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Lee Barry Composition (And Photo) Diary

Music For Drones

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Ambient music for silent drone films, or music for the Overview Effect.

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Every so often I'll compose etudes for myself based on repeating cycles. It can be practiced on any instrument and consists playing over a pair of chord changes a tritone apart, then proceeding up in fourths (or down in fifths). Each chord has a set of chord scales that can be played over them, and you can play one type across then all, e.g. the Phrygian mode going down in major thirds, or simply playing arpeggios, or mixing it up in different ways.

10/25/2026

0256. Be careful that a planned trajectory does not circle back to where you started. Without bold acts of will, things will naturally default to the basic shapes and characteristics of the universe, circular shapes, orbits, and routines.

30000 Years

A remix of diary entries from my 11/10 diary 1998-current transformed into a lyric using a text randomizer. This isn't AI, but it's like AI in the sense that you are using an algorithm. But instead of using a pre-made one you make one of your own, which is ultimately more fun and interesting. You can use the constraints but you can change them as well. This is essentially a cut-up technique. Using the natural rhythms in the words, "get the thing" created the main motif. The main chorus riff is 30000 Year s, with this rhythmic motif: Get the thing Everything Rapidly Love the thing Started abandoning Hoping it was the thing

Yuthe (Peripherique)

A 70s-ish funk groove in C Dorian with two bass parts, one "bass bass" and another "guitar bass" with echo and reverb on it. The part I'm playing live is another "guitar part".

Barbie Doll

AI-generated based on a 2011 song conceived in an open G Minor tuning. All minor chords. Score:

Photographs For Music (That Was Me)

I love this photo of Bowie but I don't know who the photographer is. It was a photo shoot of some kind as there are a number of stills. Perhaps it is Masayoshi Sukita. The nice thing about AI generation is that you can skip around genres to find something that fits the words. This came from a diary entry of November 17, 2004: "Interesting observation/existential moment: A twenty year-old musician dressed in tight black leather, getting off the El with his girlfriend, slinging his bass, getting home from a gig at 7:30 a.m....That was me 25 years ago. "I overheard an actor talking about improvisation in theater—following impulses, making arbitrary choices, discovering characters as you go along, you set the rules and go—like improvisation in music. "Since you can't teach someone to be funny, you can't teach them to be musical."...Doing comedy is physical work—being alive in your body and in the moment; "Struggling in the moment and getting through....

11/24/2024

September 1sts

In September, the summer leaves. 9/1/1997 Pillow Book at Village Theater. Excellent. Story of the power of Japanese calligraphy to drive erotic fantasy and obsession. Interesting bit on keeping diaries. [When composer Gavin Bryars was told he was "beginning to sound more and more like Peter Greenaway," Bryars apologized, acknowledging that he "can get quite obsessive" and that his work at times could be "cryptic" and require every single note to be justified. Bryars suggested that he eventually found a "middle ground" beyond this approach.] Source: Music Articles and Book Excerpts 9/1/2020 Emotions rely on our ability to surf over them. It's something that we have to do intuitively, and there are no shortcuts to getting there. This is where music has spiritual and philosophical elements. Expressiveness can arise (or must arise, because of he nature of the instrume...