Lee Barry Composition Diary

11/30/2000 Smashing Pumpkins final concert at United Center. Pumpkins stuff all over the media, interesting interviews with Corgan. He's much too interesting to be in an inane rock band. It's nice to see him mature. 11/30/2001 George Harrison died at 58. So sad when any well-known musician dies. The saddest one will be when McCartney goes, such great musicians, but I'm afraid there are so few musicians nowadays who can fill that same void. [11/30/2024: He died with the fresh memories of a post-9/11 world. Everyone leaves at some inflection point, good or bad. Memo to 11/30/2044: What were the inflection points for Macca and Ringo?] 11/30/2005 Interesting: I wonder if someone could devise a concept search engine for music as they do with language. [11/30/2024: All digital music should have [accurate] bibliographic metadata, but no one would do that kind of tedious work in the age of AI. You’d be able to search “songs in G Minor at 88 BPM”. At the moment AI is not smart enoug...

This is an interesting way to put the human in the loop: generate the music based on your words, transcribe the melodies and riffs, then arrange for string quartet. The original rhythm based on the rhythm of the words, "Part of the fabric (magic) of America is a rodeo". This is how AI interpreted the words using the prompt: "R&B, Funky, Normal Tempo, Synth, Electric Guitar, Drums, Bass". Not what I expected, but really interesting. The string shortet: String Shortet No. __ ("Rodeo") by meta4s

11/29/2015 The best way to learn something new is to find out (in the easiest way possible) what something is capable of, then immediately do something with it. When you see what music can do and how it works, you immediately want to make music. Another way is to copy or emulate, then follow that path—like tracing an image. Rote learning can sometimes be like going around the world in the horse latitudes, and not seeing or doing much of anything. Go as far north or south as you can, and you can circle the globe in a shorter time. [11/29/2024: AI-generation seems to be the easiest way possible, but circumambulating around such a small area is incredibly boring. You’ll find yourself wanting to leave for a warmer climate]. 11/29/2022 Reading Weston's Daybooks. Interesting (June 1930): "Photography suits the tempo of this age—of active bodies and minds. It is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas, imagery, for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by paint...

 

Used AI on a song from over 30 years ago. Absolutely love the 80s Vince Clarke treatment...dreamy. The thing that is remarkable about AI music is that the "singers" never get tongue-tied or can't pronounce certain words. The "hides footprints of men blown by wind driven sand" line would be difficult for a human to sing. My original  version was a 12/8 blues feel, which makes the line easier to sing. The original scribble in 1992:  

11/28/2005             While I still see the value in music education or enrichment, there’s something very arrogant about it. Music teaching should be Socratic, where the student “pulls” the knowledge rather than pulling what was arrogantly pushed.  [11/28/2025] The best way to make discoveries is to find an access point. It’s the first “secret” doorway].  In the final paragraph of the book Filterworld , the author states: "There is no pure form of culture that happens outside of technological influence, nor is there a singular best way to consume culture. we cannot just rid ourselves of algorithmic influence, even if we wanted to, since the technology has already an inexorably shaped our era. but the first step of escaping the algorithms grip is recognizing it. By moving away from the mindset of passive consumption and thinking about a post algorithmic digital ecosystem, we begin to construct that alternative, demonstrating that the influen...

11/27/1998 Sitting in the park as I write this. The angle of the sunlight this time of year is so low and casts such long shadows. When a cloud passes in front of the sun, everything goes almost completely dark, like an eclipse. The message behind cutting-edge art is “the world is strange, and therefore there’s a reason to make strange art.”     Reduced to a poem: When a cloud passes In front of the sun Everything goes Completely dark The world is strange Therefore there’s a reason To make strange art     11/27/2006 A phrase you hear in every presidency could be a pop tune:   11/27/2020             AI won’t change music like multi-track recording or MIDI did. Tools assist creativity, they don’t eliminate it. To the extent that tools are also machines (as AI is a machine) it could smooth out the rough edges of “hand tools”; Tools are also a work-in-progress, and improvements in the tools used in creativity make inno...

 

 

 

 

Photos taken on the 26th of any month  11/26/1997             Web browsers should have a “this site only” feature to prevent you from straying too far away from your original focus. This makes surfing more like reading just one book with many footnotes, containing hyperlinks that you can explore later.             [11/26/2024: Even in the beginning of the internet, distraction was an issue–primarily through hyperlinks. But distraction is a bug of our cognitive software. It was once simply called daydreaming, where even if you were reading something you liked, there would be points where you thought of something else, or had an idea. This was always the case for me, where I’d want to jot down a lyric line or title that was inspired by something I was reading. That’s how these diaries started, and here I am 27 years later, commenting on it]. [11/26/2025: The problem we all have is a short attention span. That's alw...

A melody heard in a dream on 7/10/2024.  It reminds me of  Madame de Pompidour, delicately rococo, almost annoyingly dainty.     This is one of the 15 minute-long pieces that will be a part of the Sum IV: String Shortets album, with pieces exactly/approximately a minute long Sum II are pieces based on days. Sum III are field recordings and soundwalks an hour long. Sum IV are pieces a minute long. String Shortet No. __ ("7-10 Dream") by meta4s

November 25ths Podcast   11/25/1974 (From the article, "Bowie Meets Springsteen", published in The Drummer magazine) We arrived at Sigma Sound a little after eight. Producer Tony Visconti was arched over a mammoth soundboard, pressing buttons, being generally pleasant to the half-dozen engineers and musicians in the control room, and peering into the large windowed studio directly in front. The album was practically finished. The first rough mix had been accomplished since Bowie recorded the basic tracks some weeks ago, and this week had been devoted to clean-ups and overdubs. This was the final night in the studio for the album; the final touches would now be made. "I'm Only Dancing (She turns me on)" [subsequently released as "Hang On To Yourself"] was being played back.... "You know Barry Goldwater is resigning from politics to become President of a UFO organization... he's not really resigning from politics, he just realizes they can't...

11/24/1872 (Letters of William James) To Harry James: On this saintly Sabbath morn I take up my long unwonted pen to make you a report of progress at home ensheathed in other gossip. I sit at your old table facing the Lowell's empty house which has grown to look more tumble down than ever during the absence of the family in the country—(they are still there, old Mrs. L. being sick)—the double sashes just put up in front and a sickly mist-swathed November sunshine pouring through the back window on the right... [Almost a century into the future, a group of young musicians play these new "electrified" instruments and magically makes a new "sound book"] 11/24/1966 (Beatles Recording Sessions) "And so the Beatles entered the new phase of their career. No longer the tidy, smiling 'Fab Four', singing boy/girl pop songs on stage. Now they were casually dressed, sometimes mustachioed, smiling-when-they-wanted—be-Beatles who would make the greatest ever batc...

Taking a break from the AI music to do some scoring. This Songday is based on 4/29/1805 entry by Lewis (or) Clark. "Marthys River" n/k/a "Martha's River", or Big Muddy Creek. 4/29/1805 (Lewis And Clark) "Courses and distances of the 29th of April...to the entrance of a Marthys river in a bend on Stard where we encamped for the night. this stream we call [ blank] 25... miles" This might be a vibe for the next Sum II album. Martha's River (String Quartet and Choir) by meta4s

11/23/1998 The recording and manipulation of sound loops are the future of music, although the power of computers is the essential element of such prospects. But people will always be impressed by the artist who displays some skill and not relying on computers to create art. The real skill is the artistic eye (ear), and the sense of how and why the product should exist. [11/23/2024: The power is certainly here now, and even more power in another 25 years, but to what end in terms of real skill? I find that I feel happier when I'm engaged with music directly, playing an instrument and writing notes on a staff. It's not produced at all, and I don't expect it to be. The rub between AI music and real music might be in the expectations: People expect music to be perfectly produced, and that is what we get from AI music, but it puts the brain in a different mode, which I think may make it more prone to anxiety and depression. Everything we do is changing our brains in some way. T...

In progress: 35 years of musing on music in a slim 100-page volume. Images are the series of 12 from Chromatic Windows

11/22/1963, Friday President Kennedy's Diary Entry                 "Discuss the Kennedy assassination"  11/22/1968, Friday (Beatles Recording Sessions) "A massive out-pouring of Beatles recordings: 30 in one double set. This was what the Beatles wanted, and they were in charge. But George Martin probably wished that he still held the upper hand. "With the 'White Album' they'd come back from India with 32 songs and they wanted to record every one of them. I listened to them all and there were some which I didn't think were that great. But a split had already taken place and they were wanting to do their own things, so the whole of the album, because there was so much to do, became fragmented, with two, sometimes three studios in use at any one time. I almost became Executive Producer, running from one studio to another and handling one particular thing while the Beatles and Chris Thomas got on with other things." 11/22/2009 Book: From Bauhaus...

11/21/1964 (Eva Hesse Diary)             “One must take pride in what one is and achieves. I still doubt myself in both myself and my work. In competing with Tom I must unconsciously be competing with my alter ego. In his achievements I see my failures.” “Instead of waiting for external recognition or applause, learn to applaud your own steps and value what you have created. This shifts focus from checking what rivals are doing (which triggers bad feelings when they get ahead) to productive personal action.” “Discuss social comparison”   11/21/1997 Interesting Leonard Cohen quote: "I have a lot of admiration for anyone that just stands up and does it. The content of the material doesn't concern me; it's the fact of the performance—it's the courage and the balls." [11/21/2024: “Standing up” got redefined on the internet in the ensuing few years after 1997. By 2000, having your own website was the equivalent of “putting yourself out there”. Now it’s...

The 1995 version had a syncopated feel and arose from the metaphor of arteries being like rivers. This version was performed by a really good band in a smoky bar outside of Baton Rouge circa 1978. It's fun to play with AI but I see it as a really low art devoid of any craft. Also, when you attempt to play them there's little musical substance. An analogy would be like using what looks like a real map, only to find that when you get to the the place you think you're going to, it's just an empty field. They're mirages essentially.

11/20/1903 (Paris)   (Harry Kessler Diary) He doesn’t think Germans believe in art, even if they are artists themselves or are art historians.             [11/20/2024: What art was he referring to? Perhaps this was a sea change happening in the older generations born in the 1850s reacting to the change in painting, Cezanne, etc. “Belief in art” means having a tolerance for The New, whatever it may be. Those tolerances are different for everyone]. “Discuss Kessler's opinions of Germans”  11/20/1947 Jack Kerouac: There's too much of the " pale criminal " with us, and not enough simple beauty", in reverence of the wedding of [Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten]. "A wedding, a young bride, those things are the center of existence..." 11/20/1998             Reading essays on architecture. One architect described his architect father as “only making monuments to his own ego.” 11/20/1999    ...

 Thoughts on Ken Burns' documentary Was the preeminent sci-artist, autodidact Work of effortless effort Connector of the ancient and premodern worlds, post-medieval polymath Moved on to geometry from painting. Very often artists get bored with doing one thing, and they are more interested in things that are ramifying in nature Penchant for not finishing things is interesting because I like resolving things. Perhaps they were unfinished because they couldn't be resolved. Fascinated by water down to the molecular level, particles of dust Mind always elsewhere. Everything is a door to something else Perhaps cognitive and/or emotional issues, insomnia, caffeine, other substances Would not have understood why people who lived 500 years in the future were as stupid as they were. The world had just emerged from the dark ages

11/19/1964             (Eva Hesse Diary)             “I refuse to fear any longer....When a problem, just do it then and there, say it, write it and get rid of it. Face all that I fear, to fear it no longer. . . In my work too. If crazy forms, do them outright. Strong, clear. No more haze...Risk nothing—nothing gained.” [11/19/2025: Essentially a “just do it” or “just in time” (JIT) approach, where you work from the right hemisphere and trust intuition. I’m of “two minds” about this because we can tend to accept ideas that are perhaps too provisional–and if you worked with them you could create a better version with some re-writes].  As a lyric: When there's a problem Just do it Then and there Say it Write it Face it Strong and clear Nothing risked Nothing gained No more haze [Inside the brain]          11/19/1997             Interesting segment of Jere...