Tag: musicbox

S_V_H Dance Monkey final

Published on by Scott Von Holzen
Dance Monkey ≈L51″xH33″xD6″ The artworks musical notation follows the words: “And when you’re done, I’ll make you do it all again.”

Dance Monkey project took over three week to complete. Creating an advanced draft, and then a finish version of the artworks cover music took three days. The rest of that time, was spend solving a number of issues related to the design and the performance of these mini works, plus updating the stereo system on Cheap Thrills. I also put together a new LEDs lighting system for these mini works and an alternative amplifier option. Time was also used up fixing a number of construction bugs for this series of artworks. My goal for time spent to complete these small artworks is two weeks.

Before photography, talented painters where payed to produce ever growing realistic two-dimensional images of a three-dimensional world. Throughout the history of western art from the thirteen century into the twentieth century that is how they made a living. Then there was a change with the invention of photography and the portable camera that made realistic images easier and cheaper to produce. Painting, then had the opportunity to diversify its purpose. Notable artists like Wassily Kandinsky contributed to the creation of abstract art. But, for me, I would look to Pablo Picasso’s 1907 artwork, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, as the first important painting of the twentieth century. In 2015, I saw this artwork in person at MOMA in New York city. I remember nothing about that moment, but luckily my good friend Tom Haley took the image below. I have read that Les Demoiselles d’Avignon had few admirers, including Picasso’s fellow artists. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon did not sell until 1924. MOMA purchased the artwork for a modest $18,000 sum by selling a Degas painting and donations in 1939.

I feel a connection between Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and my art. I see Les Demoiselles d’Avignon as a major artwork that was not made to be a quick turnaround sale by Picasso. I think Picasso created Les Demoiselles d’Avignon to make a statement and to change the course of art history. He certainly did all that and more. This art from day one was also never about sales. Instead, its end goal still is a more humbled realistic butterfly effect on future art. This quote by Richard Serra represents my sentiment: “Good artists impress the viewing public, while great artists impress their fellow artists.” Right now, my only connection to other artists is our art group. And their art, as I now expect and am perfectly fine with, is focused on impressing the viewing public. That is where the sales are. My take is: where their art stops mine begins.

On the drive over to a wedding with my wife I was playing softly my favorite music on Spotify. It was like listening to Muzak. I felt nothing coming from the music. I think music needs to be felt to be heard. At the wedding dance for 300 people the DJ music got louder as the night came on. Even though, again, I recognize the music all I actually heard was throbbing bass. All the other instruments sounded like a mix of blaring white, pink, and brown noise. I certainly felt the music, but did not hear it.

When this art is on display, the dilemma is the volume of the artworks. No matter who is in charged the artist’s preferred volume set in the Studio will need to be adjusted down for any public display. To help set the volume at public events I dug out my old sound level meter from Radio Shack. I put in a fresh 9 volt battery and this analog device, of course, worked. I use the meter to test and set a base reasonable volume in my Studio. I found that to be around 65 decides with spikes into the seventies. It can be louder but for this artwork those settings are enough that I can hear the music. I can feel the music.

With some experimentation and feedback from my last exhibit I am going with a gallery setting from 50 to a peak of 60 decibels. The sound meter manual states those levels would correspond to the residential to background music setting. Any volume lower than 50 number did not work for me. I am capping spikes at 64 decibels. I take all the measurements about 30 inches back from the artwork. This is only a starting position. I certainly know when hanging these works in either a private or public spaces, there will always be the threat of turn-it-down. In those moments I will do just that while hearing in my head the voice of Meat Loaf saying: “If it is too loud you’re too old.”

Sound Level Meter manual

Using the sound level meter, I have found a strange effect I am unsure of. When I compare at equal volumes, a better quality stereo system to a lesser quality system, the sound from the better system sounds consistently louder. The difference may be the quality of the sound being reproduced. Therefore, here is the mp3 of the music box music from Dance Monkey. Since a listener is not in the Studio, it’s okay to set the volume of Dance Monkey at a level depending on the quality of the stereo system. Find your level for this music needs to be felt to be heard. Although, in the Studio, my music varies in volume, quieter in the daytime, louder into the night. No sound level meter needed.

Dance Monkey final Music Box cover

This is an update on the previous artwork Cheap Thrills. The images below show the upgraded Cheap Thrills stereo system, and a test amplifier I used on Dance Monkey. In my comparison testing, setting the volumes close on both artworks, the differences surprised me. Some of this might be the music, but the sound coming out of the Dance Monkey amplifier system feels to me to be wider, with better separation between instruments. That may be because the test amplifier has both treble and a bass controls.

Cheap Thrills upgraded 20watt stereo system. Amplier is on the upper left.
Cheap Thrills 100watt stereo system. Amplifier is on the right.

Originally, the artwork Cheap Thrills came with a 2 watt stereo system for the cover music that is under one minute. I thought this would save time and money over a 20watt system. I thought the 2watt system was appropriate for these mini styled works. I was wrong. In short, the 2watt stereo, even at its maximum volume of 60 decibels, lacked clarity, separation, sound depth, and detail. The 20watt upgrade resolved all those issues and made Cheap Thrills cover music sound almost as good as my major and much larger works, which have cover music limited to a length of a minute and a half.

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon 1907 MOMA 2015 photo taken by my lifelong friend now passed, Tom Haley

Next Music Box project is called Fast Car. Tracy Chapman wrote and released the song Fast Car in 1988, Luke Combs recently covered it, in 2023.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H Final image Cheap Thrills

Published on by Scott Von Holzen
Cheap Thrills ≈L47.50″xH31.25″xD6.25″

What thrills me first about cheap thrills is the time saved when I only need to cut out circles to represent the artwork’s notation. And even more important thrill is I like what I see on the canvas that hangs the artwork. That eight by twenty-four inch canvas has multiple layers of spaghetti like words that appear to be a word salad of semi-abstraction. I place words on an artwork from the lyrics of Cheap Thrills to help bind the music to the artwork. That is why on the main canvas, my clumsy cursive writing is fairly legible.

For this mini artwork to accommodate my attention rule for mini artworks, the cover music length must be under one-minute. This requires extra shrinking down of a song, while retaining as much catchy melody as possible. The Cheap Thrills cover is 51 seconds. I compose, modify, and adjusted this cover on my desktop computer using a quality Bose speaker system. With it I can hear all the subtle differences in the sound, especially when I turn up the volume. This range of volume of the Bose system helps me to create a decent sound track for each artwork. But apparently, installing the cover music on a small 2-watt stereo system powering 4-inch 2-way speakers wastes much of the effort. I found that the 2-watt system’s lack of volume range weakens all the subtleties of the original cover sound heard on the Bose. Even the effort to maximizing the volume, no clipping, the 2-watt stereo system has no punch compared to the 20watt systems on my large artworks. On these small artworks the cover music plays out to the listener at around 60 decides. That is comparable to light conversation. Although disappointing to listen to as music, these mini works, besides their boutique portable size, play their cover music at a volume level that should not offend any listener’s ears, and be enough for most moderate sized rooms.

Not irrating the listener I found has been an issue with this art. For example, when I was picking up a large artwork after an exhibition, the curator told me that my music echoed loudly in the gallery. Obviously, this is a gallery that prefers its art to be seen but not heard. Then recently my volume issue came up when setting up the large Beatles triptych at another exhibition. That curator asked me to turn down my powerful 20-watt music boxes to conversational levels. She tested it while I adjusted the volume. The Beatles’ music lost much of its bite, its presence, and its purpose. I did not like that, but had little choice. I understood her requirements but disliked the idea of big artwork having little sound. The balance is all wrong. The good news for these mini artworks is that my volume issue should never be an issue with them until it is. Their meek sound is okay if it balances well with the dinky artworks and the stupid standard of a visitor’s conversational levels.

Here is an modified version of my Instagram post of Cheap Thrills. And yes it is silly, but here it is anyway.

Okay, after watching that YouTube video, I think I have had my fill (actually emptiness) of the audio from a 2watt stereo. The music that was playing in order to sound more normal sounding awful, I doubled the volume (increase was 10.37 decidable). I had first tried to increase the output in the software for more volume and a deeper sound, but found I had already reached the system’s limits. That is when I realized I had also reached my limit. I will update the audio on both this artwork and the other mini artwork, A Day in the Life, to the much better sounding, 20 watt system used in all the major artworks. I have another reason for this change.

I limit the cover music length on mini artworks to under one minute. The issue I found was my effort on these mini artworks audio is as time consuming and detailed orientated as the longer cover music I create for major artworks. That is because I care deeply and respectfully the music I am portraying. Therefore, why should I listen to my hard earned cover music sounding weak, tin can like, and totally lacking depth? I cannot justify that compromise any longer. I am done with 2watt audio systems. Once updated, these two mini works will have the option of actually have a range from soft to loud. This allows me to balance the sound and the art in its space. It is a good feeling that I can finally let reality return to the surface. I am eager to ride the next available wave to see if these mini works can truly float by themselves.

Cheap Thrills audio.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H A Day in the Life final image

Published on by Scott Von Holzen
A Day in the Life ≈ L44.5″xH28″xD5.25″

This tiny artwork took two weeks to complete, which is about half the time of the larger works. Future minor projects will go faster if I make these small works a series and use a similar template. The reason for this size is to fit better in smaller exhibition space, allow me to take more artworks to an exhibition, and finally to have a price range about half that of the larger works. I do not know how complicated they will become, but they will, and when they do, allowing two weeks, pricing them lower by fair for me, that amount of time allowed for each project seems reasonable. I do like with this work how easy the decision was to try new ideas. I can see already that innovations will happen faster, along with expense and time savings, for these small works are less risky.

For example, the stereo system for A Day uses a one piece 2Watt system. Compared that to the much larger Zombie, that requires an expensive 20 watt system comprised three separate components and larger speakers. The benefit of that is a much better sound system. Another time and expense saving for small art is in the simplified custom notation, explained in the image below.

Explanation of how the new custom notation works.

Of course this innovation and style change requires a better attitude towards small works. When I first looked at this tiny artwork all alone on a twenty foot by ten foot high wall, it looked lost. To change that look and to help promote these tiny works, the plan is to place a big artwork in between a group of these small works on each side. This type of presentation would actually create for the viewer a back-en-forth movement between the pieces, creating a striking and positive visual between big and small artworks. To make this work, first I need an attitude change from big art that reflects big music to small art that points to the music. And the game of chess was the answer.

I enjoyed video games when they first became popular. I remember the original Nintendo and my favorite console, Sega Genesis. Overtime I realized that playing video games took too much of my free time. I stop playing. It is only recently I returned to gaming by playing chess online. I always play against the chess bots. They allow me to stop and go whenever. More important, playing against the bots reduces the stress of competition while teaching chess strategy, stimulating and challenging my thinking. I would have thought creating art would accomplish a similar goal, but it appears not to with de Konning. All this came to mind when I saw my first photo standing next to this tiny artwork. After exhausting all of my small art remarks I knew it was time to come up to an alternative approach, compare to all my previous failed strategy for creating small art. Then I realize I could compare this art adventure to a game of chass. I saw these tiny artworks symbolically as the pawns in a game of chess as well as in the art market.

Pawns in chess are the weakest chess piece. Unless they are not. The pawn is the only chess piece that can turn itself into another piece, including the game’s most powerful piece, the Queen. I am not going into the details of chess on how the lowly pawn can win the game, but I do see a comparison between the pawn in chess and my mini artworks. I see if played right, these tiny works of art might be the right move forward (pawns only move forward) that I totally underestimated in the past.

Thinking of the art market as a strategy of chess helps puts everything in its place. In comparing a pawn in chess with these small works of art my current plan is to move these little artworks forward one step at a time with the help of a companion Queen or Rook. Each step forward in chess is like a step forward for small works of art, bringing them nearer to the other side of the chessboard, or, in art terms, the upscale market. It may be possible to turn pawn art into the queen of the contemporary art world.

Optional: Commentary about the where, the why, and the reasoning behind this art, my current observations.

For almost two months I experimented with try tele visit therapy suggested by my doctor. Part of my routine was to note my thoughts before and after a session. One note of mine that stood out, that seemed to put my art and my therapy into a firm perspective said this, “Everything would make sense……if this art sold.” I do not remember any reaction or comment from my therapist. But I knew what those words meant and that conerned me. It was soon after that I saw the end of my tele visits was near. The more I thought of those words, it became clearly to me that I needed a honest examination of what was my motivation to continue down this art path, for I was feeling that after 18 years and 755 blog entries, this art’s momentum felt stagnate. I was wondering if I was losing my sight of this art’s message.

Years ago this naive and enthused want-to-be artist found a message to paint and took that first step forward. Over time that first step became a step, another and then it turned to the left, then a step back, then a turn to the right was followed by a step backwards, that then surprisingly became two steps forward, which lead quickly into a spin around two steps back. To now to here eighteen years later. I cannot help the feeling that I am strangely standing near that same first step. Why do I feel that?

As I have mentioned, the marketing of this art or “…getting it out there..” has been challenging, with some enjoyable moments. Most of those came in the early years when this art was two dimensional. I ended selling early a dozen artworks on Etsy with the last sale in 2017. The next sale came in 2021. I welcomed it reluctantly, for it was a favorite of mine, “Walking in Memphis.” That one sale did confirmed in me the importance of this art over the money. Soon after I took the sister artwork of “Memphis,” The Blue Danube, of the market adding it to my personnel collection.

Now, in 2024, I am pushing forward with A Day in the Life, hoping that it will be the first of many mini works to find a market, the large works failed to do. These smaller size works also be a better fit in a residential space. For now, I am letting go of my overly youthful art idea of a museum wall. The reasoning is simple: this art has struggled over eighteen years to define even the smallest existence of a market. Then if there is no market, why do I keep painting music? Why am I creating musical artwork after musical artwork that rarely travels beyond the studio? Unexpectedly, I was reminded again why I paint music.

I was looking for a podcast while doing my (must be short) strength exercise routine. That is when I clicked on the podcast: Make Art not Content. I felt relatable to its title and how I obviously approach art. I scrolled down and found this episode: “What Every Struggling Artist Can Learn From Taylor Swift’s Rise.”  The podcast tells a story of how Taylor saved her career and turned it around to where her stardom is now bigger than ever. The podcast summarized her accomplishment by offering other struggling artists three pieces of advice learned from Taylor’s experience: Find your allies. Make your journey about something bigger than yourself” and finally “Make more art.”  I wondered, could my loyalty to this art be bigger than me, and that is the driving force of this art for the last eighteen years?

Throughout art history there are hundreds of images, of people playing musical instruments, dancing to music, singing music, listening to music, character images of music notation, and lots of abstractions depicting music, but nothing displaying the actual music as the subject. That is where I came in. I saw that and thought I found my unique art niche.  I said then and believe now that this art has always been about the idea of combing art and music into what I define today as one meaning. Sales are also nice, but if this art was about the money, I would have stopped its evolution early on.

In our living room hangs the 2009 artwork Canon in D. I sold more Etsy prints of this one artwork than any other. I see why. It depicts an art style of sheet music that is appealing in its design and subject. I could have continued painting in this way dozens of other great songs. I am convinced if did that I would I would have quickly found my market as the portrait painter of a song. But I did not. I did not because I thought this art was about combing art and music in an ever higher, undefinable artistic levels of expression. That was the original goal. I have always thought that the meaning of this art was simple: keep the momentum going and all will end well. When asked the why you do this (a rare event) I have said I wanted someday to answer the question: “Did he make it?”

Canon in D 2009 L80″x30″

That thinking continues to this day even after eighteen years, because this art has presented me with unlimited opportunities to express and to grow my knowledge of art and music.  I may never think I am at the end of combing art and music together into one meaning? I truly feel there are still unlimited amounts of techniques and styles I have yet to discover to take portraying a song to the even higher levels of artistic creativity. As I think through Taylor’s strategy, I remembered that when I first started this art I surely thought I had the time to find my market and to reach my goals. But that was eighteen years ago. I don’t know if I have eighteen more years to see this art, though. I see my time to build up this art verging on the words; I don’t know. The plan is to keep pushing this art hard forward with no further hesitation to reach a point where others may want to take up the challenge. The quest is a final combing of music into art and art into music that defines both meanings equally.

I do not want to forget Taylor’s third technique for success: Make more art. And the key to that success is to work fast. Maybe my quicker little pawn art has arrived at the right time. If so, for now everything makes sense…...if this art keeps growing.

Scott Von Holzen