Underground Network
You may note that this update is not my promised blog about random bands who've inspired me (though that is coming, I promise); I realise it's terribly bad form to split my posting series like this (I think maybe when I finish it I'll see if I can re-jig it so it still runs in order), but I felt I had to get my thoughts down about something I've become involved in quite by chance.
After a number of years snidely decrying its value as a social medium, I've begun using Twitter over the past couple of months after realising its modus operandi was perfect for all those 'exceptionally witty' snippets I kept coming up with in the privacy of my own head yet never felt quite appropriate for Facebook Status, um, status. It's been an interesting learning curve in social media - I've gone from using it as a snark-dumping arena to utilising its benefits as an information exchange site - and, more to the point, using it in different capacities. As a casual user, I connect to my friends through it; as a musician, I use it to contact my fans (there's a possibility these two areas might come into conflict at some point in the future, but at this point my 'friends' and 'fans' are pretty much the same people - I'll cross that bridge if and when I come to it). As a newly-graduated music student, I keep in touch with potential future employers through Twitter; as a politically aware young adult, I keep an eye on what's trending as an alternative news source in itself; and as someone with an interest in alternative music strategies, I explore what thought-leaders and industry types are saying by following them.
(There's a point to this besides being an overly ornate introductory paragraph - bear with me.)
One of the people I've been following is Steve Lawson, or @solobasssteve (no prizes will be given for guessing his instrument), who is a highly-respected figure in this particular field; pretty much all the other people I've been following on this subject are also following him (to be fair, he follows quite a few of them back - it's not a particularly large field). He's an informative, thoughtful and insightful chap, in my limited experience - as well he should be, being as he is one of the founders of New Music Strategies (NMS to its nearest and dearest) - an organisation dedicated to 'Music Culture, Strategy and Thinking in the Digital Age' (to nick the tagline from their website). Until today, though, I knew none of this - to me, Solo-Bass Steve was just a clever guy with a very versatile four-string*.
Earlier today, though, I noticed @solobasssteve had posted a link to an event called 'AmpNMS'; not only that, the same event was mentioned by several of the other alt.industry bods I followed too. Intrigued, and having an empty day now I'd got back from signing on, I decided to investigate. What I found was, quite frankly, brilliant.
Turns out, AmpNMS is a collaboration between NMS and Amplified (another fascinating group I'll have to go back and explore in more detail when I have the time - basically, they kind of pull all the different social networking tools together to make events like this) which, to my uninitiated understanding, is something like a music conference and internet chatroom (no, not that kind of chatroom - get your minds out of the gutter) all rolled into one. There are four discussion sessions (two on June 21st, two on June 22nd), with each chaired by one of the NMS team and accompanied by two panelists, and each session has a live chatroom and a short opening provocation video by a figure involved in 'the new music industry'. Basically, the chair and panelists open the session with a brief introduction, and invite those watching online to watch the provocation video. Afterwards, the panel and the chatroom participants discuss some of the points raised in the provocation, whilst also responding to each others' points and raising new points of their own. I'm probably not doing a very good job of describing it, but it's an excellent way of stimulating debate, especially because of the calibre of the people involved. Aside from Steve Lawson himself, who chaired the second debate (his colleague Andrew Dubber, aka @dubber, chaired the first one), there have also been numerous figures from various parts of the 'new-music' community involved both on the panels and in the chatrooms, with a wealth of ideas and information being shared and discussed, and people bouncing information across Twitter afterwards. It's been a fantastic learning curve, and as everything from each discussion is being archived (even my lame attempts to contribute) it also makes for a fantastic resource for the future.
And that's not even the best bit.
You may have gathered from reading this that I'm not the most knowledgeable chap about this area; I haven't made it my business to educate myself about it until recently, and in the company of such relatively august individuals I have very little to say by way of contribution. And that didn't matter. I wasn't invited to this debate, as I have been to similar conferences in my time as a student (usually via an email written by someone acting on the assumption that I would give either of my arms in order to be in the rarefied presence of a bunch of anonymous industry bods); I stumbled on it entirely by chance - by accident, almost - and all it took to get involved was typing my name into a chatroom. Okay, I didn't say that much, but I said a damn sight more than I would've had I been to a traditional music conference, and I got to do it from the comfort of my own bedroom whilst dunking Rich Teas in a builder's brew (try doing that at Sound City...). Which is great, but there's also something more important to it; this is exactly the kind of thing I need to be involved with, however passively, if I want to achieve what it is I'm aiming for. I need arenas like this where I can encounter other people's thoughts and philosophies, and where I can bounce my thoughts off people who've already had the experiences I'm having, if I want to carry out my plans in this new and exciting (not to mention terrifying) environment.
The other, more important impression (also the more self-important one, as it will no doubt come across if I'm not careful) I've taken away is that I'm exactly the kind of person AmpNMS is trying to reach out to - the kind of person who isn't necessarily one of the movers and shakers in this new way of doing things, who maybe doesn't know a great deal but is willing to learn, who's coming to this much earlier in my development as a musician than most (or so it seems) and who lacks the experience others have been gaining for years. Like I say, I'm being self-important and also probably not being very eloquent, but I feel as though merely being involved has been hugely beneficial for my thought processes and my informed stance.
Of course, not everyone is going to engage with AmpNMS in the same way; just as people engage with Twitter in different ways, so the participants in these debates will take different things from it. That might be anything from an entrepreneurial plan to individualise your music to another interesting and informative person whose tweets you follow, or anything in-between.
I'm probably in danger of descending into a morass of clichés and parroted repetition, so I'll leave it there for now. There's two more debates today, at 4pm and 8pm, which you can find here. Once the dust's settled, I'll come back to this and try and look at the event as a whole, as well as the subjects covered in the debates, which I totally didn't forget to mention whilst writing this. In the meantime, if anyone reading this wants to follow me on Twitter, my alias is @SpoonyBardEsq.
So there you are, dudes - get involved!
*Yes, I know Steve plays six-string basses. If I'd said it was a 'very versatile six-string', though, everyone would think I thought he was a guitarist.
After a number of years snidely decrying its value as a social medium, I've begun using Twitter over the past couple of months after realising its modus operandi was perfect for all those 'exceptionally witty' snippets I kept coming up with in the privacy of my own head yet never felt quite appropriate for Facebook Status, um, status. It's been an interesting learning curve in social media - I've gone from using it as a snark-dumping arena to utilising its benefits as an information exchange site - and, more to the point, using it in different capacities. As a casual user, I connect to my friends through it; as a musician, I use it to contact my fans (there's a possibility these two areas might come into conflict at some point in the future, but at this point my 'friends' and 'fans' are pretty much the same people - I'll cross that bridge if and when I come to it). As a newly-graduated music student, I keep in touch with potential future employers through Twitter; as a politically aware young adult, I keep an eye on what's trending as an alternative news source in itself; and as someone with an interest in alternative music strategies, I explore what thought-leaders and industry types are saying by following them.
(There's a point to this besides being an overly ornate introductory paragraph - bear with me.)
One of the people I've been following is Steve Lawson, or @solobasssteve (no prizes will be given for guessing his instrument), who is a highly-respected figure in this particular field; pretty much all the other people I've been following on this subject are also following him (to be fair, he follows quite a few of them back - it's not a particularly large field). He's an informative, thoughtful and insightful chap, in my limited experience - as well he should be, being as he is one of the founders of New Music Strategies (NMS to its nearest and dearest) - an organisation dedicated to 'Music Culture, Strategy and Thinking in the Digital Age' (to nick the tagline from their website). Until today, though, I knew none of this - to me, Solo-Bass Steve was just a clever guy with a very versatile four-string*.
Earlier today, though, I noticed @solobasssteve had posted a link to an event called 'AmpNMS'; not only that, the same event was mentioned by several of the other alt.industry bods I followed too. Intrigued, and having an empty day now I'd got back from signing on, I decided to investigate. What I found was, quite frankly, brilliant.
Turns out, AmpNMS is a collaboration between NMS and Amplified (another fascinating group I'll have to go back and explore in more detail when I have the time - basically, they kind of pull all the different social networking tools together to make events like this) which, to my uninitiated understanding, is something like a music conference and internet chatroom (no, not that kind of chatroom - get your minds out of the gutter) all rolled into one. There are four discussion sessions (two on June 21st, two on June 22nd), with each chaired by one of the NMS team and accompanied by two panelists, and each session has a live chatroom and a short opening provocation video by a figure involved in 'the new music industry'. Basically, the chair and panelists open the session with a brief introduction, and invite those watching online to watch the provocation video. Afterwards, the panel and the chatroom participants discuss some of the points raised in the provocation, whilst also responding to each others' points and raising new points of their own. I'm probably not doing a very good job of describing it, but it's an excellent way of stimulating debate, especially because of the calibre of the people involved. Aside from Steve Lawson himself, who chaired the second debate (his colleague Andrew Dubber, aka @dubber, chaired the first one), there have also been numerous figures from various parts of the 'new-music' community involved both on the panels and in the chatrooms, with a wealth of ideas and information being shared and discussed, and people bouncing information across Twitter afterwards. It's been a fantastic learning curve, and as everything from each discussion is being archived (even my lame attempts to contribute) it also makes for a fantastic resource for the future.
And that's not even the best bit.
You may have gathered from reading this that I'm not the most knowledgeable chap about this area; I haven't made it my business to educate myself about it until recently, and in the company of such relatively august individuals I have very little to say by way of contribution. And that didn't matter. I wasn't invited to this debate, as I have been to similar conferences in my time as a student (usually via an email written by someone acting on the assumption that I would give either of my arms in order to be in the rarefied presence of a bunch of anonymous industry bods); I stumbled on it entirely by chance - by accident, almost - and all it took to get involved was typing my name into a chatroom. Okay, I didn't say that much, but I said a damn sight more than I would've had I been to a traditional music conference, and I got to do it from the comfort of my own bedroom whilst dunking Rich Teas in a builder's brew (try doing that at Sound City...). Which is great, but there's also something more important to it; this is exactly the kind of thing I need to be involved with, however passively, if I want to achieve what it is I'm aiming for. I need arenas like this where I can encounter other people's thoughts and philosophies, and where I can bounce my thoughts off people who've already had the experiences I'm having, if I want to carry out my plans in this new and exciting (not to mention terrifying) environment.
The other, more important impression (also the more self-important one, as it will no doubt come across if I'm not careful) I've taken away is that I'm exactly the kind of person AmpNMS is trying to reach out to - the kind of person who isn't necessarily one of the movers and shakers in this new way of doing things, who maybe doesn't know a great deal but is willing to learn, who's coming to this much earlier in my development as a musician than most (or so it seems) and who lacks the experience others have been gaining for years. Like I say, I'm being self-important and also probably not being very eloquent, but I feel as though merely being involved has been hugely beneficial for my thought processes and my informed stance.
Of course, not everyone is going to engage with AmpNMS in the same way; just as people engage with Twitter in different ways, so the participants in these debates will take different things from it. That might be anything from an entrepreneurial plan to individualise your music to another interesting and informative person whose tweets you follow, or anything in-between.
I'm probably in danger of descending into a morass of clichés and parroted repetition, so I'll leave it there for now. There's two more debates today, at 4pm and 8pm, which you can find here. Once the dust's settled, I'll come back to this and try and look at the event as a whole, as well as the subjects covered in the debates, which I totally didn't forget to mention whilst writing this. In the meantime, if anyone reading this wants to follow me on Twitter, my alias is @SpoonyBardEsq.
So there you are, dudes - get involved!
*Yes, I know Steve plays six-string basses. If I'd said it was a 'very versatile six-string', though, everyone would think I thought he was a guitarist.