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Same Walk, Different Music
Stars Of The Lid, “Even If You’re Never Awake.” Good music often doesn’t go how you thought it would go. It may have parts and sections that repeat, it may use recognizable sounds, it may introduce themes, it may have a discernible structure, but still it manages to surprise you by how it goes and… Continue reading
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Database: Catching Flies On Extending Sounds So The Harmony Becomes Interesting
“[Paul Stretch software] extends sounds. So, if you put a 30-second recording of a harp in there, it will extend it for an hour. It won’t mess with any of the transients within it, so it doesn’t sound terrible, it sounds like a really beautiful, long piece of drone. Sometimes I’ll put something into that,… Continue reading
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Keywords: Make It Frankensteinian
Composing is a kind of cobbling together of disparate things to make a coherent whole, but in music production especially we want to dwell among those disparate things for as long as possible and not obsess over when and where coherence will emerge. (It always does if you stick around long enough.) The more disparate… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Neil Theise’s “Notes On Complexity” (2023)
“Unpredictability is a defining hallmark of complex systems. Unpredictability is also the source of all the extraordinary capacities for unbridled creativity in complex systems. Its implications are profound.” “With just the right, low level of randomness, sometimes referred to as quenched disorder, the system blooms with the ability to explore what Stuart Kauffman calls the… Continue reading
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Keywords: Do It Manually
(Photo: Quino Al) Digital tools promise quick magic, giving the impression that we can make musical things happen by pressing a button, turning a knob, or moving a fader. But speed distracts from quality pursuits. The producer wants to capture as much humanity as possible and the way to do this is to do as… Continue reading
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Database: upsammy On Contrasts And Looking For Details In Sound
“With my Zoom recorder I recorded some field recordings and percussive sounds, connecting the music to the visual ideas. I wanted to look for contrasts sound wise, make it sound organic yet digital. Using soft melodies but more bright and icy percussion for example. The act of ‘zooming in’ was a way of working throughout… Continue reading
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Database: Moritz Von Oswald On Listening To Backgrounds
“Experimentation, exploring, sound, and listening. To listen to backgrounds. You should always be listening to what is in the background, of whatever it is…I’m trying to round up the capacity of what the ear can perceive.” Moritz Von Oswald database Continue reading