If you'll permit a little fanboy moment, I love Werner Herzog. And I love the Minnesota Declaration. He delivered it on 30th April 1999… 25 years ago today.
I take so much from it, and the work we all do as creatives.
I find Herzog’s idea of 'ecstatic truth' over 'accountants truth' - a really interesting idea, applied to sampling I feel like it means I can present something that sounds natural, but in its creation it isn’t natural at all - in my own work, the extended glock or ac08 is a good example of this. The plug-in I’ve been working on (for years at this point) takes this to an extreme, more on that soon…
Think about piano libraries and how often the most detailed fastidious ones are the most boring and uncreative, and probably not the ones we reach for. The creativity for me comes with how can I find a middle ground between usable and detailed… that’s the hard part.
Recording by it’s nature is not a natural way of hearing an instrument, what we determine as satisfying or natural is not actually truly natural.
I get moderately irked by stuff that claims a mic on something is somehow natural because there’s ‘no eq, no compression’ - the microphone is a choice, it is eq… especially if it’s directional… the medium of delivery is almost always compressing.
Sometimes these recordings can be crap, and using the qualifier of ‘no eq compression’ to quote big Wern, who wants to ‘be the fly on the wall, when you can be the bee that stings.’
Anyway, my Herzog viewing recommendations:
The Great Ecstacy of Woodcarver Steiner & Fitzcarraldo (I think Stroscek is his finest film, it's amazing, but it is so depressing that I struggle to watch it)
Burden of Dreams (Les Blank)
It’s all great stuff, it all in some form features around the idea of dreams of reality, reality of dreams… a true master. In his interviews with Paul Cronin he offers further insight and a great piece of advice for anyone doing stuff - especially if that stuff is on the internet: beware of the bozos.
Final point from the Minnesota declaration - point 8:
8. Each year at springtime scores of people on snowmobiles crash through the melting ice on the lakes of Minnesota and drown. Pressure is mounting on the new governor to pass a protective law. He, the former wrestler and bodyguard, has the only sage answer to this: "You can´t legislate stupidity."
I’ve linked it below, well worth a read: