Listening to the piece from late last night -- was nice to get some space back for reflection this weekend.
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The music that moves me is that which twists and turns and massages my expectations with constant surprises. This is one reason I have a hard time even listening to songs strummed away in the Old Standard Tuning, even if the musicians doing the strumming are singing interesting melodies with great tone from great voices.
Those who know me well, know that OST voicings drive me crazy. Put a << I – vi – IV - V >> progression together with OST first-position chords and it’s a recipe for me to head for the door or wish I were home doing instead of watching. Worse: go for that D-sus4 even once and I’ll be wishing I were at work writing UI patents for Windows.
With the ‘music sketches’ I’ve been doing for the past few months, I generally take what pours out on first pass (after sufficient warm-up), and focus on discovering an outline or an essential ‘form’ rather than worry about polishing individual lines or details. To my ears, these are intended to feel and sound like the literal equivalent of pencil sketches. However, when the lines line up and intelligent ‘surprises’ pour forth and capture a shadow of a shape or an outline of a meaningful sentence, or an ironic twist –- it is like hearing a wonderful story or an excellent joke for the first time.
The underlying theme of my personal music work for this past year has been the applied study of Music as language. Notes are syllables, melodies are sentences, harmonies provide context and color, songs are stories, collections of songs tell a longer story about a character over time.
With music as language, the first listener question becomes: what is this story and why is it worth telling? Or perhaps even more importantly: what is the meaning of this piece? Is it just a random collection of sounds, or is there a meaning that is transmitted within its telling – why is the teller telling this tale? And how much of the transmission success is dependent upon that which the audience has ‘read’ before?
Spewing T.S. Elliot or Shakespeare in a kindergarten class may not be the most efficient use of language. Likewise, a reader hungry for Snow Crash may not be happy with See Spot Run -- or worse, a beautifully read owner’s manual.
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Continuing work on the next CD project in the queue, Piano Sketches and Guitar Sketches, I’m considering adding a third CD to the mix: Song Sketches. After more sequence work on the growing collection of piano sketches this weekend, I’m back to the realization that there are some nice chapters, but the overall story still needs some work.
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Energizing afternoon meeting w/ ChrisS, BillB, and GeorgeM. Chris recently worked with Seymour Duncan to built the largest guitar in the history of the world.
An active weekend. Many phone calls remain unreturned: dad, mom, sis, sis, SteveT, DavidLV, PatrickB, among others...
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