This year, RaeMag attended NXNE Canada’s #1 Music, Film Festival and
Conference and sister to our stateside SXSW festival. This 7-day/night festival in downtown Toronto showcases over 650 local, national and international artists and attracts over 2,300 music business delegates and panelists.

Now, in it’s 16th year, NXNE has proven itself to be a formidable launching pad for hot new talents and media creatives, with many of this year’s performers sure to join the ranks of alumni such as Fiest, Peaches, New York Dolls, Sloan and many more.

RaeMag: How did you become so knowledgeable about music and music history?

Alan: Well believe it or not I actually do have a music degree in history I am very good at the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. I’ve always been a bit of a music nerd from the day my grandmother gave me a transistor radio when I was 6 years old and when I got into high school actually it was junior high, when I got into junior high, we went to my uncles place to pick up a puppy one day and he was moonlighting servicing old school juke boxes, so in addition to the puppy, he dropped a box of 7-inch singles on me. And that essentially became the beginning of my record collection.

RaeMag: What are your thoughts on music education, were you ever formally trained with an instrument?

Alan: Yes, yes, ok, the first instrument I was formally trained on and it was serious training, I mean I went to grade 8 in it and I performed at a lot of festivals, both at the local level and the provincial level [...pause] that was the accordion, I was actually pretty good at the accordion I had a Titano 120 bass with 3 reeds, which is pretty humiliating to think about it right now, but it gave me all my music theory and so I know enough about that. Later in high school me and a bunch of friends decided we were going to be in a band and we all sat down and decided which instruments we were going play and I wanted to be as far away as I possibly could from the accordion so I became a drummer. So I learned how to play drums and I actually ended up being a teacher. A drum teacher. I taught at a place called Drums Unlimited in Winnipeg all through university. I had students 3 times a week.

RaeMag: Wow, so you’re very knowledgeable about the tutoring profession and the process of what it’s takes to teach somebody and pass on musical knowledge. Do you think that’s something that can be done through online education or is that something that should be done in person.

Alan: I don’t know I think these days people want to be able to access teaching materials in some cases, on their own time and in their own environment they don’t want to get up and go across town to sit down at a piano or sit down in a chair with a guitar to learn how to play an instrument. A lot of people would love the opportunity to be able to do it in the privacy of their own bedroom where they can make all their own mistakes without being humiliated or berated by a teacher. And maybe there’s more motivation to be able to, you know, if you really want to be able to play guitar, or play keyboards, if you’re motivated you’ll do it you just maybe need some help. You know there are stories, lots of stories, about self taught musicians who don’t know a thing about theory, which can be a good thing in a sense that sometimes if you don’t know what you’re doing, you don’t realize that your breaking rules, and sometimes when you break rules you can make things of great beauty. Sometimes mistakes, imperfections, add to beauty rather that absolutely perfect playing. I can see how this would be helpful to somebody, you know cause people are completely comfortable sitting down behind keyboards and in front of screens, so if there’s something that can take you through something rather slowly and at your own pace and if your motivated enough you can do it, and you don’t need that teacher there, or you don’t have to go to see that teacher.

RaeMag: How would you describe the music of the last 10 years?

Alan: The last 10 years has seen more fragmentation of music then every before. There are so many different genres, so many different styles, so many different stratifications of music that it’s pretty tough to keep up with them all. I mean we still have Rock, we still have R&B, we still have Country, we still have Jazz, we still have Classical, but within those classifications, there are still multiple sub-genres. The other thing that’s been rather interesting is the role of technology and how technology has made it possible for us to access just about any song, anytime, from anywhere we happen to be. So we’ve seen a great explosion in the creation of music, because it’s easier to create it, we’ve seen an explosion in the consumption of music, because it’s easier to consume it, whether it’s digital download or bit torrent or Myspace or Facebook. So looking back on the last 10 years I think were gonna need another 10 years to put everything into context, but I think it’s the technology years, the post-master years, where technology has facilitated a massive explosion in music.

RaeMag: Yeah, one band I feel that has sort of foreseen that coming, if you know Our Lady Peace’s album Spiritual Machine, they really depicted the whole movement of…

Alan: Yeah, the whole Ray Kurzweil thing, yep.

RaeMag: …yeah, of technology taking over the music and turning it into a more computerized version of what we would enjoy.

Alan: We’re still enjoying it, but were using technology to make it
differently and distribute it differently. I mean it used to be that you had to go down to the store and hand over money and somebody would give you a piece of plastic for you to consume music. Now, it can be at anytime of the day, wherever you are and if you have the right device in your hand you can get whatever you want. It’s to the point now, I think what’s gonna happen this last decade is the last decade where people are really gonna want to possess music physically. In the next decade, which has just started, what where gonna be all concerned about is being able to access music, we don’t have to have the file or the album or the CD with us, if we have a device that will allow us to get that music from wherever it happens to be at that second.

RaeMag: Just the link rather than the actual physical or the downloadable file, Youtube on your iPhone at all times is better than downloading all the music when you can get it anytime you want.

Alan: Right, exactly. We’re seeing the rise of things like Pandora and Spotify and this new thing called Rdio and a few others, it’s access over possession and that will change the way we consume music if we don’t have to wait for it anymore, if we don’t have to work for it anymore, if it just comes to us or we can conjure it up whenever we want to.

RaeMag: That’s less of a testing and a more of a going after what you like and want you know is good because you have the access to it.

Alan: Well you do, but the other thing that is going to have happen is that you’re gonna have to have people to help you get started, because if there’s an infinite amount of music out there where do you even being to look for it? So were gonna see also a sort of a flashback to the days of the old radio DJ where you listen to the radio because there was a guy there that you trusted to tell you what was cool, what was worth listening to, what records to go buy, what shows to go see and it made it much less confusing for you because it saves you time. We’re consuming more information or we’re being bombarded by more information and data than ever before and you know we spent the last 10 years spending so much time researching and searching for music that we haven’t spent enough time savoring it.