Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. A couple of hundred have contributed since 2009 on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Joe Little who is an emerging technologist, Honorary Professor at the University of Stirling Management School and a qualified Futurist with a 36 year career in BAe, BP and as an independent consultant at Ouijo Consulting based in Surrey, England. He writes about his passion for not just listening to or playing music but also producing it:
Throughout my career, I have always been impressed by folks, who if asked, shared their secret creative passion. To me, they also tend to be ones who have the biggest business impact.
I turned sixteen on January 23, 1980. The day after, I caught a bus into Glasgow city center and there, flush with my birthday cash, I started an obsession. I bought 4 albums played by bands that most excited me back then. Since then, I have purchased an average of 1.5 albums a week. But what also started that day was intense curiosity about how those albums were recorded, the technology and the people involved. What does a producer do? How about an engineer? And what the hell are synthesizers?
I guess being a technology geek that shouldn’t have been a big surprise but it was the creative element that most fascinated me.
Fast forward to 1985. Having spent 2 years as a radio DJ, I saw an opportunity to get time in the adjoining studio. A 4 week producer’s course gave me the opportunity to book time and play with the 16 track mixing desk and tape deck. I learned how to mix, overdub and tape loop and create fairly interesting (at least to me) sounds and fundamental musical pieces - all with very basic equipment. It was a welcome escape from the pressures of studying and the stresses of the world. Music creation would become my most satisfying cure.
It was around that time, that I realized that having a immersive, creative output not only provided me with a distraction but ultimately kept that side of my brain active when the rest of my world was routine and plain. Being an obsessive workaholic, this became an essential element in “my mix”. It also meant that side of my brain was activated and ready when called upon in a work situation to be innovative, to generate ideas, and to make projects more appealing in the eyes of the business.
In 1994 I was looking for a new project to channel my musical interest. I visited the music industry technology fair at the Olympia in London. I saw an exhibit by Akai where they showcased their kit in little home digital studio pods. I took photographs and notes and set about building the elements of my own digital home studio. In that initial instance, my configuration included a Roland D5 keyboard, Gateway PC with a sound card, outboard Casio keyboard, a little mini mixer and a Marantz DCC deck (remember DCC, as in digital compact cassette?).
Music software was prohibitively expensive back then but as luck would have it, I managed to get a license for a short-lived new comer. SeqWin v2 was undercutting the competition and for their sins quickly went out of business when no one would distribute it.
It was with this little MIDI studio that I set about recording a CD purely for my own pleasure. “Digital Delay” had a limited edition of 2! One for me and one for my mother. It was pretty much rubbish to be honest aside from a song or two but it was the start of a huge learning curve.
A year later, having played in an office band and been tutored in time signatures and essential rhythms by a work colleague, Steve Croston, I tried again. This time I deemed “Deep” worthy of sharing with friends and colleagues (it was still a limited edition of 100 cassettes). It was mastered at Royal Oak studios in West London. Hearing my own music played on other people’s hi-fi systems and not getting a thumbs down was a thrill.
For the next 3 years I continued to record with ever better equipment (synthesizers, V-drums, guitar synths) and moved to limited edition CD releases with “Destiny” (recorded in Madrid and Hamburg) and “In The Wake of Apollo”. I started to share these with New Age record labels. In 2000 I caught the attention of a producer at BMN who was looking not only for collaborators but material for their record company launch. This led to sessions in their High Barn studios in Essex and songs that were later to appear on several albums by their artists including a Ghanaian drum group, Aklowa.
BMN Music very kindly released my album called “Difficult Listening Hour”. At its core it had sample based technology using Sony’s Acid and Cubase DAW (digital audio workstation) that I used to mix orchestral, electronic and world music sounds. It was inspired by a small band in a market in central Japan triggering samples and thumping out compelling bass rhythms. At the time it felt very fresh but soon that trend became more popular and mainstream so its follow-up “Moving on Then” was less well received.
But with the advent of podcasts and platforms such as Podshow that year, led by MTVs Adam Curry, my music found an unexpected digital channel and audience. Songs from that album made it onto radio in New York, Israel and even made the top 10 on a Swedish Radio station for the summer of 2006. All of sudden my songs were being mashed together with poems, with Latin American superstar music and integrated into tech podcasts.
For the next 9 years. my creative brain was awash with new technology and futures in the day job and the little studio got packed up and unpacked many times but without any fresh music. Then, of all things, on a Daddy day, my kids demanded I write a song with them. I was toying with a refresh of technology anyway and had some ideas kicking around. But time was an issue, especially with excessive work travel. If I was to write new songs they would have to start on the road, in hotels, trains, airplanes and airport lounges. The iPad was fresh and new and the software on the device was conducive to making that happen. So I set about recording bits and pieces on the iPad that would then get assembled at home on a MacBook Pro using Logic X Pro.
I loved writing songs to themes and this one, “Hidden Meanings”, was an idea that had gestated for a while. Using archive recordings of presidents, priests, actors, dictators, explorers and radio friendly colleagues I layered an album of songs about saying things and meaning something totally different. My kids wanted to record “Jelly Donut” - it used JFK's Berlin speech with my kids having fun with his words. I released it on SoundCloud and quickly found a brand new audience interested in the novelty.
Using that method over the next few years “Chronicles of an Analogpunk" and “Between Two Worlds” got quickly assembled and released. By this time there were plenty more streaming channels available for distribution. And for once, they yielded some income. Not too much. but enough to meaningfully donate to local cancer care and palliative charities.
It also meant that if there was a need for a license free music sound track on a website, music for a virtual world installation, for a video or commercial ad, Joe became the “go to guy” for something that would fit.
Like most folks, the first few months of the COVID pandemic presented something none of us had much of before…TIME. Writing upwards of 50 songs was my savior. Spending an hour or two each day gave me an outlet that distracted from the world outside once again. “Cloud Formations” gave me a chance to mix video footage for a combined video/audio experience for those looking to remain calm in an anxious world.
“A Life Erased” then provided an even bigger opportunity to write for an imagined futuristic movie. This time I combined voices of friends and work colleagues also pinned down by the pandemic. It also afforded an opportunity to work with a professional singer, Ainsley Hamill, for the first time with the resultant song “I Thought I’d Find You Here’ a launchpad to a new project with her.
The pandemic also opened up a further collaboration with a former BP colleague, Martin Ingram. We have had the same weird taste in music and using pieces started during the lock-down created a new project called “The Unnatural Science Orchestra”. The resultant EP and CD “Zen Gardening on Ganymede” and “Unnatural Chemistry” with their early stage Midjourney AI generated imagery creating new and weirder soundscapes and a new audience.
My message in all of this is that there is value for all business men and women to create not only a physical well-being but also a creative well-being that naturally enriches the workplace brain. So never be afraid of having that secret creative channel - in fact, embrace it.
Follow Joe and enjoy his music on Apple, Amazon, Spotify and SoundCloud
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