man in spite of my age I am on the fast-track to growing up LAST.
but then, that’s comparing myself unfavorably to others, and it is also giving importance to certain “norms” of behavior…
so what if others do things sooner in life than me(even my younger crazy artist friends,) so what indeed.
they haven’t done what I HAVE.
no one gets to say that the NORMS are more meaningful/important than the things I HAVE DONE.
so there.
so HERE’s a question…no, wait-
“….. now THERE’SSSSSSS a Bat-mannnnnnnnn.”
so, as I was saying…
if I DID like someone, um, aside from playing music, listening to music, talking about music, or having sex…or just talking to them…
what WOULD I want to DO SOCIALLY or anti-socially with them…
do I even KNOW this?
one thing that seems to drive me fucking bananas in a bad way is being in um, social situations that don’t really involve music, or that DO involve um, things unfamiliar and uncomfortable (and also not that interesting too, it should be stated.)
I mean, GOD DAMMIT learning new things SUCKS. (yes, I’m early-teenage-mike here, who never learned anything that most people did, yes. I’m 12. or 8 still, yes.)
AND_
people that I DO seem to like (so few, it seems…)
do I REALLY like them, or are they just so similar to me, and is THAT why I like them….
never ending god damn questions…
seems I really don’t know…
fuck I hate it when people I know are in relationships. HAHAHA< I know, who the fuck isn’t in one. I hate it when people I like get with others. but then I never approach them in a way that doesn’t wreak of “lets’ just be friends because I’m too unfocused and scared to move.” just think, some day I’ll either 1. stop stopping myself from, um, doing what I want 2. actually get something I want 3. or die first. any might be nice and peaceful. (relax, concerned friends… it’s nothing, I get like this when I get jealous that other people are experiencing things with people that are actually interesting, things that I never focus on nor let myself experience, even if I’d get rejected countless times first.)
quick overview of lessons taught to me tonight:
1. my very definitions and separations of NORMAL and WEIRD are kinda not the right way to go about things.
2. don’t use what my childhood-self perceived as “other people’s standard of normal, particularly if it seems to not really be what I want.
3. sometimes, it is good to “have strategies.”
4. sometimes when you dance with someone, at a certain point, it is appropriate to touch their back, and then attempt to play with their butt, depending on the reaction.
5. the TRUE meaning of “it’s not about me” is not that “my feelings are irrelevant”, but that the highly self-conscious and crippling worrying I (and apparently many people) do is ONLY IN “OUR” HEADS, and that it is in fact about the other person, not your own incessant worrying…, IT, being um, social stuff, I think.
wow, I’ve really got A LOT of cool friends to make music with at pretty much any moment.
I’ve got
1. these people
2. them two dudes
3. this dude
4. that dude.
5. this dude.
6. them big groupa dudes
7. them new people down there
8. some new people up here too.
9. several other combinations of the above people
10. oh, THEM new people UP UP there too too.
guess life really is actually great.
– friends in the dark, who never have experienced this: please seek it out, and if possible, come to calarts, that’s the best way.
-I know it sounds crazy. trust me. you’re gonna die some day. don’t die without this.
-oh, and also THOSE people and
-THAT REALLY REALLY HUGE group of people as well.
being relentless because you should, is one thing.
being relentless because you REALLY REALLY want something, YOURSELF…. is another.
I was relentless with Minimalism.
Wagner was relentless with his works.
1. a piece my friend wrote, begins and ends with a certain Riff.
2. it’s sorta an Arch-Form (sorta, a little) in that way.
3. I can’t believe I somehow have become, even a little, the kind of person who feels that the introductory RIFF of a piece of music, a THEME, should be more than just a THING you play at the beginning and end, and should have MORE THAN A PASSING “STRUCTURAL?” importance/relation to, the rest of the piece.
OTHERWISE it’s just a cool riff you played, merely as a “hey, everyone listen up” thingy.
more often than not, however, something ELSE happens, in “pop” type music at least (and in some other music as well.)
more often, it’s just USED as an intro, and basically a BACKGROUND/SUBSIDIARY thing to something ELSE… AND- SAID something else is…
not only “not all that related” to the thing, but FAR LESS INTERESTING THAN it.
I find this in Hip Hop some. and man… EVEN in JAZZ, which I love, YES I appreciate that obviously “the head” is being repeated over and over and is the harmonic (as well as other things) BASIS for the tune, for the solos, yes yes of course… but I just think it can also be MORE than that…
take the case of STOLEN MOMENTS by Oliver Nelson. believe it or not, I wish always that there was um, “more development” of the nifty voicing (voicings, but apparently, “voicings” plural isn’t a word:)
in the beginning.
maybe it’s just me…. maybe I’m SUPER WHITE. yeah, likely.
when I First learned African music, yes, AT CalArts, from Alfred and Kobla (and Chris T. Armstrong, the first thing I did in my private lessons was NOT to learn a bunch of the different drum patterns from one piece, but four different pieces with four different bell patterns (uh, rhythmic underpinnings, that is.)
not that that was advisable, to this day I don’t “always” now “all” the supporting rhythms for some of the easier BASIC pieces, which kinda “isn’t ok”, but I digress.
it took me, um, “some time” (try 10 or more years) before I developed the patience to get into the SUBTLETIES of the pieces, so…. what do I know… who knows, who knows indeed.
I guess all I’m saying is I’d like it more if the opening material of a piece isn’t just used an excuse to make some “kinda generic” music on a theme (not saying that about Stolen Moments, just trying to get the point across, sorry if I offend someone with that analogy) I mean, dude, it happens in classical music some TOO. “this here is a concerto, which is a lot like other concerto’s, but on THIS theme, but otherwise has a very similar form, etc….)
fucks sake, do somethin different, and APPRECIATE THE OPENING MATERIAL FOR IT”S OWN SAKE, IT”S OWN SOUND, NOT JUST AS A BACKGROUND/FRAME FOR music which, even if great, is like many other such pieces.
phew, tough to say.
p.s. this may have something to do with STRUCTURE, TIMBRE, HARMONY, RHYTHM… and perhaps NOT with Melody?:)
here’s HERE’s an example: there’s a version of that same tune, STOLEN MOMENTS by OLIVER NELSON, played and arranged by BILL CUNLIFFE…. the intro in that version alters some of the chords… I’d like (and maybe it DOES do this, haven’t heard it all yet)
to hear the harmonic relations of what they altered to chords to like… DETERMINE the modulations later in the piece… like… at the end of the head in this version…
it (it’s in c minor)
goes to EbM7, GbM7, and EM with a G natural in the melody the whoe time (making the EM kinda like a E7 #9, except there’s no 7th:))
I’d like to hear the tune MODULATE to those keys, or even modulate in the DIRECTIONS those keys ARE from C, even upside down….
even it such a thing wasn’t obvious….
SO WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME, other than being WHITE???:)(by white, I mean Classically trained, and not a jazz musician:)
don’t think too much about tomorrow, nor worry about yesterday too much,
for
right now is here.
I hear this:
1. an A.A. thing
2. A Buddhist Thing.
3. I KNOW it’s a YODA thing:) Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, act II, when Luke first meets Yoda and the latter admonishes him, saying
“This one, a long time have I watched. All his life, as he looked away to the future, to the horizon… NEVER, his mind on Where. he Was… HM? ? what he was DOING… Hm!.”
hey, here’s why WOMEN, AFRICAN MUSIC and MINIMALISM are tagged in this:
1. being present in the moment, in a relationship, is probably good, and I’m a guy.
2. African Drumming, and Minimalism, particularly in the case of Steve Reich’s music, are all about being in the moment.
I feel like I am a BEAST, and that sometimes I act more like one than others, and on still others I act VERY serious and focused, i.e, like a beast.
if there are
1. some things I do that basically OTHER PEOPLE arrange, and I merely have to GO to…
2. and other things which would happen if “I” succeeded in arranging and organizing them…
then why is it that so often, the latter are things I never GET to until um, years later than I need to…