BlueSky for Musicians and Audio Nerds - a Quickstart Guide
Suddenly this week everyone is talking about BlueSky, for some reason.
I signed up there ages ago as a possible alternative to Twitter (RIP), which was becoming less and less fun (for some reason).
Sadly there just weren't enough people talking about music production, audio technology, mastering and sound engineering to hold my interest back then. I tried Threads instead, which was OK but just seemed like more of the same algorithmic content that I was already seeing on Instagram and Facebork.
And now suddenly, almost overnight, everyone is trying BlueSky, for some reason...!
It's full of musicians, recording engineers, music producers, mixers, mastering engineers and more.
Honestly, it's really good fun. Loads of great people, no algorithm deciding what it thinks you're interested in, some innovative features and no aggressively promoted stuff you'd never normally choose to look at. It's great !
But because there's no algorithm, it can also be a little slow to get up to speed with. Finding people is a bit clunky, the search is often a bit hit or miss, and it's easy to get discouraged before you've even had a chance to get started.
So I'm putting this post up to try and help with that. If you've been wondering what all the fuss is about, and want to find some interesting people to follow and look at quickly while you give BluSky a try, here you go !
On Saturday, The Slightly Crazy Thing was jumping on a train to go and see the premiere of the world's first ever 'generative' documentary. So why was that crazy ?
Well, London is a fair way to travel to watch a 90-minute documentary, even in a venue like the Barbican Hall – and with tickets plus train fare the cost soon mounts up. Especially when it was such a spur-of-the-moment decision – I'd only known about the event for a couple of days. "Never mind", I thought – "it's a birthday treat, so provided I can find someone to keep me company, I'll go".
Except I couldn't. There were plenty of friends and contacts who would have liked to join me, but none were able to at such short notice. But several of them insisted I should go anyway, and eventually I decided… what the hell. And I'm so glad I did !
Partly because this was the UK premiere of the film, including a live Q&A with the film-makers and Eno himself afterwards (and famous faces like Peter Gabriel wandering around the lobby) – so it had only ever been shown a handful of times before.
But mostly because this screening of the film would be genuinely unique – as have all the others – because of that word 'generative'. So what does that mean ?
Why I spent my 50th birthday with a giant VR snail
If you'd told me I was going to start my 50th birthday in VR, on top of a giant tower in Coachela letting off virtual fireworks with Imogen Heap, I wouldn't have believed you.
In fact as I type it I'm not sure I quite believe it myself !
That's what happened, though. There was also a giant snail. And before that we were in a re-created VR version of the end of Pink Floyd's The Wall, complete with virtual hammers...
Which is all very well for me, and made for a pretty unique start to my birthday, but why am I writing a blog post about it ? (more…)
Imogen Heap Live Lockdown Improvisations - More Internet Connection Magic
Arthur C Clarke once said that any sufficiently advanced technology eventually becomes indistinguishable from magic, and that’s exactly how it feels watching Imogen Heap perform. In this post I’m going to try and explain why. The only question is, where do I start ?!
Live and direct
At the heart of it all are the live-stream improv sessions. They happen once a week, every Tuesday, and are about to enter their second month tonight. They’re informal, intimate, inspirational and emotional. They’re at the heart of what Imogen Heap is doing right now. They bring it all together and make sense of it.
The format is simple – she sits down in her deep red semi-circular music room, at the piano she learned to play as a girl, and starts to play. The music could go anywhere – she makes it up as she goes along. Swirling, shifting, improvised strands that mutate and evolve as she plays, in ways that are sometimes fragile, sometimes strange, often beautiful and occasionally downright odd. And we get to watch, and sometimes take part.
I've been talking about this image for years. Literally, I'd describe it in almost every conversation, interview or lecture when I talked about loudness. And it always got a great reaction.
