TylerHauser

A Time For Change

I’ve been considering and reconsidering the artist name “Digital Enigma” for a long, long time now and it wasn’t but 2 months ago I decided to just drop it. I mean, I came up with the name around the time I started “making music” on my good ol’ PlayStation back in 1999. I was 15 years old then and I honestly thought it was a cool name.

Digital Enigma perfectly described me as a musician; I created music in a digital realm and I couldn’t decide what the heck kind of music I wanted to create. I thought it was clever. But, at this juncture in my life, just saying that name aloud makes me cringe. It’s childish and simplistic and I don’t think it fairly represents me or my music.

This is where the challenge lies: How do I come up with a name that fits with the style of music I create and the type of image I wish to convey?

Tough stuff it is.

So, over the past couple months, I’ve kept this on the back of my mind as I’ve gone about my daily business. As I’m sure you know or can imagine, trying to stand out and/or be unique in the musical world is a monumental task only few are truly capable of taking on, yet so many try to do it. This just further complicates the task that much more. I finally came to terms with that fact and decided to look at my music as a whole and try to describe it with as few words as possible. This lead me to the study of linguistics and terms associated with it. (It’s a logical conclusion, no?)

Research introduced me to the idea of phonemes and their function in language. What interested me most about the concept was the simple description of what a phoneme is: “the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances”. Even reading it now, I’m fascinated with the musical implications. And what’s more, the idea itself is an oft-disputed one. To some, it’s a very language-specific notion: “any of the abstract units of the phonetic system of a language that correspond to a set of similar speech sounds (as the velar \k\ of cool and the palatal \k\ of keel) which are perceived to be a single distinctive sound in the language”. To others, not so much: “a phoneme is a difference in sound that makes a difference in meaning”. This gives me a delightful little grey area in which I can prance about.

I feel I can now accurately describe my music with one word: phonemic. However, here comes the big “BUT”… The damned domain name is taken!

This has me a little upset, only because URLs like phonemicmusic.com and thephonemic.com kinda piss me off.

So, with that, I’ll end this post with two things:

1. A short, unfinished song that may end up being the intro to the new album.
2. A question.

What would you recommend as a good URL for my website?