draco @draco@sonomu.club

Wait, what happened there? Probably an editing glitch where my brain was jumping from one sentence to the next and didn't finish that half-sentence I inserted.

Welcome to the interesting place that is my mind.

Also, I figured out how to mess around with arrays generated by ChordSymbol in #supercollider. Let's see if I can make some more bleepy arpeggio texture later.

Some progress on my #harmonycrashcourse; mostly working on examples and making terminology consistent. Text of the chapter about I'll need to put in a session of listening to some Bach works with sheet music to find some examples, and then type them into Lilypond.

It's interesting to me how pop (at least 80s and later) seems to be very sparing with those V-I progressions that are the driving force behind (tonal) classical music.

Or am I wrong here?

#popharmony

Ahahahaha, just spent a very happy half hour trying to look at two pop songs through the lens of what I know about harmony so far: "Creep" by Radiohead and "Enjoy the silence" by Depeche Mode. Can't even determine the tonic in "Enjoy the silence"!

Interestingly, the B major in "Creep" can be explained in terms of functional harmony (secondary dominant to the relative minor tonic), but how significant is that in a song that seems to actively avoid dominant-tonic relationships?

#popharmony

also, I was frustrated because Ardour has this latency calibration thingie where you're supposed to connect your physical input and output, but my laptop has only one jack, so I can't use that.

I'm still a little upset that I lost an afternoon's work to this, but I learned something in the process and I got the latency on my Windows machine down to an acceptable level by finally installing ASIO4ALL. Lesson learned: Latency above 20ms really makes playing with acceptable timing impossible.

Now I guess I can uninstall Ableton Live Lite and figure out how to use my Arturia Keylab Essential with Helm, Surge, ZynFusion, and Supercollider.

OK, I worked with Ableton Live Lite today, just for shits and giggles... and the export is a train wreck. My computer is not exactly a high-powered gaming machine, but not weak either... even Sibelius is usually not a problem.
But rendering a puny 108 measures with 5 MIDI tracks makes it crash. Which is very frustrating because that means I can't export a song I worked a full afternoon on.

Next time, I should take the time to boot my Linux box. This is ridiculous.

#commercialsoftwarebullshit

And so, for weeks now, I have wanted to record some music with my shiny new keyboard and I don't get around to. I catch myself obsessing over a million chores I have to get done first. I feel incredibly blocked, as if I was stuck in knee-deep molasses as soon as I so much of think about the music I truly want to make.

As if doing art, and doing it with ambition and commitment, were the most severe breach of rules I used to live by.

My maternal grandma passed away a few days ago. I had a conflicted, ambivalent relationship towards her, and some of the behavior she showed towards me and my siblings when I was a teen (and my siblings in elementary school) fits the term "abusive". Her death brings that up with renewed vigor.

I grew up with a feeling of things being just about to spin out of control. Creativity was regarded a luxury. I have internalized that deeply.

Weird idea: If I ever learn video editing, I want to make a "x levels of harmony" like this one, but for classical (i.e. 1750-1900) harmony:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz3WR-F_pnM

(In the last two rehearsals, our choir leader was like "I always wanted to have you study songs without sheet music, so let's do this".)

Downside of learning music by memory only: The earworms are _much_ more persistent than if I learn something from sheet music.

My wife has taken up the Concertina and is discovering her love for Irish music. Ever since she got her concertina about 2 months ago, she has been practicing with a diligence I envy.

For this #fiftyninety, I am tempted to try on that hat named "composer".

Oh, and here's Granular Synthesis Part II: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnD8stNB5tE

#supercollider #granularsynthesis

One week until #fiftyninety: http://fiftyninety.fawmers.org/

Also, I guess I figured out how to route audio to bigbluebutton with VoiceMeeter.

The latency is annoying; I wonder if finally configuring FlexASIO would help, but of course that adds another layer of complexity to handling VoiceMeeter (IIRC I have to install yet another piece of software then).

Also, I familiarized myself with OBS a bit. That could be fun!

Around 500 words and a lengthy example in my dissonance chapter.

#amwriting #harmonycrashcourse