Epiphany

[Paul Maddox]

for those not following me on facebook, or those without it -

Last night, March 22nd 2013 was my last gig with Her Dark Embrace and
marks the end of an era for me. It was a great gig and I'd like to
thank those who came, I'd also like to thank Will, Mike, Tom, Tim and
Steve. I will still go to the Her Dark Embrace gigs as and when I can,
because I do like the music and support them where possible.
I've done a lot of thinking over the last few weeks and a lot of soul
searching, David Grohls key note speech at SXSW
(http://austinist.com/2013/03/16/watch_dave_grohls_sxsw_keynote_spee.php)
added a lot of fuel to the fire of the thought process that has been
on going for a while.
Why? because he talks about his passion for music, passion is the key here.
Yes I love music and yes I enjoy playing music, but I've come to
realise I'm not passionate enough to play music in a band.
My idols aren't musicians like Klaus Schulze, Peter Baumann, Tony
Banks, Tim Blake or Rick Wakeman though I can appreciate and love
their music. They're people who gave these musicians the tools they
use, I'm talking about Bob Moog, Alan Pearlman, Dave Smith, Dave
Rossum, Chris Huggett and last, but not least Wolfgang Palm. These are
my heros, these are the people who inspire me. These are people who've
taken they're passion for electronics and music and given tools to the
musicians. They're people who've take their love, their enthusiasm and
passion and turned it into something new, something unique, something
that didn't exist before. Admittedly times have changed, you no longer
need lots of discrete electronic parts and you can accomplish a lot in
software, but that's just the medium that modern day craftsmen work
with, the passion still has to exist for the musicians tool to be
created (Wolfgang palm is making some great apps for the iPad).
This is what I'm passionate about, and upon reflection I always have
been. Some of the things I enjoyed most whilst being in the Her Dark
Embrace was making a simple switch box for to control his amp, and
Will's original LED Mike Stand, Simple projects but I really enjoyed
making them.
Thinking about it more and in conjunction with a random comment Jessie
made, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about my music
electronics, how to solve problems how such and such might sound, or
what if I did XYZ to an oscillator, or would I achieve a module that
did ABC.
Life is about change, even death is change (although admittedly
extreme change) and I am sad to be leaving Her Dark Embrace, but it's
a change I feel I need. I want to follow my heart and my passion, I
want to spend more time building electronic music devices, be that
through VacoLoco or other means.
This really feels like my Raison d'être, it's taken me a long time to
work it out, but I really do care about my electronic music devices,
be they something like Gorf, Zira or JuJu or something as complex and
diverse as Phoenix (my DSP based polysynth).