The Rat Race

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Time is the measurement of all motion according to a standard. The truth though is that time measures the movement of the Earth around the Sun and this measurement divided into ever smaller increments becomes seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, and years. Age too makes its impact on our lives as time affects the condition of our bodies in addition to our use and maintenance or lack thereof. But nothing can prevent our age from catching up with us no matter how well we treat our bodies, over time age, bad habits, poor eating, genetic predisposition, and hygiene, will break down the body and stop it from functioning.

The ticktock of time is accentuated in The Rat Race as it impresses the listener with the silent pressure that clocks and schedules provide to working people. Every second is a moment either invested wisely or wasted, never to return, time lost and never regained. Beginning in an appropriate minimalistic style, The Rate Race quickly adds elements that float around the main minimalistic riff. Without a clear tempo, the listener has to rely on the pulse provided by several song elements such as the downbeat on the multitracked guitars and strumming.

Whether we’re overworked, stressed with the kids, or frustrated with other people and our conflicts with them, life is full of friction and can become unbearable by forcing us to adopt the mindset that we’re in a kind of prison of craziness apparently out of our control. The Rat Race tries to represent this chaos of drama by showing this combination of elements in a cloud of sound that goes in different directions and different speeds. Some elements are slow and relaxed, spaced far apart and reappearing at varying intervals of time unpredictably. While other elements are constant, quick moving, and altering their activity in rapid sequences of change.

Change too is a factor that calls our attention to time. Basically, time is the change of objects and people through space, which produces time, and as such The Rat Race demonstrates this with all of its sonic components colliding with one another in chance events occurring in an unplanned manner, you know, just like life. How often does it occur where one of our plans are thwarted or come to fruition in a version we had not foreseen? Change is inevitable and events emerge spontaneously as the motion of time waits for no one.

Another interesting feature of time and change is the development of opportunities. As things remain in motion they sometimes align into a fortuitous series of events that benefit us or those around us. Even unfortunate events oddly enough can sometimes push us into circumstances that are not totally harmful. Even in adversity there is much to be gained, a lesson to be learned, and even if a bad thing happens some good can come of it. Sometimes we can anticipate such moments as when we “feel lucky” or somehow interpret a day as possessing a particularly useful quality where things are working for us and not against us, perhaps, a day filled with good omens or signs leading to a positive result on the order of a “sure thing.”

Every day, these factors of time - the motion and change of objects and people into certain alignments forming opportunities - reveal themselves in unique ways, but only to the observant and sensitive individual. The real world Rat Race is filled with so many obstacles and ways to distract ourselves from achieving fulfillment or happiness that it’s not always possible to change our mode of perception to see what opportunities are developing and being presented before us. If we let the stress of everyday life beat us down until our heads are hung low, we may miss the potential of new possibilities in other directions than we normally travel.

The Rat Race was composed with these concepts and images in mind and as music stresses how we use our time and that our use of time is governed by our freedom of choice. To defeat the real world Rat Race it is up to us to choose a new way of living by pursuing what it is that life has to offer and changing something about ourselves, because after all, the world we see is simply a reflection of ourselves. But if we change ourselves, we can literally change the world we see and live in. Seek a new idea, a new way of thinking, or a new way of being and test what it’s like to live like that. What new things and people have been attracted to or repelled from the “new” you? Interestingly, by changing little parts of ourselves we can remake our image of the world and become born again into a new experience of life and break free of The Rat Race.

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Related Music:

The Rat Race

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Marc

https://stereothesis.bandcamp.com/

Being in the Room

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Connection is what defines the relationship between the artist and audience. The artist through their work literally reaches out with an idea impressed on matter or by a transference of energy and touches the audience by means of their senses. Therefore, the bond between an artist and a fan is extremely intimate and personal.

At the moment of connection, which occurs in the mind of the audience, the person upon whom the artist’s message falls or whose work touches deeply, the audience member is transported temporarily into the space of the artist. This event occurs magically and perhaps through some means of psychic transmission. However it does happen, it seems to transport the audience member to another place and time completely, when the experience is deeply felt. 

It’s as if a portal was opened through the work of the artist transporting another mind from whatever distance into proximity so as to have them share in the experience of making the artwork that brought them together. The work of art is a portal connecting the artist with specific people in the audience at varying intensities of connectedness.

One of the most common experiences and questions that occur to individuals in the audience when they become transported by a work of art is, “How did they do that?” What this means is that the individual is shocked by how thoroughly the artist has approximated one of the audience’s own thoughts, beliefs, ideas, personal convictions, experiences, sentiments, or emotions in a work of art. The individual perceiving the creative work imputes this part of the experience and this is what establishes the connection on their side of the interaction and permits the transportation to take place. The individual literally opens through acceptance of the work just as the artist previously opened themselves to pour out the work of art and this is what forms the portal of connectedness.

The audience wants the experience of being in the room where the artist spent countless hours originating, shaping, and developing their work in stages or in bursts of inspiration. They want to witness how failed attempts eventually lead to a breakthrough, how an artistic problem resolves with a flash of insight or an ingenious solution, and how accidents can give birth to new creative directions. To give them a direct look into such actions would require the artist to allow them into that space and therefore to have an influence on the outcome of the work. 

Being in the room with the artist, the audience would no longer be an audience and would magically be transformed into an influence or force partly shaping the direction of the work. Since the audience is in the room, they switch from being transported by the work of the artist to becoming part of the process. No portal of imagination will form from this type of influence, so it fails to create the kind of connectedness that generates the sensation of being transported or moved. 

When the artist sends out a message, someone is always listening. Who “hears” the message or calling from the artist is not always who they intended to reach, but someone hears nonetheless. A unique recipe, strange painting, unusual song, a building, a photograph, book, or chance meeting with a work of art are all vehicles for connectedness. Whether the audience member is touched through their sense of sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, or by a psychic channel of perception, the connection is forged when the mind of the audience relates the work of the artist to their personal history (memory) or aspirations for the future (dreams).

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Marc

http://stereothesis.com/

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Live Music Recordings and the Element of Surprise

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“Subtle material like those which exist in recordings of jazz and other improvisational music becomes more interesting and meaningful upon relistening.”

– Brian Eno, The Studio as a Compositional Tool

"Live music recordings" are simply a music recording approach that harnesses the ease and immensity of digital recording equipment with the freedom of improvisational music. The basic idea is that you'd improvise a new composition from the beginning of the recording process, track by track, until you achieve completion. 

The purposes of recording live music or of recording improvised music are to improve the sensitivity of the musicians or composer and to exploit the element of surprise. Recordings of live concerts and classical music clearly illustrate this principle in action.
 
What's wonderful about digital recording equipment is that it allows the solo musician, composer, or unstable band to  transcend time by freezing music in a digital universe. This is extremely useful because any new musician can come in at a later time and fill in the missing parts in a piece of music. The solo artist can also perform this function by creating the illusion of multiple players by multi-tracking.
 
The way in which he would achieve this is whenever a new track is going to be added to the piece he, in effect, acts in the capacity of a new player coming into the recorded ensemble with his own perception of what the piece should sound like or with what he would like to add to it. This psychological approach will increase the chances for another layer of the element of surprise. 
 
The new player infuses an existing piece of music with his unique signature of creative energy, technical skill, and emotional expression (style). All of these factors are injected into the music he adds to and the surprises manifest as he reacts to the twists and turns of rhythm and melody. In my music, I don't worry as much about getting each part just right, rather I'm concerned with capturing an energy or solidifying an idea. That's the only thing worth recording.

Recording live music includes the idea that chance events and musical accidents might stay in the recording as a way of authenticating the actual "live-ness" of the music recording. The advent of affordable digital music recording equipment leveled the playing field in terms of sound quality. That means for good or bad all music can be recorded at more or less the same quality. On some systems and software the mixing and mastering process can be completed with the touch of a button. So what's going to determine what's good or bad about a song will only be the strength of the composition and the level of musicianship.

Another way to think of the studio is as an environment where music recording is done as opposed to a place that determines what music will be made. The difference between these two viewpoints is one of quality - freedom vs. restriction. The element of surprise must be preserved at all costs. So when producing live music recordings you have to balance spontaneous performance and rehearsals. Rehearsing should only be used as a way of determining the possibilities within a song, while the recording process should unleash the live energy of the musician that allows him to spontaneously arrange the material he discovered during the rehearsals.

The field for digital distribution and marketing of music has also leveled a barrier that stood between the composer / musician and the consumer. Now the lines of communication are direct and open to all. With this barrier gone too, the quality of the composition and musicianship must be stressed on any recording that gets made. Average songs and mediocre musicianship can become popular, but they don't last and are easily replaced by other average songs and mediocre musicians.  A vicious artistic cycle.

Live music recordings can bring the living energy of an artist through the music to the consumer. The little imperfections, outtakes, and minor variances all give a digital recording a "live" feel. And when they are permitted to remain in a studio recording, all those little things a composer didn’t intend to be in a recording take on an added significance when listened to over and over again. No consumer listens to music they like only once. Instead, they listen to it many times over a period of years, so the music grows more meaningful as they change from their experience of living. As they grow, the music they listen to also changes and takes on deeper significances.

Now if you do decide to edit or erase little imperfections or musical accidents be very selective and only remove those that interfere with sound quality and not those that reduce technical skill or emotional expression. Sometimes it’s the chance events and musical accidents that become the reason why an audience falls in love with a recording. Good music is always used as an essential part of life to highlight meaningful events and important moments in a person's life.

  

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Marc
http://stereothesis.com/

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Intensity of Emotion in Art

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The intensity of emotion is best expressed by using the dynamic methods of an art form. Every creative subject has its own formalized approaches for dynamic usage, but in general dynamics are tools we can use as options for increasing or decreasing the amount of emotion flowing between artist and audience.

Because the flow of emotion is a bi-directional adjustments occur in two locations: within the artist's and within the audience's mind. In both of these locations you'll find points in which there is an emotional impact and a feedback signal. Both of these effects change by manipulating the types of emotions in question with their artistic dynamic equivalents.

The emotional impact of a dynamic component in art also occurs in two ways: suddenly and gradually.

In some instances, a sudden impact will manifest as a punch or direct influence with no subtlety about it and in others it will occur as a harmonious and seamless emergence within a work of art. In contrast, a gradual emotional impact will usually seem to come from a far distance or an unexpected angle by slowly drawing an increasing amount of the audience's attention to it for a pleasing surprise.

Using dynamics as a diagnostic tool is a way of testing, measuring, and adjusting the intensity of emotion in an art form.

Gradual change or a sudden impact basically comprise all types of dynamic categories, but it's the combination, structure and timing of each of these elements that alter the distribution of emotional intensity in creative work.

By pushing some dynamic factors to extremes and reducing others to levels where you'd hardly notice their presence, you begin to get a feel for how each factor will interact with every other factor you're using.

Here are a few dynamic components that an artist must control in any of his creative works that give him the power to alter the intensity of emotion as well as the emotional impact that is their product.

Color

Texture

Volume

Depth

Balance

Timing

Tone

Grammar

Velocity

Style

Flavor

Harmony

Shape

Size

Height

Melody

Line

Whatever approach an artist uses to generate a new and unique work, it is very important that the work expresses a clear statement and definite idea that is truly the artist's creative vision. A simple concept, short phrase, ingredient list, color scheme, or dramatic theme are all great places to start.

From this point on it's easy to begin testing different dynamic components to determine the results of each experiment. Note taking can be extremely helpful and invaluable during this part of the process so as to trace your line of progress.

The process will soon accelerate and bring you even closer to the end product. Each line of progress will reveal some new element, an interesting combination of factors, or an unusual result that can be re-created and explored at a later time.

One of the most important keys to forming successful pieces of art is by illustrating in its structure how the result developed or grew. The combination of elements should form a harmony or balance of factors that seem like they couldn't have existed apart from each other or that they somehow always belonged together.

Now, because the artist's mind is the site in which such discoveries occur, it's only proper that all credits and proceeds should flow directly to the individuals that made such discoveries possible.

Ultimately, the goal of experimenting with various dynamic elements is to make discoveries through unexpected surprises, marvelous accidents, or clever feats of chance that couldn't have been planned in advance. This is the realm of game-changing artistic products, which are truly ground-breaking, and that usher in "the new" and sets trends.  

Every artistic idea possesses a little piece of the artist himself and becomes imbued with part of their life energy. This is part of the alchemy of creative work, where the artist extends himself into the work of art and the piece begins to take on a life of its own.

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Marc

http://stereothesis.com/




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The Essence of Music: The Organization of Sound

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The discovery and organization of consonant and dissonant tones brought about a variety of tonal relationships which gave birth to a variety of tuning systems including our current notion of scales.

A scale is simply a series of tonal relationships consisting of consonant and dissonant tones. Regardless of the tuning system one is using, notes and scales are the fundamental elements of every tuning system.

Some of the tuning systems which have existed in the West include Pythagorean Intonation, Mean-Tone, Just Intonation, Well Temperament, and Equal Temperament.

In Western music, the basic building blocks of composition come from the Equal Temperament system (A=440 Hz), its 12 notes, and their frequencies. 

To illustrate what tones (or specific frequencies) are allowable within the Equal Temperament system, look up the frequencies of the Equal-Tempered scale. As you look over the chart notice how the column listing frequencies show “gaps” between the notes. Even though the frequencies between the allowable notes are themselves tones and in another tuning system may qualify as notes, in Equal Temperament they are simply discounted frequencies and unused sonic material. 

Every musician is capable of broadening  their compositional approach to include an expanded definition of what a note is and how many notes a scale can be comprised of.

To all intents and purposes, a note is any frequency that can be produced by a musical instrument and heard by the human ear. And a scale is any quantity of notes which have been designated or selected for use in a given musical context.

So a note is any tone which exists in the acoustic range of human hearing from 20Hz to 20kHz and a scale is any series of notes allowed to be used for a musical composition, whether it consists of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, or 12 notes.

Adjusting your musical framework to incorporate these ideas into your own compositional approach will compel you to invent your own scales, experiment with alternate tunings, string tensions, and a variety of scale sizes because the limit of what can be formed into music isn't dictated by ancient texts and musical scholars, but by the range of human hearing (every frequency from 20Hz to 20,000 Hz).

An artist not only creates with existing materials, but is also capable of manufacturing the very materials with which they create. If the painter can manufacture their own pigments by extracting color from flowers and the juices of brilliant fruits and the dancer can choreograph movements limited only by how well they can make the human body flex, then the musician can experiment with performing feats of tuning and inventing scales.

Ultimately, music is merely intelligently organized sound wave frequencies. Therefore, any system or set of tones can be utilized for the purpose of composing music.

The challenge then for musicians is to expand the range of frequencies with which one works. In doing so you'll discover consonant musical sounds in surprising ways as well as exotic forms of beauty by taming the dissonance of odd tunings.

So in the end, the dividing line between what music is, and is not, is determined by whether or not it is organized by an entity possessed of intelligence as opposed to a random collection of sounds and noise.

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Marc

http://stereothesis.com/

To support Stereo Thesis with a financial donation securely through PayPal, click here.