What the VAULT?

Published: 2025-01-07 13:10
Updated: 2025-01-08 03:03

The VAULT is a 360° Discord community for people exploring music production as a function of creative self-expression. In the pool of genres surrounding, and not strictly limited to Dub-, and Detroit Techno. It’s an ongoing conversation about everything related to music production. Beyond products and cooking recipes.

The spark fueling this community¶

I grew up with IRC. To me, IRC’s benefit revolved around being present, in the moment. Pro-actively committing to contributing to, and thereby shaping the conversation. I met a lot of folks on IRC who eventually became my friends in real life.

Witnessing the discourse on social media becoming continuously polarized (and toxic), I was wondering: What’s necessary to foster a constructive, learning online community in 2020? That appreciates and prioritizes first-hand, personal experience above hearsay? Whilst maintaining realistic expectations about human communication (because🤷) .

I don’t believe in rules. They are based on observing the past. Therefor, by design, demand constant revision and enforcement. As a creative, I’m not interested in either.

As a host who is inviting people, thus responsible: I believe in accountability and living by example. By joining the VAULT, I request agreeing to behaving online as if we met offline. Like people I’d want to:

🤝 invite to the community for a second time
💡 learn from, connect with & help excel
🤗 and disagree with again

To add some pedigree to that in the context of the spark (constructivity, learning, priorities vs realistic expectations): How I approach disagreements.

Our channels: Where to find what?¶

The Discord’s structured like a space with rooms, to hopefully make navigating easy.

📝 ENTRANCE — yeah, well
- agreement — a Discord necessity
- bulletin-board — further info about the VAULT
- introductions — mandatory/in the end, this is about people
- if-you-missed-it — announcements, links to valuable posts
🎤 KITCHEN — every space needs one
- chit-chat — the connective tissue
- music-chit-chat — general music talk (incl. country & western)
- roundtable-text — chat related to below
- Roundtable — voice channel for our hangouts and co-working space
🔊 STUDIO — yes
- production-processes — processes/strategies/meta-talk
- mixing — product agnostic mixing chatter
- mastering — product agnostic mastering chatter
- sound-design — synthesis/sampling/making sounds
- samples — share (your) samples
- sequencing — product agnostic sequencing talk
- software — where we talk about software products
- hardware — dito, but hardware products
- deals — friends don’t let friends miss a good deal
- djing — for the DJs
- acoustics-etc — monitors, headphones, treatment…
- wip-feedback — give and receive input about your wip tracks
- challenges — in case we challenge each other to do sth
- sessions — voice/video channel for showing each other stuff
📔 BACK-OFFICE — for the boring, yet necessary side of things
- back-office — administrative side of releasing, publishing…
- computers — quack about computer related things
⛩ BEING HUMAN — cause the universe peoples so differently?
- art-and-intention — what makes you create?
- learning-and-pkm — how we learn and manage knowledge
- small-pleasures — about the tiny, joy-sparking things
- the-struggle — a problem shared is a problem halfed
🌟 INSPIRATION — no output without input
- music — from VAULT related genres that inspires you
- i-made-that — made anything incl and beyond music you want to share?
- photography — for our photographers
- visual-stuff — for design, movies, visual arts
- thinking — food for thought
- book-club — yes, some of us actually read them
🔌 LAB — most musicians got a lot of diverse interests
- audiodev-dsp — plugin development rabbit hole
- electronics-diy — good to know how to fix or build sth
- webdev-design — cause everyone needs a website/thing
- wood-metal-crafts — for those who saw more than sines

For context: How I understand Dub Techno¶

Or ‘the intangible subject matter of the community’. To me, as a genre, Dub Techno is the result of transferring:

The process, strategies and techniques of dub recording
To the genres of Acid/House/Detroit Techno/Jungle…

I think about it as the zen- or Bob Ross-approach to music production: The decision making is guided by intuition instead of planning. Maybe, the most direct and physical way of capturing ‘the flow’.

The most important, underrated and overlooked tools:¶

🙌 Hands
👂 Ears
🧭 Intuition
🎚️🎛️ Mixing desk or MIDI controller
And: 🧠 How you’re using time

As opposite of stress in > stress out.

How to interpret my writing style¶

I’m aware that how I’m writing can come across as peculiar. eSpcally in a worldWHr interpunctuation seemns to be a luxrz…or is thrown in, arbitrarily,,.. lol and rofl.

I generally try to use headlines, bold, italic and lists ‘as a service’: as means of highlighting and structuring information. It’s my way of making an effort. To make texts more easily scannable and digestible. I’m also consciously using Emoji like 🙂 to convey benign intentions. As indicator for how I wish something is being interpreted.

When ‘thinking out loud’ or trying to catch a ‘train of thought’, I tend to condense too much information. Especially when differentiating dependencies. I’m aware of this. At times, I wonder what the heck I meant, too. It’s a bug, not a feature. 🤷

IF this happens, pretty please: Do not hesitate to check-in and ask what or how I meant something. Or untangle and clean up the mess. It’s my goal to help you see things more clearly than fuzzy.

By no means do I do this to sound clever or ‘over your head’. I’m potentially having an ADHD-case of “everything, everywhere, all at once”. Or a Kleist-ian burst of gradual production of thoughts during writing (english version below the german).

Things I like¶

Specific questions and specificity. Follow-up questions inquiring certain aspects. Open-ended inquiries to dig deeper. What if…. Did I understand you correctly that…

Pro-active, curious exchange of ideas. Differentiating between cases. Digging into dependencies. People who make/take their time for this.

Honest, transparent and constructive feedback. Even if means to start over, paraphrase, approach sth from a different perspective. Checking back in after trying something.

People who are satisfied about identifying areas they don’t know or understand, yet. Because they appreciate learning something.

Paradoxes.