Lee Barry Composition (And Photo) Diary

  The valley of the shadow of death--Roger Fenton Seed:  

0034. The camera lies, or the camera finds the truth hiding behind the lies, sometimes the camera see better than the eye because it slows it down. In the end, will the camera lie or will the camera tell the truth?  *** Listen on Suno

Lines from a Paul Cezanne letter (~1930), with other random lines from 2024. Played on acoustic guitar and demo'd by AI.    Listen on Suno

A remix of diary entries from my 11/10 diary 1998-current transformed into a lyric using a text randomizer. This isn't AI, but it's like AI in the sense that you are using an algorithm. But instead of using a pre-made one you make one of your own, which is ultimately more fun and interesting. You can use the constraints but you can change them as well. This is essentially a cut-up technique. Using the natural rhythms in the words, "get the thing" created the main motif.       The main chorus riff is 30000 Year s, with this rhythmic motif:        Get the thing Everything Rapidly Love the thing Started abandoning Hoping it was the thing 

  In terms of the connection between language and music, there is a finite number of rhythms that can be extracted from poetry and prose—probably in any language. If you read a passage in a book out loud, sometimes you will come upon phrases that are inherently musical.  The musicality of language (prosody) arises from the stresses on syllables, which have to be either on an upbeat or a downbeat in order for them to be coherent. In musical contexts, you can shape language however you want, and make things wrong for the sake of making them wrong for artistic effect, or emphasizing particular vowels when singing them. Ignoring strict meter and using a roving bar line is a cool way of approaching language in different ways in a musical context. Rhythmic displacement is one of the main tools for improvisation. For example, starting a phrase on an upbeat sounds less square than starting on a downbeat. Bass players are known to do this as well leaving the first eighth or quarter not...

 November is C Lydian month. (Music For Paintings-- Course of Empire )   

A 70s-ish funk groove in C Dorian with two bass parts, one "bass bass" and another "guitar bass" with echo and reverb on it. The part I'm playing live is another "guitar part".     

Every so often I'll compose etudes for myself based on repeating cycles. It can be practiced on any instrument and consists playing over a pair of chord changes a tritone apart, then proceeding up in fourths (or down in fifths). Each chord has a set of chord scales that can be played over them, and you can play one type across then all, e.g. the Phrygian mode going down in major thirds, or simply playing arpeggios, or mixing it up in different ways. 

0256. Be careful that a planned trajectory does not circle back to where you started. Without bold acts of will, things will naturally default to the basic shapes and characteristics of the universe, circular shapes, orbits, and routines. 

  Based on a field recording (Smartphone audio) *** AI Treatment: Listen on Suno