July 17ths

 

 

This combines elements of two diary entries 74 years apart, and uses a preexisting song title as a part of the lyric. It asks, "Is is better to just "be" than to be someone?" The string quartet is a Beatles "fragrance".

7/17/1895, Cambridge (William James Correspondence)

To G. H. Howison: “How you have misunderstood the application of my word “trivial”....The word came out of one who is unfit to be a philosopher because at bottom he hates philosophy, especially at the beginning of a vacation, with the fragrance of the spruces and sweet ferns all soaking him through with the conviction that it is better to be than to define your being. I am a victim of neurasthenia [chronic fatigue] and of the sense of hollowness and unreality that goes with it....”

7/17/1969 (Beatles Studio Diary)

Studio 3, Paul vocals on Oh Darling. He usually comes to the studio around 2P and has been doing many takes. Now the sessions were done individually. They were rarely together in the studio. He wants to capture a rawness before his voice changed.

[Interesting: Abbey Road evinces the feeling of warm camaraderie with everyone lovingly collaborating, but each came individually to the studio to do their parts, which is evidence that most of recorded music history is non-linear, a facet inherited from film production, where emotional valences are artificially created.].

7/17/2021, Saturday

I was thinking about the “replacement” of knowledge, i.e. gaining knowledge later on in life which replaces what you did before. The example I still use is the way I played music when I was younger and the way that I play and write music now following having a formal musical training. This probably happens to other people as well where you intuitively work on something before you’ve had any training or education, and then once you’ve had training you forget how you used to work. I can’t remember how I played music in 1978 for example. Knowledge of theory replaced it, although I can reactivate it to some degree with alternate tunings that remap the fingerboard.            

Things just fall away once you’ve gotten to a higher level. The lower levels are closed off and there’s no stairway down. You can revisit older ways of working but you won’t get anything from it once you’ve progressed to another level. The question becomes whether there’s something inherently wrong with that as if it’s an abandonment.

Another thing that’s reshaped my approach to music is simply the interest in lots of other things such as Systems. In fact, music is a system, albeit a very simple one. When you know how it works you can create all kinds of things within it and you don’t have to be nostalgic for the way you used to do things. #riff  

[7/17/2025: On-point on relying on AI to make music. Your skills would devolve and over time would lose the ability to "fly". You'd become a musical penguin. "People who’ve never driven a car without GPS can’t drive using road signs, for example. Your brain has offloaded the task and it’s really, really hard to take it back. And so the more machines are used by human creators for certain tasks in music creation, the less likely it is that humans can then perform those tasks and train future artists and musicians and songwriters to perform those tasks. That’s a serious risk."] [More]

7/17/2022

Imagine going to a gallery or museum and all the art is framed pages from adult coloring books, done by people who have conned the public that they are artistic geniuses. (In fact, they actually might be if they can sell the idea that the deskilled artist is the more popular artist). Coloring books are a way to both dumb down art and somehow exalt it. Autotune (or any popular effect) can be that coloring book. It is also a kind of “advertisement” for music. It is the commercial for the music within the music. It is the “product placement” within the “film”.

[7/17/2025: AI Music is essentially a coloring book. Some “advanced” users can produce the actual outlines that get colored in. The way I look at AI authorship is that if you made or designed some kind of a seed that drives the whole work, then you were at least a co-writer and have rights that have legal weight.]  

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There is a philosophy in pop music that talking about music theory is anathema to the spirit of creativity. To many musicians, music is about the sound and the social rewards. Learning music might interfere with those mojos. I am of two minds about focusing on rudiments. Sometimes we don’t need them because intuition might be strong enough to allow the music to happen. In jazz, both are happening at once: everyone knows the core theory and so it doesn’t need to be deliberated.     

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Romance languages tend to be more staccato using more 16th notes, whereas English tends to be more legato. A “romantic” feel will typically have slower tempos and longer note values and will be more characteristic in cultures where love songs are cherished. Also, soft consonants are more romantic, such as soft R’s as opposed to square twangy R’s, and with rounder vowel sounds.

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Current book: The Power Of Daily Practice. There was an interesting part about who we identify as painters, regardless of domains. Are you a Paul Klee or a Joan Miro in your working style? How do we show up for creativity, and where are we on the spectrum of serious to playful, left-brained to right-brained? When I am in divergent mode I’m in idea-collection mode and open to happy accidents. But at some point you have to get started on making something, which will tilt you into left-brain mode. If I’m working in a score I’m almost all left-brain. Since I’m not a skilled orchestrator I have to study more. The Songdays are now my daily practice, whereas before it was the daily riffs, which I stopped doing.

7/17/2025

The 3 levels of meaning of a lyric (can combine all 3):

1. Specific: It tells a specific story, either fictional, real-life or a combination
2. Vague/Ambiguous: Possible narratives, single lines or couplets hint at possible meanings
3. Wordplay/Nonsense: Words serve as placeholders for sounds. Words are used rhythmically or percussively.  

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Slang-y music. What that do? 

What That Do? (7/17/2025) by meta4s