October 10ths

10/10/1997, Friday

Todd Rundgren’s new album is just straight Bossa Nova renditions of his own songs. Why is he doing this? But it’s interesting that he has all these different voices and personas. This album is back to the “Hello It’s Me” basics.

Saw interesting book of photo mosaics where hundreds of tiny photos were arranged to form Gestalt images. How can this be done with samples for the same effect, i.e. the subject of all the images equals the portrait?

[10/10/2025: This was done by Beeple in 2021, but the parts didn’t stand for the whole and couldn’t in music either. The closest we’ve come to a corollary in music is the pattern works of Phil Glass and Steve Reich. A temporal art form is a grid but everything has to be locked to bar lines, beats , and subdivisions. Music is (usually) unforgiving in this way, but there are attempts to free music from grids, such as Nestup.]

10/10/1998            

The job of the musician is to fill unwanted silences with desirous sounds.            

Pat Metheny on Sessions at West 54th, now hosted by a nervous-looking David Byrne.

10/10/2003, Friday

Article in Tribune about using classical music in restaurants to get people to feel more affluent. I’ve always felt that the power of music is not so much in the rhythm and melody, but rather its outside elements, cultural connotation, and the context and era in which it is created and/or performed. When you hear a piece of music it activates all types of knowledge. Music is the adhesive that bonds experience and memory.

10/10/2021

It’s interesting that people just learning music now have YouTube as a resource. Back in the 70s, all I had were music magazines and I’d go through the musical exercises. Having a video was rare and videotapes were very expensive, sometimes as much as $50. I think it’s so great that young people now have free videos to learn from and most make them as well. I wish I could have showcased my abilities then. Also, having a video diary documents parts of your musical life, and it’s nice to have participated in it. 
            
It’s funny to think people had to wait minutes for a tiny 360x240 video to download. It took a good 10-15 years for that to develop. So 10 or 15 years from now there are going to be developments that will allow people to do amazing things in context with the memory of what is essentially that 360x240 video. #riff
            
[10/10/2024: A few days ago, I riffed on the evolution of an artist’s or musician’s way of working–where your techniques evolve and devolve. I can’t remember how I played bass when I first started and didn’t know anything about music, but changed once I went to music school. The alternate tunings were a way to get away from that–to “rearrange the furniture and turn out the lights” so you learned a new way of navigating around. But this happens without our needing to do it. Like a coastal cliff, it will be eroded naturally and gradually, and you might not notice the changes. Or you adapt to them, perhaps when you shouldn’t have].

10/10/2024

Apparently ads for watches frequently have the time set at 10:10 or some rotated variation like 8:20? 
“...the cognitive science piece didn't fall into place until 2017, when Frontiers In Psychology published a study entitled, "Why Is 10 Past 10 the Default Setting for Clocks and Watches in Advertisements? A Psychological Experiment." The study found that, " … watches set at 10:10 showed a significant positive effect on the emotion of the observer and the intention to buy. However, watches set at 8:20 did not show any effect on the emotion or the intention to buy. Moreover, watches set at 10:10 induced in women significantly stronger ratings of pleasure than in men." https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/science-says-1010-hands-in-watch-ads-are-a-subliminal-soft-sell

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Just as there can be documentary films, there can be documentary music. After you've made all the "feature films" and all the "TV series" you could make music "documentaries". The purpose of it would be to document your life--a kind of sonic memoir. If you're already a singer-songwriter, you've already done it to some degree--if your style is autobiographical. But if you're making music as you would make a diary entry then it becomes a "documentary".  #riff