November 18ths (All About the Sound)

11/18/2001

Documentary about Quincy Jones on PBS. Found it very compelling, albeit perhaps too much of a "love fest" (Even Clinton was on it.) What I was struck by about Jones was his sensitivity and vulnerability, which are essential qualities for an artist.

11/18/2022

A realization I had years ago was that music had become all about the sound rather than music for music's sake. It was after I had seen a Japanese blues singer on TV: He said, "I didn't know what I was singing about, but I liked the sound." (A testament that American pop music is primarily about sound.) People are looking for an emotional connection with music and it's interesting how that's now done more electronically.

[11/18/2024: AI music is all about the sound. If the sounds weren’t good the bad lyrics would sound even worse. Pop music never really needed good words, or that they were intelligible]. 

 

When I broke my elbow about ten years ago I was wearing a cast for six weeks. One thing that I missed that I didn't think I would miss was holding a camera. I thought I would miss playing my instruments more, but it wasn't the case. 

If I haven't held a guitar for a couple of days I really start to miss it, and I don't miss the camera so much. If I'm photographing something it's usually with a smartphone; I don't always take out my SLR. [SLRs tend to have a deeper tactility because of the way it is held, and differ greatly from holding a phone--something we are always doing, so it has no distinction from function to function].  

In creativity, if you diversify the things that you do you can replace certain mediums that you can no longer do. Writing is something that you always can do, and if you can dictate then you can always express your thoughts.

As people get older and they can't perform as well on musical instruments, it's something that they might miss, but it can always be replaced with another medium. 

If the Metaverse ever evolves into something useful, it will be a form of "sensory substitution". But I wonder if muscles have a memory that can't be virtualized. They have phantoms within them. 

[11/18/2024: Sometimes you can do mental practicing, but it still doesn't improve your playing without using muscles and tendons. It can be mind-over-matter sometimes, but it's only a temporary condition. Will only goes so far. Entropy always rules the day. Similarly, relying on AI to make you an artist is also a temporary condition. You are not the performer in any way, and just barely a writer if AI is churning it out]. 

11/18/2023, Saturday

Nice autumn day, clear, 55 degrees. To Maple Lake (one of the "pothole" lakes) and Teason's Trail. Used the telephoto for some selective-attention photos at the top of Swallow Cliff. Apparently people use the stairs as a form of fitness training.... What was also interesting were lines of small stones that people had made--perhaps also a form of counting device. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11 months into Nostalgia Galaxy I realize I really like working on only one song per month. It allows me to experiment with the idea and let it reconfigure itself.

[11/18/2024: My recent use of AI to generate music troubles me because it’s a distraction away from more rigorous creative work, which makes me think about what the current definition of “meaningful” is. A popular political opinion is now vastly more meaningful to the masses because it taps the emotional jugular–what art has done historically. So the question for artists is where do they focus?]