0424
Rhythmic seed for "NFT, the new Model T"
Posts
Curio No. 79
Thomas Cole Over Rubens 4 against 3, with the drum part in 4. Seed: The words "scatter" and "matter" alternating.
0124
A rhythmic riff derived from 1/24/1998, as an intro and outro, coming and going. 0124 (Coming and Going) by meta4s
August 24ths
8/24/1998 Article by drummer who does jungle grooves. It’s interesting how a new way of working creates new ways of thinking about music—such that new composers want to learn cutting-edge techniques, much in the same way composers in the 17th century wanted to learn about harmony, melody, and counterpoint using the equal-tempered tuning. And the new cut-and-paste techniques are really no less intricate. [8/24/2025. AI is certainly a new way of working. All artists are presented with a new world of creativity. In music, some may have never used any kind of electronic gear or a computer to make music. In 1998, any music magazine was all about gear and using computers. In my view, purity doesn’t go very far as a strategy in itself in terms of creativity being a generative phenomenon. Imagine still recording on a cassette recorder from the 1970s]. “Apathy is probably never good. I think it’s important to go back and see what was important to ot...
July 24ths
January 24ths 7/24/2023 Interesting: How instrumentalists’ personalities affect how they play. I always thought Percy Jones was the better player than Jaco. Percy seemed more stable and interesting and never moved for hours on stage. 7/24/2024 John Mayall died at age 90. Right after I watched the Biden speech, I watched Eric Clapton’s elegy and was also very moving. I was also raised on the blues. One of my first albums was the Bluesbreakers “Beano” album. Looking back, my real roots in Chicago are the Blues. The first bass line I learned was a blues bass line. 7/24/2025 In terms of emotion in music, especially orchestral music, you want to work the orchestra for 3 minutes solid, like a rock band can work at a fast tempo. The assumption is that classical music is somehow fragile, and I must say, it has mostly lived up to that. It’s not macho enough. My ironworker father hated classical music: “First you hardly hear anything, then it gets really loud...” He didn’t like that i...
May 24ths
5/24/1949 (Kerouac Journal) "...Someday perhaps I myself will look back on those days (before selling [On the Road]) with the same kind of wonder..." 5/24/2000 The proliferation of wireless internet is a great opportunity for marketing music: They can listen to it, but not necessarily download it. Fascinating documentary on PBS,”Sahara”. Great soundtrack of Arabic music. It reminds me how much I love this music. [5/24/2025: PBS has been hugely valuable to me, and probably to most everyone living. Of course, we are flooded with DIY content, but not how PBS has produced it historically]. On the Cluetrain Manifesto : I’m generally against the idea of manifestos because 99% of the time they’re too “culty”. This one has some interesting and useful things to say: Don’t wait for someone to show you how; [5/24/2025: This morning I riffed on how skills are being redefined by new technologies and we don’t necessarily need for people to show us how–we just teach ourselves. This started...
April 24ths
4/24/2006 AG Installation: 4/24/2016 What I liked about Prince’s guitar playing was economy: He used only a few guitar sounds, mostly clean and overdriven, with very clean playing, as opposed to the 60s blues-influenced players (Clapton, Hendrix, Page) that had more ‘slop’ in their technique. 4/24/2021 About five years ago I started a series that was called “15 Minutes”, a riff on Andy Warhol's 15 Minutes. It was supposed to be an album with 15 tracks on it with each one being one minute long. It's amazing how long it takes to write a piece of music that's just one minute long when you have to produce it and make a video, otherwise writing one minute of music perhaps doesn’t take a long time. A rule of thumb that I heard a long time ago was that you should write a minute’...
February 24ths
2/24/2001 According to Louis Armstrong, scat was born in 1926 when he dropped his lyric sheet in a recording studio and had to keep going. They didn't have the luxury of retakes. 2/24/2008 The New York Philharmonic does a series of concerts in North Korea as cultural diplomacy. The audience looked either bored, agitated, or were nodding off. The choice of music was ironic as it comes—Dvorak’s New World and Gershwin’s American In Paris , suffused with sex and hedonism unbeknownst to the audience. This is as imperialist as anything the U.S. military has done. Next in the NK series—Eric Clapton. American culture can be more accurately described through pop culture and its genesis in the work of Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, and The Beatles. 2/24/2013 If everyone could live forever, what age would we choose to begin living forever? If everyone was 21 how would we know the actual age of peo...
January 24ths
1/24/1999 10-year-old boy writes essay about Clinton perjury. The irony will be that the kid grows up and does the same thing the president did. (It’s not perjury, it’s “creative lying”, “poetic untruths”). [1/24/2026: We think that presidents set an example, but rather it’s the culture at large that sets the example, perhaps through the Copycat Effect . "A survey of 18,000 Americans revealed significant political and generational divides, particularly concerning young voters. Regarding attitudes perceived by some as sexist, racist, homophobic, or violent, the study suggests these are not solely a result of Trump creating a permissive environment. Instead, generational trends are more significant. Notably, the belief that violence might sometimes be necessary in politics is strongly generational. Younger voters, particularly Gen Z, perceive the political system as not functioning well for them and are questioning its flaws and potential sol...
December 24ths
12/24/1998 When you leave something unfinished or omit something in a piece of art, it leaves the question open, “why is it unfinished? It invites the listener to think about it rather than to just gloss over the surface. [ On Finishing ] 12/24/1999 To MCA to see 100 Years of Architecture exhibit. (Apparently lots of others are doing this “non-traditional” activity). Daunting installation on four floors. Highlights: visionary work of Le Corbusier, Russian avant-garde, the German functional kitchen idea, Frank Gehry (his comment, “things look better unfinished”), my idea for “sound houses”. Idea to keep organized with multiple projects: the “daily triad”, where you choose the three most important tasks for the day. (Expand to "weekly triad" and "monthly triad"). 12/24/2011 My initial concept for Music For Places was to scout and find indoor and outdoor locations that had unique ambient sound characteristics, record them, and then compose p...
June 24ths
December 24ths 6/24/2021 An interesting way that you could use artificial intelligence in music, specifically with meter and rhythm, is to take, for example, groups of 2 and 3—which is how polyrhythms and mixed meter and odd meter pieces are shaped, and have some randomization of that. It would continuously run in the background and then you’d listen to it and capture interesting snapshots or “stills”. This goes back to my idea of putting these things on a mixing board in a separate channel, with a “meter” channel that is constantly running and then you’d just pull up the fader and see what’s there. If there’s nothing there then you just don’t use it. It’s similar to turning on the radio at random or opening a book at random. [6/24/2025: A “feature request” for AI music. AI music is still a listener’s tool rather than for real songwriting. Recently I tried using the Strategies as a prompt and mostly didn’t work, but as a listener I like the results for what they were]. ...
