May 3rds

5/3/2006

A lot of pop music is just playing a cliche really well.

5/3/2017

I used to love to dance before I became a musician. Sometimes I find myself reacting with music rhythmically, but it’s not dancing. Even in classical there are some pieces you can dance to, and are written specifically as dances (Gigue, Gavotte). The Pulcinella Suite by Stravinsky is very “danceable” in some sections. 

Once you’ve done lots of writing you can lose your ability to dance. Words and music are its cure. Since music composition is more like writing words, the composer gets stuck in the frontal lobe.

[5/3/2024: I still think words and music are a “cure”. There is a primal connection between the two, as evidenced by aphasia patients still able to recall music. Very often I’ll get song ideas from repeating 1-4 bar phrases in dreams. They are earworms essentially and are further evidence of the connection between language and music. There is now more evidence, at least anecdotally, that music came before language in the form of onomatopoeia or mimicking of animal sounds going back 30,000 years. The first flutes were made from bird bones, which they probably used to mimic bird songs as a way of communicating with them. Whistled language is another example.]

[5/3/2025: An example of taking a phrase like “I used to love to dance” and reduce it to rhythm, then base a bass groove on it]       

I Used to Love To Dance (5/3/2025) by meta4s

5/3/2021

The problem I have with AI music is that it doesn’t really give you anything to do over longer periods. Once the Beatles were using the studio as an instrument their time in the studio increased. If all they ever did in the studio was let machines generate everything they’d never have gone into a studio.