A favorite band. My favorite people. Lovely venue. Beautiful flyer.

Q: What do you call a guy who hangs out with musicians?
A: A drummer.

We like to put people into boxes–roles that are defined by simple rules. Like: a musician is someone who makes “complete” music: melody and harmony and rhythm. If a person doesn’t make melody or harmony, how can he be a musician?

Designers? We like to say that we are problem solvers, but the larger culture thinks that we make things beautiful. Fashion designers make beautiful clothes, and interior designers make beautiful rooms and graphic designers make beautiful printed materials. And even when we know that it’s more complicated than that, we still tend to buy into the broader cultural definition.

I’ve thinking about this recently as I read and considered the responses to my previous post. People–even other interaction designers–seem to want interaction designers to fit into some pre-conceived box, some well-sanctioned model. I certainly understand this impulse: the more I am exposed to traditional wisdom–especially traditions of craft–the more I see that they contain wisdom that is not immediately apparent. But I also believe that as the world changes, models that were once apt can become less so. New people work in new ways in new conditions. These people bring new combinations of skills to the table. They are of a new shape. Can we honor the shape of the individuals who do this new work while at the same time working within and learning from the tradition?

***

I’ve been thinking about the parallels between my work and music, especially in terms of the creative collaboration typical of most music-making. Listen to this Billie Holiday recording of  ”All of Me.” This song has been recorded literally thousands of times, mostly by people who choose to treat the song as an exaggeration, a pop trifle built on a slim lyrical conceit. Listen to Sinatra’s recording, or Louis Armstrong–both capable of very sensitive interpretation–and you can almost hear the songwriters’ glib Tin Pan Alley studio banter: “you took the part that once was my heart, so why not take all of me?” It’s pure schmaltz!

But Holiday’s vocals do something simple and amazing with the song. The force us to take the lyric seriously. The result is raw, the cry of of a lover who cannot bear the burden of her broken heart.

All of me
Why not take all of me
Can’t you see
I’m no good without you
Take my lips
I want to lose them
Take my arms
I’ll never use them
Your goodbye left me with eyes that cry
How can I go on dear without you
You took the part that once was my heart
So why not take all of me?

Listen to the sax playing (Lester Young, I think) that follows the first chorus, how sensitive it is to the mood Holiday sets. Listen to the band behind Lester, how it drops out to nearly nothing, just drums, bass and guitar as if it too can’t bear the burden of its body. This beautiful collaboration transforms the songwriters’ framing work–whatever their intention–into a devastating piece of art.

So here’s my question: who is responsible for the success of this collaboration? Are some of the musicians here more “real” than others? What can we learn about the way we think of our roles from this model?

Looptastic HD for iPad

One wonderful effect of the iPad release is that it has made multi-touch computing mainstream. If you want to argue that the iPhone accomplished this, fine. But the iPad unleashes a world of possibility due simply to the size of the multi-touch screen. We now have a platform that allows two-handed multi-touch interactions. The possibilities are thrilling.

Bill Buxton, writing about the history of multi-touch systems makes a memorable comparison. Multi-touch, he says, allows us to:

…go beyond [the] simple pointing, button pushing and dragging that has dominated  our interaction with computers in the past.  The best way that I can relate this to the everyday world is to have you imagine eating Chinese food with only one chopstick, trying to pinch someone with only one fingertip,  or giving someone a hug with – again – the tip of one finger or a mouse.  In terms of pointing devices like mice and joysticks are concerned, we do everything by manipulating just one point around the screen – something that gives us the gestural vocabulary of a fruit fly.

So guess what iPad software designers? You get to work for humans now.

Some of the most exciting iPad interfaces that I’ve seen are in the music space. Looptastic HD is a loop-based performance application that lets you mix together beats, bass-lines and other sound loops in a live performance.

After a moment or two of orientation, I found myself immersed in flow and making compelling music with two hands: using two fingers on my left hand to adjust two different track levels on the left stereo track while at the same time using two fingers to make a similar adjustment on the right; using one hand to control the cross-fader while using the other hand on the X-Y control to manipulate sound effects. Looptastic HD is exciting because it is explicitly designed from the ground up to be used this way: with two-hands on.

Another category of iPad software is using the multi-touch capability to re-implement software versions of the UIs of physical devices.

The KORG iElectribe reproduces the Electribe beat box UI for the iPad

KORG has gotten a lot of attention for its iElectribe, a mostly-faithful reproduction of its Electribe beat box.

The problem with iElectribe is that it’s essentially a novelty product. Despite the success of the original, the user interface of the physical Electribe sucks: the complexity and the obscurity of the controls forgiven by users who had few other ways to access those features at that price. But iElectribe won’t create new lovers of the old paradigm. It will intstead satisfy people who have learned to work in a given way, and it will soon be bypassed by next-generation products that go beyond the limits of the physical.

AC-7 Pro Control Surface sticks to physical product reproductions

More successful products are taking advantage of the iPad to replace high-end control surfaces with low-cost software implementations. These products are taking controls that work really well in the real world–that have evolved over decades–but have been un-reproducable in software until now.

Products like the AC-7 Pro Control Surface don’t stray far from physical product representation. It works because it is copying a model that is not only familiar (like the KORG), but actually works well.

Entrackment for iPad uses a mix of physical device and software idioms.

You can see the future coming in products like Entrackment. Though it’s still feature set is still limited, you can see the approach already: the product uses a hybrid model, using basic idioms from physical control surfaces where they make sense, and implementing software-based idioms like context-sensitive display where they make sense. Look at how those software knobs communicate their state more richly than physical knobs and sliders ever could.

This morning on Cover Lay Down I discovered a set of Tom Petty covers that were full of what a yoga teacher might call “new information.” Free Falling, that genius arena sing-along is, lyrically anyway, as empty as it’s characters:

“She’s a good girl, loves her momma, loves Jesus, and America too.”

So what made the original so effective? What was it about that chorus that made you want to meet 50,000 of your closest friends at Busch Stadium on a summer night so you could all admit how lost you are? This cover strips away Petty’s performance and arrangements, and you realize that’s where the genius lived–in the distinctive roaming bass line moving underneath that plaintive lead vocal, in the exquisite balance between bass, strumming guitar, and Tom’s vocal, and in all that empty space in the middle: that’s where we come in–all 50,000 of us are invited to sing background. And Tom really sells that vocal: he’s lost, you buy it.

So what were the Kings of Convenience thinking with that earnest reading? The song isn’t strong enough on it’s own: it doesn’t stand up to their Simon and Garfunkel preciousness. Despite that, the audience sings along anyway–they must be remembering the original–and almost rescue the experience.

But earnest works for Dawn Landes’s cover of Won’t Back Down. Tom works the successful side of familiar with the lyrics on this one:

“Hey baby, there ain’t no easy way out
Hey I will stand my ground
and I won’t back down.”

It’s a resolute truth, spoken simply, and Landes’s understatement highlights the strength of the words. Compare that to David Baerwald, whose vocal goes from polished phony drama to weird phony growling. All the ornamentation conveys one thing: you’re lying. Leave the ornamentation aside, find the essence, and express that.

Blog » India Calling | Mad Decent.

Just outside the Met is a place that is not so much like the rest of New York. It’s more like the places outside the Prado and the Louvre and the British Museum. Crowded streets, slanting sunlight, taxis and tourists. Grand buildings and wealth and power.

Who is a native here? Who are the people who have sat on the walls for years and years? Who kissed in the park nearby, fumbled with buttons and snaps? Who drank and dodged and watched the clouds? Who come back sometimes and remember.

My friend Elliott, who wrote the music for this, was one of them too.

click the picture or here to download

If you like the song, you can buy it, either on Amazon or with iTunes

Click here to watch the movie.