July 18ths

7/18/1886

(Thomas Sullivan AI Diary)

Sally finally convinced me to attend the opera—my first time at the Auditorium. I confess I approached it with some skepticism, expecting pretentious warbling and overwrought dramatics. I love it. The contralto—Madame Schumann-Heink, possessed a voice that seemed to emerge from the very depths of human experience. When she sang Azucena's aria in the second act, something within me broke open. The raw emotion, the technical mastery, the way she commanded that vast space with nothing but breath and will—I found myself weeping openly in my seat. Sally squeezed my hand, understanding without words. She has always possessed an intuitive grasp of beauty that I'm only now learning to recognize.     

7/18/2006 

At Millennium Park there is a street performer that does a show with marionettes. In order to appreciate the performance, one has to focus attention on the puppets and block out the performer. In essence, this is a “suspension of disbelief”, i.e. knowing something is clearly fake, but choosing not to notice it.

[7/18/2025: Now with most of us using generative AI to some extent–or at least seeing it everyday, we’ve normalized it. Normalizing requires that suspension of disbelief that AI-generated content could actually be good. But it’s all arising from anonymous fragments. In 20 years we might be nostalgic for the music of our youth, but there might not be a real artist associated with it: we don’t know who sang it or played guitar or bass on it. There will be no interviews or documentaries…]        

 

7/18/2015

New Kithara, 19.75 x 25.25 inches, acrylic and pastel on paper.

Abstract expressionist painting partially inspired by the alternately-tuned instruments of Harry Partch.  

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7/18/2020

2010 was the first year that I got my first pair of ear mics and a portable recorder. What I was most interested in was finding places that had embedded Keynotes or Soundmarks (continuous pitched elements in a place) which I wanted to integrate into my ambient music. Field recordings are actually a great way to listen to the environment because the recording apparatus has done some of that listening for you: when you come back and listen to the recording, you hear things that you missed when you were there.

7/18/2024

A year ago Montpelier Vermont was hit with catastrophic flooding. What’s particularly interesting about this footage is that it is full of keynotes and rhythms produced by the various alarms. All of them fit under a drone in A minor. 

Revisited my old Music Ideas list from the 90s. This is #75 "She's A Star". I think the idea at the time was that the word "star" would have a dissonant interval in it. This would be the intro, a la You Can't Always Get You Want, but would be a fast EDM, not classic rock. In the end, both she (and he) are "diminished".

Female Voices

She's a star
She's our star
She's a star
He's so glam
She's a star
She's our star!
She's a star

Male Voices

He's our Tzar
He's our man
He's so glam
He's a Tsar
He's a star!
He's a star 

She's A Star (Revised) by meta4s

AI Experiments. I like the happy accident "She's aTtsar"