Category Archives: Music Theory

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.