Pseudonyms

So I've been drifting around with various different names for projects and none have stuck cause the names all suck. I don't even like them when I make them I just can't come up with anything. How did you guys come up with yours? I always hear that it just comes from living life and hearing things and some stuff just sticks.

autechre, kraftwerk, ludwig van beethoven and aphex twin was taken so...

Pseudonyms either come to me effortlessly, or are a gruelling process involving weeks of trying to get something out of a bunch of shitty names I salvaged from track titles or lyric fragments.

I've made music under so many pseudonyms that by now you'd think I'd be able to come up with them easily :P

I honestly don't remember how/why I came up with Pselodux, I think it was a semi-randomly typed word. 0F.digital however, went through a process of iterations, and it's not even that good of a name without all the strict branding that goes with it..

I saw the word and I thought: That might be hard to pronounce for someone who can't speak German, so I took it.

just do it with your feels man

Mine was just a suggested username I got when I made a Playstation account for Need for speed online and I just kept using it everywhere cause I couldn't think of anything else

Laika because of the dog, Lada because ennnhh idk it sounds nice?

Been thinking about changing it since I've been using it since 2008 and my music has changed a lot, but I can't think of anything cool.

Better than what I called myself when I was 14 (Frida's Teeth) or my first AIM sn (phyrexianmeatdog) tho

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_(video_game)

But considering it's also someone's real life name, I should probably change to something else in the future.

My philosophy is that you have to pick a sort of neutral name that does not have any stereotype baggage coming with it, and then use your music to create some real meaning to it. Like I guess before you heard anything from Aphex Twin, you didn't have any idea of the music behind it, but now you associate the name and also song names with something definite. I don't know if I'm making sense, but basically what I mean is if I read the name Gorgoroth, I won't be expecting smooth jazz, and if I'm looking for a name for a thing, I'm kind of trying to anticipate what people will expect based on the name. 

The first name (and "pseudonym" is weird, cuz that's who you actually are) that I used in the late 90's was Fun Cube, doing hardcore and gabber type stuff.  Then at art school I decided on UDAC (United Digital Analog Community), for its thematic/conceptual properties (bring all aspects of myself together, hence "community"), but also because the "UDAC" made for good logos; with the same "U" shape just rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise, for the letters following U (good animation potential, haha).  Now I actually really like the name, which I've been using for 17 years or so.  A collab I did with a friend, we were Pangophonic (which was formerly Pangophonic Fun Brothers).

But now- as in what I wanna release my next album as-- I feel like I'm gonna use 777gogogo, which is one of my soundcloud accounts, and I think it emphasizes the happy go lucky (yet, in it to win it) positive energy that suits the intention of my sonics more than "United Digital Analog Community"-- because UDAC is more how things were technically executed.  It's like if you call someone "human", you don't know what kind of character they might be.  In that sense, United Digital Analog Community is much more sterile than 777gogogo, even though UDAC suited me for ages:  Just create whatever I want, without being limited by genres or the fact that I wasn't a woman if I wanted woman vocals, etc.  DSP power, basically ("community" was also about tools involved).  And IDM power subsequently.

So there was a time when a kind of hyper-phuture image of emotion really appealed to me, like autotune and all that shit I thought was great; like a computer was trying to interact with a human.  But now I'm more on the other side of the fence, getting into just rawness and simplicity, which I feel is a much more relatable and efficient use of sonics-to-emotion.  Every human understands the cry of the wild.

But anyway, yah-  I think my new album might be a coming-full-circle but also coming-of-age tale of living in the IDM underground on cloud 9 and sending out demos by telegram and shit, so my current prospective album name is (the one which will assist me in attaining the Sonics Ultra state, which incidentally I will be sending to Mike P, natch):

777gogogo - United Digital Analog Community

It's like the penultimate expression from these some 20+ years of making electronic music; working with the obscure puzzle of what in the fuck it all is.

Scarbo is the greatest piece of piano music ever composed

For what it's worth, I think I'm about done with aliases.  Whenever I use one, I never know how to market it, and most people seem to not realise those releases exist at all.  So people will buy all of my albums (I believe there's a button or link that lets you grab them all at once if you're feeling generous), except they're missing out on the ones I released pseudonymously.  The tracks most successful in our house (my partner and I still hum some of them daily after all these years) are the least successful outside of it (hardly anyone's heard of the album they're on).  Plus there's the issue where I can write new material that sounds (to my mind, at least) halfway between the styles of two of my aliases, and then I wouldn't know who to release it as anyway.  So I'm probably just going to use my name from now on.  Admittedly, I probably spent a while choosing my name too, but it's been so long I can't remember.

Basically, my advice is whichever alias you release tracks under, just pick one and stick with it, unless you have a good reason not to.

Speaking of sticking to one name...:

  On 5/2/2017 at 4:06 AM, ladalaika said:

Laika because of the dog, Lada because ennnhh idk it sounds nice?

 

I thought Lada was because of the Russian car brand, like Laika is the Russian space dog..

I have a bunch of aliases. I also really suck at marketing my own stuff. Not that I particularly care. I just like to use different pseudonym for different style, but lately my styles have started to blend together. So IDK.

I can quickly count at least 10 aliases that I've used..

hautlle came from some random mistyping or something when I was 14 or 15 

The collab names usually came from some joke or situation we found ourselves in while working on the album

БЬЕM because it looks cool and I like the pronunciation

  On 5/2/2017 at 7:25 PM, hautlle said:

БЬЕM because it looks cool and I like the pronunciation

I don't really care

  On 5/2/2017 at 5:58 PM, mokz said:

 

  On 5/2/2017 at 4:06 AM, ladalaika said:

Laika because of the dog, Lada because ennnhh idk it sounds nice?

 

I thought Lada was because of the Russian car brand, like Laika is the Russian space dog..

whoa

  On 5/2/2017 at 12:24 PM, peace 7 said:

Speaking of sticking to one name...:

https://soundcloud.com/777gogogo/peepee-mike-p-new-album-promo

(is awesome btw)

  On 5/2/2017 at 12:01 PM, ZoeB said:

For what it's worth, I think I'm about done with aliases.  Whenever I use one, I never know how to market it, and most people seem to not realise those releases exist at all.  So people will buy all of my albums (I believe there's a button or link that lets you grab them all at once if you're feeling generous), except they're missing out on the ones I released pseudonymously.  The tracks most successful in our house (my partner and I still hum some of them daily after all these years) are the least successful outside of it (hardly anyone's heard of the album they're on).  Plus there's the issue where I can write new material that sounds (to my mind, at least) halfway between the styles of two of my aliases, and then I wouldn't know who to release it as anyway.  So I'm probably just going to use my name from now on.  Admittedly, I probably spent a while choosing my name too, but it's been so long I can't remember.

 

Basically, my advice is whichever alias you release tracks under, just pick one and stick with it, unless you have a good reason not to.

Good advice.. on the other side though, I feel that using one name for *everything*, especially in my case, where I have trouble focusing on one genre, isn't really appropriate. This is the main reason why I started the 0F.digital project, since it's pretty much the opposite of most of the music I've been releasing as Pselodux.

I had attempted to consolidate all of my electronic music into the Pselodux name, but it got a bit disjointed when minimal tech and IDM was being shown on the same bandcamp page as what that particular name has become semi-known for, ie. super composed 80s prog metal. And then people started saying things to me like, "you should focus, man, I never know what genre to expect from you", and gig promoters would always put me on early because they didn't want to risk putting me on later, due to not knowing what my set would sound like.. anyway tangentz lol

Gotta say though, I'm somewhat tempted to shed all of my pseudonyms and start recording noodly "academic" music under my real name.. and use 0F.digital as a name for an electronics company or something lol

From a practical perspective, go with a name nobody else is using - Lo Five is also the moniker of an Aussie jazz funk trio, leading to iTunes confusion 

Hate to be an SEO guru, but go with something easily searchable too. Eg if you call yourself 'discount codes' nobody will be able to Google you. Something like Oneohtrix Point Never however, is utterly unique.

i quite like the idea of anyone who in the future might give a shit about my music may be exposed to some fucking phenomonal 20th century shit when they search for me. 

  On 5/3/2017 at 7:58 PM, westhead said:

From a practical perspective, go with a name nobody else is using - Lo Five is also the moniker of an Aussie jazz funk trio, leading to iTunes confusion 

 

Hate to be an SEO guru, but go with something easily searchable too. Eg if you call yourself 'discount codes' nobody will be able to Google you. Something like Oneohtrix Point Never however, is utterly unique.

fuckinglol discount codes.

what about Discount Viscount 50% off

  On 5/3/2017 at 7:58 PM, westhead said:

Hate to be an SEO guru, but go with something easily searchable too. Eg if you call yourself 'discount codes' nobody will be able to Google you. Something like Oneohtrix Point Never however, is utterly unique.

lol, if you get popular enough it'll be searchable (cf. LMFAO)

I have 3 names but only put out music from 1. I am racking up tracks/ideas for the others all the time so when the time is right they'll get an airing. Most of what I record can sit under the main name as I can't write anything with a genre in mind so everything always sounds like it's me.

These names came instantly and are not particularly good, just something that came naturally, no thought at all.

My main name is not actually relevant to the current output under that name, it's more akin to the music under one of the other names but that's how it's ended up.

  On 5/4/2017 at 12:22 AM, oscillik said:

 

  On 5/3/2017 at 7:58 PM, westhead said:

From a practical perspective, go with a name nobody else is using - Lo Five is also the moniker of an Aussie jazz funk trio, leading to iTunes confusion 

 

Hate to be an SEO guru, but go with something easily searchable too. Eg if you call yourself 'discount codes' nobody will be able to Google you. Something like Oneohtrix Point Never however, is utterly unique.

fuckinglol discount codes.

 

what about Discount Viscount 50% off

 

 

Someone's been to Home Bargains!

  On 5/4/2017 at 1:54 AM, modey said:

 

  On 5/3/2017 at 7:58 PM, westhead said:

Hate to be an SEO guru, but go with something easily searchable too. Eg if you call yourself 'discount codes' nobody will be able to Google you. Something like Oneohtrix Point Never however, is utterly unique.

lol, if you get popular enough it'll be searchable (cf. LMFAO)

 

William S. Braintree is pretty unique in a search, but almost everyone forgets it 5 seconds after I say it.

I thought about switching handles and just using my real name, but then I was mentioned in this Bandcamp daily article: https://daily.bandcamp.com/2016/08/16/braindance-feature/