Extreme(ly) Extreme Minimalism
What might qualify as extremely extreme minimalism? Music that takes one or more parameters to an almost insane point of rarefaction. Duration, for example. Many minimalist composers have worked with tempos under 10 bpm. But few have broken the 1 bpm border. Fewer still: .1, .01, .001 bpm. Imagine a piece with a tempo of [...]
Extreme(ly) Extreme Maximalism
To extreme-ify something is to push it to its limits. The problem with extreme-ifying maximalism is that the maximal is, by definition, already at its (maximum) limit. So the notion of extreme must take on a different slant. Extreme-ifying the maximal means not going up to, but beyond its limits. This is a bit of [...]
Emulate: Ja. Imitate: Ach NEIN!
All animals learn by imitating, even fancy apes like us. It’s the most efficient way to master the basics of a new field of knowledge. Want to become fluent in conversational Italian? Spend a year in Venice surrounded by native speakers, listening to everything and imitating it like a four-year old: words, inflections, rhythms, phrases, [...]
Soundcombing
I’ve always loved beachcombing. Growing up, I’d wander the shores of Jones Beach looking for whatever the ocean happened to yield that day: shells, rocks, driftwood, dried-up hermit crabs and jellyfish and other mysterious aquatic beasts. Now I’m landlocked, 350 miles from the ocean. So I do my scavenging in the audio arena: soundcombing. I [...]
Less is More
For electronic music composers, life is a grand – and crowded! – playground. We are surrounded by thousands of great-sounding toys: sequencers, samplers, synthesizers, VSTs galore. There is such a glut of sonic beasts out there, one could make a full-time career out of downloading and auditioning them … with little or no time left [...]
More is More
Excess, when applied in an artful manner, can dramatically enhance the power and expressiveness of music. Two dazzling examples jump to mind: Birds of Fire and Go Plastic. John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra, which had its heyday in the early 70s, was the most ecstatically loud and musically dense band of its era, perhaps any era. [...]
Free Groove
Groove, defined conventionally, is a rhythm whose notes conform time-wise to a periodic pulse grid that specifies which beats are permitted and which are verboten. You can tease the grid, play ahead of it, play behind it, speed it up, slow it down, syncopate. But you must respect it and, ultimately, adhere to it. This [...]
TV Covers II
Just finished revising the 12 classic-TV-theme (extreme) covers of TV Covers II. I tightened them up and added a little pizzazz to the mixes (too much would have ruined their delicious lo-fi-hood). Have a listen!
Musical Flow
Musical flow is the succession of sounds (and silences) that spans the duration of a piece. It’s the way a piece unfolds for the listener; its rhythmic and melodic dance; its storyline. A piece’s musical flow cannot be reduced to a simple formula, diagram, or analytical mapping. Flow is a complex and mysterious quality, more [...]
Shhh …
Music is (un)filled with silence. On the macro level this silence occurs between movements, sections, passages, phrases, and even single notes: gaps in sound-time. On the micro level it occurs within every sonic event, at the infinitesimal points when the sound waves attain zero amplitude (zero crossings). Silence can be pure (absolute) or coloured (relative). [...]