[NewMusic] Old discussions no one cares about

[Matt Davignon]

>
> Funny, talking with Dan Plonsey last night at the Toyoji benefit, we
> discussed that philosophy.  It raises the question of how an artist
> comes to a conclusion about what she/he does best.  Obviously,
> there's a lot of identity influencing that conclusion.  Is my "best"
> my highest level of technical expression, or what I do that is most
> unique to me?  Are self-editing artists automatically bowing to the
> "marketplace"?  Is rejection in the marketplace proof of your integrity?
>

I'll give you my own thoughts:

I think about this stuff all the time. My current theory is that to create
"my best" would be to find the clearest way possible to express what is
unique to me as a musician. That sounds simple enough, but it's been a big
challenge. First is figuring out the difference between what I like and what
is actually "me".

(I guess at this point, I should say I'm not under the assumption that being
me is going to make "the best" music, or even music that would be successful
- it'd simply be my best music.)

So, then comes this excavation process - I've found this little point of
something that's me, but I have to do a lot of digging to figure out what
sort of shape it's going to take, and find a few other points of me in other
places and wonder what sort of shape it's going to take under all that soil.


...And once I figure out a part of what it is, I need to figure out how to
present it so people will "get it". It'd be really easy to say "Well, I'll
just make a bunch of noises, and if folks don't get that, then they'll never
get me." Or I could listen to those noises I made, and try to filter out the
sorts of things that might give people the wrong idea.

I'm currently at a place where I live performances are at a place where if I
keep playing the way I have in the past year, I'm going to wear it out. At
the same time, I have a lot of stuff to figure out on the home-studio
workshop front. So that's what I'm working on.

But to get the last 2 questions of yours, I think when we say "marketplace"
some people think of the sum of the entire music business. But there are
marketplaces everywhere. Each subset of the music business is a marketplace,
even if it's a few people in Oakland who go to improv shows. So self-editing
for me is attempting to listen to my record as a potential fan, and deciding
whether I'm actually expressing the things I want to express. Rejection in
the marketplace would be a symptom of either not expressing those ideas
clearly, or of the ideas not being very good in the first place.

Matt