Rolling Music Writers' Thread

What print publications do people here contribute to? I much prefer seeing my writing in a print magazine to on the web.

I thought I'd ask a staple question that I think may have been toiled over before on ILX, regarding use of the first person in gig and LP reviews. Is this generally considered unacceptable in anything less than the most stylistic circumstances? Or does it really not matter too much?

I'm going to try a different tack: Suppose you are an aspiring musician, and the question is the use of guitars in creating musical recordings. Is this generally considered unacceptable in anything less than the most stylistic circumstances? Or does it really not matter too much? Well, those would be the wrong questions. The question I'd pose to you first would be: Do you like music that has guitars? Obviously, you'll like some and dislike others. But is there some guitar playing that inspires you to want to play guitar yourself? Who is making such music? What guitar techniques are they using and, most important, to what effect? That last question - to what effect? - is crucial because what might happen is that you'll discover that the effect they got with guitars isn't the effect that you're getting with guitars, whereas when you switch over to trumpets or keyboards or jew's harps, well then - blam! - that's where you've got it. But you'll start with guitar, seeing what you can do with guitars.

Same is true with any literary device: irony, alliteration, first person, subordinate clauses, etc. You use them because you've learned them from models you admire, and if they help you say what you want to say, you keep using them.

This is a long-winded way of saying that no editor knows in advance whether you should use the first-person singular until he or she has seen how you use it. There are a few publications where you might find it outright forbidden, but we're not likely to be welcome at those pubs anyway. The important thing is having something interesting to say.

Xhuxk's forgotten that most of what I wrote for him was on spec too; same with what I wrote for Levy or Simmons. This is mainly because I was too scared to pitch things that I didn't know in advance I'd do well, and of course you can't know in advance, so the way to find out is to sit down and write it in the first place.

Of course, I'm not a good model for how to earn a living.

DiS isn't 'totally' a landfill site. Or at least it wasn't a couple of years ago when I used to read it regularly. No site that had Kev Kharas, Mike Diver and, dare I say it, the charmless but occasionally brilliant Dom Passantino writing for it amongst others could be considered so.

To elaborate on what I said above: I doubt that someone who hasn't "earned" the right to use the first person has earned the write to bore us with adjectives and genre designations either. Someone who falls asleep at my use of the first person isn't interested in my ideas anyway, whether I'm in the first person or not. To go back to my analogy, the phrase "guitar band" is a red flag for me these days, indicating that I'm likely to dislike what I hear. But the problem isn't with guitars themselves; guitars don't kill music, musicians kill music, and if you had the same guys playing keyboards or xylophones they'd probably be just as dreary. "Electric guitar" meant electric excitement in '66, it means drudgery now. But there's plenty of electric guitar excitement in music today - great stuttering Keith Richards-style guitar chords at the start of Martina McBride's "Wrong Baby Wrong Baby Wrong," for instance - it just doesn't usually come packaged with "guitar band" on the label.

The first person is a red flag for Chris because he associates it with a style of wandering P4k writing c. 2000 that I never paid much attention to anyway. But that's not an inherent problem with the first person. Any reader who sees the name "Kool Moe Dee" in the kicker and sees Kool Moe Dee's picture at the top of a review is gonna know that the piece will get around to Kool Moe Dee even though the lead is "I transport myself into rage a lot." And editors who think that "Kool Moe Dee transports himself into rage a lot" would be as good an opening as "I transport myself into rage a lot" probably should re-evaluate their career choice. But then, which opening to use depends on the piece as a whole; by starting it the way I did I put the rage closer to the reader than if I'd assigned the rage only to Kool Moe Dee. But then, I wanted to put the rage close to the reader. If I hadn't, I'd have started the piece differently. Doing what I did, I was immediately able to call my record player a rage machine and put Kool Moe Dee in the context of other performers on my rage machine (Stones, Stooges, Sex Pistols, Big Youth, Spoonie Gee), so the piece isn't about these misogynist black youth out there in hip-hop with their rage, but about something basic in a lot of music that - problematically - attracts me and potentially the reader too. But it wouldn't be as problematic as I want if it isn't the writer's and the prose's rage that is at issue, and potentially the reader's, not just that of the guy I'm writing the review about. (And if you don't want reviews that read like that, why in the hell would you listen to music that sounds like that, either?)

By the way, my use of the first person back then was heavily influenced by Mick Jagger's use of it in "Under My Thumb" and "Back Street Girl" and "Street Fighting Man" and so on, the way he made himself problematic. But I wasn't sitting down and going, "Oh, I'll use the first person in the way that Jagger does." I just was someone who'd analyzed a lot of Jagger and then wrote the way I wrote.

"Earned the write"

(But I haven't earned the right to proofread my own writing, even if I'm pretty good proofreading others'.)

i actually wondered if that was intentional coz i thought it were a funny pun

Sometimes my unconscious pulls off some expressive bloopers that I end up keeping, but this one has more to do with senility. As I get older, more and more I'm typing in sound-alike words for the words I mean.

By the way, Chris actually allowed all sorts of shenanigans at PTW. E.g. this.

The unwritten rule at PTW was that no one was allowed first person unless they had a book published, so I def let Frank and xhuxks first person narratives roam free in the wild while I cracked down on others!

Here's a music writing question for all yall.

Is there a reliable alternative to doing phone interviews on anything besides a landline? I'm currently paying appx $40 a month to keep a landline (which, to be fair, is actually really cheap compared to, say, five years ago) so I can continue to do phone interviews at my house.

So far the alternatives I see are
a) Cell Phones - Which, as anyone who uses AT&T knows, are subject to dropped calls, bed reception, and sketchy changes depending on fluctuations in the weather. The cell phone coverage in my part of Brooklyn isn't the best in the world to begin with, and even in the best neighborhoods, I would rarely describe ANY cell phone call I get as "crystal clear" enough to make me want to trust phone interviews that make up my livelihood

b) Skype/Web phones - "The future" as it were, but subject to sketchy wireless internet farts (which are less predictable that even cellphones in my experience), but the possiblity of your computer freezing, corrupting, or simply crapping out and losing the entire interview you just recorded.

god knows i'm wary of the vagaries of technology crapping out at the most inopportune times, but phone interviews via mobile/skype have always been fine for me. w/the former, plant yourself in an area of good coverage. the latter are pretty rare, only done one skype interview...iirc, it screwed up the first time (either the artist's or the pr's end), we arranged, it went smoothly the second time).

i record phone/skype interviews w/the usual dictaphone so there's no more risk of the i/v being lost than usual. wouldn't know how else to record them tbh.

I use AT&T and I don't have a problem, so that might be an area issue. Over the last few months of doing cell phone interviews I've only dropped one call (the person was very understanding and called me right back). And if you jailbreak it, you can record the phone conversation with an app, which fixes the problem I have of trying to transcribe phone interviews -- on my old cellphone I'd have to put it on speaker phone and hold a recorder to it.

(And if you jailbreak an iPhone, that is.)

i was hoping this wouldn't turn in "my cell phone sounds awesome wtf is wrong with u" because cellphones never sound awesome to me, even when i use someone elses

I've been interviewed three times in the last two weeks, and all our conversations (3 hours at a time) took place on my cell phone. I thought I was going to ask him to call my land line (which I still pay for and love), but the reception was first-rate.

It could be that I haven't used a landline in so long that I forget how superior they sound. At this point tho cell phone works well enough for me.

as far as first-person goes, I'm more comfortable using it now (better than the first person plural or second person at any rate). Hell, I may even have used it for one of my PTW reviews.

mobile phones don't sound particularly worse than landlines to me? more than good enough anyway, it's always more of an issue doing face-to-face i/vs which end up having to be done in some noisy public space

I do the majority of my phoners via cell these days - I put the cell phone on speaker and plop my Olympus DM-20 digital recorder right next to it on the couch. I have perfectly sufficient reception and excellent recordings. Sometimes if the artist is calling me, I'll do it on my land line, but more and more it's cell phone speaker into recorder. Recently I thought I was gonna have to do a Skype interview w/a guy who lived in Berlin but we wound up doing it by email instead (cleared this in advance with my editor).

ugh speaker phone is the worst, you people are savages!

In regards to first person discussion, I use it when it seems that my personal experience in the matter will carry some weight. I write a lot of music previews in Portland, OR and I've become known as an authority on metal around here. Since I play music, promote shows and festivals, and write about it, I know that there's a local audience that trusts my words to some degree. So even though I haven't published a book (yet), I feel no guilt in using first person voice when it actually lends something of use to the writing.

I am all ears about more good interview recording solutions though. Sounds like I should jailbreak my iPhone. I like that solution best so far.

I'm more curious about others' steps AFTER recording, especially transcribing in the mp3 age.

Here's my process at the moment:

1. Do interviews on a land line, mainly because that's what I have a jack for. Record on an Olympus digital voice recorder DS-330, which my brother gave me. I should probably upgrade.
2. Download to my Mac using DSS Player, which I have set to automatically make an AIFF copy.
3. Take the AIFF and plop it into Switch, then convert it to an mp3.
4. Label and plop the mp3 into iTunes for safekeeping (and make sure it's set to actually import to iTunes).
5. Put the DSS and AIFF "originals" in a folder for backup.
6. Plop a copy of the mp3 in ExpressScribe for transcription. ExpressScribe lets you slow down recordings, but it's still nowhere near as handy or as good-sounding as a manual cassette tape recorder.

The only good thing about digital transcription is fast-forwarding and rewinding, but I have yet to figure out "hot keys" or buy anything like a foot pedal or whatever, which sucks because I'm planning on doing 100s of interviews this year...

just make stuff up.

i mean, i still do my shit on TAPE and still am fighting the move to go digital.

The way I see it, your interviews are the most valuable part of your job, and if I get hit by a car or drop my recorder in a puddle or whatever, that tape is gonna survive. I've heard too many stories about digital recordings just "corrupting" with no rhyme or reason.

When I interviewed Negativland they told me a story of a friend who went to mexico and did a weeks worth of digital recording and then the whole thing just crumbled into corrupted digi-dust

Sometimes artists laugh when I pull out my big cassette recorder, but I've been doing this 10 years and have had exactly one mishap, which was with a wire, not the recorder.

go analog!

I still use cassettes as well, I swear by it. Has never let me down.

Used Skype a few times now and it has worked very well, recording to computer HD. It's a little scary because it's not as easy to trust as tape, but as long as you see the VU meters going, it's recording. Helps to have a headset, the sound quality is outstanding, much better than any phone. Right after I make a copy of the file on another drive. Recording cell phone conversations sucks, period, and I never figured out how to do it with an iPhone.

I helped someone on my student magazine's staff run an interview last year, and we just put her cell on speaker and recorded the whole thing using GarageBand. It went fine, but there were a lot of ways it could have easily went wrong, and I could totally see why people would feel safer using a tape recorder or something like that.

It's true, cassettes are hardy. But I don't do more than one interview on a digital recorder before ripping it to the computer and my external hard drive. And the convenience of organization, searchability, and space is considerable.

I just archived all my old interviews on cassette into digital format -- but I haven't gotten rid of the tapes because, well, why? Might as well keep the ultimate backup.

still pete, if anything happens from the time you record that interview to the time you get it on your computer...

especially since sometimes you do interviews on the road or at shows and not always at home!

6. Plop a copy of the mp3 in ExpressScribe for transcription. ExpressScribe lets you slow down recordings, but it's still nowhere near as handy or as good-sounding as a manual cassette tape recorder.

The only good thing about digital transcription is fast-forwarding and rewinding, but I have yet to figure out "hot keys" or buy anything like a foot pedal or whatever, which sucks because I'm planning on doing 100s of interviews this year...

not sure if its the same on mac, pete, but on pc the espress scribe hotkeys are f4 for stop, f9/10 to restart, f7 rewind and f8 ffw... lovelovelove that program...

sound quality of digital over analogue is an incredible improvement, tbh, and while my minidisk was scarily unreliable, my cheap mp3 recorder has never let me down yet...

i can't believe we're having a digital vs analogue debate in 2010. even a massive luddite like myself has long gone digital.

still pete, if anything happens from the time you record that interview to the time you get it on your computer...

anything could happen to anything! tapes get chewed up inexplicably! someone could step on them! i could be run over by a bus! digital dictaphone puts my mind to rest re: clarity of recording and relative ease of transcribing. if bad things happen i'll deal.

I use a horse to get to jobs. There's just too much that can go wrong with the combustion engine.

I transcribe my interviews straight from the recorder - don't even import 'em into the computer anymore. And when they're transcribed, I erase the original recording.

Speakerphone + Garageband works a treat for me. Just export to Itunes so it's easier to pause and go back.

tapes get chewed up inexplicably! someone could step on them! i could be run over by a bus!

Yeah, you joke, but seriously digital recordings can just "go away", if a tape gets chewed up or stepped on you can still salvage it.

I remember when U2 recorded their last album. They finished, tried to play it back and it had just 'gone away'. Bummer.

Just make sure to keep those tapes in their cases. Who knows who's out there roving for binders filled with your interviews!!

Yeah, you joke, but seriously digital recordings can just "go away", if a tape gets chewed up or stepped on you can still salvage it.

or maybe you can't. analogue tape is a hella vulnerable medium, and i can ruefully say i've lost interview cassettes on tourbuses, had them doused in liquid and left em in my car on a rilly hot day before, and that's pretty much been the end of that.

is harder to misplace a file on a digital recorder i'd protect with my life anyway.

I love my digital recorder. Done a few interviews in noisy restaurants--seriously, at one point someone started vacuuming in front of our table--and I was shocked to find that the audio was perfectly discernible.

I too just transcribe straight from the recorder - use the playback function where the speed is slowed down a little bit (though it always makes me sound like a pothead) and it works pretty swimmingly.

yeah, i do have to say the one real drawback to my cassette tape system is that the audio is often a lil wonky

Done a few interviews in noisy restaurants--seriously, at one point someone started vacuuming in front of our table--and I was shocked to find that the audio was perfectly discernible.

I interviewed the DJ at a bull riding competition on Friday night while a band was playing in the center of the arena and his voice was perfectly clear.

So what model digital recorders are you all using?

...not a music writer, but have somewhat similar purposes - I use a Sony PCM-D50.

Olympus DM-20.

olympus ws-210s

Olympus WS-100

Sony ICD-UX71 - I really like it. I've also used the Sony ICD-B510F (low end model) which does the job but has a few less features (like background noise reduction and slow playback) that feel essential now that I have the UX71.