Lee Barry Composition (And Photo) Diary

  Buncheong

 

 

The first storytelling from 5000 years ago, just when it started to come out of its talking head phase of utilitarian use, now being "sung" by a machine. This passage in isolation isn't very musical so I am using only part of it. This is actually art song material, not to be used as a verse in a pop song, but AI could never compose an art song, but I suppose it could if its data set was art songs.  

 

Groove for the phrase "Where do all the things we forgot go?" (Dynaxiom 0498 ). Anything can have a rhytmicity if you work with it, and supports the idea that music is a bottom-up phenomenon from drumming and the vocalizations that may have accompanied it in the ancient world. This could be used for a jazz piece of some kind, with horns doing the "stabs". 

9/27/2018             I’ve kept an idea list for as long as I can remember. The funny thing is that I tend to work on things that are in-progress or are a part of a series, which may or may not have been from the list. While I’m working, I will take the time to explore ideas as they arise, which get added to the list.     9/27/2021                        Finally reading one of Neil Peart’s books, Roadshow about their 2004 tour. I liked the bit about “tryism”. I tried the “trying not to try” (wu wei) and never got anything done and never led anywhere interesting. Even if you simply coast to the next destination, you find yourself trying something during the day, regardless of whether it’s creative or not. What I find remarkable about him is how he can be both intellectual and also do the hard work of playing shows every day for six months. I always thought it was about compa...

7/27/1997             Idea: Video of guitar solos/performances.             [7/27/2024: At the time I had the idea of producing a series of videotapes, but YouTube made this possible 10 years later. We knew what the internet was, and some people had crude dial-up, but it was beyond our ken that you could watch TV on it. To some degree, music instruction videos have made music education unserious entertainment. No one could possibly want to do things like voice-leading exercises, practicing rhythms, and sight-reading. Every new technology steals something away and sometimes re-integrates older ones: Radio stole time away from books, TV stole time away from radio and books, the internet stole time away from rigorous activities, but looped in radio (podcasts) and TV (streaming video), social media stole time away from everything: what it does mostly is to share things we’ll never have time for, AI steals time away from b...

 December 27ths 6/27/1943, Sunday My father with Army bud, Buckroe Beach    [6/27/2025: What would he have thought if someone from the future told him that the US might become a dictatorship in the 2020s?] 6/27/1944 (Diary of Anne Frank) “...In the three weeks since D Day there hasn’t been a day without rain and storms, neither here nor in France, but this bad luck hasn’t kept the British and the Americans from displaying their might....Finland turned down a peace offer some time ago, and now the negotiations have been broken off again. A short ditty for the entry:           6/27/2016 A philosophy of bass: A bass part can be “skeletal” in nature. Some songs don’t need a bass part per se, and rather can be contrapuntal and melodic in nature, rather than simply doubling the lower octave. How supportive the bass line or voice is really depends on the skill of the writer and/or performer, and the style of the music: In pop, a supportive bass part is...

 

 

 

 April Morning Dapple Diptych  

No One's Status Is Unknown (3/27/2020) by meta4s

 

2/27/1943 (Diary of Anne Frank) Jan brought along the episcopal letter that the bishops addressed to their parishioners. It was beautiful and inspiring. "People of the Netherlands, stand up and take action. Each of us must choose our own weapons to fight for the freedom of our country, our people and our religion! Give your help and support.  A chant:       2/27/1998 Bill Russo on WBEZ this morning about recreations of jazz records from the 1920s. Since most of the performances are only on vinyl, the music needs to be transcribed. I wonder what is lost, or gained, from transcription. It brought to mind the new transcription of Brian Eno’s Music For Airports . Bill also talked about his trip to Italy saying that everyone’s lives are in an improvisatory style. The key is to have the faith and skill to know that you will be able to solve any problem that comes along. [2/17/2025: I have been doing quite a bit of transcription from the AI generated music. it’s interesting...

 1/27/1998 Fascinating book by Edward Hall, The Dance of Life, The Other Dimension of Time . On the Zuni songs: perform an experiment, formulate a function, because they came from an unconscious, unverbalized layer representing group sentiments and beliefs. This is why very good songs have congruence on all levels. Music represents a rhythmic consensus of the core culture.   [1/27/2025: What’s interesting and unique about primitive cultures is that they don’t memorialize or tokenize music as recordings, but can be represented (re-presented) in visual forms, perhaps depicting dancing, which is a transference from rhythms to the body and then to painting, fabric, pottery, etc.] 1/27/1999               On Bernie Krause’s autobiography, Into a Wild Sanctuary:  Interesting to read about his involvement with the first Moogs. It was a brand new medium that changed the face of music forever–like Dylan’s going electric in 1965.  1/27/20...

12/27/2009 Part of the reason Hitchcock shot Psycho in BW was that it would mask blood. The first color out of a world of black and white is red. 12/27/2016 When we think of light, we understand it as a retinal phenomenon. But music has been used as a metaphor for centuries, most notably during the impressionist period in the late 19th century, with works primarily by Debussy and Ravel.               In the 20th century, artists such as James Turrell and Brian Eno extended the phenomenological (or ambient) aspects of light. Eno was interested in light even before he became involved with sound and Turrell, while not an audio artist, recontextualized light as being an ambient phenomenon worthy of deeper meaning and attention. There is a natural linearity of moving from visual phenomenon to sound; They are joined at the hip in many ways. People who have synesthesia understand this with an intensity that others may not. Still, most understand that lig...