I’m Offended #3

Rampant Half-ass

Okay, I’m used to it in Indie author/publishing. But in essence all of the rampant half-assed-ness comes down to the old joke about the person who showed up at the stage door and said they could play the violin. Yeah? How long have you been you playing? Well, I haven’t, but it looks easy, right? And I wasn’t doing anything else tonight.

Cross that over to writing. I’ve read a few books. I’ll kick out a novel. No one is watching over my shoulder. It looks like writing. I got an ISBN number. I’m a writer!

But – YouTube? That’s presentation time. Particularly live streaming. I have mentioned being in many facets of the music biz. If I were six times better than most of what I see on YouTube I’d never have made it to the parking lot, much less in the front door. Do none of these people know what they’re going to so or say or demonstrate next?

There’s an Englishman, (TheSoundTestRoom, 54.7k subscribers) I’m sure he’s the nicest guy, and he runs a popular iOS music demo/review site. He doesn’t even spend the first five minutes begging you to like and subscribe. But he wastes far more time than that bumblefucking around. “Well, here’s this, no, there it is, no…” and he bounces from screen to screen, often the same screen that’s not the right one 5, 6, 10 times before he gets to where he’s going. I can do that and get it figured. I’m looking for the quickie how to/here it is. The same with sound demos. Play something identifiable or useful and move on. Hint – don’t play piano licks on a pedal steel guitar. I’m sure Doug is doing a service for a lot of people, but he drives me fucking crazy. Have a plan. Don’t drag us around while you figure it out. And like the “writer” pages, people fawn all over that half-assed stuff. Example – I mean he couldn’t answer a direct question in the comments about iPhone 10/MIDI/audio with the appropriate answer(s) when, hey, he could’ve fucking Googled before he said something stupid. And expensive. But no. You need a $100 plus audio interface and… It’ an epidemic. I had a plumber tell me I needed to pay $1,200 for a $30 valve that was “mandatory” until the city inspector said “Bullshit”. There’s more than enough bullshit out there. If you can’t answer from the bottom up, don’t.

Even Jakob Haq, (Haq attaQ, 38.6k subscribers) whose videos I generally appreciate, and it’s obvious he knows his iOS stuff, still ends up staying in the shallow end of the pool sometimes and being a “personality”. Both he and the SoundTestRoom do what they do and if it gets tricky or is outside their domain with (usually) MIDI (which has been around for almost 40 years) they duck. They try to be clever. “Ah, ya don’t need it. It sounds wonderful by itself” and just like everybody else. Plus, there’s a plethora of chubby guys with beards, and chicks with tattoos or Pre-Raphaelite hair or both, and erudite pontificators doing the same wanking hither and yon and begging for likes and subscribers.

The only one who seems to know his stuff deeper than the superficial and can edit out his clams is Nutrix the Synth Guy (15.9k subscribers). And he’s difficult to understand. But when no one could make sense of the SE02 Sequencer, he nailed it. It was slow, and glitch edited, but he got it. Which was appreciated because Roland’s manual sucked, even after the firmware/documentation update. It should be said Nutrix is a teacher at a brick-and-mortar music school.

Aside. I was one of the three people responsible for sales (and etc) at Sequential Circuits. It was one of the synths of the late 70s and 80s. And is now a reborn high-end specialty. Here’s a fact. Over 98% of the Prophets we got back for any kind of service still had the factory patches in them. What does that tell you about “creativity”?

Why is this half-assed-ness acceptable? If I’d shown up at a trade show or clinic and couldn’t make the stuff kiss my ass, didn’t have a program, couldn’t stop, change hats and switch gears in an instant based on the crowd and answer the questions from a piano teacher in Monroe, Louisiana to Herbie Hancock to the pocket protector people (that had nothing to do with music) I’d been fired. Actually, I’d never have gotten hired. But some of these cats, who are at best hacks (no offense, Jakob) have coffee mugs and t-shirts and keep time with their hands like DJs, or if they’re cute and do full on personality videos they wiggle dance or groove some. They don’t explain or teach shit, but there they are. Talking heads. Marketing spokespersons. “Hit the like button and subscribe and I’ll get some more free shit to not explain very well.”

Not half-assed – The other day I landed on a music theory site. The guy has 1.56 Million followers.

WHOA. 1.56 Million

He’s knowledgeable. And clever. And makes sense. I made a comment on one of his posts. That comment got 145,000 likes/thumbs up. One comment. One post. But what I like most about the guy is his “Oh, for fuck’s sake” attitude about elitism or “Stump. The Band”. Example – Someone sent in a question about how to voice an idiotic chord. It was stupid on its face, Gbmin7 with added #13 and b9. “You wouldn’t normally want to do this,” (demo) “because it just sounds bad. Unless that’s what you’re after.” Plus, it violated the syntax of chord notation. (Kinda like writing, huh? Syntax is voice.) After this, the host took the time to point out that regardless of what the circle of fifths we memorized tells us, Gbm7, and all its associated flats, is really F#m7 and suddenly we’re back in the land of the sane. I don’t know many people who think in Cb when B will do. And the most amazing thing he said, and shows his attitude and probably why 1.56 Million musicians have found his site, was this (after being asked for advice by someone starting music school) –

“…(do) not let the information you’re given dictate the way you feel music should be made. You’re going to learn (chords, scales blah blah blah) but there is a danger of losing track of what it is you want to do with music. Don’t lose sight of what keeps you excited.”

Now, this entire rant makes sense if you think cross curriculum. That riff above reads like Elmore Leonard on writing. “I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It’s my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing.” Duh. Write a melody, don’t run scales. I relate writing to music. Others relate it to accounting or programming or Friday night drinking in a bar. An understanding of music (nor the others) is necessary. Understanding how to use and abuse the rules of craft is mandatory. (At least I think so).

Point – there are way too many of those “tonight’s the night” violinists out there. Everywhere from writing to music to dryer repair.

If only I were young and scrawny. I’d have coffee mugs and T-shirts. The question would be, would anybody give a shit if it’s better than half-assed? From what I can tell? Maybe. Because unfortunately Kurt Vonnegut nailed it with this gem –

“If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you are a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.”

How fucking sad a commentary is that?