November 13ths (Underground Lake)

11/13/1998

On my architecture kick again. I really want to find a way to apply the metaphor to music without using its structural aspect, i.e. foundation, reinforce, build, but rather the space aspect—something that surrounds you and that you can walk through...I like the way architects visualize their work and articulate their methods. They're not consumed by their emotions like musicians are. (Interesting thought: electronica artists actually being more intelligent because the emotional element is not an option.)

[11/13/2024: I still think architecturally in all the things I do. Perhaps I’m naturally a left-hemispheric person. Architects/engineers can’t be “emotional”, but when they think about the space it is emotional because the people in it are.] See Hemispherics

11/13/2003

Paul McCartney releases the remix of Let It Be (or rather the pre-mix) This is the revisionist approach...once the sound of a record becomes established in the musical oeuvre, it's difficult to get used to the new version. What McCartney is doing is stripping away the sound ambience (or artifice) to reveal the core of the song, but sometimes a stripped song sounds crappy on a recording and you want to stack "frosting" on it. The listener won't always want to understand why, it just has to be "cake." The Long and Winding Road sounds more cinematic with the Spector touch. Paul's new version sounds sappy without the sap.

[11/13/2024: Pop music has to rely on production because sometimes there isn’t much musical “nutrition” in it. In retrospect, this seems odd because The Long And Winding Road is “nutritious”. It isn’t just empty calories. You can determine whether pop music has nutritional value by playing a song acoustically, and whether it can be reduced to notation. My big “dream” for AI music is to be able to start with notation, then make a production built on that as a set of instructions–which is what a score is essentially.]

11/13/2004

On the El on the way home from work, I got on a car where a group of young black girls were singing A Capella gospel. They sounded excellent. I wish I could hire them to sing on my music. When they got off, everyone clapped and cheered. 

11/13/2009, Friday

Equivalent of 24 gallons of frozen water found on the Moon. It is far from the science fiction fantasy of an underground lake, but still pretty impressive for a satellite long dismissed as arid and dull.

 

Film: Food, Inc. I know of all this horror—this is not new to me. But below the disgust is the superstructure of capitalism: profits, opportunities, jobs for local economies. How could all that ever be changed? For such a documentary to be truly transformative, you'd have to watch the grisly footage over and over, at which point compassion fatigue would replace the disgust, and people would resort to carnivorous behavior for its convenience and economy. 

[11/13/2024: This is where the US is headed. It is said there are only 12 good harvests left, so the adaptation phase must begin. Those adaptations are not likely to be equal for all countries, or all areas of the US. All you have to do is watch all the doomer films made in America to know where it’s all going. (America is every kind of movie)].

11/13/2022

Idea: Courtesy Notices for musical instruments as you would get a Notice from the library about an overdue book. If you haven't touched an instrument for weeks or months, perhaps it's time to return it. Instruments are containers for possible music, so if you're not going to fill it, someone else can.