December 15ths

12/15/1966

(Beatles Studio Diary)

By the end of the evening, the remake of “Strawberry Fields Forever” had taken on an intensity of almost frightening proportions. With its frantic strings, blaring trumpets, very heavy drum sound and two manic exceptionally fast Lennon vocals it was far removed from the original, acoustic take of one of the songs recorded on 24 November. Would John be satisfied with it now? For the time being, at least, it was labeled, “best” and was thus subjected to more remixing.

[12/15/2024: 1966 was a sea change year in music, particularly with Revolver. The art world had its major shift probably beginning with Dada and Les Incoherents in France in the 1890s, so it was several generations behind. The end of World War II created a zeitgeist where Norms were changing and they weren’t seen as norm violations. It was when postmodernism became popular]

12/15/1999

Prediction:  In 10 years we'll be creating music on systems with thousands of tracks, each pixel on a screen will be a separate zone that can be recorded into and edited. But the problem will be finding the patience to sort through it all and make a compelling work of art. Like making giant sculptures out of toothpicks.

Applying visual metaphors in the creation of music is an interesting idea and allows non-musicians a chance to design sound, but to be a true musician you have to know how to use the tools, and not be afraid to get your hands dirty by applying pitch, sense of rhythm, scales, and so on.

[12/15/1999@25: The current track limit on ProTools is 256–still a lot compared to the 24 I was using in 1999, 16 ADAT and 8 in DigiDesign (ProTools). The issue is more about the over-complexity of software than the number of tracks. Music has been gradually becoming less about music since the 2000s. I was watching a talk yesterday by a music professor who was saying that music students now are more interested in the politics of music–which is a metaphor of sorts].

"Discuss the use of metaphors and provide examples" 

12/15/2000

Show on NPR All Things Considered about country musician Marty Stewart, who is composing a score for the new film All The Pretty Things with Billy Bob Thornton. Interesting bits: Very American, two guitars in conversation with orchestra, the conductor was Japanese, but was a great accordion player. Marty said he liked the clash of cultures, music evocative of wide open country, all in minor keys, made as “mind cinema”, he followed the story and didn’t get in the way, working on the score he pulled things out that he never knew existed, Thornton writes scenes in film from music, his goal was to satisfy the classicists and the common man, and tuneful enough that remembering the melody would evoke the film. 

Idea: Write specific music for photos so that when you experience either one, the other is evoked in your mind.

[Essentially Photographs For Music]
 

12/15/2012 
            
Secrets to the perfect pancake: Very often pancakes do not fully cook in the center. I believe I have solved this finally. First, the liquid should be room temperature or slightly above, approximately 80 degrees. (Cold milk from the refrigerator is typically around 45 degrees). What I do is mix all the liquid ingredients (including egg if you are using it) and then put in the microwave for 30 seconds. Second, heat up the griddle to blazing hot. I use a seasoned cast iron skillet and heat on high until it starts to smoke slightly, then dial it down to a low flame. Transfer the batter to a large mixing cup with a handle, or if you have a thin batter, pour into a ketchup squeezer. Since pancakes will heat in from the edges, pour the batter onto the skillet from the center out in a spiral motion, adding to the circle directly at the edge. When you flip it, you see a nice spiral pattern, and the pancake is cakey, yet elastic and not too puffed up in the center.

12/15/2015

There can be lots of flavors of techno: techno-optimism, techno-pessimism, techno-narcissism, techno-aesthetics, techno-spiritualism, techno-asceticism (the Amish)—you just have to decide how you want to incorporate new technology, and when. You can’t avoid technology—civilization never has.

We seem to have an obsession for data. But that could be the next step in our evolution as a species: from symbols to speech to text to data to .... Clearly most of this technology could have been on drawing boards for decades but is just now being rolled out. 

"Other societies developed unique methods for information storage and retrieval, such as kipus from South America, which were knotted threads and cords utilized for documenting numbers, calculations, and possibly storing other forms of information like music."  

"Discuss the technologies of prior civilizations"
 

12/15/2022

Another example of how algorithms are running/ruining our lives, “Leo” the AI assistant on the Feedly app will ask you whether a certain article is about a certain topic. The CNN article was titled “Prince Harry says William screamed at him over a royal split with Meghan”, and [Leo] asked me whether the article was about politics. I didn’t think it was so I said “no”. But it was 71 percent confident that the article was about politics. Is it really politics or just tabloid news? Is this article about Drama? 100 percent confident.

Even algorithms are biased towards making things sensational because we make it so. I don’t know why an algorithm on its own would seem to think that this is political--perhaps because the word “scream” is in it, and is about human conflict, so that’s now the determining factor for whether an algorithm will tag something as political--not that it is about Politics per se, alongside serious geopolitical content.
            
Is “Leo” really AI, or is it just polling?

"Discuss how algorithms are a means of social engineering"

12/15/2023

Dream: I was at a shallow pond or the shallow shore on a lake where the water was clear. I waded into the water and had the idea of coming back at night and shining a light on a large stone in the water to take a photograph of it (like a Sugimoto). I was excited about the idea and was trying to find a place where I could sit down and write in my diary. 

Lyric derived: 

 
 

12/15/2024

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. Playing music manually has a temporary calming effect.