Hello, solarpunk world. I’m Photosynth, a musician deciding to craft music from the ground up that expresses what Solarpunk is about. I want to make the soundtrack to Solarpunk. I want to start this off with a long mission statement that sets rules and boundaries and goals and visions of what Photosynth will be as a music project. Read it if you care, if you don’t, just know it’s there. :)
In my Solarpunk music-to-be, expect upbeat tempos, percolating percussion, shimmering melodies, dance-worthy rhythms, vivid compositions, contemplative passages, supplemental nature sound effects, high-tech sound design and layering, and an overall bright, organic-yet-technical, multi-ethnic sound.
That said, the difficulty with Solarpunk music is that it ideally would encapsulate something from every culture, every continent, and imagine it combined as one in a futuristic-yet organic and down to earth music sound. This is a huge and daunting task for most composers who haven’t been “cherry-picking” their favorite parts of many different cultures and their music for almost a decade. Luckily for me, I’m doing this to HAVE FUN, because it IS FUN, not to take it seriously and worry about who I don’t represent or if it sounds too corporate and not anarchist or socialist enough, etc! I know I have an all-loving heart and my reason for Solarpunk is for *optimism, inclusion, love, growth, sustain, and the combination of technology with nature.* Politics find their way into everything, and are a necessary evil in my opinion, but this music is the soundtrack to an *ideal*, not a *campaign*, so I will not be pumping this music full of any Solarpunk politics. .
There are also some things, musically speaking, that I protest against as a long-time composer/musician in the music that I make:
1. Using vocals/singing/lyrics just to use them, and letting them ruin a perfectly good instrumental that would leave more to the imagination. Especially for Solarpunk music, I seriously have a hard time imagining many vocals fitting into any of the songs, and especially not any words, but who knows? Solarpunk needs a lyrical voice at some point, after all!
2. Music which is extremely devoid of a beat and rhythm. I’m sorry, but the Solarpunk playlists I’ve found made thus far, while extremely inspiring and often-times pretty spot-on, don’t feel like they could be “real” to me because they often don’t have rhythm. If you’re looking for ambient / new-age / nature sounds / meditation music / sad piano music / singer songwriter with a guitar or other types of music that don’t have much rhythmic life to them, you’ll already find thousands of songs like that and you don’t need mine! I’ll be making music which, most of the time, has rhythms and beats of all kinds.
3. Sticking to one genre as a crutch and pigeon-holing the sound and style of what this project could be. I have always been a fan of artists that span a wide spectrum with their music, and try to do the same with my music. Solarpunk mixes *A LOT* of things together, so why would the music not do the same? An African Mbira sounds *great* with a Trini Steelpan, and a Japanese Koto, and an Indian Tabla, and maybe even a European Dulcimer and Chinese Gamelan! Who knows! But unless you explore all of these intruments and styles and sounds, enacting musical chemistry to see what works together and what doesn’t, there’d be no point in even making Solarpunk music. When the world is eco-sustainable and inclusive and loving of one another, this is what music will be: a hybridization of the best and brightest of all cultures and continents. I *WILL NOT* settle for “theming” a certain type of established sound to be “Solarpunk”. That’d be great, but this project’s intention is “Bespoke”... custom-made. Hand-crafted. That type of thing.
How it will be made:
With all that out of the way, I’ll say that the music will be made using FL Studio as its primary DAW. This is because much of what this music will be comes from complex arrangements of virtual instruments from all over the world, and so putting the music together like electronic music typically would is the best way to arrange it. Also, there will of course be some electronic music influence in the sound, seeing as it’s about a high-tech future that assimilates its technology with the natural world and all of its cultural potency—so what better DAW to compose organically AND synthetically in without getting too long-winded in any element of production? FL Studio allows me to load in instrument libraries like Kontakt (where I have libraries of hundreds of virtual ethnic instruments), as well as synthesizers, samplers, effects, sound clips, and of course organically record line-in any guitar, bass guitar, or microphone-recorded parts that might find themselves in the mix.
Using FL Studio also allows MIDI work to remain prominent. Any seasoned musician knows MIDI is extremely beneficial where any re-making, re-mixing, or “versioning” is involved in music. With Photosynth, I plan to make multiple versions of songs that fit different Solarpunk sub-themes (think of a theme park, or the Rainforest Cafe, or the video game Sonic CD and how its soundtrack has different versions of each song based on the past and future timelines of a place) so having MIDI to play with very easily is also a benefit of composing, arranging and mixing all right within FL Studio 12 (soon to be V 20)
Disclaimer though:
Any new music project, especially one with lofty goals like this, takes some time (meaning: a few songs or releases) to find its groove, in terms of the sound, the music, the art and graphic design visuals, the music video style and production methods, the marketing tactics, the social networking, the collaboration, etc. I’m painting a very vivid manifesto here, but in reality I’m one person with one computer (4 screens, though!) and one brain and only one set of world experience. The first few releases of this project are going to fall short of this manifesto, undoubtedly, but I hope you’ll enjoy the ride as I work to find the groove that I want it to have within some months of time. I know I’ll enjoy it greatly. Making music is FUN, but making Solarpunk music? That sounds like Utopia!
p.s. All of the Photosynth social media will be pretty slim for now, since I just finished a lot of work on a different music project and I’m authoring a Solarpunk book (see The Carbon Coast) so be patient with updates on Photosynth!
