Category Archives: Minimalism

Steve Reich minimalist music related stuffs

so um, what ARE “new music people” doing?

so um,
may I ask,

all those
New Music People

who are playing more gigs than I,

what exactly ARE you doing?

playing a fair amount of gigs,
not getting paid all that much at all (same here)
and making your money with a combo of
teaching and “other gigs” (likely, mostly teaching)
yes?

my life may in fact not be all that bad at all.

especially if this seldom pays much at all, which, does seem the case.

I’d rather play less often, and when I do, have it be big and huge and awesome, and then nothing. or at least, in a more ideal and better organized world, BIG and HUGE AGAIN, just MORE OFTEN.

but not smaller, not practical, not smaller and less.

that doesn’t do it for me.

you want a slice of pizza, I want the whole pie.
you want a drink, I wanna party hard and be unconscious in an alley and hurt for two days.

you want a nice leisurely drive through the country on a sunday,
I wanna drive so far I wreck the car and can’t walk for a year.

well, I’ve already got this life, so, mission accomplished.

lets’ continue getting ready for the next big project, which still may take years.

if something is not going to pay…

the THOUHT of the day is:

person-1218190_1280

it better be worth your effort in awesomeness.

if it’s not… even if it IS, to someone else…

don’t do it.

life’s too short.

when something is for fun…
it needs to ACTUALLY
BE
FUN.

FOR YOU.

be precise. be perfect. in the good way.

very often people do things in a manner MOST imprecise, imperfect.
when it comes to Artistic manners this is UNACCEPTABLE.

HAHAHAHA!!!
Yes, I really did just say that.

please don’t be half-assed.
don’t not care enough to figure out HOW to not be half-assed, to actually not BE half-assed.

please be awesome.
please try hard..
please be patient with thyself.
please be awesomer.
please try harder.

“perfection of the bad kind” (when you are too hard on yourself, hate yourself, and are generally negative and destructive to yourself,) never do this ever.

However-
“Perfection of the Good Kind”
is NOT OPTIONAL!!
GO FORTH!bulls-eye-1044725_1920

being so afraid of feeling guilt and shame

being so afraid of feeling guilt and shame (a very bad habit indeed) that you DON’T take even the smallest risks, and effectively self-sabotage, even in passive aggressive ways (me?!) by simply taking something I am very good at, that being procrastinating, and doing it so long, that you “self-“ sabotage the opportunity.

cannot TELL you how many times I have done this,

how many years I have known about it, and how some kind teachers who cared, almost 20 years ago, tried to shake me out of it.

it seems I still have much to learn.

THIS is an answer, yes.

TAKE more risks, and  for YOUR OWN sake,
sport-1284275_1920overthink them LESS.  just MOVE.

the four challenges, in short

not feeling worthy of something is one thing,

not knowing how to go about it, (due in part to years spent not feeling worthy of it)
is quite another.

whereas not WANTING something, unless it’s done YOUR WAY, versus “everyone else’s”, is QUITE another yet, and of course-

simply not getting around to it, or anything,
is indeed another.

These are THE FOUR CHALLENGES. 3, 2, 1, and 0, in that order.chess-1215079_1920

Wo, didn’t realize I was kinda a drill-sergeant

wo… weird…
thought I just had:

when it comes to MY teaching, I just thought almost instantly of many examples where, when “I” teach, the following notion is true:

“It’s not my job to make you feel good.
It Is my job to make you do what you DO good (being play music in my case.)”

(you can argue that there is nothing too wrong about making students feel good, indeed.)   just saying.

presenting one kind of thing as another

an attempt, not the first,
to create not a theory of everything, but of “some things”
involving analyzing
presenting one kind of thing as another, in the context of the former, or the latter, and which one is best…

is suddenly expanding, hopefully not unnecessarily into a discussion, within my brains,

of classical music,
ethnocentrism, white privilege, how in touch with the moment one or one’s culture is, and whether or not or one’s culture is alienated from the moment, from joy, and how important, if at all,
TELEOLOGY (goal-orientedness), LINEAR DEVELOPMENT in the western (music (and other things) sense is…, if at all…

why?
an attempt for
my extreme-left-brain (as always) pre-pre-pre planning to:

take something, a cultural (musical expression) which happens to be popular, but it most often lacks aspects of music that I really like…
and turn it into
1. something I like better
also
2. an attempt to take something I like and make it popular….

no small fuckin order….

I’ve only got “the rest of my life” to try to do it. :):):)
speaking of which:

(most everything in this post was cryptic for “very specific things.” ask me if you want.)

speaking of which:

I’m diggin the tune at 16:34, down the backstreets, in this:

sometimes I like the raw material…

sometimes I happen to like the raw materials of something (jazz, funk, my favorite harmonies of choice, etc.)

so in those cases, I don’t “mind” if what is “done with” them, FORM-wise, is TYPICAL, cause I like the material that is actually being used. (think of a guy who likes meatloaf (not me) who doesn’t care in what form meatloaf is presented in, nor how much, for it’s meatloaf and meatloaf is his thing.)

I’m trying to say two different things here… something tells me this is going to come across as rather incoherent… here goes.

other times,
I dislike very much the FORM, the way something is PRESENTED… it’s IMAGE, too.
I dislike it as ARBITRARY, and “kinda uncool and uninteresting.”

yes, raw materials liked by me could help this situation, but here’s another idea:

*I typed the end of this, anticipating what I’d say…. then came back and- can’t get my thoughts organized, and now they involve using “lower” (what’s lower?) art forms IN “higher ones” (what are “higher” ones, and could there BE a more “white/western-centric approach to ANYTHING…?

to be continued after I think about it

the end:

thus I agree with Beethoven from the end, which if I remember correctly (I do, and Thanks DR. RUBIO)
“CONTENT DETERMINES FORM.” (at least more so than it once did.

to do otherwise, is to agree with “no child left behind” and any other one-size-fits-all JIVE ASS CONFORMIST approach, which
IS.
NOT.
FUCKING.
OK.

it’s getting late.
we really need to do what the hell we want.
when we’re gone…. we won’t want anything no more, nor be able to do it.

let’s GO! let’s GO!!!!!

“promotes the advancement of inferior tones”

so I just read in a Schoenberg book, on page 6, (I read such books very slowly, for when they end… the fun is gone, so of course, draw it out…)

the term

“promotes the advancement of INFERIOR TONES.”
!


that of course shows a bias not unbefitting classical harmony of the olden days,
a bias towards things making “sense” in the old sense, and in traditional hierarchies, sort of like gender roles, or any other system of judging people’s worth by how they compare to “some other” people, or worse, how well they “conform” to some “system.”

fyi, fuck such things.

so

MY POINT is the following thought, is my reaction to that quote from Schoenberg, WHICH IS:

regarding the advancement of inferior tones, or superior ones, or even the labeling of tones as superior or inferior,

on the notion whether advancing an inferior tone is some kind of bad thing unless done in a certain context…(grrr, my anger is barely beneath the surface, for many reasons…)

“That Depends,
on whether you wish to
1. submit to the system, defining yourself by it
2. work within the system, albeit a bit less subserviently than option #1
3. gradually move to change the system, or
4. DESTROY IT, or, at least,
4a. NOT USE IT and use SOME OTHER SYSTEM more fitting to YOUR NEEDS AND FEELINGS.

this reminds me of a quote, I think….. no, just a saying, from some book, which said that debate on the following subject had raged since “EMMERSON.”, R.W. (off hand, don’t even know without google when he was…)
something like:
“what do artists owe society, and what does our society owe artists?

that’s not the quote, only sorta…

BUT ANYWAY:

I’m partial to options 4 and 4a, myself.