September 4ths

9/4/2012

Another visit to the wonderful MAM. Excellent collection of modern art: Judds, Morris Louis’s, Kelly’s...    

 9/4/2016

On dealing with monotony in music: Monotony is largely subjective based upon cultural factors. I like constraints. With spare and/or repetitive bass parts I like to experiment with duration, space, and range, to the extent that the music allows it. Tension can be created by switching octaves; leaving space and playing with notes and rest durations can push and pull the groove in interesting ways. Alternating the role of player and listener, as well as little rhythmic adjustments can be effective. 

[On Bass Lines]

9/4/2017

People are still asking if 4’33” is music. If you broaden the definition of music to include a range of sound that includes pitch as well as noise, then it can be music if you are mindful of the sounds around you. Each “performance” is different because the ambient sounds are different. I’ve understood it as being equal parts conceptual art and a short meditation. It’s not music per se.

[On Indeterminate Music, from my Music Articles LLM] 

9/4/2024

I’ve always used randomness in music composition, the latest being the Songdays. But as you develop an idea that might have been randomly generated, or a happy accident, the final result might not have any resemblance to the original idea. Synchronistic events are “spiritual”, i.e. ephemeral and delicate and you can destroy them by too much manipulation. Also, if you try to be too vigilant of them, everything might look like a happy accident and they become fungible.

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Craft is in some ways a sacred thing because it involves a devotion requiring work, whereas things of a profane nature are orthogonal to work, craft, or study. I personally think music is sacred, but it wouldn’t necessarily stop me from exploring more edgy things.

[9/4/2025: The generation of music with AI presents new experiences for a songwriter because the results are usually a surprise, and you have to process it in some way. For example, if I try a metal treatment on a lyric idea, I may think the results seem “profane”--interesting yet jarring. It wouldn’t mean that I would reject it out of hand. And other people might like it. In fact, many things I would dismiss as junk, someone else likes. This means that writers typically have blinders on because we want to “own” it in some way. I can’t own Metal, although I’d like the guitar approaches as a usable texture].         

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Photographs For Music: A Break In The Rain (from Rifts, September). An interesting synchronicity—the “Reading The Rocks” book came in. It’s a riff on Rifts.