In my previous post, I explored the idea of making music with too much intention. Now I would like to take a minute to think about the richness of partially intentional music.
An interesting process occurs when musicians reflect of their their own playing, listening to what they do and thinking about how to play better. One of the first things that pops out in listening is the mistakes that were made. Someone who is oriented around playing a certain style or composition "to perfection" will take note of these errors and head back to the woodshed to smooth them out. But it is also possible to use mistakes as a basis for going in a creative, new direction. For example, mbira players in Zimbabwe see them as the instrument teaching them new variations:
"The mbira is said to be capable of making musical suggestions to the player during the performance of an mbira piece. If as the musician plays a particular finger pattern he inadvertently strikes a different key than the one for which he has aimed, it is not necessarily viewed as a mistake. Rather, if the mbira player likes the new pitch he can interpret it as the mbira's suggestion for the next variation and can incorporate it into his performance." From Soul of Mbira by Paul F. Berliner.
Similarly, in their Oblique Strategy card set, Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt suggest: "honor thy error as a a hidden intention". Eno and Schmidt point to a latent intention, but they don't pinpoint the source of the intention. What is its source? The possible answers to this question point to a range of possible approaches to creativity. It could be seen as the animistic spirit of the instrument, as above. Or, it could be interpreted as the will of God or the divine.
Adam Young of Owl City believes that his music is God inspired. So much so that you could argue that he's actually claiming a music of "no intention":
"I honestly just try to stay out of it! My prayer is just that God give me the songs He wants me to sing and that they will be extremely "usable" by whatever capacity He chooses to use them. I feel like anything beyond that is almost none of my business!"
On the other hand, David J. Wood, writing in the journal of the College of Pastoral Leaders at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, agrees with the idea that mistakes point the way to new ideas, and goes on to tie the process of accepting them to the practice of Christian ministry. This is what he had to say about mistakes:
"A mistake in the performance of a piece of classical music can jar, jolt, and derail the entire concert. In improvisational music, it can open up a new avenue to explore. Fear of failure is a block to improvisation. Pastors continually work in the world of imperfection and error—in their own lives and leadership, in the lives of their parishioners, and in the lives of their congregations. What is the practice of forgiveness and reconciliation if it is not the gathering up of mistakes into a larger redemptive movement?"
For me, a richer explanation of the source from which the "hidden intention" is that of the musician's own subconscious. Music can be seen as a process by which our hidden thoughts and desires are made manifest.
To embrace creative expression as a mode of revealing mysterious parts of our psyche was the program of Surrealism. In The Surrealist Manifesto André Breton defined it as: "Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express...the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation." In other words, Breton and his comrades aimed to take the conscious "critic" and historical moral influence out of the process of creation.
Salvador Dalí came to embrace "the psychoanalytic idea of a 'dream language' spoken by the unconscious, whose unplanned irruptions into waking life constitute the phenomena of delirium and madness, but which is nonetheless the true source of the artistic imagination." He took it further with his Paranoic-Critical method, cultivating madness not just in his art, but throughout his everyday life. He elevated the language of dreams to the same validity as rationality: "The 'hidden meanings' have equal status with the conventional interpretations - their 'real existence' is 'undeniable'."
This last approach brings up the question of whether it is possible to create something new. This is a very important question. If the answer is no, can ever be an "avante-garde"? Carl Jung's archetypes suggest that we all share a common language of dreams. If that's so, it makes me wonder if even Dalí's farfetched creations are really just reruns of the collective unconscious. Is it true that "there is nothing new under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9)? Can a way be found to say something new? Schoenberg sought to find one, seeking to "establish a new musical order in response to the so-called 'collapse of tonality'". He believed he'd found it with his 12 Tone Method. Brian Eno also seems to think so:
"I think very often producers are really trying to repeat things. When they hear something in the new songs that they recognize as being a bit like something that was a success on a previous record, they're inclined to encourage that. Whereas I'm always inclined to encourage things when I haven't heard anything like them before. So when I hear something-- even if it sounds quite clumsy or a little bit unformed-- that makes my ears prick up, and I go "Oh, that's new, I don't know if there's anything like that around," that's what I put my weight behind. I figure the whole of the rest of the world is putting its weight behind the other stuff, the repetition side, the recognizable side. So I sort of want to speak up for the newer stuff."
Joseph Campell said "the main motifs of the myths are the same, and they have always been the same". Maybe art and music can be "new" to the extent is the specific language with which we update the ancient motifs for our particular time and place that makes any art original. But this is a question for another time. In the meantime, I welcome your thoughts.
Music can be made with a range of intention, from full intention to no intention. The processes of incorporating mistakes and symbols of the subconscious are two small ways in which the two extremes can be reconciled. But, there is a whole range of possibilities for partially intentional creativity, from the aleatoricism of Boulez and Stockhausen to sound installations that incorporate the ambient sound of the outside world. In my next post, I will explore some approaches to making music that involve little or no intention at all. Thanks for reading!
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Music and Intention, Part 1 - Full Intention
Lately, I've been very interested in the role that intention plays in making music. As a bluegrass fiddle player, I spend a lot of time thinking about improvisation. I also spend a lot of time practicing. There is a certain vocabulary of licks and scales for bluegrass fiddle, pioneered by the likes of Benny Martin and Vassar Clements. A similar vocab exists for the other instruments in a string band, too. When you hear driving bluegrass, all these licks sound great, at first. But, pretty soon, they all start to meld into an endless, homogenous stream of clichés. You could argue that the creative arrangement of these licks and scales is what constitutes the solo, and their similarity is what defines the as "bluegrass" instead of something else. You could also take into account the Chris Thile quote posted on this blog recently, and come to the conclusion that many bluegrass pickers are serving as "museum curators" of earlier musicians' work.
But I think something else at work here, which is more basic than questions of historical influences. I've been to a lot of jams where "power pickers" spend the whole time trying to outdo one another, whether overtly or covertly. The banjo player picks a tough song as quickly as possible, with lots of melodic runs and/or bends. The mandolin player smiles as he rips into a spicy cross picking passage. The underlying message is: "look how good I can play!" Some players exude a voracious need to put their unique contribution into the music all the time, no matter what else is happening. I know I fall prey to it, chopping and filling through others' solos when there is already plenty going on in the texture. As Brian Eno puts it: "you watch any group of musicians improvising together and they nearly all play nearly all the time. In fact I often say that the biggest difference between classical music and everything else is that classical musicians sometimes shut up because they're told to, because the score tells them to. Whereas any music that's sort of based on folk or jazz, everybody plays all the time."
Driving this whole approach is an intense need to engage with the music. Musicians (and listeners) want to derive an intense feeling, a primal experience. Music sometimes gives it to us. Once the feeling subsides, we strive to recreate the conditions that brought it about. How do we find the path to get back there? That's one question, perhaps the question, at the heart of what it means to be a musician (or a mystic, for that matter).
Some people try to get there by the path of effort. It's the American myth of "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps". The line of thought might go something like this: "That music made me feel amazing. It was so deep. It was so good. How can I feel that again? Listen to and emulate more good musicians. Like who? Chris Thile. I wish I was like him. What's he got that I don't have? Genius, and experience. How can I be more like him? PRACTICE! Try. Log the hours."
This line of thinking goes great until it's time to take a solo. Then it becomes all about how much of yourself you can put into it. You invoke all of the transcriptions, the scale and arpeggio patterns, licks, advice gleaned from interviews, and try to execute the same tricks that Thile does.
This is a bad approach. It cuts the musician off from expressing his or her own feelings. Music is a tool to express emotion. By trying to sound like someone else, you are not expressing your own uniqueness, but playing a mental game of trying to make your playing sound like something it is not. This need, and the attempt to achieve it, is totally rooted in mechanical thinking. According to this recent article on Huffington Post, you can't think mechanically and tap into your deepest feelings at the same time. If that's true, then the approach I'm describing will never allow you to truly express what is inside of you.
Brian Eno weighed in on the tension of thinking vs. feelings in a 1979 interview:
"One or two of the pieces I've made have been attempts to trigger that sort of unnervous stillness where you don't feel that for the world to be interesting you have to be manipulating it all the time. The manipulative thing I think is the American ideal that here's nature, and you somehow subdue and control it and turn it to your own ends. I get steadily more interested in the idea that here's nature, the fabric of things or the ongoing current or whatever, and what you can do is just ride on that system, and the amount of interference you need to make can sometimes be very small."
"The corollary point is that if you're not in the manipulative mode anymore you're not quite sure actually how to measure your own contribution if you're not constructing things and pushing things in a certain direction and working towards goals, what is your function?"
To me, solos are most interesting when they are unique, full of feeling and expression, and make use of space. How can one overcome the habit of approaching solos from a "manipulative mode" and just stand aside? Perhaps by tapping deeply into one's feelings,or going to a place of dream or vision, while trying to let the phrases just come. After all the practicing, the scales, arpeggios, and licks are already there. But hours and hours logged in mechanical thinking dig a very deep hole, and it can be hard to overcome the habit of a conscious, rational approach.
I am not suggesting that musicians should neglect learning the vocabulary of their music. That is a part of the means to get where we are going. There needs to be something more than overbearing mental intentions involved in music making for it to be truly satisfying.
Music is the quest for the intense feeling that I described above - catharsis. A place not reached by mental gymnastics alone, but through the opening of the spirit or the emotions of the artist to the greater space of humanity and the universe. It is the ultimate aim of art, according to Joseph Campbell: the sublime. He quotes Webster's definition: "that which arouses sentiments of awe and reverance and a sense of vastness and power outreaching human comprehension". The search for the sublime is synonymous with being a musician, an artist, and a human being. Campbell goes on to quote Nietzsche: "Art is the proper task of life, art is life's metaphysical exercise...Art is worth more than truth."
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
On The Limitations of Instruments
I've been learning to play the Mbira Dzavadzimu from Zimbabwe. At the school where I teach, we use marimbas that are constructed in the style invented at the music school Kwanongoma. These instruments are great for mbira transcriptions, so I've been practicing mbira to get a deeper understanding of the music.
I'm also reading The Soul of Mbira, by Paul F. Berliner. This is a classic ethnomusicology text that talks about the mbira in as it's played in its original context in Zimbabwe. Today I came across this interesting set of passages:
"...the music reflected back to [the performer] by his resonator as he plays seems to be more complex than that which his fingers alone produce. It is, then, real musical feedback that the musician receives from his instrument.
...On the one hand, he is the performer, initiating the music. On the other hand, he continually receives new musical patterns from the mbira as if he were a member of the audience.
...the mbira player initiates the basic pattern of the piece and listens to the complex of parts projected back to him by the mbira.
...In reaction to the mbira's voice, the musician gradually elaborates upon the piece..."
Thinking about the instrument as a partner in performance brought me back to a question I've thought about often, which is that of limitations and creativity.
The first thing that springs to mind is Stravinsky's quote from Poetics of Music:
"My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit."
But I also wonder about the limitations of instruments, and how those limitations shape what music comes out. I heard Jake Schepps say that he believes "every instrument is as hard as you want to make it". On the other hand, Chris Thile says of the mandolin: "there's twice as many strings as a violin -- and half as much sonic capability...but it is a fun little instrument". But he also seems to agree with Jake when he says: "it just seems if creating music is your goal, playing the piano makes it a lot easier, because you’re able to realize so much stuff at the same time. At the same time, I love making music on the mandolin, and I feel like it’s my voice. You can do anything on any instrument. I think the musician is greater than the instrument." It seems like Thile is admitting that the mandolin is limited in comparison to the violin and the piano, but he still believes that it is possible to push the boundaries of an instrument to make the music that you want to create, no matter how impossibly imagined
It seems that Björk takes a different tack on this question. She spoke these words about writing Vespertine: "During that time, everyone was moaning that computers were going to kill me, so I was trying to take a laptop-- which had very bad sound at that point-- and make this whispery, hibernation-winter world where things were frozen anyway. I tried to use that as a poetic thing; you could argue that I worked around the tool." This approach makes a lot of sense to me. Different instruments have different strengths and weaknesses, and using the former efficiently, while trying find a way to make the latter fit your aesthetic could be a very effective approach.
Going back to the mbira, for a moment, it's amazing that an instrument with a limited set of pitches, and basically no chromaticism, can create so much richness and variety. Part of the effect surely comes from the overtones of the mbira keyscomes, but I think it's more because of the amazing interlocking 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12 note patterns that are found in mbira music. Whenever mbira music was written, "the musician was better than the instrument", as Thile said. A fairly simple concept - flat metal keys attached to a resonating board, produces extremely complex music as a result of how it is played.
In all of these examples, the bottom line is that the way you play an instrument can take you beyond its limitations. Whether this is from the techniques used, the aesthetic adopted, or the complexity of the composition being played, the imagination of the performer is what takes the music to the furthest reaches of the possible. Yet, I wonder whether it would be so easy to imagine where to go if there weren't any boundaries to break. Perhaps, as Stravinsky's quote above suggests, it is the obstacles in the "field of action" that enable the musician to visualize - to "auralize" - a new sound world and bring it to reality.
I'm also reading The Soul of Mbira, by Paul F. Berliner. This is a classic ethnomusicology text that talks about the mbira in as it's played in its original context in Zimbabwe. Today I came across this interesting set of passages:
"...the music reflected back to [the performer] by his resonator as he plays seems to be more complex than that which his fingers alone produce. It is, then, real musical feedback that the musician receives from his instrument.
...On the one hand, he is the performer, initiating the music. On the other hand, he continually receives new musical patterns from the mbira as if he were a member of the audience.
...the mbira player initiates the basic pattern of the piece and listens to the complex of parts projected back to him by the mbira.
...In reaction to the mbira's voice, the musician gradually elaborates upon the piece..."
Thinking about the instrument as a partner in performance brought me back to a question I've thought about often, which is that of limitations and creativity.
The first thing that springs to mind is Stravinsky's quote from Poetics of Music:
"My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit."
But I also wonder about the limitations of instruments, and how those limitations shape what music comes out. I heard Jake Schepps say that he believes "every instrument is as hard as you want to make it". On the other hand, Chris Thile says of the mandolin: "there's twice as many strings as a violin -- and half as much sonic capability...but it is a fun little instrument". But he also seems to agree with Jake when he says: "it just seems if creating music is your goal, playing the piano makes it a lot easier, because you’re able to realize so much stuff at the same time. At the same time, I love making music on the mandolin, and I feel like it’s my voice. You can do anything on any instrument. I think the musician is greater than the instrument." It seems like Thile is admitting that the mandolin is limited in comparison to the violin and the piano, but he still believes that it is possible to push the boundaries of an instrument to make the music that you want to create, no matter how impossibly imagined
It seems that Björk takes a different tack on this question. She spoke these words about writing Vespertine: "During that time, everyone was moaning that computers were going to kill me, so I was trying to take a laptop-- which had very bad sound at that point-- and make this whispery, hibernation-winter world where things were frozen anyway. I tried to use that as a poetic thing; you could argue that I worked around the tool." This approach makes a lot of sense to me. Different instruments have different strengths and weaknesses, and using the former efficiently, while trying find a way to make the latter fit your aesthetic could be a very effective approach.
Going back to the mbira, for a moment, it's amazing that an instrument with a limited set of pitches, and basically no chromaticism, can create so much richness and variety. Part of the effect surely comes from the overtones of the mbira keyscomes, but I think it's more because of the amazing interlocking 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12 note patterns that are found in mbira music. Whenever mbira music was written, "the musician was better than the instrument", as Thile said. A fairly simple concept - flat metal keys attached to a resonating board, produces extremely complex music as a result of how it is played.
In all of these examples, the bottom line is that the way you play an instrument can take you beyond its limitations. Whether this is from the techniques used, the aesthetic adopted, or the complexity of the composition being played, the imagination of the performer is what takes the music to the furthest reaches of the possible. Yet, I wonder whether it would be so easy to imagine where to go if there weren't any boundaries to break. Perhaps, as Stravinsky's quote above suggests, it is the obstacles in the "field of action" that enable the musician to visualize - to "auralize" - a new sound world and bring it to reality.
Monday, November 5, 2012
Chris Thile on the Future of Bluegrass
Amazing thoughts from Chris Thile that have stuck with me ever since I first read this interview:
"I look at mandolin as the one tool I have, that I have some idea how to use. But no more. To me, I'm not interested in pursuing the perfection of mandolin. It's just that I want to be as handy with that tool as I can. Being good at the mandolin isn't interesting in and of itself. Being good at music is very interesting to me.
We have a tremendous amount of respect for our predecessors on this group of instruments, which is commonly associated with bluegrass, but we're not interested in being museum curators of their work. Rather, we want them to influence our work. They weren't debilitatingly beholden to their predecessors, and neither should we."
"I'm 30 now. I was 19 when Nickel Creek recorded that second record, and we finally were starting to work with a bit more humility and awareness, in this huge and powerful and endlessly inspiring arena of music. At 30 years old, I'm newly convinced of my relative incompetence. I'd like to think I write music with a lot more humility and a lot more love. I deeply, deeply love music and am honored to just be a participant."
"I look at mandolin as the one tool I have, that I have some idea how to use. But no more. To me, I'm not interested in pursuing the perfection of mandolin. It's just that I want to be as handy with that tool as I can. Being good at the mandolin isn't interesting in and of itself. Being good at music is very interesting to me.
We have a tremendous amount of respect for our predecessors on this group of instruments, which is commonly associated with bluegrass, but we're not interested in being museum curators of their work. Rather, we want them to influence our work. They weren't debilitatingly beholden to their predecessors, and neither should we."
"I'm 30 now. I was 19 when Nickel Creek recorded that second record, and we finally were starting to work with a bit more humility and awareness, in this huge and powerful and endlessly inspiring arena of music. At 30 years old, I'm newly convinced of my relative incompetence. I'd like to think I write music with a lot more humility and a lot more love. I deeply, deeply love music and am honored to just be a participant."
Facebook and Band Pages
I'm about done with Facebook "pages" as a band promotion tool. I hate it when bands ask people to "like" them at shows. I've done it myself, and it always felt cheap.
Likes are basically meaningless. For one thing, you can pay someone to up your likes through fiverr.com. For about $15 you can have as many likes as a well-established, nationally touring band. It's also standard to ask your friends and family to like your page to help get it off the ground. Then, I assume, you will also like their pages for products and services that have nothing to do with your life. I know that I like some things I know nothing about - my aunt's therapy practice, for example. On the other side, I also see really well known bands with very few likes. When I look at a band page, and I see a lot of likes, my thought is: "they must have spent a lot of money/energy getting likes", not "wow, a lot of people like this, I should check it out!" A better use of money would be to do direct advertising on Facebook. As far as building a fan base, I believe that's going to happen best with quality shows, good press, a website, and a newsletter.
The latest part of this is that FB now wants bands to pay to send out messages, unless fans have gone in and subscribed to status updates (which many will not know how to do/find time to do). Personally, I think this is the final nail in the coffin for FB pages as a promotion tool. I don't visit pages, and I am not going to go through every band page I like and subscribe to updates. I'm over it.
Likes are basically meaningless. For one thing, you can pay someone to up your likes through fiverr.com. For about $15 you can have as many likes as a well-established, nationally touring band. It's also standard to ask your friends and family to like your page to help get it off the ground. Then, I assume, you will also like their pages for products and services that have nothing to do with your life. I know that I like some things I know nothing about - my aunt's therapy practice, for example. On the other side, I also see really well known bands with very few likes. When I look at a band page, and I see a lot of likes, my thought is: "they must have spent a lot of money/energy getting likes", not "wow, a lot of people like this, I should check it out!" A better use of money would be to do direct advertising on Facebook. As far as building a fan base, I believe that's going to happen best with quality shows, good press, a website, and a newsletter.
The latest part of this is that FB now wants bands to pay to send out messages, unless fans have gone in and subscribed to status updates (which many will not know how to do/find time to do). Personally, I think this is the final nail in the coffin for FB pages as a promotion tool. I don't visit pages, and I am not going to go through every band page I like and subscribe to updates. I'm over it.
Bjork's Thoughts on Music
I've been having a Björk obsession lately. Her avante-garde approach to music is inspiring, yet she always makes something that's still accessible. Easier listening than Schoenberg, yet still very unique and visionary.
Here are a couple of quotes I found from Björk about the process of making music, from a Pitchfork interview last year, and these other interviews: here, and here.
"Over the last 10 years, there have been so many incredible albums created in bedrooms by people who never would've gotten an album deal. People keep thinking of [professional] music studios like they've always been this way for hundreds of years, but they're very much a child of the 70s. Even the interior is very 70s, like Fleetwood Mac just were there a couple of moments before you. Everything's brown and it's wood-- somebody told me the wood panels are all by the same company. We're always mourning things that have died. It's a bit much sometimes. These studios have no fresh air, and there's this unwritten rule that they don't have windows, either."
"My favorite people, like Panasonic [now Pan Sonic] or Aphex Twin, were the ones who would just work in their house-- they don't even know what a studio is. When guys that have worked on beats with me suggest, "Now should we mix the song?" I'm like, "Mix? What's that mean? It sounds fine, right?" So, this whole old 70s way of doing things was already out of date."
"I guess I learned after being in bands for fifteen years before I did my solo stuff, and we were punks and we were like: ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter how things look it’s all about how they sound’ and then somebody would just take a picture of us and put us in the papers and you would be upset – not that it was ugly, nothing to do with vanity – just that it didn’t fit the music. So I guess I had fifteen years of kinda…” she shrugs indifferently, “and then once every few years I would meet somebody who totally got it. So I learned, almost like I was a pupil. So for fifteen years I learned that if you match the right image to the right sound it makes my life a lot easier!"
“The other idea is to do with electronic music, because I love electronic music. I’ve been doing it for a very long time, but it had its limitations and one of the criticisms I’ve heard for twenty years from people who prefer indie music or classical music or jazz or whatever is that they’ll be like: ‘Yes, but it has no soul’ and I’ve been doing that debate for twenty years now!” She laughs. “It’s like, well, it’s because nobody put it there!”
“You know, a hundred years ago, if you wanted to do music you would probably be playing on street corners. I could have been in a hundred Rokk í Reykjavíks and fifty Sugarcubes then and still not become famous. But when all the money started coming into music it attracted a new type of person who hadn't been there before, gambler types who like to wager a lot of money on this and that, hoping for giant returns. Now, with the internet, people are going to have to ask themselves whether they want to go into music even if they may not become multimillionaires.”
"It’s no big deal putting out an album. I think a lot of musicians think it’s this kinda thing where you have to send your music to all the big labels. It’s more of a psychological, confidence thing: ‘If I’m good enough, they will like my demo.’ But I mean I did it all for ten years. I’ve done it: making the album in somebody’s bedroom, making the poster yourself.”
Here are a couple of quotes I found from Björk about the process of making music, from a Pitchfork interview last year, and these other interviews: here, and here.
"Over the last 10 years, there have been so many incredible albums created in bedrooms by people who never would've gotten an album deal. People keep thinking of [professional] music studios like they've always been this way for hundreds of years, but they're very much a child of the 70s. Even the interior is very 70s, like Fleetwood Mac just were there a couple of moments before you. Everything's brown and it's wood-- somebody told me the wood panels are all by the same company. We're always mourning things that have died. It's a bit much sometimes. These studios have no fresh air, and there's this unwritten rule that they don't have windows, either."
"My favorite people, like Panasonic [now Pan Sonic] or Aphex Twin, were the ones who would just work in their house-- they don't even know what a studio is. When guys that have worked on beats with me suggest, "Now should we mix the song?" I'm like, "Mix? What's that mean? It sounds fine, right?" So, this whole old 70s way of doing things was already out of date."
"I guess I learned after being in bands for fifteen years before I did my solo stuff, and we were punks and we were like: ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter how things look it’s all about how they sound’ and then somebody would just take a picture of us and put us in the papers and you would be upset – not that it was ugly, nothing to do with vanity – just that it didn’t fit the music. So I guess I had fifteen years of kinda…” she shrugs indifferently, “and then once every few years I would meet somebody who totally got it. So I learned, almost like I was a pupil. So for fifteen years I learned that if you match the right image to the right sound it makes my life a lot easier!"
“The other idea is to do with electronic music, because I love electronic music. I’ve been doing it for a very long time, but it had its limitations and one of the criticisms I’ve heard for twenty years from people who prefer indie music or classical music or jazz or whatever is that they’ll be like: ‘Yes, but it has no soul’ and I’ve been doing that debate for twenty years now!” She laughs. “It’s like, well, it’s because nobody put it there!”
“You know, a hundred years ago, if you wanted to do music you would probably be playing on street corners. I could have been in a hundred Rokk í Reykjavíks and fifty Sugarcubes then and still not become famous. But when all the money started coming into music it attracted a new type of person who hadn't been there before, gambler types who like to wager a lot of money on this and that, hoping for giant returns. Now, with the internet, people are going to have to ask themselves whether they want to go into music even if they may not become multimillionaires.”
"It’s no big deal putting out an album. I think a lot of musicians think it’s this kinda thing where you have to send your music to all the big labels. It’s more of a psychological, confidence thing: ‘If I’m good enough, they will like my demo.’ But I mean I did it all for ten years. I’ve done it: making the album in somebody’s bedroom, making the poster yourself.”
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