Composer, Performer, Developer
Last week when walking to work, Lisa and I noticed the sounds of birds of chirping. A beautiful day, the birds not of the usual crowd, we seemed have caught these small visitors on their way to another place, perhaps on their yearly migration. How lovely it was to hear those birds, to see these strangers in the place I know.
It struck me how I’ve probably come across birds on their way many a time before, but not until now did I really ever notice, nor appreciated the experience…
Today is the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz…
I was struck by the pictures I saw today on the news websites. How incredibly saddening it is to think such a place existed, that such atrocities could be within human capacity…
I had gone to see Auschwitz and Birkenau a couple of years back when I was staying in Krakow; seeing the images today and reading the stories reminded me of that visit, of walking through those camps, imagining what those people experienced. I think really only being there can one even begin to understand the weight of it…
I’ve long enjoyed the music of Erasure and have long respected Vince Clark’s synthesis work. Listening to Erasure’s new album Nightbird on Rhapsody today, I found it their first album in a while that I really had something of a spark in it. Something I always loved about Erasure’s music was that it was all very synthetic but also very organic, the blending of electronic timbres very well done(at least, to my taste), and altogether very warm. Perhaps I’ll go home and dig through all of my old synthpop CD’s tonight… ^_^
I have been exploring the Bohlen-Pierce scale for the past month, sketching out ideas for a new piece, getting my ear attuned to its character, trying out different chords and colors, exploring that sound world. Last night, after working up a sketch to a size where I felt I was getting a taste for that palette of sound I found that I couldn’t quite get the colors I wanted, and so I think I will move on from exploring this scale for now. It’s strange how I initially found the scale quite warm, but later found that the ideas I was working on feel muted in color. Sometimes it just takes time to explore things before getting familiar.
The work on the sketches has been good though as I’ve collected together a number of timbres which are working very well together. Tonight I think I’ll do some work to restructure the project file and will continue on in exploring…