I read something interesting on Wil Wheaton’s blog over at www.WilWheaton.Typepad.com (poor guy effed up his site or something so he’s stuck at that crappy URL until it gets fixed). Wil Wheaton, some of you may remember, played Wesley Crusher, Dr. Crusher’s snot-nosed son on Star Trek: The Next Generation. More importantly, however, he was the kid who liked to write in the film classic, Stand By Me.

He posted an article about a musician named Zoë Keating, a cellist who has, to put it mildly, HARNESSED THE MIRACLE OF TECHNOLOGY to create absolutely stunning music using only a cello, her hands, and a MacBook (once again, go Mac). The post was more about how Wil had been listening to a program on NPR (89.9FM here in LA) in which a piece of one of Keating’s songs was used as intro and outro buffer music. The producer of the program apparently did not see it as very important to give credit to the musician whose tune he was hijacking to bumper in and out of KCRW donation request advertisements. This pissed Wheaton off. Apparently he was heard too, as Keating was giving proper credit both on the air as well as on the NPR website after the story had surfaced.

For her part, Keating also seems like a genuinely cool person, because she responded to Wheaton’s post with:

People have written saying I should be flattered. Yeah, I’m flattered, but I have mixed feelings. I feel the same as [I did] when a Channel 4 doc used my music without permission, money or credit. I’m flattered… but also bummed that 1) my music isn’t worth anything and 2) no one thought to ask if I cared about how they edited it, or in what context it’s used.

Also, the economics of it are kind of a bummer… I’m an obscure experimental musician. Just a link on the All Things Considered music page, along with all the other links to music used in yesterday’s show, would help. RadioLab is a good example of this. They use my music with my permission and they credit me. I am happy for them to do this because I love and support what they do, and I benefit from increased exposure and substantial iTunes sales (thank you RadioLab!). That is a fair exchange… (although sometimes I think I should pay a cut to RadioLab because they have helped me so much).

Sometimes this business is such uphill going that I have to remind myself why I spend all my time doing it (er, why? something about the need to create, blah blah). Maybe it would be easier to go back to being an Information Architect and just [doing] a little music in the evenings for my own benefit. Ha! Not likely.

Anyway, I agree with Wheaton’s point that it is difficult enough for writers, musicians, any artist in fact, to create what we do and try to make a living off of it, so make sure that if you are using something we create (and believe me, we are grateful), give credit where it’s due.

By the way, this is how she does  it: She begins playing a beat or a kind of “sound-bed” that will lie under the rest of the music (using only the cello), then captures it with some kind of program in the Mac (GarageBand?) to form a loop, which plays consistently throughout the song. She then moves on to the next part of the song, creates a loop, moves on to the next part, loops it and so on, all the while utilizing effects pedals normally used with guitar, until what you have is an absolutely extraordinary song.

Anyway, here is the mind-blowing song. Look her up, buy her album, it’s on iTunes.

Zoë Keating’s website: www.ZoeKeating.com

(Thanks to Wil Wheaton)

Update – The program she uses on the Mac is apparently Ableton Live. Aren’t you happy now?