Where do we go from here?

[mosc]

We have recently passed the 1800 member mark. See: http://electro-music.com/forum/topic-7498.html
The number itself isn't all that significant, but we are approaching the start of our third year and the nature of our community has started to change. I'm overwhelmed that so many people think electro-music.com is a valuable resource and have chosen to share themselves here as we develop this great international community of electro-musicians (a term we have never defined BTW).

I think it might be an appropriate time to get some feedback. What is good and what needs improvement here at electro-music.com? Why do you participate and how would you like to see us evolve? Are there features and/or services that you would like to see initiated?

Thanks in advance...

[cebec]

first: i love this forum!

i believe it's the best of those that i frequent, daily. it feels like a 'home', and i visit and participate because: 1) i am a clavia/nord modular/G2 enthusiast, 2) i am an electronic music enthusiast, and 3) because of the wonderful people/brains who make up this community and the truly tangible sense of community... i was also at e-m 2005 and was both enriched and invigorated by the experience -- it crystallized my feelings and gave me a sense that all of 'this' is more than a 'website'.

i agree, though, with many others, that the forum/subforum structure could benefit from some reorganization and optimization but i don't think i can or should articulate my personal vision since i primarily stick to just a couple of sub-fora and use the 'new posts since last visit' link most of the time.

if i have one criticism/hope for improvement, it's the speed at which the site responds -- it seems to take quite a long time for the initial connection to be established. this is from a variety of operating systems, broadband connections, and locations.

all in all, i'm very pleased with the forum's software from an enduser perspective and proud to be a part of this burgeoning community.

a heartfelt 'thank you' to you, Howard, and to all the editors, moderators, and contributors. this place has been, and I hope it continues to be, an oasis in the interwebland.

[jksuperstar]

If I had any suggestion, it would be to formalize the reviews, tips, and suggestions that are presented here. Getting the front page updated more frequently would be nice (even though I usually jump staright into the forums). Having synthesis tips & tricks that are presented in the forums get crystalized and sorted (the old "interesting threads" area of the 404 website I though was great once I started taking my NM1 seriously...it filtered out the 1000's of posts to a few that really made a specific point). Scheduling regular equipment reviews, or techniques, circuit bending schematics, or what have you.

Basically, I think the forums are fantastic for ironing out ideas, and communicating. But once that's "done", it be nice to formalize that information so it becomes a reference. To me, that's the next step. Almost like an e-zine that is written by the members...ideas eventually become articles. And to accomplish that, I think you just have to foster the attitude that members *want* to help out and sort information and once the mob forms, and critical mass attained, others will join in & help constantly.

Also, the EM label, and more live/sponsered events across the globe would be cool.

[seraph]

did you know that "Where do we go from here? Chaos or Community" is the title of book a by Martin Luther King Jr.?

[mosc]

No, I didn't realize MLK wrote a book by that title.

Thanks for your comments. I'm working very hard on getting a new hosting company that will provide faster service.

JK, I'm with you on developing this 'interesting threads" idea further. It could expanded to music and patches too. Every member should be able to creat their own such lists. Also, good comments about the front page too. It gets a lot of page views.

Anyone interested in electro-music.com moving into a musician hosting type of site similar to the old mp3.com, or soundclick.com or something like that? The focus would be on electronic music, of course.

[seraph]

[elektro80]

I kinda agree with Carlo. The Online Music section here is great, and I like the idea of podcasting/albumcasting and streaming. However, it seems we have managed to create an interesting community which isn´t based solely on LTMM/charts and such. I guess I would like to look more into building the content and structure that in interesting ways. THere are of course feature sets that we could "borrow" from sites like soundclick but I would like to see that we use those in our own way in order to become even more weirder and less like the rest of the sites out there.

[seraph]

[opg]

A lot of forum admins will "freeze" a topic and post it at the top of the list when he/she thinks it best explains the what, where, or how of something. That is the easiest way to turn the info into a "Reference Section."

I've been going to two forums regularly, this one and em411.com. I've actually started getting tired of EM411 because it's changing. There is a large bubble of newbies that have moved in and are asking the same questions, it seems. That's okay, as long as they're directed to a "reference" post. But more importantly, EM411 is becoming more of a LTMM and shameless-self-promotion kinda site. All of us would like our music heard, but I guess it's the way that it's done at EM411 is what's bothering me. Perhaps if their Online Music section was broken down by genre? I'm not sure, but what I do know is that the longer you are part of a forum, the harder it is to listen to new music, especially if it's from mostly new members/musicians. I wouldn't want to ignore them and not provide feedback, though, because we were all a "newbie" once.

I think that's the key. If you are able to direct a "newbie" to the right information quickly, they will feel more welcome and learn the flow of the forum quicker.

[Mohoyoho]

I agree that an MP3.com thing would not be wise. It would change the whole flavor of our community and turn it into a self promo site. There would be many who would just deposit their MP3s and never come back for discussion. The lively and upbeat discussions are what make this site shine above all the rest. Members here want to help and contribute. I would not want to see that lost to self promotion.

[jksuperstar]

Unless the fact of creating an MP3 hosting site creates enough revenue that Howard isn't taking the brunt of the cost anymore. Then it might be nice to have a "sister site" which does this hosting, somewhat seperating the communities of hosting vs. forums.

I agree there *will* be a flood of LTMM, as well as "Listen to my play list, I'm awesome!" type of posts that would follow suit. Lots of grumbling over illegal posts for admins However, it really CAN provide a service to electro-musicians, by providing a channel to the masses with this special form of music.

Difficult choice.

[mosc]

All valid concerns. This is why I haven't want to rush into this - that and laziness.

There are already people posting to the Online Music forum that don't participate in other discussions. That doesn't bother me too mush as long as the music is relevant. I don't want to see hip-hop, R&B, or Christian music and stuff.

This is why I wanted to open this discussion.

[Kassen]

I can understand that sentiment. Hiphop, R&B and Christianity have led to much suffering in the world and are closely asociated with objectionable phenomena such as driveby shootings, tasteless videoclips and crusades.

Still, despite the bad examples that get all the publicity there are also good hiphoppers, R&B producers and even christians, much like there are also good Muslims, Policemen, Bi-sexual neo-pagans and Sysadmins.

:¬pppp

Hip-Hop and R&B are currently using quite a few interesting techniques such as creative compressor use and scratching on a compositional instead of a performance level. I think those can be relavenat.

Actually those aren't my points. Where I realy wanted to go is that I long for the moment when electronic music finally comes of age. I think that by the time people are so comfortable with electronic music that they choose to use intangible instruments based on information and comunication to express such intangible and comunication/information based concepts as religious feelings then we are realy there. this link makes a lot of sense to me. I don't think I would support a ban on religious songs if we didn't also ban politcal and love-songs.

I think it'd be great if some people would express their religious ideas thorough electronic music, much like I think it' s great that some people are inspirered by the concept of evolution in making sounds.

Bach's religious music is off topic here, but not because it's religious (or so I feel) it's off-topic because it's written for acoustical instruments.

[mosc]

Well, I don't want to ban anything. But at the same time, I don't want to support some of those things either.

Now, the topic you bring up is very interesting about electronic music. There are some of us that got pretty fed up with electronic music when Wendy Carlos produced the first Switch On Bach recordings. Not that these weren't great, but it was a big step way for electronic music as new or experimental. There was a time when people made and listened to electronic music because they wanted to be on the new edge of exploration. They wanted their musical perspectives to be challenged and expanded. Now-a-days, almost any style of music uses electronic devices including synthesizers.

Certainly, a lot of the online music here is not of the so-called avant-garde style. We don't want to remove it of ban it. Still, I'd like to be able to put together lists of music that are exciting experimental peices from my personal perspective, and make those lists available for people to hear. I'd like to here your lists too. Some other people might list music that I don't care for, but there will be lots of people that like it nevertheless.

Manually going though the Online Music forum doesn't work. For many of those posts, I'm the only one even acknowledging that their music was even noticed. There must be ways to improve that.

[Kassen]

Yes, I agree with those sentiments. I just wanted to caution against saying some styles are O.T. because I think those styles can have overlap with what we are doing. I particularly thing there are quite a few tracks that are both arguably hiphop and are also experimental avant-garde electronic music.

I was thinking of Wendy Carloss too. I'm not too fond of those versions of those pieces personally; there's better electronic music and there are better versions of Bach. I think I may even have a electronic version of a Bach piece I like better somewhere (Though I don' t think that one was religious per-se).

Either way, this is all very hard to define. Often I'm not even sure how to tell the difference between experimental music and eclectic composers that don't feel like they are exprimenting at all. Electronic intruments get used in many styles and in many ways. Personally from time to time I hear aplications in post-rock pieces that strike me as far more interesting and inovative then the aplication of electronic instruments in some "experimental electronic music".

My gut feeling says we should encourage, promote and stimulate innovative and particularly expressive applications of electronic sounds. I think we can do that regardless of style. A while ago I was fortunate enough to stumble uppon a fairly large funk ensemble that was playing catchy music in odd time signatures, they had two "drummers", one was using a kit that was a mixture of acoustical and electronic drums (some of which triggered phrases if I wasn't mistaken), the other was a virtuoso scratch DJ. Neither drew much attention to the fact that they were working electronically amongst acoustic and electro.-acoustical instruments and both put down a impressive performance. (to be honest; they were all very high class musicians, the sort that switches timesignature during improvised jams). I think that's a great application of electronic music and sounds. Now, if you'd ask me; is Funk on topic for E-M then I'd probably say "not realy", but in my book those aplications, the questions they give rise to and so on are very much on topic. On a sader note, there is quite a bit of purely electronic music out there that I think would be quite off-topic.

Once more I want to stress that's just how I look at it at the moment.

[mosc]

So, we could create some wonderful music upload site with great technology and I could end up broke.

There must be some way to get revenue to cover the costs, and repay the musicians. The music business is supposed to reinvent itself. I guess we have to do the reinventing.

[Kassen]

Erm, yeah. We could and you could. I don't think there is any doubt or debate about either.

Still, we'd like to avoid the "broke" part.

We could have advertisements. If we have those we'd need ones that aren't that objectionalbel and we'd need some way to avoid people skipping those. ho humm.

We could also have subscriptions, that means offering more quality or more convenience then what people can get for free. Preferably both. That probably means quality controll which means judging quality. Ho humm.

Dammit, Jim, I'm a engineer, not a marketing consultant :¬p.

[mosc]

Marketing consultant? That's what we need. Any marketing consultants out there that want to volunteer?

[seraph]

[opg]

It seems to me that what makes this site different (and appealing) from other electronic music sites are the threads about song structure, building instruments (either actual machines or with software), and exploring new possibilities. I see a lot of freedom and creativity when I come to this forum. The other sites have a lot more "How do I get that sound from that artist" or "Where can I find samples for this genre," whereas Electro-Music.com has this unspoken "I know my music doesn't fit really anywhere else and I'd like to talk to people who feel the same way" attitude.

In this angle, we are not restricting what "experimental electro-acoustic music" is, but rather inviting those who feel out of place in the other forums that we don't want this one to turn into.

I wonder if that makes sense....

[mosc]

Does that make sense? Absolutely. That's as good a definition as electro-music as I can think of. Thanks.

[Kassen]

[opg]

Right on!

[Kassen]

New signature!

[orczy]