Stephen had me laatst gevraagd om, als schrijfoefening, het woord ‘identiteit’ te vervangen door ‘XXX’. Dit omdat het woord identiteit op zichzelf al zoveel verschillende kanten en betekenissen heeft. ‘XXX’ is, daarentegen, te beschouwen als een schone lei. Een woord waar nog alle betekenissen aan toe zijn te voegen. Welnu, ziehier mijn productie:

What is ‘XXX’?
When you look at a random artist, XXX is a certain consistency by which people will be able to recognize the artist, a sort of ‘sameness’ that can be found in all its expressions. It is the core of who they are. This ‘sameness’ is at a certain level different from other artists. Being different is another important aspect of XXX in order to express your individuality, even though you might express this as a group. This core, now named XXX, could actually be a dynamic between sameness and difference, which takes place on various levels.

You could see XXX as a collection of choices, maybe even a box, made by the artist which clearly defines the artist and makes it easy to recognize. When someone looks at the XXX box and later sees it somewhere else he could say: “hey, I know this artist!”

XXX is developed in an ongoing process of ‘copying, distancing and appropriating’. At first you copy whatever you encounter in order to learn, you put random new things in the box. The next step is moving away from the original and sometimes even discarding of it, trying to be ‘different’ than what you originally have been taught. You throw it out of your box. After you have found your distance and see how other ‘untaught’ ways work out, you start to get a true understanding of the value of life’s earlier lessons. Now it is time to appropriate these and make use of them. Placed back inside the box, but now on your own terms.

What do we as people need XXX for?
We use XXX in music in a way to help us define ourselves. The music you like and how you enjoy this music tells a lot about someone.

Why is it important for an artist to define himself?
Life is always a balance between learning new things and finding yourself in them. Just as explained earlier in my crude definition of how XXX is developed, understanding this concept of growth helps an artist in finding himself in the things he learned. That way he can work with an inside-out approach to learning and adapting new skills and experimenting with new sounds and songs. Because of this inside-out approach, the artist can try out different things without being afraid of ‘losing ones self’. He can open his arms to change without leaving his principles.

I am a music technologist and I come in contact with artists and their XXX when I want to design their music production process. In other words: when I decide on with what team to cooperate during the project and where and how to record the music of the artist.

I want to help artists create music that is authentic and I want to do that based on their core, their XXX. Therefore I must first find a way to get to this core of the artist and later find a way to translate this into a music production process. I would like to call it ‘process-based music production from an inside-out perspective’.