February 20ths

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 sound like this group or that group and you don’t know what to do with them. AI solves this problem because the number of artists you could write lyrics for is unlimited–not just a “P.J. Proby”]. 

2/20/1998, Friday
            
Composing music is an innate function of the brain. Composers such as Beethoven showed us that there is an inherent pattern in nature that causes music to be structured in natural patterns, like fractals. But that is not to say that we should only be writing music to set patterns, natural or otherwise, only that there is a form which pre-existing nature which “suggests” the composition, like structures of leaves.

[2/20/2026, Friday: A good example of a morphic field]  

2/10/1999

Interesting interview with Randy Weston. He sees the piano as being African in origin. It has a harp, (the kora), and the keys are ivory. 

2/20/2010 
            
Film: ‘It Might Get Loud’. Three generations of guitarists. Interesting how White is also heavily influenced by the blues, and it wasn’t just a phenomenon of the 1960s where musicians were using blues as their absolute roots. It has the same power today. I like what Edge said about the irony of simple little riffs drenched in effects: the sound is what prevails.

[Sound is a song. The first thing people react to is tone and timbre, not necessarily chords and melody, as they did, say, before 2000]

2/20/2011

My response to “Why We Hate the Beatles”: Even though I can’t fully appreciate why we have to hate them, I do see the value in taking an activist role in guiding music history. But it’s quite bizarre to be doing it 50 years too late. Architectural activists are doing something railing against ugly buildings and poor urban planning, things we have to look at daily. The Beatles on iTunes is kind of the analog to putting up a kitschy ugly building. 

2/20/2022, Sunday

Went for a short photo-shoot. "636":

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2/20/2025

This morning I was thinking: I actually enjoy my mastery of music—on my own terms. I like that I can score for instruments if I want to—or if I don’t want to and just have AI generate it. I’m not intimidated by AI. An artist should want to be the human-in-the-loop as much as possible. The machine won’t include you except to use samples of your recordings. The best way is to start with your concepts, your thoughts, your words.