nerme

It is not a straw man. I am not replacing "person who spent a lot of time and effort to attain monetary wealth" with "boring douche bag", and then attacking "boring douche bags".

I am merely pointing out the unintentional consequences of a lifetime in pursuit of the only object whose only purpose is to allow you to do or get things.

I'll put it another way: If you can't figure out anything interesting to make while you're alive, make money instead.

If you want to talk about a straw man argument, how about the fact that you're substituting "being filthy rich" with "having enough money to pay rent and feed children", and then opposing someone who is opposed to "having enough money to pay rent and feed children"?

I can't help but think that it is advantageous for a general population to have government regulate currencies, be they physical objects, promissory notes, or digital representations.

If you follow the history of currency from a piece of gold of unknown purity, to gold coins produced by governments, to the establishment of central banks, to outlawing privately issued banknotes, to fiat currencies...

...you'll notice that all of these are created to keep up with the demands of a technologically driven advancement in the state of economic affairs.

If I showed up to your store with a lump of gold for trade, we would have to go find someone we both trusted to figure out how pure it was. That takes time and money. That inhibits commerce from taking place.

Having the government get involved and eventually come to manage the digital exchange of currency would be no different than these analogous historical transitions.

It doesn't make sense to completely rely on private companies for a type of economic transaction that has already become the dominant way that value is exchanged. Especially when those private companies require the full backing of nation-states and their currencies to even have any sort of business model to begin with. Why else would Visa and MasterCard have not yet created their own currencies?

You can't have a free market if you don't have a viable marketplace to begin with.

I have no idea why, but I'm not obsessed with getting rich.

I AM obsessed with doing whatever the hell I want to do, which I've basically been able to do for most of my twenties.

Hell, I've been dead broke and still been able to do whatever I want to do.

Don't worry about money. It's a silly thing to fret over. You think you need it to travel, to eat nice food, to be comfortable... but the most traveling I've ever done was while I was the most broke... and I got to see the world while playing music!

When I have had my most steady, high paying incomes, I've been content, but not really feeling all that free.

See, you can worry about money, and then work really hard to get it, and be around other people who want to work really hard for money... but... people who only care about working hard for money are ridiculously boring.

They are so boring, in fact, that they have to use their money to buy things and pay for interesting people to spice up their lives.

Whereas the people who are more interested in just living life typically have pretty interesting friends who do, and most importantly, make interesting things. Gourmet dinner potlucks! Hanging out at a friend's art studio! Touring with a friend's band!

How do you get friends like that? You have to do and make interesting things as well!

I hope everyone actually does take offense to this: When I hear someone say they want to be filthy rich, I hear it as them saying they want to be a boring douche bag.

On the bright side, I don't think many people reading Hacker News fall in to the category of brutish, construction worker-type. :)

I did work construction when I was younger, and I must say, I enjoyed it immensely. I always love to help out someone build a shed or throw up some drywall.

It's just plain fun to build things with your hands, even if you're mainly doing the work with your finger-tips these days.

What is labour intensive now is going to be rather easy to do in twenty years.

Just think of some sort of Machinima based "gaming" program. Have your basic set of gestures for the actors, write up a little script, have someone control a camera, some voice-to-mouth animation.

Forget about twenty years from now, you could probably rattle off something in an hour or two with a modified game engine.

Wow, so weird...

I'm constantly having my friends and family give me astonished looks when they see what I can do with a computer!

I get tons of recognition! I do a good amount of web work for free... for friend's bands, small businesses... for people that I know and love who don't have a lot of money...

... and they love it! They get this look in their eyes like I'm some sort of magician!

It's awesome. :)

How much of this list is currently present in the nightly build of Webkit?

Why is there so much interest among web developers and entrepreneurs with the business of music?

I really can't figure out it.

Why are you all trying to "solve" an industry that you have no interaction with and seemingly know little about?

How many gigs do you go to a month? How many new albums do you listen to?

Where do bands in your city practice? Who does booking, and for what nights, at what clubs? Who are the promoters? Do you know any music publishers? Tour managers? Record labels? Recording studios?

Do you know any online and radio promotion companies? Do you know any band managers? Do you even know a single musician who makes more than $1000 a month from music?

Do you know where to get a tube amp repaired? Do you know anyone who does live sound? Do you know any good drummers with room for another project on their plate?

Should I go on, or is it painfully obvious that you are all commenting on things you can see very little of?

Why are you so compelled to enter in to the conversation at all?

I am truly curious.

There is a rather large spiritual aspect to mankind's creation of art.

If you look at the history of art, in the western world and elsewhere, it is strongly tied to some sort of religion.

Religious practice typically implements some sort of repetitive behavior or meditation, where the goal is not necessarily to get something done in the physical world.

If you run the process through some sort of reductionist approach, you wouldn't have art to begin with. Why even make a piece of art? What's the point?

While it is interesting to view the creation of art through the lens of an engineer, any attempt to criticize the work through only this lens is not going to stand up very well.

I know, I know, really immature... but...

...isn't it kind of funny that he made the venn diagram on mammograms look like the same body part being tested for cancer?

:D

From scratch? Like, rewrite all your libraries and nifty little UI tricks? Of course not.

But sometimes ripping out the plumbing and throwing the bigger pieces back together works wonderfully.

I guess that's called refactoring, though. :)

The point I'm getting at is, who does The Big Rewrite? I can't ever see myself wanting to rewrite sections of code that are working perfectly fine Just Because.

How much of The Big Rewrite was Mozilla? Did they literally rewrite everything? I can't imagine so. I bet they kept a LOT of code. It was probably more along the lines of a rather daunting refactor.

I'm just wondering what "starting fresh" means. For me, it normally means fixing architectural decisions that have become a huge pain in the but I'm keeping a LOT of the code base.

Haha!

Well, I don't know how much we have to worry about production oriented software disappearing.

From what I see, the web has caused a shift in the production of cultural content, away from centralized media industries to something resembling cottage industry. Wouldn't there be a rise in production oriented software to meet the demands of creators needing better, faster, and easier tools?

Let's face it, the web is never going to take over for production oriented software. People will need to be squeezing every last calculation out of their hardware while they're making things and they need feedback without delay.

You couldn't work in Illustrator with a 50ms delay, so where do you draw the line for what is computed client-side and what on the server? Sure, filters could be processed server-side. But complex drawings, taking up lots of RAM, constantly requiring a re-render?

We don't even need to talk about server-side audio production.

It's not that there aren't tools that work just as well or much better when served in the cloud, it's just that there will always need to be tools that demand to be run as close to home as possible.

It seems to me that the amount of people wanting to use production oriented software is going to grow at least at the pace of consumer oriented software.

This is just from your personal experience.

I've got a large number of friends who smoke pot everyday. They're far from non-functioning.

Two of my closest developer buddies smoke all day long. Like, literally, all day long, smoking as soon as they wake up in the morning. That's about as extreme as you can get in the realm of the pothead.

They're fine. They've held their jobs for long periods, been promoted, given raises... all of the things you expect from a "functioning" member of society.

I don't really hang out with very many non-functioning member of society and I know a LOT of people who smoke pot... maybe you tend to hang out with a lot of non-functioning people for some reason? A rather larger percentage of people smoke pot around the world, so it would tend to cross a number of socioeconomic boundaries.

To me, this issue you have with perceiving that pot is making people in to listless sacks of flesh seems to be a personal problem and entirely subjective.

Reminds me of this article on Aphex Twin (and others) embedding images in spectrograms: http://www.bastwood.com/aphex.php

I'm a musician. I'm also a freelance developer. I did the startup thing, and it's not for me. Right now I've been programming for about 6 months of the year and spending the rest of the time on music.

Starting a music project, be it a band or whatever, does have some similarities to a startup. You need a good product, you need to market it, promote it, you've got to start lean, you need to keep at it all the time, etc, etc.

My lady gives me a lot of support. She's fine with practicing 3 nights a week, being in the recording studio, sitting on my laptop working on demos or editing recordings.

I spend a lot of time working on music! A good 50-60 hours a week, for sure.

...but...

I always seem to have time for her, too. Even when I've got a programming contract.

You can always make time for the people and things that you love. If you're not making time for them, you don't love them. It really is that simple.

Honestly, do you really need to be spending 15 hours a day working on some silly little company? Your daily photo company or whatever it is? That's going to be your pride and joy when you're all alone with a pile of cash?

I mean, this is Hacker News. I know what you're motivations are here. They're not art. They don't seem to be love either.

I guess that's why I got out of the game.

I want love to rule my life, and not the other way around.

Me too! And I do! I frequently work at my band's practice space. :)

Are you in SF?

If you're not making art, you're not taking part in the conversation.

However, you CAN learn the language, and then at least listen in on the conversation.

There is a reason that those paintings are hanging on the walls of museums like MoMA. The artists have engaged with the discourse of contemporary art of their time.

I could spend then next 6 weeks going over art history, but here's a quick example of the kinds of things that motivated artists in the beginning of the 20th century.

Before the advent of the photograph, the only way to capture a scene was by reproducing it by hand, using a number of different media. Once the ability to point a machine at a scene, capture, and print it was available, the working painters of the day had some serious questions to answer. What is being lost by taking a photograph? What is gained? What is the role of a painter? What can a painter do that a photographer can't?

With this context and these questions in mind, reexamine the course of art history in the latter part of the 19th century. You see a movement towards impressionism, the abstract, and expressionism.

Of course, technology is not the only motivator for an artist. There are philosophical trends and political events, that guide and inspire artists to create what they do.

I've found that my studies of the the history of various art forms, be them visual or aural, have greatly improved my understanding of how and why things are the way they are.

There is a lot to be gained by learning new ways of communication. I would push for everyone to not only learn the language, but partake in the conversation. The creation of art is truly a transcendent experience.

Phil·is·tine (fĭl'ĭ-stēn', fĭ-lĭs'tĭn, -tēn') n.

1.

A member of an Aegean people who settled ancient Philistia around the 12th century B.C.

2.

a. A smug, ignorant, especially middle-class person who is regarded as being indifferent or antagonistic to artistic and cultural values.

b. One who lacks knowledge in a specific area.

Dude, there is a WORLD of a difference between a computer application that is made for the purpose of doing business and a work of art...

Art is about communication. Art is a conversation.

Do you expect, when having a conversation with someone, that it is going to be a one-sided affair, where the other person is completely responsible for the outcome of the interaction, and you, yourself, have no bearing nor responsibility on the course of events?

Is someone "failing" at conversation because they are speaking to you in Korean and you don't understand it? Is that their fault? Or is it yours? Is one person failing and the other person triumphantly succeeding in this situation?

I take some issue with the basic thesis.

I don't think you can outright separate the appreciation of music in to two camps, that of the musical content and that of the lyrical content.

Much as in poetry, the sounds and rhythm of the words are an integral part of what makes a good melody.

Hip-hop might actually be the ultimate example of this. Sure, there is content, but it is mainly about the flow of the lyrics. The fact that the author of the post looks to hip-hop as being some kind of example of the decline in musical appreciation just tells me that he is himself is lacking in the ability to properly listen to music.

Jay-Z has amazing flow. Busta Rhymes is a freaking explosion of syncopated beats, as good as swinging as Gene Krupa, but managing to tie lyrics in as well. KRS-One? Snoop? Eminem? They are practically jazz drummers who use their mouths instead of a drum kit.

I would bet the fact that they're talking about drugs, violence, money, women, and what it's like to be poor are the main reasons they turn people off. Most detractors don't want to know that this world exists and sure as hell don't want to have anything to do with it.

Beyond hip-hop, this is an important element to pretty much all music that could be labeled as "good". Sure, the actual language content is important... you're going to connect with more people if you're singing about heartache and love than if you're singing about molecular biology. However, if your lyrics are set to a stale melody, or don't have a rhythmic foundation that inter-plays with the rest of the music, it's not going to sound good, and people are not going to like it.

Vowel sounds are incredibly important. Imagine the lyrics to your favorite song. Now, get rid of the consonants, and listen to the rhythm of the different vowels. More than likely, you'll find a syncopated pattern. There might be an interplay of the "ee" and "ah" sounds, there might be repeated "oo" sounds at the end of every verse, etc. It may be simplistic, but I can guarantee it's there.

There are a number of great songs that have either nonsensical lyrics in them or at least very simplistic content. Led Zeppelin has never been known for their lyrics and are still selling tons of albums every year. "Ob-la-di-ob-la-dah"? "Ma ma ma my sharona"? And I'm just sticking to rock/pop music with these few examples...

Style and fashion, of course, have a lot to do with popular appeal. And these are based on trends, where timing is everything. If The Beatles were to have never existed (and somehow music today ended up where it is without them, which is highly unlikely) and they suddenly emerged, I'm not sure that they would be all over the airwaves. Sure, there would be people who were absolutely smitten with them, but I they are who they are because of a certain time and place. They hit their peak when albums like Pink Floyd's "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" were top 10 albums in the UK. Can you imagine that? Piper? Top 10? That is one weird and crazy album. Actually, I think it got to number 6 on the charts.

There are a lot of elements that go in to music. But they go in to and form a cohesive whole. It is very hard to separate out one element from another and say that this element is more important than another element.

I don't see how you can split lyrics from their musicality.

The modes of listening to music are always in flux.

Singles are very popular right now. Not a lot of people are listening or even making 70s-style albums that are meant to be listened to in their entirety.

I'm an anomaly. I only listen to music while doing nothing else. I'll add that I don't have a car, and did listen to music while driving. BTW, I feel like you're not really doing much of anything when you're driving, so your ability to actually listen to music is retained.

Unlike coding. I can't listen to music while working, I want to pay too much attention to analyzing the chord progressions, lyrics, etc. :)

I think they understand their market just fine. You're just not in that market, so you don't notice.

It is niche music, there is no doubt about it. The jazz festival circuit seems to be doing just fine, albeit, most of the popular festivals are outside of the US. Heck, most of the really good older jazz musicians moved to Europe 30 years ago, anyways.

"r.zip contains an executable file. For security reasons, Gmail does not allow you to send this type of file."

And I was trying to play a nice little trick on a few of my friends with that one, too...

Awesome, so what kind of people are working for you? Did any of them pretty much single handily engineer tumblr?

Or do you have a bunch of shmucks who plod in to work, do what they are told (and never any more), and then plod back home?

Have you ever thought that maybe the most successful businesses are the ones where the employees are bright and motivated and will actually call YOU out on your bullshit ideas? Do you really think that every idea that you deem important really is important?

Maybe Hacker News should try and organize free 2 hour "Introduction to the Internet" classes for the elderly?

I'm sure it's mainly a matter of ignorance and not a matter of intelligence.

I'm very interested in the state of audio -> MIDI... right now I'm using Max/MSP (the fiddle~ object) for pitch analysis, but it leaves a lot to be desired.

Eventide makes some great pitch related tools and the PitchFactor stomp box seems to be much more quick and accurate than anything else out there... unfortunately it doesn't have MIDI out, AFAIK.

How quick and accurate is the Nord Modular for pitch analysis?

Yet another parallel between programming and musicianship... :)

I think any musician knows where to go to get their guitar fixed or where to find a rehearsal space. Those sorts of things are pre-requisites to having any sort of future in the industry.

By "Music 2.0" I'm referring to any number of articles related to music having to be free, being a loss-leader for t-shirt sales, etc... in these people's minds, bands form out of the ether and well-recorded albums rain from the heavens above!

Businesses involved in the digital commodification of music need to have a firm understanding of how music is made and performed in order to have any measure of success.

Well, people ARE trying. :)

Here's an article from Billboard: http://bit.ly/7qevgk

The concept was very interesting but unfortunately it had a lot going against it, which is why Jake got out of the music industry.

Jake didn't really know all that much about the music industry... he didn't know promoters, or booking agencies... having these connections are still very important, just like in any industry.

Also, Francis and the Lights are incredibly idiosyncratic and would rather not deal with the industry on any terms other than their own... which doesn't make for the best business partnership.

Independent labels still fulfill this role.. to an extent. What they are mainly lacking in is capital and a way to recoup, as bands do not sign contract for anything other recording.

It would seem that a company with the right contacts in the music industry, a good amount of capital to invest, and an all encompassing approach to the artists income would have a shot at becoming profitable.

There is most definitely money to be made from music, but understanding the intricacies of the this new marketplace are more complicated than most people are willing to admit to themselves.

Disclaimer: Jake and I have been good friends since college.

"Why can't artists get regular bank-loans to fund their business?"

This is one of the fundamental questions that is most often overlooked!

Ok, so three long haired dudes working part-time jobs at coffee shops wander in to a bank and strike up a conversation with a loan manager...

...I think we can all fill in the blanks here. :)

The indicators that banks look to for giving out loans are quite different than the indicators an A&R man is looking at.

Would a bank care about how many people you typically draw to a concert? Would they care about a good review on Brooklyn Vegan? Or how many shows you've played outside of your home town?

Music is a specialized industry requiring specialized methods of investment, much like Internet or biotechnology companies.

Here's the very best point that is brought up: "And musicians need them to survive so we can use them as banks. Even bands like us who do most of our own promotion still need them to write checks every once in a while."

While the major labels had their faults, the DID act as investors for musicians.

This was probably their most important function, and it seems as if though the majority of Music 2.0 proponents do not know this.

This isn't the only thing they don't know about a functioning music industry.

The next time you're listening to a Music 2.0 presentation, stand up and ask the dude if he knows where the closest band rehearsal spaces are, where the closest guitar repair services are, who manages local acts, who does booking, who is currently promoting what genres and at what venues... really, I could go on and on about a lot of details that some messiah of the digital arts is most definitely unaware of.

I sing, play guitar, bass, and saxophone, as well as enough drums and keyboards to get by in rock or pop settings.

With my current group we've started to use a heavy dosage of Max/MSP for audio and Quartz Composer for visuals... my professional programming experience really helps with creating really good interfaces for the software (not just UI, programmatic interfaces as well), so extending or modifying the software happens at a pace that keeps up with the rest of the band... and being that music is prety much realtime...

If you're interested, we've got some demos up... http://redblueyellow.com

Of course I did our website as well... Rails ;)

And how many bands have a github account? Sorry, no public repos yet... http://github.com/redblueyellow

At one point we had three software developers in the band, but we've slimmed down due to gasp, guys getting jobs in the industry elsewhere (other than SF, I know, right?) and now I'm the lone coder.

I'd say I'm about 50/50 when it comes to music... I've had periods where I did it full-time, and I've had periods where I've coded full-time. Right now I'm burning the candle at both ends with a contract job and spending at least 30 hours a week on the band.

I know quite a few professional programmers who are also professional or semi-pro/very dedicated musicians.

I think there is more to it than mere correlation.

And can I say that the 10,000 hour thing is WAY WAY off?

I'll put it in musical terms:

I started playing the saxophone in 5th grade. I played for 2 years. I switched to guitar. About 4 years ago I picked up a sax because the band I was in needed some horns. After about a week, I was 100 times better than I ever was before. So what happened? Well, I learned more about music in the mean time. I'm sure I could pick up any instrument much, much quicker than someone who has never played any instruments. What am I getting at? Well, a lot of things in life have more than just a passing similarity. They have core fundamentals that are shared. I am completely convinced that this applies to music and software development, although I have no idea why.