11/25/2018

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 Marquee Poetry, Lake Theater, Oak Park

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30000 Years

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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 
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On Speech Rhythms

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  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...
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Conundra

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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. 
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1110

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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
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September 30ths

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9/30/1997             Roy Lichtenstein died. His use of ads, cartoons, etc. is similar to using samples in music. Music is really mimicking what happens in the art world, but with a long lag time.     9/30/1998             Surfed the Net on collaborative information filtering idea. Lots of great links: The Game of Life, the “Serendip” page. Must revisit.  [9/30/2024: This was the beginning of what we now know as simply an “algorithm”—the black box that defines the world we experience online, and now in life in general because it is recommending our relationships and how we navigate them. It has not been good for society or democracy because it is about collectivism as opposed to community. Viktor Frankl: “Only the community can ensure the meaning of individuality for the individuals…only the safeguarding of individuality for the individuals can ensure the meaning of community. This is what distingu...
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November 12ths

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11/12/1997 Just as the earth has tectonics creating its own natural boundaries, the Net will have similar divisions, which will comprise yet another overlay to the world. Man is territorial in nature and the idea of a global village with no boundaries is inconceivable. Hence, the vast internet will eventually be [partitioned] based on similar patterns of division.     [11/12/2026: The Blue Wave may have paused the “coup”, which we can now put in quotes. Mississippi elected its first black senator since 1874, so gerrymanders do nothing to corral revolts and revolutions. Power is a function of how boundaries are drawn, but they are still abstractions. Geographical boundaries are actually more powerful because they can cause wars that go on for centuries. So far, state boundaries haven’t been re-drawn, but secessions could possibly happen in the future, where red districts splinter off and are renamed with cardinal names: north, south, east and west.] 11/12/2009   ...
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1111

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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
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October 9ths

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  10/9/1914 Wittgenstein hears continuous cannon fire in the distance for 12 hours. [A cinematic audio treatment from Rings of Saturn that could underscore this moment, although they’re different World Wars]       10/9/1998 Andrew Vachss, legal advocate, crime novelist, blues musician writes essay in Pulse magazine, “Can music be a vehicle for social change?” He makes a valid point that song lyrics are generally innocuous. The power of text (McLuhan: the invention of the alphabet) is somehow tamed when combined with music, not as powerful. (Does anyone really pay attention to the lyrics?) The real vehicle for social change is visual media because it has the capacity to simulate reality. Music is more a “passenger” than a vehicle. It’s a manifestation of worlds created by things we see with our eyes. But the power of pop music is largely dependent on whose ears are hearing it. The message is subjective, even if it’s specific. [ Discuss the use of music for socia...
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Rifts

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   Solo piano improvisations in the Lydian mode for all 12 keys, following the circle of fourths. ***    The purpose of the exercise was to see what I could do manually as an improvisation using a constraint (the Lydian Mode), then create an algorithm to do the same thing. Musical improvisation is one of the highest forms of free will. It will show what is pure free will, simply playing anything on the piano for example. Someone who knows how to play will make some kind of coherent music. Someone who has hardly touched a piano may play on the black keys. The acid test is whether it has musical value. AI could be used to do the same thing and would sound like music, as it has a basic instruction. In contrast, the programming to do the same thing seems completely unrewarding. Even though my piano skills are mediocre, and my implicit knowledge of music well-developed, the music that is human-made is good enough for me. If a non-musician can do it bette...
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