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Distillation: On Composing Process
Attend to the random, the serendipitous, and the happy accidents; use the sounds at hand; commit to what’s working right now; mix on the fly; always improvise; bloom other parts from the chords; drum non-obvious rhythms; embrace the synthetic but evoke the acoustic (or vice versa); change one line and keep another the same; contrast… Continue reading
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Database: Nils Frahm On Creating Complexity Without Having To Force It
“Since a lot of my gear is analog and all elements correspond with each other, all of the effects I want to apply to the music can quickly be implemented manually. Every piece of equipment influences every other one in some form. And that’s something I could never get done with plug-ins. If I put… Continue reading
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Keywords: Grid Musical Thinking
Sol LeWitt, “Color Grids” (1980) Novation Launchpad Pro (2024) The 64-pad matrix grid MIDI controller is contemporary electronic music’s preeminent symbol. The grid represents square 4/4 time, quantized notes, auto-tuned pitch, 4-bar drum loops, and the triggered clips method of recombinant/modular composing. For a hundred years, grid forms were an emblem of modernist visual art,… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Nate Silver’s “On The Edge” (2024) and Yuval Noah Harari’s “Nexus” (2024)
“The thing is our physiology is really smart. I mean, it’s just really smart. It’s very hard to trick your physiology. We live in a 3D world, we move in a 3D world. So if we make mistakes in our movement, we die. So we have much higher standards in our physiology than we do… Continue reading
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Database: James Leyland Kirby On Musical Technologies, Creating Errors, Finding New Sound Worlds, And Risk-Taking
“I love what technology affords me. Although some of my work can seem nostalgic, believe me I work in the now. I have no desire to set up a studio with a ton of old modular gear, that game is like a fruit machine: loads of people putting money into an expensive setup with flashing… Continue reading
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Keywords: Maybe Rationales
(Photo: J.S. Bach, “The Well-Tempered Clavier, Prelude in C Major”) Maybe the parts will eventually add up to something. Maybe the perfect sound will present itself. Maybe the track is good enough as is. A maybe rationale is a speculative rationalization we offer ourselves as to why it’s acceptable that the music in its present… Continue reading
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Same Walk, Different Music
M.C. Escher, “Relativity” (1953) Stereolab, “Crest” (1993). I first heard this song—and learned about Stereolab—during a musicology graduate seminar over twenty years ago. Another student had chosen the track as way to talk about a topic in musical time which I don’t recall, but the music mesmerized me and I’ve never forgotten it. Years later… Continue reading
