Steve Ball

New Guitar Craft website

Live as of today, Solstice.

http://www.guitarcraft.com

Well done.

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Brandi Carlile w Tim and Phil: 18 Years ago today

Reposting a diary entry from precisely 18 years ago given historical significance. On this day 18 years ago, I told my friend and business mentor Bill Barrett that Brandi Carlile would be a global phenomenon one day. He was skeptical, until I dragged him to this show at the Triple Door. Even in 2004, Brandi, Tim and Phil had the unmistakable chemistry of pure stardom.

I'm not sure where Bill is now, but I wish I could reconnect to remember that moment again, today.

Original post is here: https://steveball.typepad.com/diary/2004/12/backspace.html

And recopying the whole post here:

Evening Work: Backspace (6.9M mp3).

Slowing down after a long busy frenetic week. This sketch captures the pace of a typical Pelota Saturday afternoon of multi-tasking within unscheduled time at home -- although it begins slowly and gently, forces inevitably build up and the blood (and just barely consonant harmonies) begins flowing.

The name points to a feeling of wishing it were possible (and as easy as hitting a key on a keyboard) to undo or retype characters/words/actions of recent past.

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Earlier evening: dinner with BillB, in town for a few days. Bill wanted to see what was 'hot' in Seattle right now, so I made some calls and we caught the second (10:30) soldout Brandi Carlile show at the Triple Door. Great to see old pals Tim and Phil Hanseroth blasting away with Brandi, esp P&T's excellent "Fall Apart Again" rearranged for Brandi's voice. Also gave Phil a Box Set to share w/ Tim since I don't think they've seen or heard this since we did some shows together a couple of years ago.

Highlight of the evening: Brandi's young sister came out for a duet of Jane Siberry's "Calling all Angels."

Bill may go see her again in NYC next month -- they're touring in January, opening for Jonny Lang. They just came off the road after opening for Hansen.

Fun fact: Brandi and I used to play back to back shows on Sunday nights at the Paragon on Queen Anne in the mid-to late nineties. She was still a teenager.

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More About Song Tiles

For at least a couple of decades, I have been working under the principle that each song I write, arrange, record and/or release should have it's own dedicated artwork. Given, more than ever, songs are distributed, streamed and consumed one at a time, it makes sense that each song should have its own related cover art, a 'song tile' representing the visual essence of the song.

Groups of songs bundled together as albums and/or CDs generally still all share the same 'cover art' for 99.9999999% of commercial releases. This is still the global standard. However, I have also committed my personal releases to a specific cover art template designed to provide a consistent catalog where the individual songs are celebrated over one (often random) image that has nothing to do with the collection in the group.

My template is intentional partly because it is unique. It is also instantly recognizable, like a fingerprint sticking out in a sea of album art noise. I generally also use highly saturated, iconic images where the color palate is designed to vibrate and attract attention relative to the art school standard designs (and 'jazzy' - read: arbitrary, faux-artistic, often-nature-related song titles that often go along with instrumental music.)

An example of my standard 9-songtile template is here:

Tiny Orchestral Moments, CD3 from Peak Week 1. This CD will be released one song at a time over the next three years along with ~150 other recordings and videos from the Tiny Orchestral Moments workshops since 2016.

Will other artists and labels eventually adopt the practice of individual album art for each track? I do not care. This is my chosen framework and principle designed to give each song its own visual voice. And designed to challenge the artist / producer to consider each song - and song tile - as separate cells within the same entity.

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AI is the new AR

I've seen so much hype recently about AI (Artificial Intelligence) applied to image (and video) processing that seems to be freaking out the creative technology community. The whole shebang (a word that intensely reminds me of former bandmate Bill Rieflin) reminds me of this poster that I used to see around the Microsoft office at Lincoln Square:

I tend to agree with JL on this topic. AI may help reduce some of the creative load by providing generative options, but, in the end I believe that significant creative decisions will still be directed by humans.

For at least a few more years. :)

Thoughts? Further debate from robots who disagree?

PS - The AR reference in the title also refers to previous decades-long promises that AR (Augmented Reality) was going to be mainstream any day now. From my mountaintop, AR today = Apple Netwon in 1992.

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Prometheus Review: 1998

I just stumbled upon a screenshot of a Prometheus CD review from Elephant Talk (an early online King Crimson newsletter).

I've recently been working toward a limited-edition physical CD rerelease as 30th anniversary celebration.

As preparation for this, here are some proposed inclusions to check out:

http://www.steveball.com/prometheus

Thoughts?

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