Composition Strategies Game

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Location: Chicago, IL, USA

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January 2nds

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1/2/2005 They’re razing the old Sun-Times building in the Loop, and when I pass by it I always tune into the sound of jackhammers echoing through the empty space. [Now site of Trump Tower]                Ambient Audio: [1/2/2025: Little did we know how that eponymous tower would represent the end of American democracy as we knew it. Perhaps it was always fragile and we naively thought, even after 9/11, that it would be razed].      1/2/2007 Projects for 2007: Music For Places, Highway Cinema.  [1/2/2026: Resolutions actually do work, but it can take sometimes a decade to see the results. What's important are "seeds"]  1/2/2012             James Howard Kunstler’s prediction/forecast:             “Vlad Putin has held things together there impressively after the meltdown of the 1990s, but apparently the tranquil veneer is thin. Except for two big citie...
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September 30ths

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9/30/1997             Roy Lichtenstein died. His use of ads, cartoons, etc. is similar to using samples in music. Music is really mimicking what happens in the art world, but with a long lag time.     9/30/1998             Surfed the Net on collaborative information filtering idea. Lots of great links: The Game of Life, the “Serendip” page. Must revisit.  [9/30/2024: This was the beginning of what we now know as simply an “algorithm”—the black box that defines the world we experience online, and now in life in general because it is recommending our relationships and how we navigate them. It has not been good for society or democracy because it is about collectivism as opposed to community. Viktor Frankl: “Only the community can ensure the meaning of individuality for the individuals…only the safeguarding of individuality for the individuals can ensure the meaning of community. This is what distingu...
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On the Other Side of the Year

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  Summer is a plain A plateau of life Everything in full bloom In the maximum light The sun made marks On a window sill The angle changed It caused a chill The summer leaves The flowers a clock Antipode to a country road On the other side of the year If you play a movie backwards It won't end up as it started It tells a different story To follow it is harder It's that time of year You notice the night A fading of light Disappearing from sight Take a turn With the calendar birds Hope to see you near On the other side of the year A time for reading novels Obscured by clouds Seasonal tales Never read aloud Tilt and rotation Light/dark shift Shadows of the day Shift and drift The summer leaves The flowers a clock Antipode to a country road On the other side of the year   ***  My pics: Speedo, Alibi, Vapor Cone
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Isomelody and Isorhythm

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An interesting exercise is to take an existing melody (as I did with the Bach cello suite) and map it over another rhythm. You can compose your own or use an existing one. With Be Bach I used the sequence of notes in the Suite and mapped it over a bop rhythm that I composed. After the melody was done I added chord changes. (Someone should write a program that will do this automatically.) Here is the source Bach cello Suite:      A more recent video:   Using isorhythm in a bass line:   
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Songs With Bridges

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  Sunken Bridge by RO&AD Worth re-posting. I haven't tested the links so some may be dead.   7/30/2011 At the theoretical level, song hooks are imbued with clever twists like harmonic modulations, chord 'borrowing' and turnarounds. Now these devices have devolved from the songwriter's toolkit in much the same way Cole Porter Moon-June rhyming schemes became obsolete by the 1960s in favor of new compositional devices that made them frumpy and old hat. The classic bridge is now in this category. Nonetheless I still love to put them in songs. Bridges (sometimes used synonymously with middle-eight ) are difficult to do well because not any musical transition can qualify as a bridge device. They typically appear only once in a composition: If a section is repeated, it technically is not a bridge. Some regard the "life is very short..." phrase in the Beatles' "We Can Work It Out" or the "why she had to go..." phrase in "Yesterday...
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August 4ths

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8/4/2000 Can you imagine, David Bowie becoming an architect?! It’s an interesting notion that aging rock stars can cross disciplinary boundaries. One might not think that Bowie belongs in something so Apollonian, but e’d infuse a Dionysian element.    8/4/2007 Another readymade, Electrolux. The end piece of a 1950s-era vacuum cleaner that has a mask-like appearance, placed in a shadow box frame, with a mirror placed in the hose connection, signed “R Mutt” as a sendup of Duchamp.  8/4/2010             Listened to Fresh Air interview with Brian May. Interesting: The guitar riff repeats on We Will Rock You are actually tape splices.  AI Treatment:   8/4/2012 Saddle Man                         [Through the window of a local pool hall that had been closed for some time. There was a figurine of a cowboy in the window that had a "shadowy" vibe]. 8/4/2017 The proof of the eff...
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