April 9ths

4/9/2021

I realized a long time ago that you don’t want a lot of options when you’re in the flow of creativity. I bought a synthesizer in 2005 which I still haven’t completely explored 

There’s so much work involved in drilling through menus just to find a sound. Usually what happens (and I think it’s the way it’s designed) is that you just grab a sound and just go with it. There’s no creativity involved at all; it’s just pressing buttons.....Use of AI to decrease the amount of time scrolling through banks of sounds would be helpful, but if time isn’t an element, why make it an element? 

[4/9/2025: The paradox now is a lack of options when generating music with AI. What I would find useful is to have options for each of the fundamental musical elements: melody, harmony, and rhythm. But in most generators, all you have are vague categories describing the music. It's music composition as a listener, not as a writer. As a writer you ultimately want things to be very specific. When I start a piece of music just with a guitar, usually I'll come up with a unique chord progression or riff, but this isn't an option in AI-generated music; you're kind of stuck with whatever samples are there. They can be interesting, but there's a different result from both ways of working. The gap that needs to be closed to allow the user to create music on a more musical level, as one would with a guitar or a piano].

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Virtual reality (VR) goggles offer numerous possibilities for enhancing music education by creating immersive, interactive, and personalized learning experiences. Below are some key applications of VR in music education:

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I’ve always been interested in ancient philosophies. There’s a lot of information there–like the civilization in the Cahokia Mounds. When you study them you can see how messages get transmitted through the generations to deal with everyday life. But to the modern spiritualist it’s the same trope: what motivates our lives and what gives our days meaning. For me, it’s engaging in some kind of music ritual every day as a spiritual activity and ritual–usually playing an acoustic instrument. I see music as being an ancient universal but there are new universals that we can use in tandem.  

4/9/2025

Demo for next album:

 

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Revisited the Drop 31 tuning (E-G#-D-F#). It’s interesting to play things as you would in standard tuning in a different tuning. It’s also interesting to create “orchestralizations”–taking pre-existing material, even pop songs, ideas on a bass, and fleshing them out for various ensembles. Particularly, with the alternate tunings, I like the “sourness” that it adds.