April 15ths

4/15/1944

(Diary of Anne Frank)

“There’s just one bad thing after another. When will it all end?” You can sure say that again. Guess what’s happened now?..."

What I've always liked about the tunings is that you can use similar fingerings as you would in standard tuning, but interesting dissonances happen, and you can incorporate them without dismissing them out of hand. I've noticed that a lot of the music that I've written with the tunings tends to sound like XTC, In fact, Andy Partridge uses alternate tunings. They give the music an interesting “wrongness”.

This one is actually more fitting with the Frank entry. Instant metal/prog (the notes at the 7th and 12th frets are harmonics). 

4/15/2005

We’re in the iPod Society. (I don’t have one yet) Instead of the LP we have the PL (Playlist). How is this different from just a newer version of a Walkman? (You have access to your whole music collection). The “Podcast” is the new broadcast (narrowcast) . What will replace radio? (wireless downloads) Who will (can) regulate? The good thing about 60s-era radio is that it made choices for you...

[4/15/2025: 20 years on. I had thought that "pull" technology is better than "push" technology, because the choice is always ours. But obviously that isn't the case. Even if you wanted to pull information, algorithms are still pushing it at you. You could set up playlists that would sound like 60s radio, and podcasts were doing that at least by 2010. Immersive audio will always be niche.] 

4/15/2021

A note about bass parts in general: What I’ve noticed about this album [Music For Photographs] is that I can’t get away with much on the bass. When I’m in the mix, or even when I’m laying the track I realize that it has to comport with what’s already there, so I can only do minimal things. It needs to be married to the kick drum in some cases, the notes have to be spot-on and be in the right octave. For example a note can be too low or too high and sometimes the fifth works instead of the root, and could be very dramatic as well. 

There’s different ways of approaching a bass part. Bass parts aren’t always the focus but if you go on YouTube bass parts are the focus, including mine. But when it comes down to putting a bass part on a song, it has to fit, and have very little personality. Personally, I prefer bass parts that don’t have a lot of personality–that are reverent to the song. Sting is a very appropriate bass player because he’s the songwriter and he understands that it’s the lyrics and the vocal that matter, not so much the bass part. The bass part has to work as a counterpoint. If you look at the bass parts in symphonic works there’s not much there. The bass part is essentially a voice and a counterpoint, and a way to get a color in the orchestra. You could also use a bassoon, a contrabassoon, or a bass clarinet to get colors and to provide foundation. The contrabass is there to create a foundation under them but can be used for color as well. The bass guitar is different in that there are more timbral possibilities which are inherent in guitars with metal strings and have more sharp transients. #riff 

***

Someone once asked me how I come up with the titles for my songs–like Peripherique for example. I’ve been keeping a list of titles for 30 years now. When I got my first tape machine around 1988 I started writing the working titles on the cassette box. Once I started compiling them I started to put them in a notebook and continued on with that system. Same thing with my diary which started around 1993 when I was having some medical issues and was tracking symptoms. Over time I started using it for everything–things to do, and so on. Then I started to note things that were happening in the news, ideas for lyrics, etc. On Peripherique I thought it was an interesting idea to make every title end in a vowel: Moxie, Yuthe, Omenesque, Cromenco. Cromemco is an old computer from the 1980s. 

***

What things sound like became more important over the years. In retrospect, 70s recordings were not that good. I was listening back to some old Elton John and the recordings were terrible. But they worked quickly and didn’t do a lot of overdubs. Yellow Brick Road, which was ‘72–at that point they might have had 16 tracks. Now we have an infinite number of tracks. It’s hard to get clarity in the mix. 

Over the years we’ve gradually moved towards the way things sound rather than focusing on the music. Music has kind of died in a way. Take for example jazz recordings–which were always done live–it wasn’t that a jazz aficionado or jazz fan would listen to a record and focus on the production; it was always on the music itself and the skill of the musicians. That’s what people valued. These days I can’t send a lead sheet to somebody because the first thing they listen to is what it sounds like, what’s the production–what do the guitars sound like–what does the snare sound like? 

[4/15/2025: Now with AI we get the production right out of the box: no musicians, no recording studio, no engineer]. 

4/15/2023

I’ve been reading more of Rick Rubin’s book, The Creative Act, particularly the section where he was talking about different versions of songs–that you should go with the original version. The best songs are the ones that can be recorded based upon the original idea, so you have to be careful to choose your keys and tempos wisely because you can’t keep going back and redoing them, although it’s very interesting. I probably could do several more versions of Ukiyo-e. I had an idea to do it as a samba or use horns. Sometimes you can’t go with the original version because there are technical aspects that have to be addressed and you have to change your modus operandi sometimes just to fit in with whatever the situation is. It’s interesting to go with the philosophy of going with the first original version, and I probably should have stuck with the original. At some point in the creative process you run into these log jams. It’s not all easy, and if you want it to be easy,  you have to keep writing new material and get used to them being more immediate without endless tweaks. You should strive to have 100 or 200 pieces of music created in a year–all in their original form. #riff  

4/15/2025

More Drop 31 experiments. Note at the 7th fret on the F# string (C#) is held while plucking the harmonic at the 5th fret (D) on the D string (a b9)