April 17ths

An idea for 4/17 based on diary entries--most likely to be atmospheric in its production. Essentially, Music For Places.

4/17/1998

Book: Vernacular Landscape by John B. Jackson. Book of essays drawn from lectures about the application of various disciplines to the development of environments.

4/17/2010

Interesting: Even though Stravinsky spent most of his life outside Russia, he always considered himself deeply rooted in his homeland. The music sounds like the product of cultural deracination, but is nostalgic at its core. He said, "I have spoken Russian all my life. I think in Russian, my way of expressing myself is Russian. Perhaps this is not immediately apparent in my music, but it is latent there, a part of its hidden nature." (Childhood is not necessarily the ground your life is built upon, but rather the pedestal on which the statue of your life sits.) 

The distilled poem idea:

The power of a word to define us
Rooted in a homeland
Returning to the shore

A vernacular landscape
A lexical landscape

Extending things beyond their completeness
A part of a hidden nature
Is a childhood at the core

The statue of a life on a pedestal
Cultural deracination
Is nostalgic at the core
 

String Arrangement:

4/17/2021

I've done a lot of ambient music and after a while I got kind of tired of it. And so what I do in those instances is to merge it with other things. I’ll go into a different headspace with some of my songs and make them atmospheric which satisfies the urge to do things that are ambient, as well as the reverse when I've become tired of songs, which can be very work-intensive or frustrating to produce. An ambient mix done is quick and you could do an album in a week like jazz records. The takeaway is that if you want to work quickly, develop your skills and then just go in and do it and treat the recording as a prototype and then go back and add the “outside” elements and atmosphere. But in terms of keeping your work fresh I think it's okay to skip around a lot.
 

4/17/2022

Frigid and dreary spring.

Interesting yet disturbing on Easter: Just like in Pinochet’s Chile, brutal crimes go unpunished, and it’s never determined whether it was a military operation, individuals, or both. 

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Creativity can be taught with techniques involving combinations, associations (near and distant), use of metaphor (or simply being aware of them), creativity for productivity (following through from idea to resolution), use of recursion, seriality, generativity (the latter of which drives creativity by extending things beyond where they completed), linearity versus non-linearity, and so on. In the visual arts, various art movements were pedagogical and didactic, such as the Bauhaus movement, the DeStijl movement, and others that developed creative methodologies. One could study them and apply techniques in any discipline. (Design Thinking is an example). If innovation matters, then creativity can and should be taught.

4/17/2025: A recent AI-generated podcast on this:

4/17/2024

Today’s Songday: Vernacular Landscape. The idea was to make it light, airy and atmospheric, perhaps with a gamelan pattern music mesh groove. Guitar tracks sound Gilmour-ish. As much as I love Gilmour, I don’t want him on everything. What’s going to happen with these songdays as I collect them is that they can be revised each year--like a new edition or software update.

4/17/2025

Drop 31 idea using natural harmonics and fretted notes for major 7ths:

 

 

This morning I had an idea for a song lyric that's based on “dressing for someone else”, meaning changing your behavior to fit the expectations of others, or having to “dress for the weather.”

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