In any event, here's the topic, and it's a doozy. How do you start writing a song? Speaking strictly for myself, although I've had a band for going on 20 years, I've never actually written in a band context, so I don't know exactly how one goes about it. But since the majority of the readers here are either "producers" or work-at-home-alone electronic musicians, we can sort of toss that whole concept out the window anyhow.

I personally almost always start with trying to make an interesting drum part; once in a while (usually when we're working on the design of a product) I'll accidentally create an interesting bit out of some synth sound or whatever, but generally I start with the drums. Once I've done that, I do bass. If I'm doing a vocal track, it'll be real bass, of course, and then guitar. If I'm doing a Micronaut song, which is instrumental electronic music, it's synth bass, followed by synth. If I'm gonna add guitar, I generally do it after the song is mostly arranged.

What's your method? Do you start with a melody idea? Or do you have a more rhythm-based method like me?

2) When I start Live 7, the clocking on my Lynx AES16 changes from external wordclock to internal. This is obviously somewhat distressing, as the Rosetta should nominally be in charge of clocking duties. Is there a workaround for this?

3) My new mountain bike is showing up today. You can safely assume my next post here will be about how I broke my collarbone or punctured my spleen or some other stupid shit.

As you're no doubt aware if you're in to such things, there is a Raymond Scott documentary in the works. Judging from the trailer (above) it looks like a fairly comprehensive and cool movie. Naturally, since the producers are making a documentary about a semi-obscure electronic music pioneer, for some bizarre reason they can't get the backing of a major studio, and cash is in short supply. They could use a little help. Just to prove we don't use all the money you spend on our plugins for hookers and blow (well, I don't; I can't speak for Adam), Audio Damage has donated $500 towards the film.

Even if you can't spare $10 or whatever, you'd do yourself a great disservice by not reading the Wikipedia article about Mr. Scott at the very least. This guy invented a lot of the techniques we use today, and on top of that, provided the soundtrack to our childhood. He deserves a bit of remembering.

Goldbaby Productions, makers of the Tape 808 sample set, as well as a bunch of other odd yet extremely cool sample sets, has put up a free set of Moog MG1 (better known in America as the Realistic Concertmate) sound effects run through Audio Damage effects. You can grab it on the "Free Stuff" section of the Goldbaby site.

Adam and I were having a conversation today about operating under self-imposed constraints. I do this sort of thing all the time to keep making music interesting. (e.g. "Today, I'm going to write a song using only instruments made in Norway" or some such ridiculous thing.) Specifically, we were talking about getting away from using the computer as a recording medium, an operation in which it usually becomes an instrument as well.

What I was wondering is thus: are there any readers out there that specifically use an 8- or 16-track analog tape deck, then dump the tracks to DAW for mixing any more? This seems like a rather refreshing manner in which to work, and I'd be surprised if there aren't several readers that do just that. I'm pondering methodology; my comment to Adam was that this would be a singularly excellent manner to record if you did ambient music, especially if it was improvisational in nature.

As far as I'm aware, there is Create Digital Music, MatrixSynth, MusicThing, and this very site, as far as "big" music blogs go. (Where "big" is defined by a relatively frequent new post policy and a large readership.) This blog tends to get more comments than the other three, with the occasional exception of CDM, but that's because we pedal editorial here for the most part, whereas the other three are more interested in news. Of the four, this site probably gets the least traffic, with 1500-2000 unique visitors a day.

But I'm wondering if there are other English-language blogs out there that are just as popular, or maybe should be popular, that haven't come to any attention. Other than the four mentioned, where do you go for your music industry gossip/news/whatever fix and why?

The disco folks all dressed up
Like they's fit to kill
I walk on in 'n' see 'em there
Gonna give them all a thrill
When they see me comin'
They all steps aside
They has a fit while I commit
My social suicide, I'm a
Dancin fool

"I think it's really sad, because at the grassroots level, as indie and hip hop devolve, metal evolves. If you want to see the most open-minded, most integrated, most accepting audiences in the world, go to a metal gig...

That's cute and all, but not my point. It truly staggers me how little the majors understand what the hell is going on in the industry these days. Frankly, I'm surprised to find out that Q Prime is still in business. I had to check. But you have to mark this sort of thing in the "You Lose" column by default, because one blogger sitting in his Captain America underoos eating a Hot Pocket while he mainlines Red Bull trumps an entire PR firm.

In other news, I'm in Decompression from a weekend spent on the beautiful sunny Oregon coast, frolicking (or was it prancing?) in the sand with my extended family. Back at work on our next product, the which I will perhaps drop some hints on later in the week. We will now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

For an open thread topic, I'm leaning towards "The Declining Quality Of All Things," but it occurs to me that the PCM-42 and the Radio Shack Electronic Reverb are contemporaries, so you could buy shit and quality at the same time most any time. So without that, I'm at a loss. What's on your mind?

EDIT: Oh, it's Summer NAMM. I forgot. Anything grabbing you? I just looked over the crop of press releases that are available right now, and the vast majority of the "new" stuff seems to follow the old "Let's See How Many Different Ways We Can Repackage An Existing Product" ruleset favored by the larger manufacturers. Other than the API stuff previously mentioned (and API hasn't explicitly said "this stuff is in no way made in China" yet) nothing is floating my boat in the slightest.

But "Smooth Criminal?" Really? Kill me now.