May 12ths

Today's Songday uses a Beatles title and old song of mine from 5/1992, where I'm using the same chord changes, then using it for a Mother's Day greeting. The original song was about a first date between people with nothing in common. But the alternate story is that they eventually got married and had kids. They probably still have nothing in common.

 

Some of the original lyric:

A man in search of love
A woman in search of same
They meet at the corner cafe
To drink espresso and cafe latte

She's a cultured artist
He's in a labor trade
They sit at their table
And never have a word to say

Her life's a watercolor
In his football field of dreams
He talks of scores and players
She doesn't even know the teams

The AI version, a "faux" jazz, but interesting in its own way. AI-generation reduces music composition to a description of it. So it's describing music, not composing it. You can describe a house you want to live in, but it has to be built, which won't involve that much AI.

5/12/1967, Friday

Beatles at EMI: 7.00 pm-12.30 am. 'All Together Now', for the Yellow Submarine soundtrack.

5/12/2008

If you can’t find a ‘spiritual’ core in making any art(meaning accessible at some human level (good or bad) don’t bother doing it. 

[I bothered to make work 2008-2020, some of it in retrospect not spiritual in any way, but I still have a desire for that goal.] 

[5/12/2025: I made only one painting since 2020, a paint-over of a work from 2012. I’m still anti-object which is why I prefer scoring music and creating digital art. Physical art has to hold meaning long enough for it to remain relevant enough to hang on a wall for years. Physical art is also visible to fewer people in its entirety: If a work is in a private collection there may only be a photograph of it that the public sees, whereas audio recordings are a kind of digital photograph that can still have a negative (score) and can be “reconstituted”. I’m not against making art, but it’s an object that has to be stored if not otherwise displayed. Music manuscripts create whole libraries but now many of them are digitized. If you have a PDF of everything, at least you have that. MIDI and XML are more archival if they are on servers that will be maintained over centuries]. 

5/12/2011

To Jazz Showcase. It’s interesting to observe jazz club patrons: they hardly move their bodies, like at a symphony. Most of the young girls (apparently) on dates with their jazz-loving boyfriends have a glazed look of boredom on their faces (“Get me out of here”). Looking at the audience is sometimes more interesting than what’s going on on-stage. 

5/12/2012

The ability to read and write music notation has precipitously devolved from the skill set of people involved with any type of organization of sound, i.e. audio art and/or music. But in cases where some type of 'score' is required, standard notation is still the tool of choice.

When I teach music, I typically treat the introduction of notation with kid gloves, as it can be intimidating to students with a resistance to theoretical or scholastic approaches to learning music. But standard music notation is an excellent framework for giving instructions, without being arrogant or dictatorial. It shows people the way without confusing them, as everything is clearly stated yet left open to some interpretation.

5/12/2021

Guitar Video No. 24 (Tessellation) A DADGAD piece in 5/8 one minute long (60 seconds at 1/8th note=300 for a total of 60 bars, plus an ending bar). It can also be played in standard tuning, or double-drop D (DADGBD) 

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An AI-generated analysis of a video riff, Containers of Music: 

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5/12/2023

Quora question: “Why can’t I think of new creative ideas?” It could be how our brains are wired—-or how the society at-large is wired. I think the majority of the population might have a bias for left-brained thinking and so that becomes the norm. I noticed in music the prevailing notion is that you should be covering other artists’ music before you can consider creating your own. I wonder why that is, and again, it could be how society collectivizes its cultural norms. You may want to consider whether you might be “gaslighted” by these cultural ideas. In terms of how you could push back against that, make a concerted effort to be more curious and observant. For example, take photographs without using a camera, meaning “scouting” possible photos, then going back and capturing them. This will train you to be mindful of creative possibilities. 

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I've been enjoying watching clips of Peter Gabriel's tour. Use of trumpets and french horns is a nice "chamber music" touch. He looks like a Chinese terracotta warrior in his "uniform". 

5/12/2025

Did an AI analysis of the Containers of Music riff. 

Prediction: To the extent AI music generators are using the same data sets, within 5 years, you'll be able to play two or three songs together, and it will (sorta) work. Mashups will be made by AI as well.  There will be playlists and radio stations with DJs devoted to this. That's not uninteresting.