So what is Big Stitch? Well, it’s me and exploring musical ideas, audio processing methods, sound sources, and social messages/meanings that I’m curious about right now. Specifically, I’m interested in combining acoustic music/instruments with electronic music, as well as field recordings and found sound (typically spoken word) focused both relatively timely issues of the day and universal themes across those issues. Of course, people and algorithms want tidy genre labels.
There are four ways I can answer that.
The first is what genre tag I chose when I submitted my upcoming album (it’s done! …more on that below) for distribution. I used a service called TuneCore. So had to pick from the list of genres they presented me. I decided to choose an electronic music genre for two reasons. The first is that I extensively use tools and techniques that other electronic/computer music producers use. The second is that any acoustic-music purist who sees a picture of me holding a mandolin will be shocked (but hopefully not too disgusted) when they take a listen to one of my tracks. Electronic music fans (or agnostics) will rarely have such a reaction when sampling my music for the first time. Choosing from the list of electronic sub-genres that TuneCore provided was basically a process of elimination. Specifically, I quickly eliminated every genre but one catchall: “electronica.” Some folks use electronica as a pejorative (my first electronic music teacher, for example…), but it’s also a big tent term for electronic music that is not specifically dance music. That’s one way to look at it, anyway.
The second way I could describe the genre of Big Stitch is to reference other music that I am inspired to learn, explore, and integrate. Bela Fleck and the Flecktones are the longest-standing group influencing me today. I’ve been listening to the Flecktones since 1994. A hard-to-classify group. But they are most commonly classified as “jazz fusion” and, Grammy-wise, won in the “Best Pop Instrumental Album” category. (Which begs the question of what “pop” is since in no world are the Flecktones “popular” music.) The main inspiration that I take from Bela Fleck and the Flecktones is their combination of acoustic/folk instrumentation (most prominently), electric instrumentation (most prominently electric bass), and electronic drums (using the wonderfully named “synthaxe drumitar”). The Flecktones were also largely instrumental, but not exclusively. In the past couple years I’ve been excited by a handful of electronic sub-genres: electroacoustic, music concrete, folktronica (uh huh), IDM (unfortunately name “intelligent dance music” or braindance), microhaus (minimal house, minimal, tech house), and the more musical extremes of experimental and noise). Knowing the folks who are getting this first edition, I’m guessing these are all pretty unknown genres. They certainly aren’t very popular ones, relatively!
The third way to classify my music is to have an AI tool analyze my tracks and tell us what it thinks. Well, here are three, what I call, genre-grams that show it’s categorization of each track over the duration of the track.
Got that? Combining the results from the other tracks, the AI algorithms most strongly tags my music as “abstract IDM leftfield” with a smattering of jazz fusion/jazztronica. In other words, it’s predicting that a very small number of people will ever listen to my music, given the relative size of “abstract IDM leftfield” fandom is. Obviously, I won’t be earning a noticeable income from streaming platforms.
The fourth way to determine the genre of Big Stitch’s music is for people to listen to it and tell me. And I’m happy to say that it’s now possible for people to do just that! I finished mastering my album a couple of weeks ago.
I called Big Stitch’s debut album “Regretfulnot”. I’ll write more about the album and its tracks in the future. For now, it’s a short, six-track EP that is strongly conceived around my wife and I discovering, moving to, loving, and leaving Nova Scotia, as well as all the big themes and emotions that come from such a universally human experience. The album is up on the website here, Bandcamp, Ampwall, and SoundCloud. The album’s official release is March 28th, when the album will be available on streaming platforms.
So, I’d love it if you listen to the album and let me know how you’d describe it. It won’t be exactly like you’ve heard before; it’s a fair guess. But at the same time, maybe you’ll find similarities across the tracks that give you the impression of one genre or another–likely a handful.
If you know anyone who would enjoy listening to my album or is just an adventurous listener, please pass on my album to them. I need to accept that I need to promote my music to get an audience and build a fanbase for Big Stitch. But I’d also love to eventually not rely on the big social media platforms and paid ads to do so. That means word of mouth and networking. That means support from you and folks you and others connect me to. (Did I mention I really appreciate your support?)