Lee Barry Composition (And Photo) Diary

  The idea behind the Ancient AI album was that there is an artificial intelligence that is built into humanity and is a timeless phenomenon–it’s not something that we just invented; it’s always been there in nature. What I was getting at, at least sonically, was something that sounded broken because I wanted to hold the mirror up to society and show its reflection. I’ve done a 180 since 2016, when things got unnerving in the US and the world so it’s essentially a form of mirror art. I’m of two minds about mirror art: sometimes it’s interesting in a postmodernist sense, so it has a glitchy machine-like quality to it.  (We’ve been making glitch art for some time now. Lots of artists datamosh video as a way of showing that the world is broken, so it was my way of showing that as well. But now, when I relisten to it I think a lot of it is kind of un-listenable–at least with my current ears, because I now consider myself a metamodernist and wouldn’t want to revisit it. Postmodern...

3/27/2001 Rael, the alien spiritual leader, says he will clone a human by 2002—and it will look like the alien stereotype with large cat eyes.  [3/27/2026: 25 years later, a song based in this entry with music generated with AI. Quite comical, but could be an interesting idea for a musical]. Rael Alien spiritual leader Rael Looking for believers Receiving false communion From a pop star on a station Moment of creation Spacemen for a nation Racing in a car Not going very far Creating human clones Righteous to the bone  The Curio:    3/27/2015, Friday A Harry Weese (200 S Wacker)                    3/27/2024 I came across something I had written in the diary after listening to a David Bowie interview. He said what he was interested in were the top-level systems–he didn't want to just make canoes (songs), he wanted to make the waterways. I think that's what I was thinking at the time I was doing Ancient AI : a system tha...

Ancient AI by Lee Barry Alux (Duende) with some "place" added around it. Towards the end, an EDM groove is added with a short bass interlude based on the main tetrachord (G-Ab-B-C), then fades.

Side A A1: Mxines The sound of trains has always inspired pop music. But now machines are silent algorithms. The closest corollary to machines inspiring music is the random buzzes and clicks from electronics and things like the read/write head on a disk drive. That's what inspired the static-y rhythms on this track. The glitched sound is from the random "scrubbing" of the timeline. A2: Ancient AI  A generative work based on one small looped MIDI file playing various synth patches and samples, and three gapped scales to be used for improvisation (its "DNA"). The tempo can be set at multiples of itself (e.g. 46/92/184) and played as layered polyrhythms. (For example, the MIDI file can loop at 92 on another sample running at 184, against another one running at 46.) Chord Changes: G# min / A / G#min / F#min / E / C#min The melodic layer uses four scales simultaneously, an E minor pentatonic against a C#minor, F#minor or G#minor, whic...

I like to refer to these as a "cluster changes" rather than chord changes. Sometimes you want to construct chords simply by stacking notes without consideration of what the chord symbols are. Chord "symbolization" can corrupt the thinking about harmony. These clusters are essentially a ii-V in C minor, but have nothing to do with C minor as a tonality. Ancient AI by Lee Barry

3/4 with 2 and 4 polyrhythmic overlays. Ancient AI by Lee Barry

Working title. Other possibility: "Digient Dreams" Changes, sounding like something Zawinul would come up with:

The piece started to sound like it could be scored for a quartet, and here's the first section. It sounds like Ravel in this context. Playing it through various MIDI patches sounds almost Russian. It's working title was "Morfeo". later changed to MOTN. MIDI  

Chromatic bass idea (with a "Another One Bites" funky feel) using a 3-note cell alternately ascending and descending. Chords are in D Phrygian, but the piece is too chromatic to be in any key. First draft, but will change drastically. Ancient AI by Lee Barry