Lee Barry Composition Diary

2/28/1976 From: "Bowie: Now I'm A Businessman" "...This time - boosted by the success of his Fame single all the attention he has received in the past four years - Bowie played the 14,000 seat Cow Palace (the city's largest rock hall) and the response was phenomenal. Though his 90-minute set started slowly as Bowie concentrated on new material, he worked up such an enthusiasm in the arena with his versions of such early, well-known works as Changes, Rebel Rebel and Jean Genie that a rare thing happened after the first, rather obligatory encore."        2/28/1998 Idea: Music for retirement communities.  2/28/1999  There’s an invisible line between life and art.   2/28/2000 Interview on NPR with Bob Moog. He said that even though he spent most of his life in electronic music, it still feels good to play the piano. We need a tactile connection with music. Clara Rockmore: She was the only theremin virtuoso. Very often there will be only one person who wil...

2/27/1943 (Diary of Anne Frank) Jan brought along the episcopal letter that the bishops addressed to their parishioners. It was beautiful and inspiring. "People of the Netherlands, stand up and take action. Each of us must choose our own weapons to fight for the freedom of our country, our people and our religion! Give your help and support.  A chant:       2/27/1998 Bill Russo on WBEZ this morning about recreations of jazz records from the 1920s. Since most of the performances are only on vinyl, the music needs to be transcribed. I wonder what is lost, or gained, from transcription. It brought to mind the new transcription of Brian Eno’s Music For Airports . Bill also talked about his trip to Italy saying that everyone’s lives are in an improvisatory style. The key is to have the faith and skill to know that you will be able to solve any problem that comes along. [2/17/2025: I have been doing quite a bit of transcription from the AI generated music. it’s interesting...

  The Great Parade - Fernand Leger (1954)   Original song idea used words and phrases from May 27 diary entries from the Beatles studio diary and my entry of 5/27/2019.  May 27, 1966, Friday Long sequence involving Bob Dylan and John Lennon, filmed riding in the back of a limo driving into central London. No script or direction other than to themselves. The piece was long and incomprehensible, made worse by the fact that they were both on drugs. The sequence was intended to form part of Eat The Document, a chronicle of Dylan’s latest European concert tour.  May 27, 2019 Memorial Day. Went to the parade and was thinking about America’s soul. I had heard Bill Clinton use the term “trilemma” in an interview.  Original riff:   The arrangement for string quartet, a minute long. (All the tracks on Sum IV are a minute long)   _ String Shortet No. 4 ("At the Parade") by meta4s   While it would have no association with The Beatles per se (except for ...

Just What is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?--Richard Hamilton    The Songday date is December 27, 2022, the day of the first draft.    The Shortet arrangement: Shortet No. 5 ("Heaven As Home") by meta4s

2/26/1998 Did remix of Ice Moons and remix of Splat , a short 2-minute piece. Could possibly be fleshed out.  George Bernard Shaw: There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire, the other is to get it.  Phil Glass on Sessions at West 54th. I don’t completely see the point of having humans play like machines, or vice versa, but Glass found his voice and became successful at it. [2/26/2026: Playing like a machine is actually a form of meditation as it becomes a kind of “mantra”.] 2/26/1999 This is the age of recycling ideas rather than inventing them. The invention is the way in which ideas are recycled and what their effect is. But I'm sort of suspicious of how merely creating collages of things can ultimately be that interesting. Everyone seems to want to be somewhere other than where they are. A friend showed me the mp3.com site. I'm skeptical because I think the sheer amount of things to listen to will trivialize music. We're overstuffed on musi...

2/25/1997 Final mix of Force of Will . [2/25/2025: 28 years later, the AI-generated version]: [2/25/2026: I still like my own version, even played on a uke. Not that the AI version isn't interesting in its own way, but you probably couldn't reduce it to chords and melody, and if you did, the result wouldn't be musically interesting on its own. That's typically the problem with AI music in general. I suppose over time, the training data will make the harmony more interesting. But humans will always be more effective--the reason being time itself. There is a difference between the creative moment with a guitar and a creative moment waiting for the result from typing a prompt]. 2/25/1998 Sitting in Starbucks listening to 1970s groove jazz, Herbie Mann/ Herbie Hancock, realizing that much of hip-hop and rap is based on the two-bar grooves that were the basis for long psychedelic improvisations. Also interesting that at this time (1974), Muhammad Ali was becoming famous and...

2/24/2001 Idea: Stories or song lyrics based on letters ghost-written by a jailed poet for Illiterate inmates who want to communicate with lovers, family, and so on. [ More ] According to Louis Armstrong, scat was born in 1926 when he dropped his lyric sheet in a recording studio and had to keep going. They didn't have the luxury of retakes. 2/24/2008               The New York Philharmonic does a series of concerts in North Korea as cultural diplomacy. The audience looked either bored, agitated, or were nodding off. The choice of music was ironic as it comes—Dvorak’s New World and Gershwin’s American In Paris , suffused with sex and hedonism unbeknownst to the audience. This is as imperialist as anything the U.S. military has done. Next in the NK series—Eric Clapton. American culture can be more accurately described through pop culture and its genesis in the work of Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, and The Beatles. 2/24/2013        ...

My tribute to David Lynch using scenes from Mulholland Drive, Rabbits, Lost Highway , and Blue Velve t.  as well as a painting by Edward Hopper. The lyric is mine, formerly written for GPT#9 , but not used. Music is AI-generated. The idea for the lyric is more prosaic and banal--about life in an alienated screen-based world, in a bleak urban landscape of suburban strip malls rather than vibrant cities. It's more like a movie set than it is real life. The reference to Sephora has to do with a Sephora in my town where they put the entrance in the back towards the parking lot, and the front of the store has an ugly vinyl applique (back to the street). What would be the main entrance is now a utility door. It's something that annoys me. The Shortet based on Variation 2:  Shortet No. 16 ("See You In the Movie") by meta4s

  Based on a June 30, 1930 diary (daybook) entry by Edward Weston in Carmel California: Fog has lifted—brilliant sun. This provides the happy accident of shadows cast upon the work. Played a Caesar Franck Symphony as well as a Bach Concerto, read, sunned, dreamed.  The early idea as a song:           The artwork: This is a photography of Carmel in 1930 but isn't "cinematic" enough for the music. The mood of this music is dark, due to the parallel minor chords. The still from the Wizard of Oz works well. Again, it shifts the location, in this case, Kansas (A Place Like Kansas)             The Shortet:   Shortet No. 6 ("Carmel") by meta4s

  Madame de Pompadour (as a gardener) -- Carle van Loo  6/28/1934 (Edward Weston Diary) I have often noted Sonya sitting in the little Mexican chair, knees crossed, and one leg twined around the other in a seemingly impossible way,—impossible to me at least—suggesting one vine twisting around another. Anyhow it had a dynamic flow which at once suggested new subject matter. With time, and a new idea, I get into action at once. So this morning I have a new negative before me. No doubt as to its value. It may start a whole series in a new vein. Maybe I’ll travel legwise up to other fragments. I have not done nudes for several years and methinks I am ready, and better able than ever before. There is something out of place in my back. This morning I could hardly move in bed with pain. Each day I have thought it would pass. I so dislike doctors—unknown ones—but I must find one to snap me together. The "lyric" Sonya sitting in a Mexican chair One vine, around another With time, I ge...

    A song where the lyric is all titles of Beatles songs from 1965. 2/23/1965 Studio Two (control room only): 10.00am-1.00pm. Stereo mixing: 'Yes It Is' (from take 14); 'You've Got To Hide Your Love Away' (from take 9); 'If You've Got Trouble' (from take 1); 'Tell Me What You See' (from take 4); 'I Need You' (from take 5); 'Another Girl' (from take 1); 'Ticket To Ride' (from take 2); 'You Like Me Too Much' (from take 8); 'The Night Before' (remix 1, from take 2); 'You're Going To Lose That Girl' (remix 1, from take 3); 'That Means A Lot' (from take 1); 'You're Going To Lose That Girl' (remix 2, from take 3). Studio Two by meta4s

2/23/1944             (Diary of Anne Frank) “The best remedy for those who are frightened, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere they can be alone, alone with the sky, nature and God. For then and only then can you feel that everything is as it should be and that God wants people to be happy amid nature’s beauty and simplicity. As long as this exists, and that should be forever, I know that there will be solace for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances. I firmly believe that nature can bring comfort to all who suffer. Oh, who knows, perhaps it won’t be long before I can share this overwhelming feeling of happiness with someone who feels the same as I do.” Black-out poetry:           For those who are frightened,  lonely or unhappy, go outside alone with the sky, nature and God.  for then and only then– can you feel nature’s beauty  as long as this exists (and that should be forever) know that there wil...

2/22/1999 The most interesting thing about a piece of music is how it develops and how well it positions itself in the landscape of all other music. Music never had "salons" but it's that kind of effect. 2/22/2013  Finished Macrophage . It looked demonic a few days ago with the plain Red Cross in blood red but “white washing” it with a “Mondrian Stripe” "healed" it up.   2/22/2018 Working on Rings of Saturn track re: Dunwich. Apparently, a huge hurricane-like storm devastated the area in the 13th century: "On New Year's Eve 1285, a storm tide devastated the lower town and the portside so terribly that for months afterwards no one could tell where the land ended and the sea began..." https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-suffolk-35549952   2/22/2025 The more theory you know isn’t going to make the art better. I like my level of mastery in music, and it allows me to create art at that level. What’s the point of learning just for the sake of learning, ...

  The Last Judgment (Panel Detail) -- Hieronymus Bosch                                       Based on a June 25, 1986 Keith Haring diary entry:  " The best reason to paint is that there is no reason to paint . I'd like to pretend that I've never seen anything, never read anything, never heard anything...and then make something. Every time I make something I think about the people who are going to see it and every time I see something I think about the person who made it. Nothing is important...so, everything is important." Original rhythmic idea from the phrase:     Shortet No. 9 ("June 25, 1986") by meta4s      

2/21/1998             John Lennon said that whatever changes we go through, whether they be permanent or not, last forever because it brought the relationship to a point where both people changed, and that change would not have been possible without the relationship.             Film: Mother and Son by Russian filmmaker. Visually seductive. I would have liked to have seen more image manipulation rather than long static scenes of them in existential discourse. Not much of a score, which gave me lots of ideas of how I do it. Film was in a small theater at the Music Box, replete with lumpy seats and poor sight lines. It’s so funny to watch people before the show playing musical chairs to audio, while looking at the back of someone’s head.  *** As a "redacted" lyric/poem:             *** Reduced to lyrics: Went to see a movie Visually seductive Long static scenes In the music box Too ha...

 Based on two diary entries made on July 2: 7/2/1907, Tuesday (Paris) (Harry Kessler Diary) Visited Renoir with Vollard this afternoon in Montmartre, rue Caulaincourt...Renoir sat on a rolling chair and painted a long, life-size blond nude, a replica of the nude at Gallimard’s. His black-haired model Gabrielle, in a loose yellow calico blouse, cleaned his brushes afterward. He had her bring out a nude of her, as she lay on the sofa with her mature, rather round form...  7/2/1969 (Beatles Studio Diary) Studio 2, Golden Slumbers . Paul lives close to the studio so he arrives before everyone else and works on Her Majesty.  Extracted lyric: Verse 1 Renoir sat on a rolling chair And painted a life-size blond A replica of the nude at Gallimard’s His black-haired Gabrielle In a loose calico blouse Verse 2 Had her bring out a nude of her A painted life-size blond Paul lives close to the studio He arrives before everyone else His black-haired Gabrielle In a loose calico blouse Map...

2/20/1965 (Complete Beatles)             ...’That Means A Lot’...was written for the new film and the Beatles had two separate attempts at recording it (this day and again on 30 March), neither successful, before they discarded the song and gave it instead to the day’s controversial singer P. J. Proby. Said John Lennon at the time, “The song is a ballad which Paul and I wrote for the film but we found we just couldn’t sing it. In fact, we made a hash of it, so we thought we’d better give it to someone who could do it well.” Proby recorded his version at Abbey Road on 7 April 1965, produced by Ron Richards. So what was wrong with the Beatles’ version? Actually, not a lot. If the Beatles were, as John Lennon indicated, unable to record the song correctly that may have been because it was an over-complex and somewhat unusually structured composition. [2/20/2026: A good example of something that happens as you write lots of material. Some of it starts to s...

This letter perfectly works as poetry, and perhaps a lyric, perhaps perfectly for Father's Day 6/16/1895, Springfield Centre, N.Y. (Letters of William James) To Mrs. Henry Whitman: "Just reviving from the addled and corrupted condition in which the Cambridge year has left me; just at the portals of that Adirondack wilderness for the breath of which I have sighed for years, unable to escape the cares of domesticity and get there; just about to get a little health into me, a little simplification and solidification and purification and sanification—things which will never come again if this one chance be lost; just filled to satiety with all the simpering conventions and vacuous excitements of so-called civilization; hungering for their opposite, the smell of the spruce, the feel of the moss, the sound of the cataract, the bath in its waters, the divine outlook from the cliff or hill-top over the unbroken forest..." Adirondack wilderness The breath of which I have sighed fo...

2/19/2002 Lyric: If it wasn't for the misery that we feel we'd be made of steel.             2/19/2016 What I realize when I see savants play music is that musical ability doesn’t necessarily arise from structured learning. All people probably have infinite potential, but some individuals have feedback loops in the brain that cause a piquancy in certain abilities. The musical genius has the ability to shorten the distance between sound memory/processing and the fingers. Musicians' ears are naturally attuned to ambient rhythms in the environment. City environments are particularly rich in pitched elements such as squeaking brakes, car horns, and at stoplights—a Cagean symphony of car stereos. Ambient sounds in rural environments, such as the sounds of fast trains, are well known to have influenced many rhythms in folk and pop music. I call it “Window Music” because sounds outside sometimes blend in with what you’re listening to inside, even if in your headph...

  Jim Nutt -- Plumb 7/10/2024 It's infrequent that I get musical ideas in dreams, but usually they are 2-4 bar loops, not unlike how we develop ear worms that are similarly short and repeat over and over.    

Gravitation -- Vasily Kandinsky   The rhythmic idea for this shortet is based on the phrase "Cult of creativity--idea to product, 2 random lines from a 6/24/2023 diary entry on a book I was reading at the time, Cult of Creativity . "The essence of creativity might be a winnowing process from idea to product" .   Shortet No. 15 ("Idea To Product") by meta4s

2/18/1978 From Confession of an Elitist : I've decided I'm a Generalist now! A Generalist? Yes. I thought that just about covered all grounds. It encompasses anything I wish to do, really. I find, for instance, I really want to paint seriously now, and not toy with it, and I am painting very seriously now, every available moment. 2/18/2025 Once you've been doing something for a long time, in any domain, you can alternate between styles. For example, now I'm experimenting with AI in music, and at the same time writing string quartets. If you've developed any kind of a skill, you don't want to let it go to seed while you explore new technologies. What you want is to set up two poles or two extremes and you can work within that range. For example, one extreme is writing in a 19th century style in music notation, and the other extreme using AI.   

  The Death of Decius Mus -- Peter Paul Rubens The core rhythm is derived from the line in Martin Luther King's April 3, 1968 speech, "The nation is sick, trouble is in the land".    Shortet No. 13 ("April 3, 1968") by meta4s

2/17/1998   “The virtue of abstract models is that they enable us to keep an enormous amount in mind while paying attention to a minimum of detail.” (Jerome Bruner, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds ). This translates to music as follows: the virtue of well-wrought forms is that they enable us to keep _____.” This also reminds me of polyrhythmic African music, where we’re playing a simple repeating line that contributes to the intricate layered gestalt of rhythmic figures. [ Explore ]   2/17/1999 The web is the medium by which people can offer things outside the mainstream, a way of giving people a fix for their dreams. The medium is the message.   2/17/2021   Part of the reason that I've gone back to doing music is that it doesn't make objects. I see music as being “plans”. As I've said before, once I have something written down in a lead sheet or in a score, I see that as a finished piece, even if I haven't tracked it. It's one of the reasons I’ve become “neoclassical...

2/16/1998 A statement that sounds good, but needs to be proven: “As long as the rhythmic structure supports it, music can be built in many layers, but only to the point where the music disintegrates, and the many parts have nothing in common.” (A good example of complexity is African music where each player and rhythm dovetails with every other player.)   Excerpt Library (Music I) :   "Discuss the 'rhythmic mesh' of African music" Excerpt Library (Art Philosophy and Aesthetics) :  "Discuss the effect density has on the coherence of an artwork" 2/16/2004 Idea: rearrange cover songs and turn choruses into versus, or vice versa, or otherwise rearrange sections.  [2/16/2025: AI-generated music does this automatically and is either annoying or really interesting]. 2/16/2021 Typically, what happens when pieces start bottom-up is that I never use the bass part that I originally conceived. Once you start tracking a song and layering other instruments in the presenc...

My past few albums have been video albums and haven't been formal digital releases or on vinyl. But with any album release you have to think about the artwork at some point. For this album once I got to design stage I had to listen to each piece of music and try to match it with some kind of image. In the beginning of the process I was looking at paintings of Botero. They seemed to fit with the pieces but as I looked further there were different paintings and photographs that worked with them as well. It can take quite a while to match an image with music–similar to scoring music for a film but it's the reverse process: you’re the art director.  Matching visuals with music is less intuitive than you think. What you have to have is a sense of motion in a still image, as if it was a montage sequence in a film, or more accurately, the feeling of holding a record jacket, looking at the artwork, and listening to the music. If you were to use AI by simply typing in text prompts wit...