Or rather climate change and changing patterns. In contrast, this year has been a veritable rain forest. It is rare to have droughts in Chicago in May.
5/9/2005 This is the first spring I've ever experienced in Chicago where it hasn't rained. Climate change? 5/8/2005, Sunday
News has become more and more idiotic. Once you have decided what's important to know, news generally becomes less important to day-to-day functioning. A wacky song potentially. Times were wacky back then and they still are, but cranked to 11--and there are things that are in fact more important than they were in 2005. Today's abstraction is from Eno's 5/7/1995 entry: Split Music. I don't know how to develop such a simple idea. He mentioned "rare chord changes". Using "split" and "vertical" as metaphors might be interesting.
"New piece of music in morning...with rare chord changes. How difficult or discouraged are changes when working with sequencers! The effect of computer sequencing is to split music into vertical blocks with sheer edges." Today's is partially written by ChatGPT in an attempt to create a character and narrative. As always, I grab the first line and rhythm and go with it, i.e. "Got a letter from Sally". I made a note about the girl in the Jarmusch film. I'll have to re-watch it. I'm hearing the "swamp" groove cliche (think Credence CR Run Through the Jungle.
Got a letter from Sally Ghost Dog Life of the Samurai What role did the girl have In the Jim Jarmusch film? 5/6/1886 (ChatGPT Diary) Learned about the terrible events that have been unfolding in Chicago. Haymarket Riot/Labor strikes turned violent and police firing at workers. I cannot help but reflect on the state of our country. I hope that we can find a way to resolve these conflicts peacefully, and that we can move forward as a nation with compassion and understanding. Received a letter from my friend Sally who recently moved to California. It was lovely to hear about her new life on the West Coast. 5/6/2000, Saturday Summery, 85 degrees Out to see film: Ghost Dog Life of the Samurai—a Jim Jarmusch film. I like the ambiguous elements and characters. What role did the girl have? 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
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 |
AuthorLee Barry, Musician/Content Producer Archives
May 2024
Categories
All
|