As the books move into their second and third editions, I'm continuing to add images and diary excerpts into the accompanying blog. The print editions have some of the images, but they are black and white and are all quite small. (Similarly with all other graphics, such as musical notation). The blog is also better for entries that have audio links in them. The plan is to discontinue all the ebooks. Ebooks have lots of formatting issues--much more than print (ironically). I may in the future convert the print editions to ebooks (or EPUB).
Here are the May blog entries, some of which have excerpts from the diaries. https://insumseries.blogspot.com/search/label/May
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This one is derived from a 5/21/2021 riff where I had referenced an art gallery in the Chicago Loop that exhibits and sells the art of art students. I had always liked going there to check out the new art. Sometimes there would be interesting pieces that had a je ne sais quoi about them.
The phrase that generated the rhythm was "Gallery in the Loop" which has 16th notes in it and I immediately thought of the "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" groove with the stop-and-go bass. I'm reminded of that art gallery in the loop (on Randolph across from the CCC) that exhibited art that was made by art students and various other "amateur" artists. Some of it was really interesting because it was de-skilled—where the errors in the artwork made it interesting--a little smear here and there or the characters weren't painted correctly—it just had a certain charm to it. Ultimately, the value of art comes from [life] its endearment.
At The CCC by meta4s
5/3/2017
I used to love to dance before I became a musician. Sometimes I find myself reacting with music rhythmically, but it's not dancing. Even in classical there are some pieces you can dance to, and are written specifically as dances (Gigue, Gavotte). The Pulcinella Suite by Stravinsky is very "danceable" in some sections. Once you've done lots of writing you can lose your ability to dance. Words and music are its cure. Since music composition is more like writing words, the composer gets stuck in the frontal lobe. (Daniel Dennett doesn't think enjoyment of one's own profession is dulled by doing it.) 5/2024: I still think words and music are a “cure”. There is a primal connection between the two, as evidenced by aphasia patients still able to recall music. Very often I’ll get song ideas from repeating 1-4 bar phrases in dreams. They are earworms essentially and are further evidence of the connection between language and music. There is now more evidence, at least anecdotally, that music came before language in the form of onomatopoeia or mimicking of animal sounds going back 30,000 years. The first flutes were made from bird bones, which they probably used to mimic bird songs as a way of communicating with them. Whistled language is another example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistled_language This would be something I would hear in a dream--a 4-bar groove. But it's the rhythm in the phrase "I used to love to dance". that generates the music There are different ways of expressing it rhythmically, but the nature of music should be more immediate, so I go with the first rhythm that comes to mind as I find chords on my guitar.
A new video from the album, using footage from Leni Riefenstahl's Ihr Traum von Afrika. It's a fantastic film and the clips work nicely.
Here's the link to the entire film: https://archive.org/details/leni-riefenstahl-ihr-traum-fon-afrika-2000
Here is the first demo, compared with the sketch. As with all pieces they evolve considerably from the cradle. Since I've had the Jazz Bass tuned to Drop 31 tuning for months, I just used it as-is as a "standard" tuning. The lyrics are still provisional and sketchy. They're still looking for meaning. I'm thinking "western sky" could be a metaphor for something on the horizon for the West as if it were a rare cosmic alignment or a total eclipse.
A radio show on Astrology (May birthdays) ~1935 . Imagine it was on a radio in that room. (The Thorne Rooms were built around that time)
https://youtu.be/ZLY5QoWIbdk?feature=shared&t=70 What is the sound of a place in an abstract sense? Motown had a sound. Philadelphia had a sound. Memphis had a sound. Glen Campbell "soundtracked" places like Phoenix, Wichita, Memphis, and Galveston. Chicago doesn't really have a sound all its own but it has "scored" my life. I suppose you could use the "Chicago" song by ___________. But do we want that as its "sound"? There's "Sweet Home Chicago" as a blues shuffle, but do we want that? I hear Chicago as having a "steel" quality.
For the entire month of April the routine was do carve a song out of the diary entries, and would only be for one month. Routines are hard to break! I couldn't resist this one because it's a song whose lyrics come from song titles or lines from songs. I'm not sure if it's plagiaristic or clever parody, but I would argue it's the latter. They are "cameos", as well as an ironic juxtaposition between war and postwar.
Where would you go? You can't do that You better get better Or else you're gonna get worse Can't buy me love 5/1/1943, Saturday Anne Frank writes to Kitty: "...Tonight the guns have been banging away so much that I've already had to gather up my belongings four times. Today I packed a suitcase with the stuff I'd need in case we had to flee, but as mother correctly noted, "Where would you go?". All of Holland is being punished for the workers' strikes. Martial law has been declared..." 5/1/1964, Friday Beatles in the studio 6:30-9:30: taped eight numbers, including 'I Saw Her Standing There', 'You Cant Do That', 'Can't Buy Me Love'. 5/1/2012 May Day. Arab Spring of OWS protests. *** You better get better or else you're gonna get worse.—Loudon Wainwright (From the song "Daughter")
As April comes to a close, so does my experiment for April generating a song idea per day. What has been most interesting is that working from the music of language, as opposed to the language of music (with music coming first in the form of a chord change or riff,) results in a wider range of musical styles. It also creates perhaps too many ideas, and they have to be triaged or converged and need to enter the full writing stage. Or they can be done live, where one player creates a riff based on it and the other players follow it as a form of improv. This of course is nothing new, but my spin is that it's a remix based on what happens on a particular day, regardless of year, and is an abstraction of it, not a literal storyline based on any one event.
4/30 Songday: Western Sky, initially inspired the line in the 4/30/1870 William James letter, as well as an entry by Brian Eno. "I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished Renouvier's second Essais and see no reason why his definition of free will, "The sustaining of a thought because I chose to when I might have other thoughts', need be the definition of an illusion." A search result for diary entries for April 29 using the Perplexity engine:
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/What-are-some-Iw65ngVqRASNGbXfZjpVMQ |
AuthorLee Barry, Musician/Content Producer Archives
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