December 12ths
12/12/1998
Web article on composers using scientific principles to create music: Phil Thompson does work with fractal music and Susan Alexander makes sound out of DNA. Both were interviewed by BBC science editor David Whitehouse.
[12/12/2024: This was the early days of what became to be known as sci-art. AI is now in the equation but seems to be too much in the mainstream with its use to create all kinds of music based on text prompts, not DNA chains or other data inputs. Esoterica was interesting then at the beginning of the internet, and not so much now. If you made an album of ambient music made from DNA now it wouldn’t be very interesting to people. It wouldn’t get any Likes, even though it did back in 1998. The other day Andrew Keen interviewed the author of the new book The Endless Refrain by David Rowell in which he argues that music runs only on nostalgia now. This is because experimentation in music is not popular at the moment. You couldn’t have a mid-60s avant-garde in 2024 because there’s no zeitgeist. If 1966 was 2024 people couldn’t care less. There would have to be the equivalent of playing things backward and interest in Stockhausen and Xenakis that would be going viral on some social media platform].
"Discuss experimentation in music in the 20th century, 1900-1999"
12/12/1999
Studio: P and A worked out a song sketch of “Illusions” using the Acid program. When I listened to what they did I thought of at least 20 things that could make it more musical.
[12/12/1999@25: Sony’s Acid program, which apparently still exists, has evolved into what we’re now doing with AI. I don’t see this postmodern cut-up approach ending. First we had cut-up, then re-mix, and now re-style. It disabuses us from learning the core skills for the medium and we can jump right in and DIY. With AI music I have the same grievances, namely a lack of musical logic and syntax, and always calls out for tweaks and fixes. It used to be called “rewrites”].
[12/12/2025: AI music is currently a “sealed” music that is “untinkerable”. My big bugaboo is clunky phrasing that you can’t [now] change. In a score I can change anything. Music should always have that capability. Who wants to work with clay that’s already dried?]
12/12/2000
Interesting piece on NPR about the music of Maybelle Carter circa 1928. The lyrics always got changed and reshaped because they always got garbled by dialects, etc., and eventually the lyrics became less important and the guitar came to the forefront as the compelling element.
[12/12/2024: This is interesting vis-a-vis my comment about 12/12/1999: AI always garbles lyrics, but the guitar parts are just fine].
12/12/2001
While reading the articles in Tuesday’s Tribune about David Hockney’s “Secret Knowledge” that the great art masters were somehow cheating by using the camera obscura, I was reminded of a similar controversy a few years ago about an artist in New York who was trying to prove that Marcel Duchamp’s readymades (the urinal, snow shovel, coat rack, etc.) were not the ordinary mass-produced objects they were purported to be. She contended that Duchamp actually designed and crafted the objects, then cunningly covered up the evidence to trick the world into thinking that simple utilitarian objects such as shovels and coat racks could be called art, even though no craft was involved. As you can imagine, this was seen as complete heresy in the art world, and synonymous with saying that there was no historical Jesus.
[12/12/2024: There are two corollaries with AI: that they are both readymades and a form of photography, in that they can be perceived as a form of “cheating”. But if art has been achieved by contemporary standards (which AI is now), you may not need to have any skills to achieve that end, but you’d have to approach it like Duchamp or Hockney, both of whom had, and have, skills].
12/12/2005
Interesting: Both Bob Dylan and Donovan Leitch were doing the Woody Guthrie thing in the early ‘60s, when both of them were under the impression they were the only ones doing it. (Ideas always have a Siamese twin). Donovan: “You have to be a poet-composer–you already have to have it in you to do it")
Weather was brutally cold from December 1 through December 24, then warmer. The global warming debate is now heating up.
12/12/2012
The last numerological calendar synchronic event until 1/1/2021.
12/12/2023
Revisited the 12/12/2001 post re: “cheating” and deceit in art. AI art is the current form of artistic deceit. Art is hard so you might as well cheat. It’s a cut to the chase to being an Artiste. (This is what I like about the diaries—the ability to loop back decades and see how things have changed or not changed.
Someone asked a question on Quora where they could gain some experience in the music industry working for a composer. I worked for Bill Russo as a copyist, copying music with pen and ink like a medieval monk. Now if you worked for a composer, the music probably would have already been entered into software. Perhaps they’d have assistants putting in all the bowings, articulations, etc. It’s very hands-off now with almost everything.
A coupling effect happens when you’re actually playing or using your hands in some way. This has probably been the case throughout history where skills devolve. I don’t see anyone writing music with a quill in 2024 like I did circa 1984.
12/12/2024
I keep revisiting the dilemma of using AI in music. In some ways I feel like a Roy Lichtenstein who is appropriating existing content and making a new form of pop art. But if I knew all the identities of all the players in the music I’d certainly want to credit them. I don’t see this kind of playing by any rules viable in December 2024.
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