Davin Greenwell

Over the last while I’ve contemplated what music means to me. I put a lot of time and effort into electronic music, but finally – after much thought – I have to concede that I do not know who my target audience is in marketing terms. I make music that I like: very self indulgent sounds that please my ideals of composition structure, dynamics, energy, percussion, melody, instrumentation and so forth. That is fine – I should make what I want to make. However, I am not always certain where this music should finally go, or who I should be talking to. It has been made abundantly clear that the kind of music that gets play in clubs is more or less music I have no interest in making. I had coffee with Thor / Fractal last night while taking a break from the mix of the track I am making with Formulate and Dustin H. Myself and Thor talked a fair bit about the gap between what we make and the certainty of what seems to be popular for the “dance” clubs.
I don’t make “dance music”. I generally make music that you can dance to, but “dance music” I would say it is not. It’s not “dance club” music at all. Seismic might be the exception. Speaking of Seismic, how about this? I am not particularly sold on the Flash MP3 player or the style of it but it’s more the function of the below that I am looking for feedback on. I’d like to house all previews of my music here in this sort of style:

So what does this have to do with departure? Not sure exactly. I haven’t yet departed the electronic music scene obviously but I am feeling fairly disconnected from it right now. Maybe that’s because I have not been doing many shows at all lately. It is inspiring to see music connect with people on a dance level – even though, as I say, I don’t make “dance music.” I am mainly differentiating what I make from the more mainstream stuff that you might even hear on your local commercial radio station. I’m not even saying there’s anything wrong with that kind of music – I absolutely do not think there is anything wrong with it on a general level. It’s more of an accessibility issue.
Last night the topic of artist albums came up as well. I have been giving some thought to making an artist album lately and putting that in stores. This would require many things, not the least of which is time. Also, as I type this, there are signs in the front of A&B Sound in downtown Victoria saying they’ve shut down and opened another store in Langford. What’s left in downtown for music? Ditch and Lyles Place, I think. So I’m aware that there’s not much milk in that particular cow. I think what it is .. is that I want to connect with whomever it is that I am making this music for. Being able to share over the internet is great, but it is faceless and immemorable – is that even a word? Maybe amemorable – I am pretty certain that’s not a word.
The photo above is of Charles leaving the Commercial Drive skytrain station a few weeks ago. Time for me to get some fresh air!

Submitted my remix of John Morgan and Kevin Shiu last night for approval. Waiting to hear back on that. In the mean time I am moving on to the unnamed track that myself, Justin and Dustin are working on. We have a deadline of next Wednesday to be done, so given that we started this track a couple years ago I think that’s fair time to finish it up and send it off to the stores.
Speaking of the stores, Beatport has Seismic listed with the wrong song names and has wrong genre for the Powerplant remix and even has the wrong preview clip for it. That’s pretty disappointing stuff but it isn’t the first time I’ve seen this done. No good. Once the proper release is listed I’ll link to it.
Update: Turns out we messed up the submission. DOH!
In other news, Google launched something rather significant last night – Google App Engine – this is basically an online application development platform. Will be interesting to see what people come up with when they have access to some of the tremendous resources of Google. And of course there are all sorts of implications here, and I think some of the most insightful ones are suggesting that this will (at a very high level) make the acquisition of a company very fluid for Google if the company has developed on Google’s platform already. Clever..
Just ate lunch but feel empty. Perhaps its time to go out for a walk!

The image above has something to do with this post. Give me a moment and I’ll tell you how.

I think a lot about songwriting. The fact is though, that I write very few songs, but many more tracks. What I mean by this is that the music I compose is not songwriting. To me, a songwriter writes something that you can sing. You can’t sing my songs, but I’d like to see you try if you disagree with me.

There are gifted songwriters out there. One of them, in my opinion, is Patty Griffin. Let me preface this by saying that most of those out there who think you know my musical tastes will probably not expect me to like PG or even live in the same universe as her. But I do, and musical influence is a strange animal that knows no boundaries. Not in the same way that tastes impose boundaries.

Artistic influence is about what is on the outside and hasn’t completely made it in yet. That’s the only way it stands a chance to inspire – to be different, to contrast and to show a different way of doing things. In the case of Patty Griffin, there was never much of a chance that we are remotely similar. But there is something in her songwriting that strikes a chord with me, and indeed one of her songs, “Goodbye,” is one of the few songs by anyone to have achieved a 10/10 rating on my Radio Paradise account.

Part of songwriting, to me, is writing good lyrics. This might sound obvious to many of you but I have spoken to a lot of people who do not take lyrics into consideration when they judge whether or not they like a song. If I think I like a song, I immediately look up the lyrics – this is to see if I like the message behind it all. If the lyrics turn out to be garbage, then it sours the song for me. However, in the case where the lyrics are very good, it can turn an already good song into a meaningfully good song. That is another category altogether – this is the kind of music that now has lasting power for me. I’m not going to get into what I consider to be good songwriting itself or what good lyrics are. That is far too subjective – I’d rather just say that you know when something has been written with purpose, and you also know when something was just written. And finally I’d like to give you an example of the good songwriting I am talking about.

The example I’ve chosen is a lo-fi video of a PG doing a performance of the song “Goodbye” with an acoustic guitar. This is pretty raw and in this environment I think this really shows the talent involved. Here it is:

And here are the lyrics. Maybe follow along while watching the video:

Occured to me the other day
You’ve been gone now a couple years
Well, I guess it takes while
For someone to really disappear
And I remember where I was
When the word came about you
It was a day much like today
The sky was bright, and wide, and blue
And I wonder where you are
And if the pain ends when you die
And I wonder if there was
Some better way to say goodbye
Today my heart is big and sore
Its tryin’ to push right through my skin
I wont see you anymore
I guess thats finally sinkin’ in
Cause you cant make somebody see
By the simple words you say
All their beauty from within
Sometimes they just look away
But I wonder where you are
And if the pain ends when you die
And I wonder if there was
Some better way to say goodbye

If you liked that song I’d recommend you find the studio version because it’s simply gutting with full sound – ie: bass and a bit more instrumentation, and of course you get PG’s full vocals. So what does that all have to do with the image above? Well the lyrics remind me of a couple friends I’ve lost over the years and the image above – the weightless woman – reminds me of some dreams I’ve had where I’ve died and started floating over a room. So it’s a pretty loose connection, but from where I stand that is all that’s required.

Somewhat unrelated:
How many of you out there use iTunes? If not, what do you use? Does it have the ability to subscribe to podcasts?

When I was looking through my photos the other day, this one sparked something in me. I had a topic to pontificate about which would have been relevant to boundaries, limitations and things like putting items in their correct place, and consequence.
But all of that escapes me today and all I can think about is how perfect this was to find by accident while walking along Commercial Drive with Anand a couple of weeks ago. I went over to Vancouver to work on music with Anand before he went to WMC in Miami, where he currently is with Krishen. I got a text message last night – it said “At Mansion – Sasha and Digweed are playing some RIDICULOUS percussional tracks with huge chord progressions.” Sounds like something I would enjoy. Of course I am envious that I am not there right now.
It has come to my attention that I need a new computer. Any suggestions on what I should get? Just kidding, seriously – I know what I need in this department, and have been doing the research for years. Every year my current batch of research becomes obsolete, and so I have to upgrade that research. Basically (and I don’t expect this to come across as great information, but more of a recording of an observation) every year that goes by, every new model that comes along and matches the previous price point of the previous top of the line model, you get more out of an upgrade than you did before. As it is with innovation and (relatively) static price points, the consumer wins in this regard.
This is most overtly parallel to the lifecycle of digital camera functionality and, in particular, what is migrating from the feature-rich point-and-shoot consumer model cameras to the pro-sumer digital SLR models. In short, there are a number of features that were pioneered on the R&D-a-plenty point-and-shoots and they’re coming to the more specialized, higher-end cameras. I suppose the most striking point of all of this is that more features does not equate to high end. Anyone that knows anything about cameras knows that the most important points of the camera are not photo filters or face-tracking live view on a flip-out LCD, but rather the glass, the image sensor, and the person holding the camera. Everything else is peripheral.
All that being said, I am still very happy with the Canon 30D and can see myself using it for years to come, and upgrading the body (not the lenses) in about 3-4 years, for a total lifespan of 5-6 years. Some people are splitting hairs about whether they should get the 30D or the 40D, but my advise is that it doesn’t matter which one you get because they are roughly the same compared to what your options will be in 5-6 years when it comes time to replace it. The Live View technology in the 40D is VERY rudimentary and is not fully functional yet in my opinion – it has a long way to go – just look at the difference between what Olympus’ Live View is capable of and what Canon’s is. When Canon fully slams their R&D budget against Live View, expect to see some awesome results. But I anticipate that even if that has already happened, we wont see the results in actual available cameras for a year or two at least. I don’t know if Canon has a slow turn-around between R&D and actual product roll-out into the marketplace, or if they’re just lagging behind on purpose to see how the tech effects Olympus’ sales, or if they’re just behind, period.
Thoughts?

A few weekends ago, I went over to Saltspring Island. The sculptures you see are by Jay’s very talented mom, Lynn Demers. They’re amazing – you have to see them in person. The faces statues are between 3-4 feet in height!