May 3rds

5/3/2006

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

[5/3/2026: AI music is full of these cliches but so far I haven't detected anything that sounds exactly the same. On guitar, there is a fairly big set of cliche riffs that you'll always want to use].

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]       

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. 

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When you’re physically playing music you can’t be thinking about things you normally would be thinking about. The default mode network gets deactivated temporarily.
 
When I pick up my instruments and noodle around after I’ve been reading something heavy or philosophical I realize they are two different worlds. Music has a particular quiddity when you’re playing it as opposed to passive listening. You get a tactility that you wouldn’t get otherwise. (I feel it most on the Jazz Bass).
 
I like the feeling of being 180 degrees away from the intellectualization of music. Playing well, at least for the time that you are playing instruments, turns off the left hemisphere (McGilchrist). The left hemisphere is the domain of the Apollonian, what we know as the archetypal composer composing at the piano, not to play it but using it as a kind of “typewriter”.

5/3/2023

Music is sort-of mathematical but only on more simple levels. In my experience, music will make a person more curious and have broader interests, but that’s a generalization as well. It depends on which brain hemisphere predominates: People skilled at math probably have a bias for left-brain thinking and won’t be (naturally) good at music. I would assert that music has more to do with language rather than math.

5/3/2024

I still think words and music are a “therapeutic”. 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 Seeds: