Today I released Drones, my latest sound library. It’s been almost 4 months to the day since I released my last library. That is the longest break between libraries since I started Chuck Russom FX back in April 2010. Damn, I’m slacking….
Working in a creative job is challenging. You have to be able to create on demand and within a defined amount of time. I think most will agree that it isn’t always easy to just flip a switch and turn the creativity on. I’ve discovered that having creative projects outside of your day job are essential to maintaining a creative mindset.
My hobbies have really been fueling my creativity lately. Spending a lot of my free time working on my photography and music has really inspired my sound design work and I’ve found it much easier to create on demand during my day job. I started to think about starting up some type of creative side project. After a lot of thinking, I’ve come up with three that I hope to start next year. It looks like in 2012 go back to my 2010 ways of never sleeping!
I’m inspired by photographers who do a 365 project, which is where they take a photo and post it every day for a year. I know that I would not be able to stay committed to that. I’d probably last a week before giving up. I am going to try a 52 week project. Each week, I’ll take a photo and post it here on the blog. It will be interesting to see if I can stay committed to the project for an entire year. It will also be cool to look back over a year and see my (hopeful) growth as a photographer. I’m starting this project the first week of January.
I also have a music project that I’d like to start up. I play guitar and drums and write occasional songs, but I never record or play for anyone. It’s been a great outlet for me and I think it might be time I get back to recording music (it has been many years since I’ve attempted. I have something in mind that I hope to start up next year. If past experience is any indication, this project will never see the light of day. But I’m going to try!
There is a third project I have in mind that I’m not ready to share but I think it will make a nice addition to this blog. I will be starting on it soon, so watch out.
If you followed my old blog you know that I had posted a lot of sounds that I recorded over the years. Unfortunately, all of those posts were lost when the blog got deleted. Luckily, I still have all of the sounds.
From time to time, I will be re-posting some of my favorites. I’ve been working on a lot of electricity sound design lately and was reminded of the time I recorded Tesla Coils back in 2005. This is one of my favorite sounds from that session.
29 ways to stay creative
I love that this guy plays his instruments live and doesn’t sequence. I hate sequencing music (which is a big reason why I never record anything). Very inspiring video.
There has been a lot of debate over the years about games being art. Well, this post isn’t about that…. If you must know, I think games are more like porn than art, but that is a post for another time.
I work on games as a Sound Designer and a Sound Recordist. My job is very creative and I work on creative projects. Does that make me an artist? I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I am a creative person (and always have been) and I work in a creative field, so am I an artist?
From dictionary.com
art·ist
[ahr-tist]
noun
1.
a person who produces works in any of the arts that areprimarily subject to aesthetic criteria.
2.
a person who practices one of the fine arts, especially apainter or sculptor.
3.
a person whose trade or profession requires a knowledge ofdesign, drawing, painting, etc.: a commercial artist.
4.
a person who works in one of the performing arts, as anactor, musician, or singer; a public performer: a mime artist;an artist of the dance.
Looking over this definition, I would say that numbers 1 and 3 do apply to my job and maybe even number 4. So, according to the internet, I am an artist. Now usually, I take the internet’s word as final. The internet knows everything and is never wrong. The internet gave us videos of a barely-dressed Britney Spears dancing to a Marilyn Manson song. Clearly, the internet had figured the world out. I’m not sure about this one though.
I’ve been visiting a lot of museums the last several months where I’ve seen works from numerous artists. I’ve also been following a lot of photographers on Googe +. A common theme I’ve seen with many artists is their art is about expressing themseleves. It isn’t always a job for them. Even if they are not being paid, they still create their art. It is their passion and a very personal thing to them. Even if they never made any money they would continue with their art. They have to, it is a fire inside them that never dies.
It’s this concept that I grabbed on to. If someone wasn’t paying me, would I continue with Sound Design? Would I continue on to express myself even if their wasn’t a payday? Hell no, Sound Design is hard. I enjoy what I do for a living very much, and I am grateful that I have a career that I love. I wouldn’t want to do anything else. But if their wasn’t a payday, I wouldn’t spend my day designing sounds just to express myself. I need a purpose for my Sound Design. There are numerous other things that I would rather use my creative energy on.
And this is where things get interesting. What if I didn’t have to ever work again? What if I was retired or won the lottery or suddenly received a huge life insurance payoff from a recently deceased loved one….. What would I do with my time? I know exactly what I would do. It is the stuff that I currently do in my free time. I would play music, write, take pictures, and possibly record interesting sounds (and also bitch a lot on Twitter). All of these are creative things. All of these are considered art. And I do all of them without any hope or need of a paycheck.
I play guitar and drums almost daily. Music serves as an incredible creative outlet for me. It is a very personal thing that I share with no one. I never play live and I never even record my music. It is for me and me alone. I see it as something pure, even by recording it, it would be ruined for me. Music helps drive me as a creative person and I need no paycheck or recognition from it.
Writing is something that I was once very into. Once I got more and more into music and sound, writing went away, but it is still something that is in my mind and something that I’d like to get back to. There is a lot swirling in my head that if I could ever find the time, I would write down.
Photography is my new passion. I’ve only recently discovered it, but I love pictures and it is constantly on my mind. It has overtaken everything and become my main creative outlet. My new obsession really. It is also something that I would never want to consider a profession. I do not want to make money from photography.
Sound effect recording is an interesting thing for me. I do it as part of my career, but I think that even if their was no paycheck, I’d still record interesting sounds that I discover. Not sure what I would do with them, but I love recording. Recording is what got me into Sound Design in the first place. Every time that I fire up a recorder and a microphone, I’m reminded of the 19 year old kid that I once was who was obsessed with finding a career in a recording studio.
So, after all this, am I an artist? No, I don’t think I am. I really don’t think I am comfortable using that term to describe myself. Picasso was an artist, Monet was an artist, I’ll leave the title to people like that.
I am a creative, and I don’t need words or titles to define who I am.
Finally! After a long hiatus, I am relaunching my blog. If you hadn’t noticed, my website was down for several months.
So what happened? I fell out of the blogging habit and ignored my page for some time. Then I forgot to pay my hosting bill and my webhost closed my account and deleted my blog. Sadly, it took me a while before I even realized the site was down.
After accepting the fact that my old blog was never coming back I began to rebuild. That’s when I realized, I really hate web design. After fighting with servers and databases and hosts and a bunch of other BS, I decided I wanted something really simple. I want to be able to post quickly and not have to deal with much setup. I had this Tumblr blog kicking around for a while and Tumblr is really easy to set up and use, so I decided to take all my blogging to Tumblr.
New posts should begin shortly. If you are looking for any of the old stuff, sorry, but it is gone. I’ll be re-posting some of my favorites from the old blog over the next several months. And you can find every sound I’ve ever posted on Soundcloud (beware, my Soundcloud account has a lot of sounds):
A great video that all creatives should watch
Anyone working in a client services industry should watch this video
