The Right Column

Spring

Summer. It's starting to be hot outside again.

Blueberry
Blueberry Meadows
In the Springtime rain
in the springtime rain

Far fallow fields 
and an old stone wall
and a flood into a drain
and a flood into a drain

Music is Primary

There he goes again. Catch now before or else it's gone, to the tune of a surf song, or derivative. All music is some how derivative, so it's hard to compose without a sense that the ditty, so pretty, and all of it's nitty gritty isn't someone else's recognizable piece. But good people are kind, and someone who can do that kind of wonderment: of music, isn't going to be a jerk if you are making money at it they might give you really good terms for the use, I hear that the terms are fairly straightforward. One needs to just agree to pay them the appropriate licensing fees and then you are good to go. So steal away (unintentionally) and don't worry about stepping on someone else's unknown compositional genius (you are the one who doesn't know it). But do not willfully, nor intentionally rip off someone else's music without a credit, at least, in some kind of tribute. I'm a big fan of some Irving Berlin chordal arrangements. The exact notes? The beauty of the structure is that a jazz-gay (jazz-gal) could riff on it in a whole bunch of different ways, hearing countless alternatives. The musicians all know where the song goes, but they choose whatever way up and down the mountain of chords, that lead to that wonderful . . . harmonic convergence. Maybe the harmony is only implied by the people who hit the notes and dance around the spot of it, it's like a spot in robotics where it represents a place, not a point, per sey, in the mathematical sense. The actual physical universe is not composed of 'points' and mathematics is a good way to model somehting, however, it is merely that: a model. Not the real deal.

With harmony we can almost get to some magical garden of chordal bliss. Sometimes a composition might seem like someone comes into a room and winds up a bunch of different music boxes so that they all play at the same time. But if i't s composed then all of hte foibles of the muscians who are composing live, (riffing on it) all of the foibles can be removed. It gets out of the context of being a performance: Jazz, Rock, Fusion, Funk, et cettera. It becomes a composed thing which could then be it's own music box.

Musicians are not music boxes. They are players who play along with the other players. And they know how to play nice, or as Mike Love would call it "blend". If you can blend, you can sing in the choir. If you had a bad day, and your voice is gone, as long as your just a background voice you can stand off and do it when it's right. You aren't there to follow a score, but merely to blend. And it's always wonderful because it's easy for muscian with pitch awareness who have the vocal range to throw in notes, and arpeggiated 'pleadings' of a conscious melody, that fits right into the rest of it, because they are all on key(s) and know how to make that magic mountain of sound, on which they dance around, morph into something new, something that the listeners didn't expect it to turn into.

Because music is about expectation. We want to hear the sound as we tune in to it. We have our magic transistor radio, somehow a creation of Brian Wilson. Or he heard it, and understood how to put it out as composition. We want to make it, too, into it's own kind of instrument. That is the genius of modulation. As you switch between the very many stations you can almost hear how all of the songs sound as if they were composed to be together. Different 'music boxes' modulating between each other. In the long ago, back in the AM radio days, you could hear the signals beating off of . . . something. Hills? Mountains? Giant buildings? And stations from different places would be very far away, and the signal, that AM signal might reflect off a thunderstorm, or cloud bank, as it would serve as a mirror, of sorts. And it was a game of mine, back then, as a child, to try and find the farthest away station as possible. Or to try and listen to WBZ AM (a beacon in the land of Beacon) from the fartest places possible: Chincateque, VA, Key West (never got it there), Indiana, Ohio, Cocoa Beach.

But there was this thing that would happen in the early AM, when the day had been long and the night is even longer, and you'd be driving through the hills and mountains. You'd hear the far away stations all mixed together, the voices and music all mixed together, but as if it's a shimmer, as light shimmers off the river, the moon on the lake, shimmers. It's that kind of shimmer, but it's given to you to perceive as sound. And the shimmer has a frequency of just about the low range, Maybe the waves of it are faster, maybe the waves of it are slower. And you hear a station from New Jersey playing a jazz song. You get a Christian station from West Virginia playing recordings of gospel choirs. You get the Country twanging guitar from Nashville, Memphis, Indiana. You get Funk from Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago. You hear the details, at times, of some distant baseball game. You can hear the crowds cheering, way off in some ball room. As if the music had been reflecting off clouds for 40, 50, 60 years. And it's an RKO broadcast from a big band back in the day . . . it almost seems like that.

It was almost like a song, a composition, as if the ages of time have a message for you, three AM car ride through a mountain pass. Norm on the BZ midnight to 5 AM (4:59) who was "just so darn nice" (one of Norm Nathon's catchphrases

It would be like the band or the song was set up to play on a carousel in the far away and it would be tripping across the sky, being reflected off of different parts of the atmosphere, or the landscape, or the buildings of the city (the cities). And it is playing that magical song, and it wavers in and out, with a beat in tune, modulated by the shimmer, the say way as moonlight on a lake, or the harbor shimmer of the distant buildings of the water front, tourist hotel, bar on a pier, sound of a rock-song on AM radio, middle of the night, from a distant station almost not tuned in, signal mixed and morphing, many different rock songs. To hear it, many different music boxes. The trains are all music boxes. Someone has a set up, a train set up, and it's really big. It's as big as the composer can imagine. He has little windup dolls. They represent the various singers in his band. He loves them all. He runs them, as passengers, on his toy train. And they wind up automatically through the magic of dizzy animation, and then, when they get to the part, that part of the song, they do the dew wahh , or the good night, pumpkin, part, and it all mixes: it blends. It blends.

Yes, the accidental can be magical. But when encoded into a score, or produced as a piece, with mixing and mixdown, and layering, and echo-boxes, we can get a masterpiece. Something that a random A.M drive can only hint at: the genius of harmony, the way that the universe vibrates for us, all we have to do is notice. The shimmer of moonlight in the Lamoillie River basin. Music that you can't stop humming. Songs that seem timeless, that we can date, but that seem like they must have always existed . . . The music of our lives. If we never stop to listen we might not ever hear it.

I was out at a store yesterday and an 8 year old (or so) boy blissfully bounds through heading into the toy car section, humming some symphony to himself. I instantly got a smile. I quickly cleared out, moving on, to give him privacy. But he struck me, just that very small glimse him, and those tiny fragments of melody. He must be naturally musical. And he maybe didn't even realize he was humming and singing. He was out on a mission: a mission for some cool toy, maybe something to give as a gift. Maybe he has happy thoughts of family and friends. Maybe he's got a dance band always playing in his head. Maybe he enjoys jam tracks blasting from a boom box on a beach. Maybe he always has a song that he's singing. He is prepared, without even realizing it, to be part of the choir.

Media is all about that kind of person: someone looking for the next cool thing, the next wild design, monster truck? Dinosaur toy? Rescue/Hero car set? Motor scooter? Whatever he wants, he might not get. But he's got that song. The whole world pauses to hear. Maybe he's a natural. Maybe he already knows how to blend.

Music for the next generation

So think of kids like that: the next generation, when you craft your content and pages. And put a song in your own heart. Go and listen to the music of a canyon or a beach, or the natural rhythme of trains and light railway. Get hypnotized by a singing bridge. Go off on a ridgeline alone and hope to hear, at a solitary place way up high, but still down below the big trees, listen for the haunting song of a Hermit Thrush. The world, in very many ways, is already composed. And the Great Composer, he lets the music box of nature and people chime on gleefully. Sudden weather. Booming thunder exploding. The world is the grandest symphony of all. And some here enough to make something wonderful, something that they can put in their pocket: a pocket symphony as the composition Good Vibrations by Brian Wilson has been called.

It's a hard thing to be real and relevant, to produce content, music, video, photographs, that people will still want to see and persue even in generations to come. So much will be available, but what will actually be utilized? It takes content providers, thnking about all of those young people ready to be part of the new chorus (which is the old chorus) who will want to be part of some grand accapella of their generation, so that they can blend.

Blend and be part of the larger community. One that does not put demands on talent to be better, but to be just as good. When it comes to music we all know when someone hits a sour note. Others around them might try and blend that gaff out of the mix. But maybe someone hears it and thinks that unexpected dischord must signify some other direction of the composition. If you've ever been to an all night event, like it's 3:30 AM at Bread-n-puppet 26 years ago (or whenever) and drum circles in many locations, and bands still set up, and people jamming into the dawn. You hear something there, nothing composed, but an ambiance. You can really only listen in. Many of them, locked within some concept of their composition, their drum circle's vibration, they won't hear you when you start in with some different hoot, or other hallor from far away. They aren't really under a spell. But they might be in a semi-trance. If you do things to create a bummer, if you start screaming horrible things, and being combative with words, you could cause some dischord. Maybe you'd be able to effect some kind of change in the general ambience.

But why would you? Maybe you're having a bad trip of your own? No one wants to sing along with you? Ah, no, just blend.

I'm
gonna walk that old stone wall
I'm gonna climb a tree that's tall
and walk out beyond the waterfall.

I'm 
gonna ride that old grey mare
Climb the mountain stair
echos in a canyan hall.

inline svg sample 1,inline svg sample 2,inline svg sample 3

Did the Sun ever really go down that night? I parked there, watching for a long while, not realizing that I'd left on my head lights.

Did somehow the Sun just duck within the clouds till day break, and amble along the far horizon till it got to the otherside?

🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 
🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 
🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 
🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 🌛 

Music music music music music music!

March 11, 2015


clean water, even for enemies.
if you have this attitude, you won't need this attitude.
delete your delusions.

Music of
 Christ! 

Dance to the Jam if you want to! 
🌛
    Lovers
    and
    fighters
    are often the same
    



  

Please visit my DEMOS

   Live your life
in constant resurrection!


    Fear the Lord ~ ⏲⏱⏰⏲⏱⏰⏰⏲⏱⏰⏰
 But He's always good to you ~ ; )
     so
 

Praise the Lord while you still have voice in the world!

 
 The gardeners
 healthy exercise
 some might call hard work.
 He calls it invigorating.
 
 Off in the yard
 off in the yard
 where the grass grows
 I don't have to work that hard
 but as hard as I need to, though
 
 not that hard
 working hard
 
 fresher air
 cleaner yard
 
 off in the yard
 off in the yard
 it's not hard
 to work hard
 
 When making fresh
 the verdant yard
 it's really easy
 to work really hard.
 
 It isn't really working so much
 as it's exercise.
 That kind of gardner
 is no disguise.
 
 

I got nothing more