One thing I've now grown to appreciate is this idea of "rule drift" that allows you to switch the rules after you've made them. I noticed it happening the past year or so with the writing and recording of Nostalgia Galaxy. The original rule was that I would create a song a month and the month would be determined by the month that I started it. Then I switched the rules so it would be either in the month that I started it or in the month that I finished it. The month in which it was finished actually makes more sense because you're working on it in both months and you might as well use the month when you finished it.
As I've been going through some of my notes, I had been working on songs over the course of sometimes three months, so a song would have started in February and then finished in May. It's probably best that we use rule drift because you don't want to get too locked into rules. At some level being locked into rules as a stricture is probably a good idea if you're trying to do something that's minimal, for example, using only three colors, or in music using certain note values. When I was studying composition with jazz arranger Bill Russo in the 80s, one of his rules was that you couldn't use dots or ties in your rhythms. It was frustratingly restrictive but at some level that's probably a good idea because if you don't have any rules, or if you're always drifting the rules. then you might as well not have any rules at all.
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AuthorLee Barry, Musician/Content Producer Archives
May 2024
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