The Rick Rubens - Rick Beato Interview was the first time I really noticed what Rubens had been involved with and what he actually did.
I am a few years older than both Ricks, and was really into music, was working at Fairlight Instruments at the time designing electronics, and reading some of the music and much of the keyboard and synthesizer press back when Rubens started out.
Rubens was a punk guitar player and played guitar and programmed the DMX drum machine on the 1986 Beastie Boys - No sleep till Brooklyn. That he understood that RAP was music at that time shows why he become the producer guru he now is. I remember reading the USA Magazine KEYBOARD in the 1980s and the cover proclaiming something like RAP ISN'T MUSIC. At the time I was so far away from that world, but still realized that wasn't a truth in anyway.
Rick Rubens, in his recent book, and in the Beato interview, seems to have always been a calm guru type, with a very wide perspective on music.
An interesting read for the most part, but don't think he covers anything I hadn't thought about and considered in my own creative endeavors.
The Fairlight CMI was a significant mile stone in instrument and music development. The sampling and composition tools made a one man band, that people like HANS ZIMMER ran with and made their career in film scoring with. Page R in particular. But it was all very expensive.
I look back now and think Rodger Linn's Akai MPC, had a much bigger cultural contribution, thru its use in RAP /HIP HOP. Not that the designer considered that at the time. It was a user sampling Drum Machine, but by sampling others music and raping over it generated a new world of music and copyright problems! Rodger's original digital drum machine programming was also an inspiration to the PAGE R I mentioned about. His matrix Linn Instrument is also interesting, but a real niche thing.
I wonder if Rodger is about to come out with his own book on Being Creative?...
Creativity. It isn't just paintings or songs. Designing instruments requires it was much as any creative endeavor. The form of it is just different from a book author with his characters, plot points and story.Brian Eno has his own status as a Music and ART Producer Guru. His OBLIQUE STRATEGIES cards with ambiguous statements, is rather like Rick Rubens advice or suggestions. Very Guru Like.
There are between 100 and 128 cards depending on version with statements expected to trigger the stuck creative mind, like:
- Use an old idea.
- State the problem in words as clearly as possible.
- Only one element of each kind.
- What would your closest friend do?
I made up a version of this with a numbered 0 to 99 statements and D100 dice. An interesting exercise, but I have never really used it. Here the dice rolled 59, which is Do the washing up
Brian Eno's MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS was on constant repeat in my studio around 15 years ago. Like Tangerine Dreams Ziet, it changes the atmosphere in a room without taking it over. Both of these were firsts in Ambient Music, and bursts of creative genius.
Yesterday I was informed of Brian's new book, ‘What Art Does’.
We can be found at ArtAndTechnology
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