01/31 simplify

 

the last day of the first month.

this week’s theme for me was the importance to simplify, not complicate life. untangle. remove clutter. clear paths of view and passage. we are conditioned by the attention economy to live in FOMO, to attend to all distractions and not to ignore them. i don’t buy it. i think a large part of the problem is that people are too susceptible to misdirection and slight of hand to notice they’re being pickpocketed of their time, attention, emotional energy and money. people are losing the ability to value quietness, headspace, reflection, contemplation, and perspective. we’re too busy following the darting laser pointer dot on the wall and we’re making mistakes in the process. 

we have to simplify, starting with ourselves, our mental apparatuses, our approach to the world. this not the same as burying ones head in the sand or living in ignorance. there are horrible things happening in the world, and i’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that part of the reason we’re in such a mess is that people are not apprehending modern life on an even keel. our rage and noise are only being used as wind in the sails of those who wish to enslave us in various ways. 

we can start by making habits of taking walks with our eyes and minds on our environment, not our phones. practice quieting our minds, allowing for level-headed reflection. observe the weather, the interesting things that occur around us constantly, the way that the light pings off of a window, the laugh of a stranger, that the blister on my heel is gone, the musical coincidence of a car horn and a bird call, the fact that we are all, every one of us on the planet right now, experiencing the edge of forever in this very moment. this unfathomably significant moment, beautiful in its innocence and complete unassumingness. when we return to the crazy, unrelenting world, we are better equipped to handle it without making matters worse.

01/30 homing in

 a poem by Patrick:

Tick tock on cinderblock

too loud, then not loud at all

second hand jerks, hesitates

a gear grinding its own teeth down

the sound keeps going on

even when you stop hearing it

coffee in a chipped enamel cup

blue rubbed thin

rust breathing through a crack

HOMING IN ON—

letters half there,

half ghost where meaning once was

01/29 thrumma

 

a while back I stumbled upon a live dj set, one of many held in that space all day long, complete with very good independent art, movement and libations, all done by very young, VERY hip korean DIY artists who seem to be the coolest people in town, imo. I felt a little old and was getting side glances, but that’s ok.. i’m a 55 yo white dude crashing their party. I tried to be as unobtrusive as i could be. the music being spun and created live was pretty cool, though i kept asking myself, why is this not grabbing me? i think it’s the reliance on EDM tropes.. things that seem to only be cliche to me. no one else seems to mind. so i thought.. thrum.  there needs to be a thrumming rhythmic element instead of that ubiquitous 4onthefloor kick that punches my intestines.. i’d want them to be massaged, even loudly. so.. THRUM.

I took the idea home and started making things that thrum.

This morning i remembered that and revived the idea.

Today’s music is part of that. I’ll do more exploring and see what works.

only 2 very short sounds are used in the making of this:

a pure tone kick: a sweep from a mid freq sine to a low (~100Hz to 20Hz), very fast

a pure tone bip: a very brief (just a few dozen ms) sine wave tone at 440Hz.

various modulators activated in real time by assigned sliders on my keyboard did the magic. and of course, filters, compressors, samplers, EQ, reverb, etc.

you heard it here first, folks... THRUM.

(if that’s already a thing, well.. shit)

01/21 lenses

 Today we took my new(used) projector to the LG repair service center near our home bc stupid me tried to polish the lens (gently) with an alcohol pad. Apparently, projector lenses are teetotalers. Who knew? You?

Well I learned the hard way: don’t do that. So off to the repair center. The guy immediately stated that he’ll have to replace all the guts of the thing to replace the front lens and it would be 390,000won ($265US). I knew this was horseshit bc I had looked it up. As soon as he sensed I wasn’t happy, he went straight online and a minute later said, oh here’s the part we need, I’ll replace just that for 78,000won ($53). That’s more like it. It’ll be ready in 5-6 days. Morals of the story: Don’t clean lenses with alcohol and always trust a fucking megacorporation to try to do you over in their first quote. Do your homework first.

Shaking off the ugly taste of bullyboy capitalism, we went to one of our cool coffeeshops g/b/d, before the noisy ajummas flock in. Yeah this is my typical ornery attitude before coffee. After coffee, I was back to being Dr. Jekyll and we decided to get Misun new reading glasses for her new eye situation.

Off to Emart for a thorough test of her eyesight and picking out sweet frames (she looks great in glasses, in my opinion). All good there. No gouging of eyes or bank accounts.

So today was all about lenses.

followup: it turned out they didn't want to charge me that low price and said they couldn't fix it, probably expecting me to give up and take it in the ass for 390,000won. We just came and collected the thing and left without making a fuss. Fuck LG and fuck proprietary design. Now I have 3 projectors. One new one that works like a charm, one that takes up to an hour to stop glitching and one that's permanently hazy. the busted ones will be used as lighting instruments in my future live projects!

01/20

 I took Misun to the optometrist yesterday. We were really worried. The result of an afternoon of tests, scares, and finding a good doctor and then laser treatment to fix a partial retinal detachment in her left eye, we returned home. This morning, she’s feeling better, but the residue of a medical episode remains. I woke up with this piece almost completely planned. The sounds reflect the emotional turmoil and the visuals attempt to reflect what I imagine her experience through the tests and the actual visual problems she’s had in the last few days might look/feel like.

01/16

 

someone asked about yesterday’s piece (0115 “parkour”).. “your composition? not AI?”

Yes, It’s my own composition. I can’t stand generative AI and will never use it. I can show my work if there is ever any doubt, I can show the DAW screens and show the original recorded sounds and processes that went into putting it together. I save all my work, so if anyone wants proof, I can provide it. The visuals are done using my phone camera, screen captures by OBS Studio (the free version) and DaVinci Resolve (also the free version). Assistive AI is another matter. I sometimes use an Ozone mastering plugin which uses assistive AI processes to polish the overall sound of things, but none of the musical or creative content is done by AI. I don’t do prompts or anything like that. If you want my full unhinged rant on why, just sit me down with a beer and I’ll bore you to death with it. 

Or perhaps you agree..?

Doing a project like this through something like ChatGPT or UDIO or the like is pure nonsense.. you don’t get to call yourself a composer or songwriter if you do that. Because you’re not. And the billions that are made in the pop music industry churning out one thoroughly derivative piece of crap after another and hoping that enough people think it’s impressive is ridiculous and frankly a con game.

generative vs. assistive

No. I do not use generative AI. Everyone (at least unknowingly) uses assistive AI in some form because it’s baked into almost everything now, and I don’t have a problem with that. If you don’t already know.. go ahead and ask your favorite AI chatbot about the difference between generative and assistive AI.

AI vs. generative music

I do make generative music using PureData, but it’s not AI. It’s more akin to what a windchime does.. you make the chimes and the beater and the thing that catches the wind, you set it outside and the wind “plays” the instrument you’ve designed. That’s more or less what my PureData pieces do, with varying sets of controls governing how and how much random processes get involved in the sound production. (see “aleatoric music” which has been a thing for ages) I can explain this in copious detail upon request. I’ll have coffee with you (I’m serious) if you want to talk about any of this. (within reason, of course.. I live in Korea).

01/14

 

the idea is to experiment, work on techniques, build creative flexibility, improve my mastering chops (one aspect at a time), but mostly for my own enjoyment. it also serves as a kind of journal without words.

the last time i did this was in 2013 and i emerged from that a much better composer; it changed my style pallette completely and for the better, i think.

titles

as of 0114, I've started titling them, which is another aspect of my work that i think needs improvement.. i often struggle with titling things. maybe it will help me to better objectivise what i make. framing is important and a title is a powerful thing - it could improve a piece through context providing, and it could detract from the piece and even ruin the experience of listening to it. 

a good title should be like lighting on a movie set; it can ruin the tone or bring out unexpected things; too vague and it can be seen as pretentious or obfuscatory, too obvious and it can limit the conceptual scope of the thing, cheapening it.