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Sunday, 4 January 2004
Resolution ::
Explaining why I consult the I Ching from time to time would be a big digression (but it would remind me to finish a book I got myself for Christmas so I can go back to Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind, one of many I made a note check out when reading The Holographic Universe last April). ...
Finishing I ::
Three weeks ago I finished going through my recording archives looking for things most in need of being rescued from decay. I restored/remastering my 10 favorites, which turned out to be, on the whole, much more composed and less improvisatory than Accidental Beauties. I threw together some art, printed it on my inkjet printer, made 10 CDs, and sent them off to friends in time for Christmas. I thought I was just going to post a web page with full-length MP3's and be done with it, but then I realized that personally, I prefer a tangible CD to digital media taking up hard disk space and despite “CD-quality” (cough) compression. Who wants to download 50 MB? (Well ... my brother did.) ...
Finishing II ::
Since returning from NY for Christmas a week ago, I’ve been totally engrossed in the piece I was working on before I left. I repeated more bits. The original 5 minute improvisation is there in its entirety, but it is now a 9 minute piece. It’s definitely the most composed thing I’ve done in a long time, which isn’t surprising considering how the pieces that emerged from my walk down memory lane are mostly quite composed. There is one section in the original track where I played fast patterns with one hand while going nuts with the filters and retuning the oscillators, and I somehow fit a cool synth solo on top of it perfectly. I guess it comes from having listened to it so much that I knew exactly what I was playing over. ...
Absynth makes the part grow longer ::
It was probably around Monday when I got to the synthesizer-free-jazz—no wait, this is a composition, it’s a “cadenza"—in the middle of this opus. I was stuck for sounds. Fortunately Native Instruments’ Absynth had arrived just before I left for Christmas, so I installed it and started exploring the factory sounds, which was a great distraction, lots of awesome stuff, but nothing was fitting. I’d have to find/make my own sound. ...