August 30ths
8/30/2006
People who stutter often speak in the voices of other characters in order to avoid stuttering. (The brain provides a heuristic as a solution to hide or mask the problem.) It’s like the woman with Alzheimer’s who forgot how to speak, but could sing songs and remember all the lyrics. Singing is a form of avoidance or creative diversion from the stress involved in speech.
8/30/2009
When you hear something for the second time, your mind returns to ‘memory landmarks’ set on first hearing, and are automatically recalled on second review. Try this yourself: listen to a program with a mobile audio device, such as a podcast, while taking a walk or traveling somewhere. Play the program a second time, and you will recall locations (encoded visual memories) directly associated with various parts of the program. These landmarks tend to fade over time, but if emotionally charged at the time of encoding, may become more salient, especially if repeated along the same path. This could be useful for developing memory capacity in general, or for modifying memories by listening to something in specific places, then listening to it again to recall the memories. Apparently, places are the ‘adhesive’ for sonic memory, and could be useful in changing unwanted memories by replacing them with new ones through the process of binding them with specific places.
[AI-generated from an LLM of my writings: The concept of "genius loci," or the spirit of a place, is intimately connected with sound and memory. Music can embody a strong "sense of place," even when separated from its original context. Paul Horn's solo flute recordings in the Taj Mahal, for example, derived their unique quality from the specific environment, a quality that recordings alone struggle to fully capture, necessitating physical presence for full impact. Similarly, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring performed in Frank Gehry's LA concert hall demonstrated how music becomes deeply intertwined with its physical space. "Psychogeography" in ambient music like "Music For Places" actively explores this connection by blending composed music with naturally occurring ambient sounds of specific locations, effectively encoding place memory. Returning to a place where such music was experienced can trigger vivid memories associated with that location. Musicians' ears are naturally attuned to the ambient rhythms of their environment, drawing inspiration from city sounds like squeaking brakes or car horns to create "Window Music" that blends internal listening with external sounds, meaning sounds coming from outside an open window become a part of whatever music or sounds are playing inside].
8/30/2010
Younger musicians have a tendency to see the essence of music suffused solely in recordings and not fully appreciating the fact that a musician was performing on them, and that there were other layers that are not evident in a sample that can be as short as a second or less.
If we only consume media, then we are more apt to see it as something delivered to us, like prepackaged food at a supermarket. Sadly, many of the things we take for granted in free culture are not even duly commodified, and are relegated to free samples given to us while grocery shopping. You have to make a concerted effort to see this happening, as we are all partners in crime. Ask yourself to what degree is there a sentient being behind this that may be affected by my consumption of it? If I use it anonymously and without attribution how can I give it due reverence?
[8/30/2024: I was thinking about this yesterday when I had generated some music using AI, and I found myself enjoying it. But what are the moral aspects? It’s not that I see it as a threat–what I am concerned with is that it will erode my sense of aesthetics–what I riffed on a few years ago as “aesthetic erosion”, where the world you knew slowly gives way to the wave action. You have to keep shoring up the cliff. I think most people won’t because the descent is felt as harmless. Will I want to use AI to generate everything? Perhaps–if I can hold on to the Art by asking, how is this art which I am saying something about–as opposed to using AI as an appliance that millions of people have? How is the coffee from my identical coffee machine different from yours? Like the lesson with a student: are you interested in music, or the sounds that exist in music recordings–which is what AI music is. Is sound a song?].
[8/30/2025: Sound has been a song ever since the recording studio became an instrument because you’re beginning the songwriting process with sounds. Sometimes it’s a guitar sound along with a rhythmic idea played on a guitar that makes the song–as it has with Every Breath You Take, which was a throwaway musical idea until Andy Summers made it work. Now he and Stewart Copeland have sued Sting for back royalties. AI music is all sound masquerading as a piece of music that was composed, but it is done with an LLM. If an AI-generated song becomes a hit, in the future a musician might be able to identify their riffs or sounds and they would qualify to get all the royalties because their element is the only element that has rights, unless a corporation can claim them].
8/30/2011
Where To Now St. Peter? (Here’s the fire escape...)
8/30/2014, Saturday
To the Art Institute. I always like to spend some time in the Roman galleries. The vitrines as well as reflections from the windows make it appear that the art is floating in the courtyard.
This is so “authoritarian”:
Pat Metheny is an interesting interviewee—he always has interesting insights into the creative process. One thing that I thought was remarkable was that he has been keeping a road diary for decades. I’ve always found them useful—and perhaps to other people. When I revisit them, lots of the ideas that I jotted down have come to fruition, sometimes with very long lag times: It wasn’t that I was going back to the diaries to get inspiration to finish the projects, the act of writing them down made it more possible for them to be finished.
If you’ve never kept a diary you can always start one, or start some way of compiling it from social media posts, but there’s nothing like a Moleskine, or even a spiral-bound notebook. #riff
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