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Resonant Thoughts: Simon Reynolds’ “Futuromania” (2024)
“The Gas sound is literally spliced together out of small samples from classical records, which Voigt subjected to processes of ‘zoom, loop and alienation’. The music’s provenance is instantly audible from the rainfall-like hiss of aged vinyl, the discernibly orchestral sonorities of the grave cellos and tingling violins. There’s a marvelous irony to the fact… Continue reading
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Keywords: Under Ten Sounds
The number is arbitrary, but consider keeping the number of sounds in a track to ten or less. Under ten sounds is a bulwark against music production’s abundances–a constraining line drawn around the music that says, Just these sounds are enough to do what we want to do. Under ten sounds is a point of… Continue reading
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Database: Sean Booth On Drafts All The Way Down
“What I tend to do is work with a very basic idea. Everything is drafts. It’s drafts all the way down. You do something and you think, Is this good? Yes or no? If no, what do I change to make it good? You keep doing that and at some point you think, Yes, okay… Continue reading
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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
