February 15ths
2/15/2018
Dream: I was in two cities at once: An American city
and a city that I was thinking was somewhere in Egypt, divided by a
muddy river. I sat on a veranda on the river and looked across to a
dense wall of mud-built structures, and there was one man in a white
robe leaning out a window looking at me. Gradually, the sun began to set
across the river when I was still in bright sunlight. It was if there
were two worlds side-by-side, one spinning at a different rate.
[An AI-generated song based on the dream]:
2/15/2017
On politics, culture, and music: There has to be a genuine mid-point if all the players are from different genres, or it doesn’t work. Agreeing to disagree might result in some music being made, but it won’t hold together. Whatever did will endure, like Pink Floyd with Waters, at least in the recordings that resulted in that brief alliance. After the disagreement and estrangement, the music never rose to the same level.
2/15/2023
Spambient Music: Annoying hold music.
My way of working typically involves re-imagining things after I finish them. The most recent piece that I wrote was GPT#9, former title “Lap of Lydian”, which was a Lydian melody that I played on a lap steel and did a video on it. Once in a while I’ll go back and cultivate the diary—a “diary sweep” if you like. If there’s a good idea that fits in with my framework I’ll use bits of it to create an instrumental, then put it into a song structure and map dummy lyrics over it. Usually new melodies arise and I incorporate them as well, perhaps even use them in a string part. It’s all a stew.
[2/15/2026: AI-generated music is now integrated into this process, where I'll transcribe a melody or use a rhythmic riff, then do an orchestral arrangement of it, play parts against that, make a submix of just those parts, and it's a completely different piece].
2/15/2024
As I’ve been creating shorts over the last year or so I’ve been observing how other people do them and I think it’s the wrong way. If you’re just going to make something that’s 30 seconds long and doesn’t have any connection to what the short form medium is then it doesn’t make any sense. So you want to create content that fits within the short medium. Another example would be to take another medium like TV, and say, TV was just invented and they were trying to find different ways of using it. People would turn it on its side and do other things with it. But once it’s defined then the other alternative ways of using it that weren’t previously useful, are useful. #riff
2/15/2025
What my chatbot tells me when I ask, “What is an example of metamodernism in music?”: “An example of metamodernism in music would be the idea of creating a “15-minute conceptual album” that revives elements of the avant-garde while also incorporating modern sensibilities. As the blog post notes, “the conceptual album can’t even be possible in the current climate where the new ideas must be under 60 seconds.” (Well, there’s Sum IV.1...)
Songday based on 2/15 entries using titles of two older songs:
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