Careless Interpretation : The Diary of A Music-Junkie

after a discussion with my friends yesterday about MD-ing and stuff (thanks Esse & Nukie =) ), it kinda reflects other sides of MD stuff which i didn’t really realize so strongly existed during the activity of directing music for radio.

those sides will be part of my effort here in giving a rather whole and comprehensive explanation of what MD is all about.

why do i wanna talk about this now?,……anything to give more meaning to my life i wanna talk.

disparating from the real music director employed to assist recording/production for studio, radio music director is somewhat different, in the scope of task and in the necessity of formal, tablature reading, musical education. the reason for these difference i guess lies in their difference in respective working environment and what responsibilities and what do they have to face every day.

But, though, there is some similarities between them. both of them are employed to determine what sense of music will be imprinted by certain production. sense of music means the general, overall feel of music characterized by a unique composition of its elements. elements here are defined broadly, elements could be the individual instruments with its own set of frequencies and color of sounds, or could be, as in my case, individual songs with its own set of characteristics, which constitute, in whole, a unique general impression of a radio music direction. Composition resulted from music directors could range from a track with a strong R&B feel for instance, to a radio music with a strong overall R&B leaning. In addition, especially for radio music director, are a whole bunch of other jobs included in radio music management.

Now, as we have started with differentiating between production music director and radio music director, we will delve in into my new and old revelation of the mystified profession called radio music director.

1. Radio MDs essentially are persons who burdened upon the job of enforcing a set of values of music for its institution. He maintained and honed these values truly in all aspect of music in radio broadcasting, as it is these values that determines the characters of the music of the radio. When he is selected, he is believed by the institution as having profound knowledge of the unique distinct characteristics of the institution’s music.
2. MD’s are also a person who has subjective matters and preferences, including of course his/her own musical preference. In pursuing his job as a radio MD he must sideput these preference to give way to concentration to an objective, agreed set of music hold by the radio.
3. It is in the nature of music to be somewhat ambigual and attain unclear borders between genres. This is due to the evolution of music that continually mix and synthesis new music based on the previously available. This complexities causes that in day to day situation the MD often inveitably hold his subjective preference for selecting music. This is often be accounted for the weak point of radio music directing.
4. the fact is every MD, as a person, will always have a subjective side and objective side working side-by-side. both of these will control the majority of action according to how many time available or the connection of the matter to personal reason. for example in determining the reception of a song to a playlist, during longer, more available time, a radio MD may determine more objectively, than when there is considerably shorter time, the MD will be less objective and more subjectively. Or during the inclusion of a song, for a certain song that the MD didn’t prefer but included in the radio music direction, objectively, the song would be included, but in subjective times, the song would not. So, the key in the view point of MD’s here is how to improve the selections of song as objective, not subjective matters and furthermore justify your selections, when considered unfamiliar, as worthy and relevant for inclusion into the general music direction.
5. Does MD’s own feel, experience and knowledge matter in doing his job? the answer is depends. if the radio is not an musically innovative, trend-following one (means only played the already played music tracks) then NO. but if the radio is a trend following or even trend setting one, one that considers important to be the forefront of music development, then YES. even though they say, MD’s are just followers of the radio’s music direction policy, MD’s need more than just policies to select music. Why? since policies are static, while music is dynamic. the music that is stated in the policies a few years ago now transformed into various kinds of new types of musics belonging to genres synthesized from the combination of more than one music. Being blunt, actually we can say, the policies are not relevant anymore and it should be changed. But how many does a policy change during the life of a radio? very few. while music is evolving and its evolving every day. to cope with that evolution and a wealth of new different music everyday, MD’s need feel, experience, and knowledge. these three things will fill in the gaps, in the forefront of the development of music impossible to be covered by the music policy. In general, the music policy and an MD feel, experience, and knowledge works side-by-side to select music, within the big track of the music policy and stream down in the narrow tracks of the difficultly-definable, currently evolved new music. For example, if the music policy determines that rock as the accepted music policy, should the new music such as new punk-dance-revival such as Franz Ferdinand be included in the playlist? the answer depends on the music policy and the feel, experience, and knowledge of the MD.
6. Can an MD exclude subjectivity when choosing? subjectivity is, in essentiality, cannot be separated from human. it is an entity with human, like feelings. Feelings, preference and subjectivity will always create bias. Bias in action, bias in reaction, and in an MD case, bias in selecting which music to be included in the playlist. But as every job that are based on profit and not artistry or personal satisfaction, subjectivity should eliminated for objectivity or the taste of majority. and this include jobs, such proximate to art and design as radio music directing. Subjectivity is deemed to be un-needed, only needed to a very frontier case, which will not be discussed here and will not appear in an ordinary lifetime of an MD. What should be focused on is in minimizing this subjectivity by increasing the feel, the experience, and knowledge. departing from the previous conversation, feel (not feeling), experience, and knowledge is needed, inevitably, if the radio determines to be a trend radio, which bring out new music and exposed to a lot and many kinds of new music everyday. as previously explained, feel, experience, and knowledge will fill the gap between the staticness of radio music policy and the dynamicness of music evolution. if the radio just played songs that had been played before, that means there is no need for feelful, experienced, or knowing choosing since every kind of music to be played is clear, what still need to be managed is the timing of these songs to be broadcasted, and this is usually bound to be simple stuff only. the hard stuff usually is when these feel, experience, and knowledge is needed, and this is usually happen in trend radio where new music are exposed more heavily and creates ambiguity of inclusion whether to be included into the general music direction or not. as long as there is ambiguity in inclusion, the need for F-E-K (feel, experience, and knowledge) will always prevail. Lessening ambiguity means deepening the understanding and dialectical capability of music and its genres and histories to improve F-E-K. This calls for a more sophisticated MD. Thats why, the more trend-oriented the radio, the more sophisticated the need for an MD.
7. the competencies of MD are very intangible, immeasurable, and terribly subjective-potential. It lies on his capability to determine whether the character of a song fits with the general radio music direction. the process of determination happens in split second. even the MD himself can sometimes doubt whether he is being objective or subjective. the availability of control mechanism is very hard for a number of reason. First from the fact that the competence of an MD is accumulated from a wealthy, incalculable experience of listening to music. to a music lover, as usually an MD, this usually is a humongously large portion of time in his life. Now, to measure exactly these experiences is an impossible effort. Moreover the MD has, during the years, built up his preference for certain kind of music that creates a bias for his selection. to know exactly or to measure exactly the competence of an MD is to live the MD’s life, and this is of course impossible. but, however, it can be approached by some good capability measurement method during the recruitment process.
8. When during the times where MD needs to discuss an inclusion of a certain new music to a playlist with a second party, difficulty in making agreement will surface. This rooted in a couple of reasons, first is the difficulty arises from describing the music itself. Often used with a lot of words related to subjective feelings, e.g. sentimental, happy, hip, chic, trendy, moody, etc, music became very difficult to describe and, even if it is, as in the radio music policy, conjour different meanings and perceptions to different person unless that person listen directly to it. Second, since selecting new music requires the F-E-K as previously mentioned, inclusion of the next party to the selection process also demands F-E-K to that party as well. Since not everybody has the same feel, experience, and knowledge, especially compared to the MD, this means the selection process and consolidation between the involved parties will be difficult. therefore it is absolutely important to have, if theres a second party, a second party who has at least above average F-E-K to be involved in the inclusion of a new music process.
9. Often, when the radio change MD, the music changes along. This should not happened.
10. Radios should pick MD’s that have the preference of music which is THE SAME with that of the radio. This is the ideal way. What this means is, if this situation fulfilled, the MD will be the personification of the radio’s music. His preference will be the radio’s preference. This will tremendously suppport the easeness of his decision making and in the long run, will create the best music director possible for the radio, due to extra effort and energy able to be exerted by the music director for the music he prefer, compared to music which he doesn’t prefer.

copyright: Rinaldi Triasepta (MD 87.7 Hardrock FM Bandung, 2003-2004)