With respect to the the human expression and artforms in a general context, I allude to the artform that I have invested the most individual attention to. Music Composition, and Songwriting. The philosophies and ideas that I discuss here are related to the visual arts, performing arts, language arts, and any imaginable form of human artistic expression that one can imagine.............for creativity is the essence to the artist and aesthetic value of the product is perhaps a second priority to those who truly have a passion for creation.

So here is my take on the way we should strive to be objective above those who are simply percieving the artform, and not the one involved in the creation.

Sunday, September 17, 2006
An approach to the way I listen.....and the way that you could also begin to hear.
Sometimes the music is about performance and about the moment. In that context, much as a member of a rhythm section in a jazz band would appreciate, the real treasure to be had with music is not for the future, but for the now. Forget the aspect of recording, and appreciate music as a live art, one that happens and then ends. Playing to play, and not striving to get that perfectly polished sounds mastered to tape.

And yet recording makes it possible to recreate that magic, over and over again, and these days we may even benefit from the best of both aproaches toward music performance and audition. With the cost of recording onto cd being drastically lower than the cost that was involved in the use of analog tape, one could essentially record every note that they play, even as they play through their routine warmup scales, and tuning excercises, a musician can just let that cd-r roll and capture a very acurate digital representation of their sound.

So what I am getting at is reliant upon the principle of musical moments that happen by accident, that you don't even know are magic moments, until after they have been played, and are in the past. For example, imagine some of the great jazz musicians that have laid out one of a million routine improv solos, nothing different at the time, and gone as soon as the sound waves have ceased in their oscillation, but perhaps one here or there would have surprised the musician had they been able to listen to it again maybe even months or so down the road.

Accident, and Chance, and the moment all compose the idea that I am getting at: and while recording technology offers so much to the musical arts, it sometimes makes us forget about the time where live performance was not only the only form of musical expression, but it was the essence of the art itself. It was the magic, and the moment, and the sound that was heard only once, and perhaps that was what made it magical, or mundane, yet I am sure that the musician got goosebumps at least.

SO as I truly hold a passion for improvisation, and the ideas that were developed in the movement of music that is one of the United State's original styles of music, I would have to say that I have drifted more toward an approach to composition that is derivative of "make it up as you go along"........And I have spent hours and hours going through stacks of half scratched up cd's, in search of nothing specific and for most of the time realizing that most of these sonic sketches aren't worth another listen, or equalization, or remix, or perhaps a harmonic transcription, and really cringing as I listen, I do discover passages, motifs, melodies, and sometimes complete pieces of work, and every once in a while there is a diamond in the rough, and as rare as a needle in the haystack.