Lots of great stuff in this interview with gurdonark:
I do not see patents and copyrights per se as an unworkable situation. I do oppose artificial term extensions. Yet I am perfectly comfortable with reasonable protections for artists and innovators.
I favor the “velvet revolution” of voluntary contribution of works into the public domain and the Creative Commons. I believe that the easiest way to create a framework for the collaboration that digital culture will demand is not the eternal fight between silly DRM and needless kids-pirating-Britney. Instead, artists in music, software, literature, photography and science will create for public use a new “sharing culture” of ideas and expressions.
in my world, music and the arts will no longer tread this tiring bright line between artistic “haves” who are business “have nots” and business “haves” who are artistic “have nots”. This new world will involve people who work day jobs and play music at night. It will involve people who run their music as a business, and not as a way to get “a big record deal”. A new parlor music is arriving, and we’ll share songs in the way we read one another’s weblog posts.
I get bored with people who illegally download from the majors because it’s so unimaginative. There are worlds of truly creative people out there, on netlabels, on websites, and among us. Why give legitimacy to poorly-chosen music aimed at our lowest common denominator?
I prefer to use shareware and freeware [for making music]. Because I am so fond of the music of Marco Raaphorst, a Reason-master, I did buy Reason 3.0, but a year or two later, I finally gave it, unopened, to a pianist friend to use.
Whether I am a creator or a listener, a melody “fits” for me when it conveys a bit of an emotion or an idea — not with a direct “this is this and this is that” of a wonderful Motown song, but with the sense of ambiance or whimsy that fits my notions. I love the way I can listen to Jamendo artist Henri Petterson, for example, and be transported to a downtempo yet cheerful sophisticated Europe of my dreams, or the way that the netlabel artist Cagey House can envelope the listener with a quirky, upbeat bit of instrumental fun — a kind of new Americana world of familiar sounds, all strange and wonderful. I love the way that great jazz bands often come from Scandinavia or Japan, because people take these wonderful ideas and re-interpret them from an outsider place, to the delight of all.
Netlabel owners came to understand that once the whole “make me a star and make me rich” element is removed from the equation, incredible shared experiences between artists, label and listener can result.
But imagine if music were a weblog post — a thing one shares like one shares an essay or a poem or a personal note or a flickr image. Marco Raaphorst writes soundimages (klankbeelds) — simple free downloads which soundtrack still images. Vlog artists eschew video-as-movie-madness for video-as-weblog.We as music makers can begin to see our work as ways of achieving inter-connection, rather than as ways to get record deals.
Courtesy of the internet archive, here’s one of Marco Raaphorst’s klankbeelds:
And here’s a Short experimental voodle featuring a fine flock of ambiguous furniture
with beautiful music by gurdonark: