Category Archives: Harmony

HIGH STIMULATION MUSIC, mine 1 24 15

There is some music and dance that I REALLY REALLY love to play, and listen to.

it is of SUCH intense joy, that it pretty much is my favorite thing in life.

my PERSONAL TASTE in such matters is pretty much as follows:
(in no particular order of puesto (course)
1. James Brown
2. Wagner, namely The Ring, Der Ring des Nibelungen
3. plenty of West African Dance-Drumming, from Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Ivory Coast, etc.
4. The Planets by Gustav Holst
5. The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky
6. Brazilian Music, particularly Brazilian Jazz
7. and yes, there’s always “Jazz”, yes yes.
8. don’t leave out CERTAIN HARMONIES (I’ll get to which ones)
and
9. STEVE REICH’s Minimalist Music and that of
10.. PHILIP GLASS as well.

African Dance, yes yes yes…. doing that is one of the awesomest things ever… total exhaustion, VERY stimulating, so much so that at the end, you are exhausted… and yet, you would (and do) continue dancing for more hours…

THIS is what I want… THIS is HIGH STIMULATION.

THIS is LIFE.

James Brown once said something along the lines of “I want to give them MORE than they came for, I want to make them (the audience) tired, ’cause THAT’S what they came for!”

Energy Usage.




perhaps I am a Hedonist. (perhaps I should google such terms before I use them, not “completely
certain if I have the right word in mind. (but where’s the fun in that, where’s the fun in that, inDeed…)

minor third, minor second, repeating

half step, minor third. repeat. what do you get–another “symmetrical from a certain point of view” scale (symmetry is the wrong word… I know…)
C Db E F Ab A C…

or minor third minor second…
C Eb E-nat, G, Ab B C…. that one seems more interesting only because it contains a C major and Minor triad (to BEGIN the analysis from at least.., ‘specially if you are telling this to very young people who may have just learned what a major chord IS… (something I am prone to do, I love making them aware that the universe is huge, not just a bunch of boring whole and half steps, I like making them aware of this long before they have been put through years or flitting about with whole and half steps… not that they don’t HAVE to DO said flitting about, most certainly they do. but as a child, and still now, I always think, and indeed used to actually ASK THE TEACHERS, in first grade, “what does this have to do with me?” (i.e, why should I learn this, and not just because the school says so, but what is the ACTUAL REASON?)

anyway…

the second one, m3, m2 repeating…

Cm and CM are in it… with optional m6, M7, and #9, though without a b7… …
obviously, the same exact chord qualities and such will repeat off of E and Ab, augmented, M3rds apart of course….

shallst this be used to move from a “normal, diatonic, functional-harmony use of CM, or cm, to some OTHER chord, via THIS arrangement, instead of by 4ths?
certainly!

harmony can win me over

you know, I might be “weird” like that, BUT-
when the harmony of a tune is awesome, I will also like the beat of the tune, maybe, simple as it may be.
that’s not at all the case if I don’t like the harmony.
I suppose this is kinda like, liking something about a person, and through that, learning about other things about them that you wouldn’t have cared about otherwise (and that you might indeed not care about in other cases.)
blah blah… the love affair with music continues.

certain harmonies/rhythmic feels GET ME

certain harmonies and rhythmic feels just GET ME, man. like that. I can hear such things like they are an addictive drug nonstop for hours.
they aren’t though. which is cool, cause, drugs are bad, but music is good:)
which reminds me of my “curious” reading of the end of The Hurt Locker.

such as this song right here, for some reason (it’s in C Dorian. that’s the reason I think. c d eb f g A NATURAL Bb…. yeah yeah yeah yes yes)

Books for Christmas

coolest presents I got, as usual lately
are BOOKS.
I SAW THE WORLD END by Deryck Cooke
WAGNER’S RING AND IT’S SYMBOLS by Robert Donnington (BOTH about Wagner)
FIGHT CLUB the novel, and
DESERT TO DREAM, a big coffee table book of burningman photos, including many nudes of both varieties, both painted and not, mud covered and not, and lots of “ART” too. wonderful.
Mom and Dad, LITERATURE PEOPLE as they are, are proud. Smile.
I put the T in ENTP/INTP

The Hurt Locker, 1

the ideas in this post need clearer explanation. I’ll get to that some time.

A post about the film THE HURT LOCKER.
SPOILER ALERT! DON’T READ THIS till you SEE IT!!
seriously!




ready? ok.

the first time I saw the end, when he goes back… I felt what I imagine was intended, kinda shock and horror at how a man could become addicted to the adrenaline rush that they feel in a war.

but every time since,

I have felt, shall we say, something else.

as he is walking in slow motion, and then it jump cuts to him in the suit… with that super loud THRASH music…

I feel who is anyone to judge anyone for what is best for them in life…

there are things about life that I love very much (not war, no.)
sometimes, as in the case of The Dude from The Big Lebowski….
sometimes there’s a man… and… he’s the man, for his time and place.

ADHD is not “addiction, for one.
I am not addicted to war, no.
but there are things that I find “highly stimulating.”
fortunately, for me, they are mostly music, not some ‘foreign substance, i.e, a drug” that I put in my system.

nobody can tell me, nor indeed anyone,
that they shouldn’t be this way, that they shouldn’t get “what they need”, in “their” amount and in a way of “their” choosing. (albeit, if it’s really drugs we are talking about, and I’m not sure it is…. it might or might not change the equation.

I mean, is adrenaline a drug?

is developing tolerance for things, adrenaline included, bad?

who’s to say?
(this is why a film wins best picture, in ambiguities like these.)

certainly not “normal people.” anymore than someone different is to say that “normal people” are doing it wrong. though, we may often think so, I certainly do.

All I am saying is that when I see Sgt. James walking in Iraq, in slow motion at the end of the film…. in the suit….

having nothing to do with America, or War or anything… Edmund, I didn’t take any pro or anti-us stuff from the film, was on a different level for me, as you can see)

I felt empowered. very very VERY MUCH.

to this day, I get a BIG rush in that last scene (see above… it’s High Stimulation.)

not because of war. I was against our invasion or Iraq.

because sometimes people need to do what’s right for THEM, regardless of how it might appear to others.

this is why a film wins best picture. because of ambiguities like these.

In High Stimulation we trust.

p.s. this is all about MUSIC, and MY FEELING that people have often not been in sync with, not understood, my tastes, and the comparatively extreme nature of my musical tastes, to others’.

I love Wagner, West African Drumming of various kinds, Minimalism by Steve Reich and Philip Glass, James Brown, Jazz, and many other things too.

sometimes I like to hear the same thing over and over for hours.
sometimes I hear the same thing over and over in MY HEAD, automatically, for hours.
sometimes I love playing music for hours…. sometimes I like doing it until I’m dead tired and can’t drive home (but have to anyway… coffee…)

High Stimulation Music is life. for me.

so again, this post was not about war… it was about me, and music, which somehow, I saw in the last scene of the Hurt Locker.

(Incidentally, there are Tritones in the chords of this music…. pimp)

DMajor in F#Major. poppy music

in the last 45 seconds, I heard
1. a song, in F#Major, on the radio at starbucks.
2. noticed DM7 chords in it.
3. asked the bar what it is.
4. they said “Deep Sea Diver” by Always Waiting
5. am Buying it.
I have designs on making my own popular music, but with MY flavors and tastes and interests and stuff incorporated.
and yes, I like M7 chords borrowed from non-diatonic keys.