March 10ths

3/10/1967 

John Cage writes to Yoko Ono. He's not interested in her Bottoms project.

[John Cage could be perceived as silly, but he was not unserious and was quite discerning] .

3/10/1999
 
Looped samples recorded last night, transferred to Acid program. The results are disappointing. Hard to make sound effects the focal point.

[3/10/2026: Sampling and looping have now evolved exponentially with AI. The results can be equally disappointing but sometimes really interesting].

3/10/2002

Went to library to do research on the "Nostalgia" project and perused 1966 World Almanac. Ironic that all the references to "high technology" are dry-rotted and yellowed. Record of the year for 1966 was Herb Alpert's A Taste of Honey as well as The Shadow of Your Smile, and best vocal performance was by Frank Sinatra on Very Good Year. Dylan also went electric with Blonde on Blonde, impact of Kennedy death, bombings in Vietnam, war protests. Popular TV shows were I Spy, Dick Van Dyke, Peyton Place, Bewitched.

3/10/2003

Composition Strategy: “Sound like the album The Beatles would have made if they didn't break up. Make the album if they rebanded and replaced ______ with ______.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3/10/2021

On Alternate Tunings:

 

 

3/10/2022
 
I realized I hadn’t made any art in a long time. I still feel I don’t want to make any more objects because someone at some time has to do something with them, even if they own it, and will heirs care? 

3/10/2025

It's hard to play along with robots. When I sometimes play against AI-generated tracks, I noticed a peculiar looseness or lack of tightness in the rhythms. This is because it's working from samples, and it's manipulating them in order for the riffs to fit with the words, so it shifts the tempo and rhythms around in an annoying way. It's not exactly playing ahead or behind the beat in a human way, it's doing that in a robotic way. 

***

Music can never be universally emotional. It can't be continuously emotional even in your own experience because sometimes you're just not in the mood for it. But other times you're triggered to pay attention to it. Once music becomes more interesting than emotional, it starts making you more curious. This has always been my experience with music: it had a magical quality that I wanted to interact with. I remember the early days of music school when I used to go early in the morning, even if classes started in the afternoon, and I would just bang on the piano for hours. I was just simply captivated by it. I wasn't thinking about the emotions. I was more curious as to how it worked.

3/10/2026

If you keep stopping what you used to do, you won't ever know who you are because who you were has been thrown out with the bathwater.  One of the great things about AI, especially AI music, is that I can revisit things I was doing 30 years ago and make something new out of it. Admittedly, it is a kind of a left-over, but if you use the left-over as an ingredient, then it is new. 

Possible lyric:

I never stopped
(Taking a photograph)
I never stopped
(Making a film)
We never stopped
(Looking for happiness)
Stop stopping
Why did we stop?