July 30ths

7/30/2003            

Interesting: A motion picture of a particle called a kaon will show when played backwards, that the particle does not end up as it started, or begin in its original state, and will be something else entirely.    

7/30/2004

Segment on [60 Minutes?] about musical savants. Everyone is capable of being a savant, but reasoning gets in the way. They also found that music somehow rewires the brain. The brain can be “rearranged” in lots of different ways. Music is different in that it has a transcendental quality (if you let it), which goes back to the problem in the paradox of reason: music can develop the capability to reason, but in the process can make music too analytical. The best composers were able to work around this paradox. 

[7/30/2024: 20 years later I’m even more convinced of the connection between the tactility of musical instruments (as opposed to computer keyboards and touch-screens) and the quality of our experiences. Savants are probably more right-brained in the sense that what they’re doing isn’t analytical, and isn’t interfering with motor movements. But when something needs to be analytical, savants don’t perform well because of their narrow focus of only playing. But in the long term, it appears that those with an intimate connection with rhythm can use it to calm the mind. Renee Fleming’s recent book, Mind And Music includes an essay by percussionist Zakir Hussain on the transcendent nature of rhythm: “Joints often ache at age seventy—but my father was playing at eighty, and there was never a complaint at all about his fingers aching or his wrist not working...” This is probably a right-hemisphere experience, when the analytical mind is off. Rhythms allow us to temporarily get into “savant” mode. Savants never leave that mode. Similarly, people can’t turn off the left hemisphere, both in the sense that they’ve lost control, but also they need it to be in control. I find that writing music and music production, as opposed to playing music, are two different worlds. But the analytical side is only temporary. Once the writing is done the performance part can begin, which includes re-arrangement and re-interpretation].

[7/30/2025: As a musician I've always been convinced of its benefits of music performance for cognitive function, particularly in the intimate connection with language, and to a somewhat lesser degree, mathematics. I came to music from interest in writing in childhood, particularly with rhyming, which is joined at the hip with rhythm. Certain talents showing up in childhood usually signal a musical ability more than others, such as being good with words as opposed to numbers.]

7/30/2022

A few days ago, someone asked a question on Quora, “Is it possible to learn to play a guitar without touching it?” Once you develop muscle memory and your brain has mapped the territories of instruments, you can practice mentally. To some degree this is effective, but it’s a schematic and is not plugged into the rest of your body. You can play through things in your mind, and the playing is clean without errors. But it’s the limitations in your hands in context with the physicality of the instrument that emerge when it is “plugged in” to your cortical homunculus. It takes a long time to actually wire the neurons, sometimes decades. The interesting thing about electronics is that they can smooth out those errors, and when you play acoustically it sounds terrible or just sounds like nothing: playing fourths, fifths, and octaves on an acoustic is not very musical in isolation, but can be with an overdriven amp with effects. This gives us the illusion that we have a good facility on the instrument, which is good enough for most people because it is closer to how we might be imagining the sound.

7/30/2025

Mulling over the new In Sum album. It could be a Sum V with pieces under a minute (Curios) or another Sum II, progressing chronologically through the months, one piece each, in various lengths. Title: "Abstractions From Everyday Life", and will be released as episodes. I’m also wondering if they should be string quartets again because it’s more likely that they could be played as opposed to other ensembles with tubas, bass clarinets, and contrabassoons.