Lee Barry Composition (And Photo) Diary

  Gapper/Snipper, 8x10 inches, photo collage.  An architectural image cut-up an reassembled to change the angle perspective from plan to side view.   #2013

  First track for "Central Coast". Something march-like and motivational. Determined by meta4s

  First ditty of the year Frontiers by Lee Barry 1/4/2025: Interesting version generated by AI, and in the Phrygian mode:

This month's ditty. Inclement Decembers are the new normal. This is a good a bad thing, hence harmonic contrasts. You can end the piece either in light (C Major) or dark (F# minor).     Some December by meta4s

  Something "festive", or rather seasonal (around the solstice). I like to do these transformations in and out of pop music. This is based on the chords of One Step Ahead of the Moon . The next step might be a re-mapping of the lyric against the new arrangement for something that can be sung against. Every time you make a new version of something, others become possible.

  Ink Fireworks (2015) Stills from the video of same title. Print size: 8x10 @300ppi.  

Composed in 1984 in a Mozart-age-9 style. If you like challenges on the bass, this could be for you. The recording is very lo-fi, recorded on a cassette 4-track with (ugh) reverb on it. I also did the calligraphy. I used to enjoy engraving. It was a rigorous as composing and performing. The use of the treble clef is non-traditional and unusual but as far as I know electric bass players don't read tenor clef, and this piece does a lot of switching in both parts. The third movement is the most fun to play. The Recording:   The arrangement for string quartet done a few years later: 

  Music For Places V: Music For Photographs by Lee Barry

   What once had the working title of Sea of Horizontals , is now Boden Sea 1993 . Apparently, this image was used for the cover of U2's No Line on the Horizon , which I learned only recently. A great photo has a resonance. Music For Places V: Music For Photographs by Lee Barry

 A "Standard" blues. It's an extended mix with diegetic elements (in the "world" of scene), as if you were perhaps inside the gas station in earshot of the street, with 2 radios playing, one an excerpt from The Jean Shepherd Show in 1963, and the same track looped back in, with a binaural recording of street sounds. The Station 2015 More Amarillo   Part of the mythology of the United States is its highway system built postwar and one of the more popular roadways as we know is Route 66, one of the main thoroughfares to the west coast. There's this idea of heading west that I've come across in various books as a metaphor for moving towards the future. It's interesting that it is more of a universal and not unique to the United States. One of the images that I picked for the album was taken on Route 66 while the artist was heading west from Oklahoma to California. The photo is in effect a milestone from that point in his life where he steps out of the c...