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.
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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." This is worth posting in its entirety because it is such an evergreen sentiment. It is a posting that could be made today:
4/29/1977, Friday (Keith Haring Journal) "This is a blue moment...it's blue because I'm confused, again; or should I say "still"? I don't know what I want or how to get it. I act like I know what I want, and I appear to be going after it—fast, but I don't, when it comes down to it, even know. I guess it's because I'm afraid. Afraid I'm wrong. And I guess I'm afraid I'm wrong, because I constantly relate myself to other people, other experiences, other ideas. I should be looking at both in perspective, not comparing. I relate my life to an idea or an example that is some entirely different life. I should be relating it to my life only in the sense that each has good and bad facets. Each is separate. The only way the other attained enough merit, making it worthy of my admiration, or long to copy it is by taking chances, taking it in its own way. It has grown with different situations and has discovered different heights of happiness and equal sorrows. If I always seek to pattern my life after another, mine is being wasted re-doing things for my own empty acceptance. But, if I live my life my way and only let the other [artists] influence me as a reference, a starting point, I can build an even higher awareness instead of staying dormant. If I can take this and apply it, it will help, but again I am afraid. Afraid I'll just ignore this whole revelation and remain in the rut and rationalize and call it human nature or some shit. But, I've been living like this for so long that it seems I'm doomed to continue. Although I realized it now, so that is encouraging. If I can do this, then it should not be hard to answer my questions and doubts about my forthcoming adventure. If I am all that is in question, then I should be able to answer all. Like past experience, there is always a certain magic that some call "Fate." Lately it hasn't been as evident, or perhaps I am just more ignorant of it, but I know that I'll end up somewhere for some reason or no reason, but with some answers or at least be a little clearer on why I am and what I am aiming to do or what I am gonna do or just "do." If this fate is negative, that isn't negative because that is what happened and that then was the fate. I only wish that I could have more confidence and try to forget all my silly preconceptions, misconceptions, and just live. Just live. Just. Live. Just live till I die...." 4/28/2023, Friday
By the end of April an area of dappled light appears behind my dining room table. When the wind is blowing it makes an interesting variegated pattern. A possible installation would involve a series of screens strategically placed such that the sunlight coming through a window is superimposed. (Turrell has probably done this).
4/27/1943 (Diary of Anne Frank)
"Our German visitors were back last Saturday. They stayed until six. We all sat upstairs, not daring to move an inch. If there's no one else working in the building or in the neighborhood, you can hear every single step in the private office. I've got ants in my pants again from having to sit still so long...." 4/27/1995 (Brian Eno Diary) "I called Mum and talked to her a bit about her time in Germany. She told me that a farmer used to slip an egg through the fence of the camp for her." A possible Songday song based on the entries:
In my SciFi story Reset 2046, one of the main characters is Tony Townes. He writes on 4/26/2037: "Centennial of the Guernica massacre, an event which made Picasso a political artist."
Picasso started the painting on 5/11/1937, done with matte house paint. It was also inspired by Dora Maar's black and white photograms.
The 2046 album was the "score" for the story:
4/25/1987, Saturday
(Keith Haring Journal) "Drive to Netherlands to see museum with Hans. Possible place to show the big sculptures. Great sculpture garden, incredible Van Gogh collections all hanging salon style, side by side, packed together because main building was being repainted or other construction. Funny situation. It made them all look like cheap invitations (sic) because of how they were hung, Manet and Renoir and Mondrians all mixed up, side by side and only inches apart. Funny how important space is. When their importance is reduced they are forced to compete with each other they are not so grand anymore. Only the great ones withstand the test. Great lesson in art history and reality. Drive back to Dusseldorf at 110 miles an hour in Hans' BMW convertible just in time to change and shower to go to dinner at Krupp's house." [The corollary in 2024 is the effect of the internet and social media, which algorithmically curates what we see, with money influencing what the algorithm does. We're essentially "bribing" the gallerist to show our work, and when it's displayed cheek-by-jowl with unrelated work, it has the effect of canceling one or both of them. ] 4/24/1997
Ordered 56K modem. Will increase surfing speed x4. [This was a major increase in modem speed. The computer was a Dell Pentium 90, with 8MB of RAM and a 14.4K modem. (Could we go back to using a "dial-up" connection when no one's dialing?) You might want a slow lane that costs more to prevent spending too much time on the internet. We think it's social media that's addictive, but it's actually the internet.)] 4/24/2022 Music started dying beginning in the 1980s because of MTV, that shifted the focus from music to image, and that music needed packaging and marketing—which holds true to this day with social media and into the future with whatever comes after it, such as the Metaverse. The other inflection point was the PC which diffused attention in myriad directions. It's ironic that even if music dies, sound doesn't, and we can appreciate it (and create it) at that level. *** Using the hypothetical that the music of the 2040s is a repeat of the 1960s, then the music of the 2070s will be like the music of the aughts. People that will remember that period in their youth will be in their 80s, and perhaps not be nostalgic for it. You'd have to get in the headspace of those born in the 2060s, which is difficult to project. Then again we could go full retro and use music from 100 years prior, Ziggy Stardust, with futuristic "upgrades". Most people will still be familiar with David Bowie in the 2070s and there will be celebrations of his birth in the 2040s and the 50th anniversary of his death in 2066. (You can't go wrong with folk roots, or just roots music in general or any music that has withstood the test of time). *** As to how people now respond to social media, I saw shifts around 2000 when the internet was being used more for "internetty" things (memes) rather than an information resource. Prior to that, I recall that the Web was seen as utopian, although even in 1995 people were cynical, expressed in books like Silicon Snake Oil. It's interesting how some young people have a fascination with the 80s, pre-internet and pre-computer. This is not to suggest it was a Utopia then: we were at the leading edge of culture wars, coupled with the advent of the PC and the internet, both liberating beyond our ability to realize the stresses it could put on democracy in the future. 4/23/1999
Interesting program on WBEZ ("Odyssey") about how recordings changed our perception of music. It's sort of ironic that recordings were first used only to archive music. The double irony is that we return to the original idea and now we use the archive to make works of art that we replicate in the archive. Steve Albini made the interesting point that digital sound will degrade over time, unlike vinyl recordings which last much longer. He liked the idea of having the recording as a physical object rather than having just the data on some drive somewhere. This way we keep a time capsule. But it's also an interesting idea that we let culture mutate on its own through cyberspace—anathema to the idea that things are preserved. In such an atmosphere, archived copies can only be relics. He made the interesting point that digital sound will degrade over time, unlike vinyl recordings which last much longer. He liked the idea of having the recording as a physical object rather than having just the data on a hard drive, as a type of 'time capsule'. It is also an interesting idea that we let culture mutate on its own in cyberspace—anathema to the idea that things are preserved [in a fixed form]. In this scenario, archived copies become relics. *** April 23, 2009: Digital media is already degrading and precipitously disappearing. The only thing perpetuating it is the fact that it is collaged into other works. *** April 23, 2024 AI and the Blockchain are now in the loop of digital preservation. If a digital instantiation is "tokenized" (made into a building block) it can be endlessly "modded". In music, it has been called a "cell" for hundreds of years. Classical composers like Beethoven, Haydn, and Mozart all worked modularly. But I think it's an interesting possibility to scale that out to the internet. In music you can create a one-bar phrase, a 2-bar phrase, or 4-bar phrase that repeats, then share that out. Some are selling them as NFTs of loops or samples where they indicate what the tempo is and what the key is and that would be the building blocks. You could extrapolate that further by making the modules the section of the song: verses, choruses, the bridge, outro, etc. and ideally, you could string those together in some way. I think it's an interesting idea but I don't know how that's going to scale or work in a musical fashion. |
AuthorLee Barry, Musician/Content Producer Archives
May 2024
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