Lee Barry Composition (And Photo) Diary

   AI Treatment:  

9/4/2012 Milwaukee for MAM visit. Excellent collection of modern art: Judds, Morris Louis’s, Kelly’s...      9/4/2016 On dealing with monotony in music: Monotony is largely subjective based upon cultural factors. I like constraints. With spare and/or repetitive bass parts I like to experiment with duration, space, and range, to the extent that the music allows it. Tension can be created by switching octaves; leaving space and playing with notes and rest durations can push and pull the groove in interesting ways. Alternating the role of player and listener, as well as little rhythmic adjustments can be effective.  [On Bass Lines] 9/4/2017 People are still asking if 4’33” is music. If you broaden the definition of music to include a range of sound that includes pitch as well as noise, then it can be music if you are mindful of the sounds around you. Each “performance” is different because the ambient sounds are different. I’ve understood it as being equal parts co...

February 5ths 8/5/2000  Film at 3-Penny Cinema: Time Regained . Visually stunning. Loved the scene at the recital where the audience seems to be gliding on a platform of some kind, which moved while the camera panned, causing the illusion that background objects moved faster than the camera.  8/5/2019               I recall watching an interview with Andre Segovia where he criticized composers for not fully understanding the guitar. Ideally, composers should defer to players’ creative input and revise accordingly.                     My personal opinion is that putting musicians in a position to play it strictly as written in fact does stifle creativity. Maybe they prefer to play it that way. [8/5/2025: If I am scoring something to be a recording only-and not to be performed, I won’t bother putting in any articulations that don’t affect the sound–which goes back to the idea that all ...

February is Eb Lydian Month. Innuendi From Rifts :.  An interesting ironic juxtaposition with this image:  2/1/1968 Interesting context for the iconic (and ironic) Eddie Adams "Saigon Execution" photo.  Discuss the lies of omission and the power of context in photography                  2/1/2011 Beginning of huge snowstorm, 16 inches by the following afternoon.                   2/1/2012 New word: “idiosyncretic”: (New ways of looking at the world following an inflection point, and you have to adapt after that strange event).)  2/1/2017 It is remarkable how much good music came out of bands where all the players contributed to the songs in real-time in the studio, and ultimately became embedded in pop music history. Sometimes a group of mediocre writers can create a series of individual parts that ride on serendipity in the studio. Even for the autocratic composer an...

December is F Lydian month, from Rifts , Naturally In Nature . Used as a score for Stieglitz photograph:  A string shortet a minute long based on the piano improvisation on Rifts. I'm going for a soft drone sound like a tanpura. String Shortet No. ___ ("Naturally In Nature") by meta4s

  December is F Lydian month and this year it's "Winter Clocks". The title is a variation of "Simmer Cloks" in the Scots language, which are sunbeams through the clouds seen in the summer. Lydian can sometimes slip into Mixolydian like it does here when it seems to resolve to G. Lydian is in the middle-ground or "rift" of the modes.

  Per the Rifts system, the Lydian mode for all 12 keys moves up in fourths and is associated with the months. November is C Lydian month. December is F Lydian, then starts again in January with Bb Lydian. February is Eb Lydian, and so on. Lead sheet:

A crab canon to be rapped/chanted backward and forwards, lines 1-8, and 8-1 with these set rhythms. One pitch or a chord can be used as well. As the original Autolands was in Gb Lydian, the use of characteristic interval (#4, Gb-C) would be recommended. If three, Gb-C-F. If SATB, Gb-C-F-Bb.    

   The original piano improv in Db Lydian Dark Segment by meta4s The Prog Version:

   Solo piano improvisations in the Lydian mode for all 12 keys, following the circle of fourths. ***    The purpose of the exercise was to see what I could do manually as an improvisation using a constraint (the Lydian Mode), then create an algorithm to do the same thing. Musical improvisation is one of the highest forms of free will. It will show what is pure free will, simply playing anything on the piano for example. Someone who knows how to play will make some kind of coherent music. Someone who has hardly touched a piano may play on the black keys. The acid test is whether it has musical value. AI could be used to do the same thing and would sound like music, as it has a basic instruction. In contrast, the programming to do the same thing seems completely unrewarding. Even though my piano skills are mediocre, and my implicit knowledge of music well-developed, the music that is human-made is good enough for me. If a non-musician can do it bette...

Solo piano improvisations in the Lydian mode for all 12 keys, following the circle of fifths. (Side A is flat keys, Side B, sharp keys, progressing from the outside to inside of the disc.) The purpose of the exercise was to see what I could do manually as an improvisation using a constraint (the Lydian Mode), then create an algorithm to do the same thing. The characteristic sonority of Lydian is a chord in 4ths built on the #4, and all the pieces start and/or end on it. Rifts by Lee Barry