Tumblr: Blogging, As It Should Be

I just finished a case study on the microblogging platform Tumblr for my New Media Strategies class.  If you’re interested in social media and blogging then you may find this interesting!  Take a look, it’s not terribly long…

Somewhere between full-throttled blog software, such as WordPress, and minimalist microblogging tools, such as Twitter, lies Tumblr  (Businessweek).

For people uninitiated to the world of Tumblr, a simple explanation is that Tumblr is a microblogging site used to promote the creation, curation and sharing of mixed-media content across a social network.  This process is made easy for Tumblr users by means of a simple “dashboard” interface, which allows for users to add content to their “tumbleblogs”, or share content from other user’s blogs, with one click.  Tumblr, unlike its dominant social media counterparts, Facebook and Twitter, allows for seamless, streamlined multi-media content creation, curation and sharing while retaining the ability for users to connect with their fellow users on an interpersonal level, even though Tumblr is not first-and-foremost a social platform.

Tumblr was launched on April 27, 2007 by David Karp, dubbed by The New York Post as “the Internet’s boy wonder”, and within two weeks of its launch had garnered 75,000 users.  This unprecedented burst of followers in the onset of a social media platform would set the stage for Tumblr’s dramatic permeation of the schema of the internet over its first few years of existence.  A staggeringly illuminating figure of this exponential growth is the surge in audience that Tumblr experienced between July 2010 and July 2011, with its monthly visitor count growing from 4.2 million visitors to 13.4 million visitors in just one calendar year (a radical 218% increase!).  The “About” page on Tumblr’s official website currently boasts a staggering 16,000,000,000+ page views per month in addition to playing host to 68.4 million blogs and 29.4 billion blog posts since its inception.

The primary obstacle Tumblr faced at the time of its launch was the question of whether it could build and retain a strong community of users and be able to compete with the vast ocean of increasingly accessible social media tools available in the online world.  This proved all too easy and more than achievable for the fledgling platform.  The very nature of the site has allowed for self-perpetuation and internally-generated expansion like no other social media tool has shown previously.  This is primarily because of Tumblr’s innovative feedback system: the “dashboard” interface, which provides a continual stream of content from all of the blogs that a user follows, offers users multiple options in terms of feedback.  Unlike the standard “commenting” as seen on Facebook and many other social media platforms, or the simple process of “@replying” that is common practice on Twitter,  Tumblr users are given an array of choices when deciding how to interact with the content they encounter.  There is a “like” button, much like Facebook, that allows users to simply make known their enjoyment of certain pieces of content.  Additionally, each piece of content put forth by a user offers the ability for other users viewing the content to be linked to the blog of origin and “follow” other blogs, and finally, there is a “reblog” feature that allows users to effortlessly embed other user’s posts into their own blogs, as a means of pushing outwardly content that interests them and may potentially interest similarly-minded bloggers.  This is how Tumblr has made their way in the cyber-world, by founding their platform on the very nature of true viral content dispersion and encouraging their users to encourage others to share and add content constantly.  This has created an inherent sense of reciprocality in the inner workings of Tumblr that drives the cultivation of a true network of individuals; it is simply a matter of enough people choosing participate in the community that allows for the snowball effect to occur and exponential acceleration to begin.

Tumblr. has streamlined and reinvented both social networking as well content sharing.  Taking cues from many of its social media predecessors and adapting them to the immediate and ever-changing nature of today’s Internet, Tumblr has utterly simplified for its users the process of generating and sharing content with other like-minded internet dwellers.

What [David] Karp has done with Tumblr is build a better mousetrap, improving upon traditional blogging platforms like WordPress and Blogger in much the same way Facebook improved on MySpace and Friendster (Maxim).

It is perhaps Tumblr’s overwhelming sense of community that has come to spearhead its resounding staying power in the social media landscape.  As opposed to a user feeling like a cog in a seemingly boundless machine (as might the users of Facebook and Tweet), Tumblr users are enabled to create their own sense of identity and community internally and find, with great ease, other users with whom they can share content, ideas, and relatable human experience/sentiment that is simply not possible when dealing with the mainstream powerhouse social media platforms.

David Karp and his team at Tumblr have found their greatest obstacle over the course of their existence to be the breaking into of the mainstream and garnering an even greater following than they currently boasts.  This has not been an all-too difficult task, seeing as Tumblr became the first blogging platform to host President Obama’s blog, partnered with Adidas in their creation of an official Adidas Soccer blog, and became the primary forum for the members of “We are the 99%”, the unifying slogan behind the Occupy Wall Street movement.  These events have all seen Tumblr reaching new heights in public visibility and in the hierarchy of social media.  Nonetheless, founder David Karp sees nothing but limitless possibilities for the future of his beautiful brainchild.  “We really believe in this thing”, Karp says thoughtfully.  “We’re approaching it as if it could be the next Google”  (Fast Company.)

Bibliography:

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by greycoyotemusic on August 13, 2012  •  Permalink
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Why Animal Collective is Awesome (Even If You Don’t Think So)

I had a forum assignment for my New Media Strategies class that asked us “Is ‘being visual’ necessary for success in the new music industry?”  I responded with this:

Alright.  So here’s the thing.  I don’t think “being visual” is 100% entirely necessary for a successful life in the new and emerging music industry.  That being said, I do think it is a majorly smart and forward-thinking move to meet the future head-on while keeping the visual in mind.  It’s incredibly obvious that technology is becoming ever more encompassing and all-pervasive and it would be wise to meet it in the middle by creating multi-faceted sensory experiences that incorporate not only one or two of the human senses, but perhaps three or four… or even all five!  (Let’s do this, Smell-O-Vision!!!)

What I want to talk about is forward-thinking, using one particular group as a fantastic example of how technology and the visual arts may be the very key to staying ahead of the curve that is the future.
Animal Collective is, it’s safe to say, my favorite band.  Like ever.  I just think they’re the best.  And while this post is not strictly a platform for me to gush about all the reasons why I think Animal Collective is the greatest, it IS about me highlighting some of the coolest things they’ve been up to recently.
In 2010, Animal Collective released a work that took four years to visualize, realize, actualize and complete.  It was entitled ‘ODDSAC’, and they called it a “visual album”.  It was somewhat like an extended music video, but it also had a (somewhat) cohesive and traceable theme.  That’s not to say it was in anyway an understandable piece of art.  But, then again, I don’t think it was meant to be…
‘ODDSAC’ pushed a lot of boundaries, both sonically and visually.  The music and video were made simultaneously, with one influencing the other and vice versa.  Both elements essentially wrote one another into existence.  Animal Collective worked with visual artist Danny Perez entirely collaboratively and obtained some amazing, befuddling, and sometimes frightening results.

Here’s a clip…  Check it out and see what you think:

Then, in the summer of 2011, I got to volunteer at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago thanks to the McNally Smith Student Affairs Department.  It was really great.  It was my third time attending the festival and my frist time as a volunteer.  I basically got to attend the festival for free and handout water to dehydrated hipsters while watching music I really enjoyed.  But, by far the greatest thing I saw during my three days at the festival was Animal Collective.  They closed out the first night and it was really astounding, like “Woah!!!” It was my third time seeing them (the previous time was at Pitchfork in 2008, and the first time at Gabe’s in Iowa City in 2007) and it was hands down my favorite experience of seeing them perform.  Don’t get me wrong, they were all great, this one was just something else.  They performed almost all new material that had not been heard by practically anybody up until that point (something they’re known for doing) and it blew me away.  They also had an incredibly stimulating and complex stage set-up, complete with crazy lights, crazy projections, crazy skull and crystalline stalactite props, and crazy stuff hanging from the rafters.  Simply put: IT WAS CRAZY.  But in the absolutely greatest way.

Here’s a video clip from the concert in HD.  Check it out, it’s worth the 15 minutes.  However, if you’re short on time, just watch the first minute or two and you’ll get the idea of what the stage decoration looked like (There was also a giant monitor off to the side of the stage displaying absolutely mind bending imagery non-stop, so… yeah… they go all out.)

The final forward-thinking move that Animal Collective has made recently is perhaps my favorite and the most experimental (IMHO).  They, once again, paired up with visual artist Danny Perez on March 4, 2010 to perform an installation at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, celebrating it’s 50th Anniversary.

The band said of the installation on their website:
“Welcome to Transverse Temporal Gyrus, where you can experience the installation we did with Danny Perez at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in March, 2010.  That Night Danny designed an immersive visual environment for people to hear a sound installation made of brand new songs and sounds we composed for the vent.  Over the course of a three hour period, a computer program designed by Stephan Moore deconstructed our sounds, randomly recombined their stems into new pieces, and panned the new pieeces through a 36-Channel surround sound system we installed on the museum lobby’s spiral ramp.”
In addition to the installation, two years later they released the songs and sounds as originally composed and compiled by the band on a dual-record vinyl album along with a poster of the computer program designed for the installation.  (I have it, it’s pretty amazing.)  However, the audio is not for the faint of heart or the faint of imagination.  It is sonic wildness incarnate.
But wait!  There’s more!  The band also created an entire website AND a downloadable computer program designed to give their audience an innumerable amount of ways to experience the project.  When you open up the program, there is a disclaimer that reads:  “This is a stereo version of the original three-hour long sound installation.  It will be different every time it is played.”  That means, every time you open and run the Transverse Temporal Gyrus program on your computer, the program originally designed for the installation will re-arrange all of the sounds through it’s randomizer (the original program is actually called ‘CHAOS’).
And finally, to top it all off, the band and Danny Perez designed a website to incorporate the visual aspect.  I’ll let you check that out for yourself here:

The Transverse Temporal Gyrus

***Just click the flashing ‘ENTER’ button in the top right corner to check out the visuals.  You can decide whether or not you want to download the audio program.  Be careful, though!
Enjoy!  smile
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Top 15 Musicians That Utilize Technology

Here’s my Top 15 list of musicians I think utilize technology in unique and innovative ways.  Whether it’s using samples as lead vocals, live looping, busting out phat remixes, or finding new ways of using the computer as a compositional tool, it is undeniable that technology is where music (as well as everything) is heading.  I am of the opinion that it should be embraced, and I think these artists are crashing into the future with utmost grace and style.  Check it out…

(Of course there is so much awesome electronic music out there, and this is not the be-all and end-all.  This is just what I came up with on a whim…)

 

1.) “Lead Breakfast” – Pogo

Pogo is the man.  If you don’t know about him you should really check him out (see ‘Links’ page).  He’s this Australian guy that does movie and TV remixes & mash-ups.  He’s really been a huge influence on me in the past year.  I just love all of his stuff.  Especially his use of vocal samples.  He recently did a video about how he makes his music and I found out that he actually doesn’t tune that many vocal samples, but rather looks for samples that already have a certain note to them to avoid the choking effect that auto-tuning often has on vocals.  Really cool stuff.  This is a Pulp Fiction remix he put out about a week ago.  One of my favorites of his.  But yeah… definitely get into it.  It’s very cool… Here’s a link to the only song he’s done using actual sounds he recorded from his mother’s garden (it’s also the video that introduced me to his work):  Gardyn

2.) “Help Me Somebody” – Brian Eno & David Byrne

So, the above video is the most recent music in this list, and the video below is certainly the oldest.  It’s from David Byrne and Brian Eno’s collaborative album ‘My Life in the Bush of Ghosts’ from 1979 and showcases the first time vocal samples were used exclusively as the lead vocal track.  This album even pre-dates most of the vocal sample work that became prevalent in hip-hop in the 80′s and has lasted up until today.  It was incredibly innovative and before it’s time, the production techniques throughout are super heady and dense.  If you appreciate sample work whatsoever, this album is an absolute necessity.

3.) “Enjoy Your Worries, You May Never Have Them Again” – The Books

The Books.  A genre unto themselves.  Undefinable by most anyone and beyond any convention previously established by the entire history of music before them.  Masters of sample work and instrumental madmen, the Books spent the last decade composing soundscapes and orchestrations out of found sounds, live instruments, and unrivaled creativity.  Sadly, this last year saw the duo parting ways… but never fear!  Singer Nick Zammuto has started a new, self-named group, Zammuto, and will be touring the U.S. for the remainder of the year.  But, if you’re like me, and you just can’t get over the departure of you’re beloved Books, then check out Nick Zammuto’s new BLOG, wherein he discusses the life of the books, the meanings and inspirations behind the songs, and how his life unfolded around the music he made.  He even reveals that this was actually the first song that the two of them wrote together.  REALLY great stuff, especially if you’re a Books nut like me.

4.) “Angel Echoes” – Four Tet

Four Tet, the one man electronic virtuoso, a.k.a. Kieran Hebden, firmly straddles the line between electronic composer and DJ.  His works have been many and varied over his almost 15 years of production and he shows no indication of slowing.  This track is probably my favorite of his, primarily because of the gorgeous vocal line that guides the song.  It’s just perfect.  Four Tet’s drum work and sample stitching is formidable to say the least and his entire discography is worth your ears’ time.

5.) “Busy Signal (Prefuse 73 Remix)” – Daedelus

This track is actually a remix of a Daedelus song realized by fellow electronic mastermind Prefuse 73.  Both artists have styles that sit outside typical genre boundaries and their talents collide in an amazing and groovy way in this song.  Just try not to bob your head to his beat… I dare you.

6.) “aNYway” – Duck Sauce

Alright.  Admittedly, I know next to nothing about who Duck Sauce is or what he does.  I’ve read on the interwebs that he’s kind of blowing up right now on the DJ scene… and I suppose that’s all good and well.  But I just love this song.  In my opinion, it is the perfectly executed DJ banger.  The beat drops, the build-ups, the drums, the vocals, everything is just perfectly slamming and put together.  Definitely drop this one at your next house party, the dance floor will collapse… I’d be willing to bet…

7.) “Insomniac Olympics” – Blockhead

Blockhead, a New York native and hip hop producer, probably best known for his work with Aesop Rock, always delivers.  His beats are crafted from samples, samples and more samples, all coalescing to achieve something greater than the sum of its parts.  I actually remember the first time somebody played Blockhead and I was thinking “What band is this?  How many different people are doing how many different things in this group?  This is amazing!”  Shortly thereafter I discovered it was just some dude cranking out marvelously fat beats.  I really love this song.  The higher pitched vocal line towards the middle… it’s just spectacular.  (I hope you’re starting to sense a pattern in my affinity for well utilized vocal samples…)

8.) “Bombay” – El Guincho

El Guincho (some consider him ‘the Spanish Panda Bear’) hails from Espana and makes excellent modern pop music.  He uses samplers, keys, drum machines, and his voice in a magnificently concocted blend that both makes you want to dance as well as soar off into space.  So catchy, so sonically pleasing, so intricate and lovely.  Get down with this stuff.  The video is also awesome.

9.) “Poison Pit (WHY? Remix)” – Themselves

So much to say along with this song… Wow.  This song (though it is amazing) is really meant to highlight a lot of my favorite artists in one fell swoop.  It is a remix of a Themselves (Jel & Doseone) song done by the band WHY? (Yoni Wolf, who along with Doseone was 2/3 of post-hop group cLOUDDEAD).  If you don’t know about any of these artists or about the label they founded, Anticon., then you’ve been sleeping HARD and you need to wake your ass up.

10.) “CMYK” – James Blake

James Blake kind of blew up a couple of years ago, and for good reason.  He came out on the internet as being actively against the machismo and emotionlessness of the gargantuan wave of dubstep hype that came along with Skrillex and his imitators.  James Blake, in that sense, is in many ways, classifiable as Post-Dubstep, actively moving forward and leaving behind what was unnecessary in a movement that has many people (myself included) befuddled.  But whatever your stance on dubstep, it can’t be denied that James Blake has some tricks up his sleeves.  This track is off his CMYK E.P., which came out before his self-titled debut album, and features a lot more of his computer chops than his song craftsmanship, both of which are brilliant.

11.) “Voy Cell Ohs” – Olsen Twinns

My friend Mickey Davis is a beautiful human being.  He’s been blowing up around here in the Twin Cities as well as back home in Iowa.  He’s inspired me in so many ways this past year and his music has directly influenced the direction my music has been heading.  This is a video of him playing at our house in West Saint Paul, he does a great job when he plays live.  Thumping beats and heart sweat.  He’s got a new album coming out soon and you should go check it out and buy it along with his EP (see ‘Links’ page).  Great stuff from a great dude.

12.) “Seaside Town” – Baths

Baths is the best.  Seriously, this dude is the greatest.  Probably my single biggest influence from the past year.  I even got a chance to see him perform at Pitchfork last summer and I was absolutely blown away with the amount of energy that one person could produce and the amount of control he had over the crowd.  The only thing I saw that outdid it was Animal Collective, which is just like… DUH.  No, but seriously, Baths has raised the bar for electronic producers and composers hands down with his off-kilter beat work and multi-instrumental capabilities.  Get DEEP into this music.  It’s amazing.

13.) “Capture the Flag” (Live At Home) – Dosh

Martin Dosh is way cooler than you.  For real.  Dude puts on one of the best one-man shows I’ve ever seen.  I got to see him twice this past year and each time was just wow wow wow.  He single-handedly controls multiple looping mechanisms, drum machines, live keys and drums, along with a whole other slew of noise flavors.  This is a video of him and Mike Lewis (local Twin Cities sax legend) in Dosh’s basement just absolutely killing this song dead.  Loop MASTERS.  This is how it’s done, folks.  This is how it’s done.

14.) “Tonto” – Battles

Battles have been tied for my absolute favorite band for about five years now.  They were the first band to trigger my interest in looping and just generally being amazing and awesome.  This is a group of insanely talented musicians with their minds on multiple planets and planes all at once.  Though they tragically lost their singer/second guitar player Tyondai Braxton last year (he’s just doing solo stuff now… BORING), they still put on a great show and make wonderfull, technologically-driven jams that make you question where the human element ends and the computer takes over.  Future: Here we come!

15.) “Bros” – Panda Bear

Panda Bear, one fourth of the indomitable Animal Collective (my other favorite band), released in 2007 an album that blew absolutely everyone’s mind.  Person Pitch is an album constructed from samples and Panda’s iconic voice that takes you through spaces you may not have known existed before listening.  It’s essential.  This track is the embodiment of the mindful chug of the album and the head space and patience it takes to become one with the music.  I’ll leave you with this twelve minutes and see if you can make your way through unchanged.  Enjoy and thanks for being here!

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by greycoyotemusic on June 28, 2012  •  Permalink
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Making Commercial Music

Hey all,

I thought I would clue you in on one of the things I’ve been doing for the past couple of months.  Since May, I’ve been interning at sound design company in downtown Minneapolis called BWN Music, a music house that does post-production, mixing, and composition for commercials, documentaries, etc.  I’ve been interning as a composer and it’s been just a blast.  Everyone there is incredibly cool and friendly and have been extremely welcoming to me, which has just been great.

It’s an interesting thing, though, because I’ve always been very against commercial media and the staggering amount of interruption marketing we all experience ’round the clock.  But for some reason, this feels like an okay thing to be doing.  It exercises musical muscles I’ve never used before and I think provides me an arena to think about music making differently than what I’m used to.  Also, if I want to do this music thing as a career (which I do), this would be an incredibly legitimate and rewarding way to be using my talents for money.  That is, until my million-dollar record deal comes through… Should be any day now…

Recently, I started getting my first official assignments to write music specifically for clientele and projects for which they have contracted BWN.  I wanted to share some of this music with you because it is very different from the music I’ve made in the past, but it’s been a fun and challenging experience, and I kind of enjoy the different approach I’m forced to take when writing for the commercial realm.  Below I’ve included a couple of tracks I demoed for a certain dog food company (I won’t say which one… there’s actually a surprising amount of confidentiality in the world of advertising!), and even though they didn’t end up using either of the tunes, I still had fun making them and I find them enjoyable.  Hopefully  you enjoy them as well!  They’re meant to evoke sentimental feelings and what not… because, you know… dogs…

Enjoy!

Dog Food ONE (Driven)

Dog Food TWO (Solemn)

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by greycoyotemusic on June 27, 2012  •  Permalink
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WE’RE ONLINE! Welcome to the GREY(coyote) Website!

Hello, and welcome to the GREY(coyote) website!  It’s really great to have you here.  Please feel free to check out all the different stuff and what not… Especially the Links section!  Lots of cool stuff in there…  Be sure to check back frequently because there will only be more cool things for you to check out in the future!

Stay tuned for more fun and frivolity.

Thanks for being here.

Tons of love,

GREY(coyote)

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by greycoyotemusic on June 26, 2012  •  Permalink
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