The Future of "do"
Alright, I'm trying this thing now where I am recording myself and I'm going to transfer it [from] audio for my newsletter.
Because I've just been thinking about, well, I haven't really stuck to the schedule lately of the newsletter. And that's not because I'm busy necessarily. It's just because I've been uninspired in terms of what I'm writing about.
Some of the things have been forced in terms of trying to put out something obligatorily. Like, oh, it's the second Monday of the month, so I need to put out a newsletter, and then just kind of like forming an idea off of that.
Which, I don't know, maybe some people could sense that for those posts. Any of the readers could sense, like, oh, this is not as special. Or it seems kind of half-assed or whatever.
I don't really want to do that anymore.
The Next Phase
I feel like each post should be something I'm excited about, because if I'm not excited about it, then how do I expect an audience to be excited about it? (Usually I still get excited once I get going on a topic, but regardless, there may be some dryness or contrivance sensed).
So [the posts are] going to be more sporadic. And along with that, I'm not going to do a paywall any longer. I've been doing a paywall for some of the longer posts or posts with some sort of hidden advice or plug-in suggestions or things like that. But I was honestly doing it more because I saw other people doing it. Like, oh, this is how you do a substack. You have a lot of material that's for free and then you have special material, kind of the patreon sort of model, you have special material that's behind the paywall.
Well, there were some people on the paywall. And I think I wasn't even consistent enough with [the paid offerings], so people jumped off the paywall, which is totally fine. It makes sense because there wasn't that much of an offering there. It was kind of barely a thing. And that's totally fine. It's understandable.
But I think I was doing it because that's what I saw as the process of what everyone else does, right? And it's not necessarily why I started the newsletter in the first place. I started it because I wanted to write about my experience and have a document of it. As well as, I was enjoying a lot of other people's substacks and felt like it was a more intimate, natural experience than the way that some of the other social media is.
But now the issues I'm having with it are similar to the issues I have with, say, Instagram or TikTok. That posts feel forced for the sake of having more content or being consistent with the content rather than having quality things, quality work, and that type of thing.
Yeah, I'm going to nix the paywall. I'm going to have more infrequent posts.
The other thing is I'm going to lean into what I do really like. Ha ha, do. I'm going to lean into the thing that I do really like about the newsletter. And I've gotten the most out of the interview portion. I think I've gotten the most out of that.
I really enjoy doing the interviews and learning about other people's processes as well. And so I want to be doing more of that. And I think my time is better spent because it does take time to reach out to people, find people that are willing to put those things together.
And so I think I'm going to continue it in that fashion. I also don't know if people enjoyed the podcast version I did of the interview and if people feel like they would consume those interviews more in the podcast form versus the transcript form. I'm doing music and I used to work in podcasting, so I just like get tired of the listening and I want to turn my ears off and just read. So I prefer having the transcript and that's kind of why I started doing that.
But there is a way to do both on Substack, which is really nice, and just have like a built transcript system. Or a transcript come from the podcast, and so then you have the audio, and then if you film it, you also have the video, which I did in mine. So I think that that is the route that I'm going to go with that.
A couple other things.
I think I'll continue to do updates that are more personal about little projects that I'm working on and other things just because I feel like the initial people who have signed up for the newsletter are interested in keeping up with me. So it only makes sense. I'll continue doing that kind of stuff. But again, that's more sporadic because there's not always something to announce that I've done every other week at this point.
Another thing is... It's changing— my feeling towards the newsletter. Even though I wish I was more consistent with it. I have a weird thing with quitting something.
I don't like to... You know, if I say I'm going to do something, I like to continue it. But... I think in this case, it's a good learning experience for when a project needs to be tweaked and when a project needs to be pivoted.
It's still something that I care about, but I just think my time and my resources are better split up into different things.
I've been talking to a friend of mine about another project that has a similar sentiment to what I've been trying to do with do and I think we're going to collaborate on something and it's in the works and he asked me if do could be associated with it in some way. And so there may be a merging of it. It's kind of an interviewing capacity with some of those interviews, though in a different way. I don't know if those interviews will kind of sublimate into that new thing or whether they'll stay on do or how it'll work, but that's something else I'm thinking about.
The Philosophical Challenges of Mixing an Album
Another thing I wanted to write about and I've been thinking about is I've been finishing up, it's going to be a while before it's out, but I've been working on finishing the mixes for a personal album under my Sure! moniker, which is an indie rock thing.
And it's eight songs, because all my albums are eight songs under that moniker. It's just something I decided.
And yeah, we're finishing up the mixes, and the mixing process is interesting because there's a lot of things that you have to think about in terms of mixing and mastering.
Well, mastering more so, but mixing and mastering are kind of like the packaging of a product, because you have the music and that's like the thing. I mean, the album art is packaging as well, a more literal way. But the mixing and the mastering is also “packaging” and you have to kind of think about how it sounds like you have to think about [how] something looks in the context of the rest of the stuff that it's being presented with. So the way that something would sound on the playlist, you know, Spotify playlist among a bunch of other songs. And it matters about those sorts of trends.
And so something we were, Max Schoenwetter— who's mixed the album, it's done as of today— talking about is that it's weird how you can have art: You have what the song wants, and that's kind of the most creative thing to think about, kind of in the same way of how people say songwriting and creativity can come out of the ether, or be God that's kind of compelling you, or floating towards your mind. Mixing the songs can kind of define how the mix should be for you. But then there's also the outside world. I don't know another way to explain it other than God and the world.
So [the world is] kind of the trends in society. And then what it feels like, for whatever inexplicable reason, you just have a sense that something should be this way (God). It should sound this way. And you're kind of trapped between those two things and having to balance that.
Like, for instance, the loudness war, which is something a lot of people speak about, where mixes and masters have gotten progressively more crushed, loud, and less dynamic range across a song's length because of radio play. You wanted your song to stick out. You want your song to stick out and not get lost. And so you don't want to have such dynamic range that sections of the song are not heard, or your song just like lower. This is in the relative sense between songs and not just within the song itself. But you want your song to not be so low that, if it's playing through a succession of songs, your song is just like way lower.
Actually, we had this issue at a film premiere of one of the films I scored where it was at a festival and I guess it was not really communicated what the audio should be mastered at for all the films, for the festival play, and so when it came time for the different films, our film for whatever reason was mixed lower. So you had all these other films play before it and then when it played it was still good, but you just heard it at a lower volume, like the dialogue was lower, the soundtrack was lower, and so it's not hitting us as hard as it could have.
And that's exactly why the loudness wars happen too. Because, you hear a song lower and then maybe just it gets ignored because you're playing the radio at a party or you're playing in the car and you're talking over it. Whereas if it's loud, it gets noticed. So that balancing act is interesting with mixing.
Finally, A Good Movie Trailer
Another thing I wanted to talk about was I finally saw a good trailer. And I think more trailers need to do this. But this trailer for The Brutalist.
It doesn't give much away for what the film is, but boy, does it make you want to see it. And it really inspires you. I mean, I was very inspired by the visual language of it, the epicness of it.
And thank God it doesn't have an acappella version of some ridiculous hit that we've heard a million times that has to be in there. (Like I’ve complained about in a past post).
It doesn't need to tell you what the movie's about, the arc of the movie. The two-minute, three-minute trailers that they show in the theaters tell you... They have an arc. And there's no need, I think. There's really no need. Especially when... With social media, you'd think... I mean, they do cut shorter and shorter little snippet trailers. But it's not about the length that makes them boring. It's just, why would you want to see the movie before you've seen the movie?
And so I think... I hope this BREAKS the industry. (lol) In terms of trailers, because I think it's a really special trailer, it made me want to see the movie.
The text layout is fantastic. I mean, it's genius to go horizontally rather than vertically, or rather than appear out of, I don't know, thin air. (Also the music is incredible, how it starts tense and thriller-y but then eventual crescendos to a patriotic feel. Masterful.)
I really, really thought it was beautifully done and very inspiring. So that was another thing I wanted to mention in this newsletter.
Final Thoughts
But yeah, I think I'm going to make the newsletter, as you can see, it's already changing and it's because I'm still deciding if I'm going to do this or not, but I am recording this while I'm taking a walk.
And then I'm going to transcribe it. Or I have transcribed it, I guess now. Because you're reading it. From this audio. And I think it's going to be more... What's the word? Spontaneous. And free-flowing. Rather than... So, succinct, which, again, the newsletters that I've read in the past have been really succinct and short and sweet. And it is probably better for doing sustainable, consistent and useful posts, but it's not what is exciting me.
With the interviews I learned that it's very nice to be able to have the audio and then transcribe it from there and kind of finalize it from there and I like that. I was like, what if I kind of do that myself, interview myself in a sense and then transcribe that?
So, yeah, that's the... I hope this is all recorded. I'm standing between cars right now.
I may decide to include the audio depending on how good the audio is. I may decide to throw it away and just use the transcripts.
But thanks for reading. I hope you'll stick around for the next sort of phase of the newsletter. It's been almost a year since I've had it. And yeah, that's phase two of do.
will dinola (he/him) is a film composer, musician, and writer currently working in new york city
he is interested in people’s passions and pushing the art of film scoring to new horizons
he writes about his experience in a newsletter called “do”
