The Ethos Behind the Production of Divine Affliction: DIY Culture and Collaboration
Divine Affliction: Perception Through A Feminine Lens Part 12
Divine Affliction: Perception Through a Feminine Lens Blog Series presents an expansive view behind the music production of album Divine Affliction. An expression of the feminine aesthetics in music. A sonic portrayal of the duality of divinity and affliction, a journey through the female experience. The album is a shorter album consisting of seven songs and would be defined as experimental electronica with raw, introspective, brooding, emotive music. This album presents an aural representation of the female processes and application to music production. The musical compositions are inspired by my own experience of the intersectionality of gender and music production along with the preliminary research uncovered in the 1st four theoretical blogs of this series. The previous blogs dissected my creative process, narrating my music-making processes and highlighting how I implement the song concepts into the musical composition, audio processing, and lyrics. This blog discusses the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) ethos used for the production of the album and project. Observe the creative experience through the lens of a female producer.
DIY Culture and Collaboration
Kearney defines the history of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) as an “anti-corporatist ideology, which grounded various leftist movements, committed to creating non-alienated forms of labor and social relations” (Whitely. Ed. Kearney, 1997, p. 215). DIY culture is a feminine aesthetic of music production, which I define as a feminine modality of music production. The use of feminist DIY can be considered a restricted aesthetic. The intersectionality of gender and music production and under-representation of female producers in the field spawns barriers for females to access to music production. DIY culture offers females a solution to these barriers, with many females in current industry practice in electronic music and popular music production finding new ways with DIY culture, to combat the afflictions they have with the intersection of gender and music production. Wolfe explains DIY is not a new phenomenon for female artists, noting that Bayton identified it as early as the 1960s as a source of access for female songwriters looking for ways to break the music industry (Wolfe, 2016). Coates uses Joni Mitchell as an example of a pioneering female artist using DIY as a solution to her musical problems and dilemmas of the lack of a creative community (Whitely. Ed. Coates, 1997, p. 174). Wolfe states females’ use of DIY culture is due to females feeling intimidated by the male-dominated aspect of music and technology (Wolfe, 2016). Feminist DIY has been a major access point for women to create music by providing “safe women-only spaces for the learning of skills as well as rehearsal and performance, challenging ingrained technophobia and giving women the confidence to believe that, like the boys, they can be music-makers rather than simply music fans” (Whitely. Ed. Kearney, 1997, p. 216).
There has been a noted rise in DIY and maker communities over the last decade, including Hackspaces, Fab Labs and Maker Spaces. These communities' core political development is concerned with empowering the individual in global corporate societies and democratizing these societies. This includes addressing gender issues by questioning traditional roles and stereotypes, as defined by Richards. With electronic music and music technology influenced by these cultural phenomena, some DIY maker communities have been using this in relation to issues of gender imbalance with the concerns of music technologies masculine gendering (Richards, 2016, p. 40). Richards research demonstrates that DIY and music technology provides possible solutions to the gender imbalance, with data showing a modest increase in female participation in music in recent years, with the number of females involved in maker communities growing along with the growth of feminist hackspaces. The use of DIY to redress the gender imbalances that currently exist in academic subject areas such as music technology should be a future consideration (Richards, 2016, p. 49). Richards interests align with feminist research on technology undertaken by Anne-Jorunn Berg and Merete Lie, who he quotes:
“We were interested in new technologies because they offered an opportunity to study change. Studying technological development meant studying social change, and it was obvious to us that the field of social studies of technology included the possibilities of studying changes in gender relations — Berg & Lie. 1995, p, 335” (Richards. 2016, p, 48.).
The Ethos Behind the Production of Divine Affliction
The production of the Divine Affliction album and the greater project was created with a feminist DIY ethos based on collaboration, intersectionality, representation, diversity, and inclusivity. This project critiques the afflicting intersections of gender and music production based on representational theories while celebrating the divine intersections, based on feminine aesthetics in music production. DIY, as explained above, has been used as a tool to create social change in production societies. With the use of DIY and theories of representation and feminine aesthetics, this project aim is to impact that change. By changing the conversations and re-writing the limited histories on female producers; creating more female role models, spaces and skill-sharing practices to serve as inspiration for young girls and breakdown gendered stereotypes with music production (Farrugia & Olszanowski, 2017, p. 2). I have used DIY to self-represent myself, a female producer in the environment of music production to address the under-representation of females in the field, and use this project to share my skills, breaking down the gendered stereotypes in music production and forming a role model to inspire more females to the field.
“You can’t be what you can’t see” (Mariane Wright Edelman, Spellman College, 1959).
The DIY ethos democratizes music production inspiring others to become music producers. Kearney explains that DIY culture has inspired a considerable number of amateur producers. Feminist DIY encourages women into various forms of creative expression, clearly articulating the stakes of such cultural practice: the subversion of media stereotypes about their demographic through self-representation, their increased involvement in the public sphere and thus political discourse (Whitely. Ed. Kearney, 2006, p, 21.).
“Women in current music production do not share a common political stance in subverting hegemonic representations of womanhood, though their public efforts as DJs and producers challenge traditional representations women in all music-based cultures” (Farrugia, 2012, p, 26).
Following is a look into how the Feminist DIY ethos of; collaboration; intersectionality; representation; diversity; and inclusivity; was used in the production of the album, Divine Affliction, associated promotional material, and the greater project Divine Affliction: The Intersectionality of gender and Music Production.
Divine Affliction: Album
The album Divine Affliction is an expression of the feminine aesthetics in music. This album presents an aural representation of the female processes and application to music production. The musical compositions are inspired by my own autobiographical experiences and the preliminary research uncovered in the first few blogs of the series. The album was composed, arranged, produced, recorded and mixed by myself in my bedroom studio. I used; a Macbook Pro; Logic X digital audio workstation (DAW); a UAD Apollo interphase; AKG440 Perception condenser microphone; Native Instruments Komplete package of digital instruments, synths, and plugins; Serum synth; Fab Filter plugins; and a Novation MIDI keyboard. I composed all of the lyrical material, though collaborated with my creative community to record vocalist to feature on the songs. I recorded female vocalists as the songs are from a feminine perspective. This shows a diversity of female voices, with the inclusivity of others on the album. Here is an image of one of the vocal recording sessions, with vocalist BarBar Blaque Sheep.
The album also serves as an educational tool for music production for females. Due to the representation of female producers in the field and barriers in accessibility to music production, this creates for females, I have deconstructed my music production process in the medium of blogs and video tutorials. Sharing my skills and changing the conversations, giving other insights and education on music production. The blogs and tutorials address the representation of female producers, by again self-representing myself, a female producer in the environment of music production, creating a role model and someone to identify with. These blogs and video tutorials are called Divine Affliction: Perception through a Feminine Lens and are discussed in the following section.
Divine Affliction: Perception Through A Feminine Lens Blogs & Video Tutorials
Most electronic music social networks privilege male inclusion and success. DIY culture and skill-sharing is an important strategy to encourage women in the field (Abtan, 2016, p, 53). The Divine Affliction blog series is a source of education that provides access to music production for females, representing a female producer in the realm of music production. The blogs serve two purposes they are informative and reflective. They give an informative view behind the production of the album Divine Affliction, focusing on the creative process, and containing conceptual accounts of the music production of each song, and as a platform to reflect on my creative process, allowing others into this experience. The blogs are published by myself on Medium along with my website. Following is a trailer for the blog series published on my Vimeo channel to promote the Divine Affliction: Perception Through a Feminine Lens blog series.
The blog series Divine Affliction: Perception Through A Feminine Lens — link:
The video tutorials’ will cover exoskeleton accounts of the technical processes covered in the practice of music production. These tutorials are primarily instructive, educating female’s how to create music by deconstructing one song from the album, title track ‘Divine Affliction’, explaining the processes and applications used on each element. These are created with the DIY ethos, filmed and edited by myself on my MacBook and iPhone with the use of the iMovie Apple application to assemble the footage. These video tutorials will be aimed for a beginner audience and published on my Vimeo channel. Following is the opening credits from the video tutorial series.
Divine Affliction: Poetic Documentary
I have also been working on a short poetic documentary called Divine Affliction to be released on Youtube and Vimeo in January 2020. It covers audio segments of the songs and short autobiographical accounts on the intersectionality of gender in music production. The poetic documentary articulates the concepts of the divine and afflicting intersections of gender and music production. The poetic documentary, blogs, and video tutorials are a way of connecting people through being published via online networks. They illustrate the feminine aesthetics of music production and use representational theories to create media representations of a female in this environment, addressing the afflicting intersections of gender and music production. These are also a source of marketing and promotional material for the album. To create the poetic documentary I have collaborated with my creative community to help with the filming and editing of the video footage. The director for the documentary is a friend and queer film director, Wayne McPhee, photographed in the above image with myself. I am the producer of the film and have also recorded and mixed the audio for the film. While Wayne is a male director he identifies as queer, which is a space where gender is negotiated not presumed. Working with a queer film director in collaboration promotes the DIY ethos of this project with inclusivity, collaboration, and diversity. Following is a trailer for the documentary.
Divine Affliction: Promotional Photoshoot
I collaborated with photographer Jamie Larken from House of Phoenix Eleven to create promotional images for the album release. Jamie is an amazing photographer and understands my creative direction. I designed the costumes and sets while Jamie works on the photography and editing of the images. Each song has an image to help tell the story. Some of the stills were taken from the documentary filming for intertextuality and Jamie also edited these. I wore the same costumes in the documentary as I did in the photoshoot also for intertextuality. The use of intertextuality coalesces the images into a unified project. Following is a collage of these promotional images.
Divine Affliction: Logo Design
I have also worked with other creative practitioners to create marketing and promotional material. To create the logo for Divine Affliction I collaborated with graphic designer and media creator Danielle Aston from Fresh Media Hustle. I chose the font type and images of an upside-down triangle signifying the feminine and the eye representing looking through a feminine lens. Danielle took my ideas and created the logo depicted in the above image. Danielle at Fresh Media Hustle also helped me to create my artist logo, Orthentix. A friend drew my logo design, which is a cartoon portrait resembling me. I worked on this image in Photoshop making it a digital image and chose a font. I then collaborated with Danielle Aston to put the logo and text together into a .png file and replicate it in other colors. Collaborating with other creative practitioners has been a way for me to create my DIY creative community. The Orthentix logo is portrayed in the following image.
Divine Affliction: Promotional Content
The promotional video trailer of a mix for Divine Affliction was created by making an audio mix of the songs in Logic X DAW, then assembling this with the promotional images in the Apple application iMovie. The previous blog and video tutorial series trailers were also created in this way, by combining audio with images in iMovie. The video tutorial opening credits had video clips of a mash-up, critiquing the representation of female producers that was also created with iMovie. Using DIY to create and publish the promotional content for the album and greater project helps to further represent a female producer in the environment of music production.
Divine Affliction: Perspectives Through A Feminine Lens
To further research the intersectionality of gender and music production, I conducted ethnographic interviews with 9 female producers from Australia, USA, Netherlands, and Mexico, to understand if the afflicting and divine intersections are a singular or shared experience. I found the interviewees on the EQL Directory and contacted them regarding their participation. The interviews were filmed with the Zoom application. Part of my analysis of the interviews has been approved for publishing as a chapter in Routledge Publications' upcoming publication titled Gender and Music Production. Gaining a professional publication for the analysis helps to create a further impact on the culture of music production as these publications feature in institutional education facilities. A representative of the association, organization Women in Sound Women on Sound noted that “Girls move away from technology in high school. The outcome is, the creative field becomes dominated by male practitioners, male lecturers, and male authors, meaning girls don’t have role models or people they see representing them. Seeing women teaching you about any area of technology won’t be a rare event, it might even become part of the norm in education” (O’Keef, 2017). This is my hope with this publication and the entire Divine Affliction project.
Conclusion
While this project is centred on my experience it is also about inclusivity, diversity, and community, evidence of this is with the connections made with the creative practitioners through collaboration to create the documentary and promotional material along with the connections with the vocalists and interviewees. “Without community, there can be no liberation” (Audre Lorde). Sharing my skills and representing a female producer in the environment of music production is a strategy to address the gender issues within the culture.
“Remember that culture is something that we build together, by doing and by teaching each other how to do things. Host a workshop. Throw some shows. Promote each other’s work. Open up your files and show each other what you’re making and, more importantly, show each other how you’re making it. Help each other to get your art out into the world” (Abtan, 2016, p, 58).
I’m going to conclude this blog with a video review explaining the greater project of Divine Affliction: The Intersection of Gender and Music Production. Keep in mind this review was created while the production of the album was still underway.
While this project and album were created with a DIY ethos, I use a professional mastering engineer for mastering the audio of the album and poetic documentary. I do this for professional practice so my album’s sonic quality is equal to successful artist's works played on the radio. I also like to get an objective opinion about the final product, as I may be too precious due to being the producer, arranger, recording engineer and mixing engineer on the album. Some may consider this not part of the DIY ethos, though I consider my mastering engineer part of my creative community, therefore, I consider this collaboration. Stay tuned for this next blog!!!
Read the previous blog: https://medium.com/orthentix/the-sonic-storytelling-of-song-the-rise-829b1c2e8a38
Read the following blog: https://medium.com/orthentix/polishing-the-final-product-mastering-95decba3b29f
Encore
Divine Affliction, experimental electronica with raw, introspective, brooding, emotive music. A journey through the female experience. A musical expression of the divine feminine and the afflictions she faces…She finds strength in her vulnerability and turns her affliction into a virtue.
The Divine Affliction album will be released — December 2019! There will be a series of video tutorials published on Youtube — early 2020 under the same title Divine Affliction: Perception Through a Feminine Lens with an exoskeletal view into the production of title song ‘Divine Affliction’ from the album. The tutorials will give a breakdown of the music production with each tutorial covering how to produce a certain element of one song from the album, giving a visceral account of how to compose and produce a song from start to finish, with the final tutorial educating how to independently release your own music. Experience her story of music production through a feminine lens, a feminine perception of music production, educating womxn how to make music and embrace the realm of music production. Excited? I am…Stay Tuned via the following Youtube link to my channel!
Reference List:
Abtan, Freida. (2016). Where Is She? Finding the women in electronic music culture [Article]. Contemporary Music Review, Vol 35, No1, Pages 53–60, DOI: 10.1080/07494467.2016.1176764. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2016.1176764
Farrugia, Rebekah, & Olszanowski, Magdalena. (2017). Introduction: Women and dance music culture [Publication]. Dancecult: Journal of electronic music dance music culture, Vol 9, No 1. ISSN 1947–5403. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.12801/1947-5403.2017.09.01.00
Farrugia, Rebekah. (2012). Beyond the dance floor: Female DJs, technology and electronic dance music culture [Article]. Intellect: Bristol, UK. ISBN 978–1–84150–566–4.
Lorde, Audre. (October 7, 2015). Audre Lorde Quote. Retrieved from https://www.nurturedevelopment.org/blog/why-place-such-a-strong-and-focused-emphasis-on-place-based-community-building-abcd/
O’Keef. (October 4, 2017.). The conversation: Women in sound: Addressing the music industry’s gender gap [Research Article]. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/women-in-sound-addressing-the-music-industrys-gender-gap-85132
Orthentix. (2019). Divine affliction: Poetic documentary trailer [Video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/362034611
Orthentix. (2019). Divine affliction: The intersection of gender and music production project review [Video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/330911199
Orthentix. (2019). Divine affliction: Blog series trailer [Video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/349846282
Orthentix. (2019). Divine affliction: Poetic documentary trailer [Video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/362034611
Orthentix. (2019). Divine affliction: Video tutorial series opening credits [Video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/349844044
Richards, John. (2016.). Shifting gender in electronic music: DIY and maker communities, contemporary music review [Article]. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2016.1176771
Whitely, Sheila. (1997). Sexing the groove: popular music and gender [Book]. Routledge: NY, USA.
Wolfe, Paula. (2012). A studio of one’s own: Music production, technology and gender [Article]. Retrieved from http://www.arpjournal.com/asarpwp/a-studio-of-one%E2%80%99s-own-music-production-technology-and-gender/
Wright Edelman, Mariane. (1959). Mariane Wright Edelman quote [Website]. Retrieved from https://quotes.thefamouspeople.com/marian-wright-edelman-2254.php
List of Figures:
Figure 1. Recording the Vocals of Divine Affliction — Logic Project File. Copyright Orthentix 2019.
Figure 2. Orthentix and film director Wayne McPhee. Copyright Orthentix 2019.
Figure 3. Promotional images of Divine Affliction — Photography by Jamie Larken @ House of Pheonix Eleven and stills taken from Divine Affliction Poetic Documentary directed by Wayne McPhee. Copyright Orthentix 2019.
Figure 4. Divine Affliction Logo — Graphic design by Danielle Aston @ Fresh Media Hustle. Copyright Orthentix 2019.
Figure 5. Orthentix Logo — Art by Bez. Graphic design by Danielle Aston @ Fresh Media Hustle. Copyright Orthentix 2019.
