July 14ths

7/14/2019

Using loops and samples in music is a small aspect of music composition. You are a musician (musicist) in the sense that you are constructing logical sequences within temporal structures. Proceeding in that fashion could make you a composer and is no different than a child’s first explorations at the piano, that are essentially “drag and drop”, i.e. playing by ear. Being a true musician always entails the development of knowledge and skill, which you wouldn’t attain by playing around with software.

[7/14/2024: I was watching a video about an 8 year-old boy who was writing songs in a home studio as if he was 28, playing all the instruments and using DAWs and other software. He had knowledge and skill with all of it in only a few years. But even people who are 28 can attain similar skills in the same amount of time, 3-4 years. This seems to suggest that high levels of knowledge and skill can start in the first decade of life for everyone at some level. The question might be why it is that some people begin so early–as if they made the choice and most of us don’t.]

[7/14/2025: I was asked how one could learn harmony. The most intuitive way is to just bang on a piano without knowing anything about music. It’s inevitable that you’d eventually learn harmony–perhaps even more so than guitar. The problem with software is that it is not tactile beyond the mouse-click or touch-screen. Music becomes more of a visual or conceptual art (Level 3). 

7/14/2022

To have ideas on how to use certain tools in ways other than what they were designed for is an example of high-conceptual creativity (Level 4).

7/14/2024

Dream: I was staying in a hotel in downtown Chicago and had a lake view. But the view out the window looked like the 19th century with lots of boats on the water including steamships. I heard this music, with the lyric: “Slipped on his back on a distant road” with male choir.