February 22nds

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, unless it gives you a sense of joy that you’re doing it? People always say to me why don’t you paint some portraits or landscapes or learn how to do that...but I’m not interested in doing that, just as some musicians aren’t interested in learning how to read music. They want to get started on making art right away. But that urgency won't always have interesting results.

[2/22/2026: One of the things I like about AI-generated music is that you can quickly prototype an idea and get started making art right away. But it's not the same as having some degree of skill, such as sketching in art].

When I was doing Never The Same River Twice, I was thinking that you’d go down to a river and there was a spot that you would stand in and you would hear a song, and each time it would be a different song, but had the same lyrics. I think what’s going to happen in the future is that you won’t have to generate something–it will automatically generate something when you press play, and either you will like it or you won’t, and nobody will be doing anything–it’ll just be generated by a machine and grabbing lyrics from the internet, even mine or yours, and generating music. (Kind of a Music For Places idea)