” out of Johnny Cash’s mouth. This is what’s left of my thoughts after one wonderful concert: Peter Broderick and Nils Frahm. Again, just as with Hauschka’s concert, it took me down to earth. Being there, sucking in the atmosphere it makes everything else so obsolete.

Music is about people. Music is between people. Real people. Music is about moments. Creating moments, sharing moments. Recordings are the attempt to capture the moment. Fail.

All the “the-internet-is-so-great-for-musicians”-evangelists have all one big, big misconception. The same way as good music comes from the countryside and is performed in the cities, good music comes from no-internet-land. (yes, well… and distributed over the web)

The internet, with all its “hello”s, “have you seen”s and “*ping!* you’ve got a new ***”s, eats up your mind. Or lets say your creativity. Or maybe just your intrinsic motivation expressing yourself through music. It’s not good to see, that there are tons of guys all making the same stuff. It’s not good to see your idea being around everywhere else. It is just not good being referenced all the time.

After a Broderick/Frahm concert I accuse myself. You are being a person, that spins his activity around the net. You were a person spinning your activity around music. What have you become?

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  • chris

    aaah the internet. our friend, our fiend…well

    i understand what you mean (i think). I've been disconnecting the last week, just do get a grip on music again. decreased number of communities, etc, internet shouldnt be leading, but agree: supporting trough distribution.

    the connection we have when making music with 3 laptops in person, is not a connection we can have trough a cable. (well the midi power and audio cables are neccesary)..

    just like food, music is more then a set of tones, it's the smell of the building the musician is performing in, it's the acoustics, it's the smell of the vinyl, the touch of the vinyl, the buying of the vinyl, the anticipation, something we cannot have trough a cable.

    internet gives too much inspiration and it's too instant. yeah actually think it does. with so much music and ideas i sometimes think we lose our own identity. having ideas all the time, but in 5 minutes i'm looking at another site and having another influence or idea that's also good, but forgot to put the last idea into reality. sometimes internet feels like just making a continous journey trough ideas, but not developing my own thing enough.

    actually i think we are forgetting that the internet should be a supporting medium, not a lifestyle.

    back to music.

  • http://nckn.de Nicken

    well, that's exactly the point. you always deal with ideas of other persons. and since social media is a big filter for only the good ideas and works, you're constantly confronted with brilliant ideas. other people's ideas. it's fine from a consumer-standpoint, but for a person asking: “where am i going” this is the hardest jungle to get through.
    nevertheless, for me the solution is: take your inspiration from concerts and “real moments”. make more music than you record music. have these moments again.
    and later let other people participate.

    back to bachelor-thesis ;)

  • chris

    so we need a good and healthy balance between connecting and disconnecting with social media :)

  • onlettingo

    I absolutely agree, internet life is artificial in the most sense, you're not actually doing anything. If you sit and stare at a screen for all of your life, then it becomes your life, sitting and staring. At one point, after Katrina was hitting the south (I'm in Houston) I wanted to paste a nutri-sweet packet on the back of my phone to remind me how completely fake my communication and life was via my phone. I didn't have any visitors during the storm and I had relied on my phone for outside communication and maintence of relationships, it was absolute shit. Whenever we had evacuated to Austin, all I wanted to do was go out and explore, I hardly picked up my phone. People just don't realize how dependent we are on technology, and how much more dependent we should be on each other. I just stumbeled upon your site, I really love the messages your talking about and the music you're creating, it's outstanding. Thank you for not being normal.

  • http://nckn.de Nicken

    thank you for the comment and kind words.
    agree, it feels like less and less people go out and strive for real experience…
    if you stumble upon the movie “Mammoth”, go watch it. For me it illustrates this topic in a wonderful way:
    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1038043/

  • http://www.klavier-lernen.ch/ Klavier Lernen

    I assure you that all of my activities will definitely lead to an upcoming but there is still a longer way to go for me. Some weeks not enough who would have thought so stay tuned.

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