August 20ths

8/20/1998

Reading interview with Milton Babbitt. He was talking about academics in music and how he hated it.

[8/20/2025: As much as I use theory, I’m always wary of getting into jousting matches about it on social media. All domains have their theory and it’s nice shop-talk, but you don’t want to be a theoritician. I’m a parallel octaves scofflaw and who really cares when no one notices it as a listener? It was one of the reasons that I stopped writing songs in the 90s. I wanted it to have no theory, or as Eno says, “leave the music out”. I’ve been putting it back in lately. I might leave it out again in the future. One of the good things about knowing music theory is that you can leave it out for artistic effect, and do something postmodern. I think ambient music is a postmodern phenomenon].     

8/20/2016       

Jazz seems to be more popular among people in science, not music. Jazz interfaces with science in many ways, especially in harmony and rhythm. There are many aspects to jazz, and many other things in life that require some intellectual rigor, or at least curiosity