This weekend was a bit rough on my wife and I. The boys are sick and Coleman puked at Trader Joes on Saturday. Thanks to the Swine Flu panic-strickened public, the looks we got were pretty much murderous. Never trust a scared mob. I was ready for them with my pitch fork so I wasn't too worried.
The weekend progressed with fevers and a gnarly whooping cough coming from the baby.
Needless to say, there was no music making activities...except for on Thursday night:
new piece, two versions being produced at once. It started out as a string piece for a part of the movie I'm working on. That went where I wanted it to so I saved it. I wanted to take it somewhere else though too, so I SAVE AS'ed and took it to another place entirely.
I spent a lot of time on a four part string movement in 3/4 time and I had a lot of fun with that and am pleased with the result. I felt like a "real" composer. Then I added the beat. I'm looking forward to getting back on it but we'll see if we all have Swine Flu or not. We're going to the doctor today.
The music of experimental composer Steve Reich was introduced to me by an electronic music producer friend Minus Kelvin, who these days is working on a PHD at UCSB, experimenting with new ways to create digital music. He wants to find something better than midi as a standard and is working with some big wigs, Brian Eno being one of them.
When we hung out in Sacramento, we would write music together and then cruise around in his car listening to totally crazy experimental music. He turned me on to a lot of music I really liked and found very beautiful. Steve Reich was one of those artists.
Yesterday, Steve Reich was awarded the 2009 Pulitzer prize for his piece Double Sextet, commissioned by Carnegie Hall.
I love that the award was given to such an experimental artist, a guy that once wrote a score based on the sound of dripping water from a roof on a rainy day.
I took a week off from everything but bike rides and sitting creekside with my boys and beer. It was a Chico week indeed. There was even a round of Golf.
So I spent a week home and did very little besides lounging around and playing with my sons. I didn't even work on music although at the beginning of the week I was certain that I was going to a whole lot. Well, it just never sounded good. The weather was too nice, the bike felt too good and the garage had to get cleaned out.
I will be redeeming myself today, at Empire Coffee, after a work meeting ends. Back to the binary dungeon in my head.
Remember Weston Thompson? He produced lush trancy tracks and is also a very good painter and visual artist? Last year he told me that he was going to quit making music.
It was obviously the rantings of an impassioned busy and scatter brained man who had a little too much on his plate and frayed emotions for some reason. He's been teaching at CSUC in relative isolation ever since.
I often think about him, what he's up to, when he's going to start making music again, how his classes are going, if he likes his students and if having students makes him feel old.
Well guess what...I SAW WESTON...AND...HE WAS WEARING EAR BUDS AND WAS TINKERING IN LOGIC!!!
I do believe the man is back to it and when I inquired he told me that he wasn't making songs, he was just making a piece of music with video and that the non-song he was writing is inseperable from the visual piece.
I'm sure his piece is a song and I for one am thrilled that he's tip-toeing back into the game. Weston is a very talented man and I've missed his presence in the non-academic electronic media arts scene.
I hope to see his piece soon. He mentioned he'll be submitting it to a film fest at 1078.
This is my Friday y'all. I'm staying home for the rest of the week to hang out, eat lunches, work on the garden, tie up loose ends, improve this website, ride bikes and write music.
I'm very much so looking forward to it and having time off to just BE.
If you haven't already and you make electronic music, do take some time to take a look at the link in the previous post about GleetchLab - a super dope modular sound design app that you can't save anything in to conserve the improvisational feel of your recordings. Very cool, I use it a lot of ambient sounds and glitchy beat mods.
Anyone bored this week and want to talk about music?? Hit me up!!!!!!!
Thanks for reading.
Saturday...
Had a nice mellow morning. Woke up a little bummed out I missed out on a night at Innerspace Studios but happy I felt so rested. The week had taken its toll and I was out at 10:30.
Rode the bike with the family to the communal Easter Egg hunt at Caper Acres after whole wheat blueberry pancakes baby.
It's a great day today, beautiful. I spent some time preparing the ground in the backyard for a nice little garden.
I just found out that one of my favorite freeware apps released an updated version. This version costs money now but the 2.0 is still super cool. It's really useful for Ambient or IDM. Check it out on this nice Saturday afternoon. This guy's site is really cool anyway.
GLEETCH LAB
So wow. I went to the Cafe Coda CAMMIES acoustic show partially because I like good songwriters, I love the human voice, I work at the CN&R so I need to represent, but mostly to finally see MaMuse.
I've heard about them about twice a week for a couple months now and I know they're moving their cd's well and getting some good festival gigs. One of the women in the duo started coming into Empire Coffee right after I opened it, would quietly drink tea, we had mutual friends and she would always be on her bike.
So for all these reasons, I've been really wanting to see them. Let me tell you, I was about as floored as I can get over living musicians in that vein of music. Perfect harmonies, excellent lyrics, catchy sing alongs, and moments of transcendent musical beauty.
MaMuse played and sang from a depth of spirit that is truly hard to find and they will do anything they want with their music. I've seen Cat Power live and they are in that echelon with more of a Ditty Bop's sensibility.
Very impressive...check them out if you haven't already.
http://www.mamuse.org
The CAMMIES folk show is at Cafe Coda tonight at 8pm. I have love for folk music. I've always enjoyed good poetry, good singing and good songs...so if done well, folk music encapsulates all of the above.
Favorites include Nick Drake and Johnny Cash. I love the Johnny Cash gospel songs and he also wrote a kids album that I love. It's a little bit buried in his catalogue but worth finding. Especially if you have wee ones.
I'll be down at Coda around 9pm I suppose. I haven't seen MaMuse yet and of course have heard many good things so I'm looking forward to that. I'll be packing the field recorder in case any moments of inspiration come and I have to use some sounds (with their permission of course maybe). Hope to see you there.
Peff just wrote back to me. I am kind of feeling like a school girl. I was hoping for constructive criticsm but received:
"Sounds great. It's a very cool blend of textures and radiophonics!
Thanks for sending that along,
/Kurt"
Peff said I made a blend of textures and radiophonics. I sent him Baptism, the track I mastered using his process I learned from his DVD.
I am now going to contemplate what he means by "radiophonics." Somebody needs to put the word on a t-shirt.
Worked on Bumper Car City film score last night. It was a good night and I feel good about what came out, definitely wasn't the standard BASIC sound. I enjoy making music to support other's projects, it's kind of a relief.
To wrap up the last 2 new tracks I made for the CAMMIES show I was cramming in production time wherever I could find it.
Skipping lunch, ducking into coffeehouses, late at night, whenever and wherever. I dangled my headphones on my bag wherever I went just in case a free 10 minutes showed itself.
Usually, after a show, I feel a bit burned out on the whole thing and want to step away from music for a little while. Not this time. I have work to do.
There's the film score work that needs to become priority one now, and I'm feeling productive and lively so I need to work on it in that frame of mind.
There's Symbio's files he's asked me to remix for fun and collaboration's sake.
There's the ambient project I want to pick back up and finish, now that I'm about 20 minutes of music away from the goal.
Lots of music to write, life is short, and I'm feelin it. Go go go go go go go go go go go go..........
RSS Feed