Re: virus: May 5, 2000

sodom (Sodom@ma.ultranet.com)
Fri, 05 Jun 1998 10:18:10 -0400


Holy shit Dan, Im sick of you making me turn my brain power up to the 11 notch.
(from spinal tap, if any of you have seen it) I am completely surprised to hear
someone speak of musical terms like that. Now I'm really gonna get on it. I need
to get a bunch of MP3s to you guys. Here is what I want to send you.

Euphoria: 6 main and similar themes in different odd times. 3/4 - 5/4 - 7/4 -
9/4 and 11/4 two parts in 5/4. Basically this was a test to see how parts
would allign, where they did align, part B would start. It's only about 3
minutes and was slightly tweaked so it would work in an aesthetic sense also. I
did eliminate some spurrious notes that didn't sound good, so it is not as
strict as Bach would appreciate.

Statis-0: About 4 mins of heavy house sounding music, but an attempt to use
psychoacoustics in a manner that would leave a person open to suggestion. The
choruses are heavy with it. This song is VERY musically complicated, dont expect
to be able to pick out all the parts unless you do or have done a lot of LSD.
(Fallawake - I am NOT suggesting you do LSD!!!! but the song was written on the
stuff)

Anguish: About 2.5 mins with no repeating parts, yet coherent all the way
through. In 7/8 and based on sounding 3D. It is a story line and if you think of
the bass part all the way through, the title will all of a sudden, make sense.

I want to send these to whoever will listen, but the file sizes are between 1.5
and 3.5 MB. Let me know and we will find a way to disseminate them.

Also, i am interested in collaboration with whoever is interested!!!

Sodom

Dan Plante wrote:

> At 12:37 AM 6/5/98 EDT, FallAwake wrote:
> >
> >BTW did anyone listen to any of my songs???? im looking for feedback im
> >releasing a cd this summer.
> >~the great tinkerer
>
> Inspire: Hmmmm. A bit Pacific-Northwest "grundge"-ish, with the somewhat
> nihilist mood typical of that genre (I really like "Smells Like
> Team Spirit" - Nirvana).
>
> This one gets a 7 from the Russian judge.
>
> Can I make an observation? The score seems a bit repetitive. Did you use
> a sequencer for this (like the ones that make .mod and .s3m files)? These
> tools are generally useful, but because of their cut-and-paste nature,
> they make it very easy to overuse short-term structure to build the long-
> term structure of the song. You /did/ have an instrumental-only portion
> that served to provide some overall structure, but the beat, key and
> amplitude in it didn't depart much from the rest of the song, so the
> effect was minimal. If you analyze enormously popular compositions
> from Mozart to ABBA to Nirvana, you can see a pattern where the short-
> term spatio-temporal structure bears a simple mathematical relationship
> to the long-term spatio-temporal structure (that is, the tempo and amplitude
> of the smaller blocks relate or "mesh" well with the larger). But to
> achieve this, you first have to make them different enough to make them
> distinct. Take the Nirvana song mentioned above, for example. There's
> an overall theme where the music is low key, the tempo is relaxed, and
> the singing is slurred and at the edge of being off key. But there is
> another part that is blaring and starts abruptly, the tempo is more
> insistent, and the singing "wakes up" into a yell. The long term structure
> of this song is built by interspersing a few of these louder, shorter
> parts with the former in a simple, recognizeable pattern. A slightly
> different, but not dissonant, beginning and end, complete the overall
> structure. It's kind of like a story, with an introduction, story line
> and conclusion. If you make a sonogram of these hit songs, the
> Cartesian characteristics are fairly easy to spot, and if you see enough
> of them, you begin to see the overall mathematical structuring they
> all exhibit. Mozart is the same way, but the short-term and long term
> spatio-temporal structure is a little more complex. Where Nirvana would
> have periodic instances of basically the same loud part, Mozart would
> make the second occurrence of it different from the first, but the
> pattern would itself bear a readily apparent mathematical /relationship/
> to the first, creating a nested, or sometimes cross-referenced building-
> up structure for the first half of the composition, then reverse the
> process for the second half of the composition, etc. The common thread
> is that these various artists enrich their compositions with short-term
> and long-term structure (i.e not too simple) while keeping the structure
> readily apparent (i.e. without making it too complex). The mathematical
> aptitude of any individual will correlate well with the complexity of
> structure in his or her favorite compositions. What you want to shoot
> for is the peak of the bell-shaped curve of mathematical aptitude in
> the general population. ABBA did this well. Nirvana was a little to the
> left, and Mozart was a little to the right. I hope I'm not trying to tell
> you something you already know.....
>
> Dan