August 25ths

8/25/2016

Teenagers seem to not like classical music because pop music is inherently more fun and social. In contrast, classical music can be too heady and intellectual. I never liked it as a teenager (or just wasn’t exposed to it), then discovered it in my early 20s through various rock bands/artists that used orchestras on some of their work (Beatles, Led Zeppelin), or directly composed for orchestra, such as Frank Zappa (influenced by Varese, Ives, etc.) It is interesting to note that 1960s pop and rock were actually heavily influenced by jazz and classical, as it was what was played on the radio at the time. In a sense, the “pop” music for a teenager in 1960 was probably jazz, blues, classical, and big band.         

8/25/2021       

If you think of music as a symmetrical system in which pitches are arranged horizontally (melody) and vertically (harmony) and given different durations (rhythm), then there can be millions of possibilities, but in terms of vocabulary, it works like it does with the written and the spoken word: We only use what is necessary to communicate. Developing a style will winnow down your harmonic vocabulary.    

[8/25/2024: This is what could conceivably happen with LLMs over time, where they will extract the exformation, and develop styles and dialects (“stylects”).

[8/25/2025: I’m still waiting for a music LLM that knows my process and would operate on things I don’t want, like common and cliche chord progressions].

8/25/2023 

The beginning of a creative process is naturally divergent, so being non-linear is a divergent activity and is a very important phase of creativity where your ideas are free-flowing. You don’t have to use them all but result in a more defined linear structure in the end. Iain McGilchrist talks about this where you use the left brain to create the framework and then use the right brain to play around in that space. The analogy from architecture is to build the steel structure and on the outside you can do all kinds of decorative things. The opposite of that is just to use the structure as the aesthetic which was what Mies did. The postmodern architectural period was when they did a 180 on that and put all kinds of decoration on the buildings—pull out all the stops and do whatever we want. I think it’s a very interesting way of working. 

8/25/2024

The thing I like about music over visual art is that music doesn’t produce objects, which have to be exhibited and sold, and take up space in the interim. Around 2019 I stopped making physical art pieces and went back to music. But I’m beginning to think I should do a 180 again, and find a way to make art in the flow of the music–music videos for the Songdays for example, or a series of 12 paintings based on song titles. 2009 was the leading edge of the smartphone/social media wave, and 15 years later, even art requires a spotlight on the personality and away from the art. AI art is very often an “outside” element made only to support the cultural aspects, as the punk movement was around 1977.

8/25/2025

As I enter my second year of AI music generation, I've noticed a shifting baseline where I'm not sensitive to the same things I was initially. When we first encounter new technologies, we're seeing the differences and finding the flaws. But the opposite can happen where we don't see the flaws initially, but we also don't see the details that we might have missed when we were too busy finding the differences or the flaws. AI music is still very flawed in the sense that its "knowledge" of music is essentially an overview or summary of what music is. AI summarizes well, but it's still just a summary or takeaway. I like that it's a "demo machine". They sound like final releases, but in musical terms need rewrites.