Freakaria Blog

what music

if you listen to Beethoven – or to Mozart – you see that they are always the same. But if you listen to traffic you see it’s always different.
John Cage

What kind of music do I like? Many different. What kind of music do I make? Many different? Sometimes I come up with music that sounds like what I hear in my head. Sometimes I come up with music that is something very different.

Reading this past paragraph I am tempted to call my music differential. Perhaps the most important characterization is, that the outcome is much less consistent than the process of making it.

When you find a new scale, it will reach your perception in a specific way. It is possible to get into a dialog with your fantasy. Then out comes some result. I try to make this result be beautiful. Voila, some music.

Maybe you will now play your creation more often; or make more creations with the same scale. Every time you use this scale, and when you play your music, your inner dialog continues. If you play for an audience, the dialog is enriched by the experience of the feedback-loop between the performer and the audience. A year later, when you play the piece of music from the previous paragraph, your experience of it will have changed.

If you try to be most true to your original music, a decision needs to be made: Whether you go for the same combination of musical notes, or instead go for a similar dialog with your fantasy.

I consider the physical vibration of air molecules as medium, through which music is flowing. Music itself exists in our consciousness. To be more specific requires a common understanding of metaphysics. Such common understanding is not known to me.

I like music that comes from the heart of people. I like music that resonates the way I want to be. I like peace, funk, beauty, humor, depth, observation…

competition

oftentimes it seemed strange to me, how strange I seem to many for not feeling this need of constant competition. Some think it’s fear; some generosity. Of those who don’t, still many seem to think one must suppress desires, or be a bit behind, to not engage with it.

I don’t thrive in competition, in matters of importance. And honestly, I don’t understand how people think they need a looser to feel winning.

What do you think of competition?

Meta music stuff on the internet

a thought on pedagpgics

watching this video triggered some not so brand new comparisson I hold in my synapses:

This awesome dude explains music theory. He explains the most basic building blocks, how they add up to the next level (#1f4a9;) then suggests to practise permutating all possible permutations of the blocks we have just learned. More on that in a bit.

During my first year in university I was attending Tibetan and Chinese language courses. In the Tibetan class we first learned the alphabet. Then we learned what syllables (Tibetan writing is heavily syllable based) can be written with this alphabet. Only after that did we learn simple sentences, like “the Lama is wondering where he put that holy grail again”.

Forgive me my cynicism, but the absence of an alphabet in Chinese language made it so much more accessible. For the first 15 minutes or so of our lecture I don’t remember hearing a single word that was not Chinese. We witnessed 我学中文 being written on the blackboard. Our textbook started with “Mama, Papa, Sister, Brother, this is, that is,…” Needles to say, Chinese was much easier to learn.

As a teenager I got more fascinated with my fathers guitar, than when I was younger. In order to learn it I picked up a songbook, which had shapes of guitar chords printed on top of the melody lines of well known songs. In the beginning it took ages for me to put my fingers in the right places, but after some practicing I didn’t need the pictures anymore. The chord names became enough.

Two different approaches of learning/teaching have been described now. First two examples of a systematic approach, using some basis that can be agreed on to be The Basic Building Blocks. And two of an approach that holds cultural experience to be more important than the systems that have been used to describe them.

Personally, I find it important to use both. As they both have their strengths and weaknesses.

story Tagebuch

Impressionen nach der Arbeit

Post author By Dominik
Post date September 12, 2020
No Comments on Impressionen nach der Arbeit

Heute hatte ich das Vergnügen gemeinsam mit Ragnhild Lund ein Theaterstück aufzuführen. Es gab eine kleine Freiluftbühne, eine Klanginstallation, einen Zeitkapsel-Flashmob, Sonne und Regen, jede Menge Arbeit und ein zufriedenes Publikum. Immer wieder schön mit Theater Engagements. Fazit: besser noch, wenn man ein bisschen größeres Team hat.

stuff on the internet

Muskian Future Review

reactions

intrusive defaults

One way quality products stand out from their bugging counterparts, is by supplying sensible default settings. Many might argue, that you can adapt a FreeDesktop to your liking much better, than is possible with a Mac. Though in practise many might never spend the effort to unbug their personal computers.

One bug modern propriety systems seem to have imho, is they try to enforce their default settings, even if you do spend the effort to adapt them to your liking. Let me give you an example: Generally, I am not fond of my phone creating a trace of where I have been on Google servers, which is why I actively decided to switch off this feature. After following my Android based devices wish to update to its newest version, a notification popped up, asking me to review my location settings. It mentioned that location tracking was currently disabled. When I tapped the notification – to follow my devices request to review my settings – I ended up on a screen with a button, for the location setting on this device… turned on. I had to actively change a setting, in order to keep my configuration.

My very clear conclusion is, that Google prefers I have this setting switched on. Even though they know I want it switched off, they silently activate it, requiring me to carefully read every bit of their bloated communication in order to keep my settings. I find this annoying. I originally was not even interested in updating my phone, let alone spent brainpower on the update. I was dealing with other things, which required my attention.

I wish technology would respect my choices as a user as good as possible, instead of trying to trick me into setting someone else’s choices.

If it is good for Google to record my movement, and they hope to have me change my mind, I think they should write openly about it. They should present what has changed since last time I made my choice, mention what they gain from it and whatever else could be reason to change my mind. Some text like “Dear user, please enable this tracking feature. We think it is very useful to you, and it enables us to earn more money. Besides public authorities are pressing to have this information available and the whole process of profiling the public could be made smoother and would require less breaching of contracts. For the sake of lawful operation, please reconsider. We offer a sweet new emoticon that will be available while you comply with our suggested default settings as a thank you. Furthermore trying to protect your privacy has never before seemed less pathetic than today. Don’t be a frog, enjoy with us. Yours sincerly”.

I then could examine the arguments and reconsider. If I then would change my settings, I would be able to celebrate my conversion, a fresh breeze in my antiquated believes. The way it is done now, however, by changing settings in the background while presenting a whirling “please wait”-circle, leaves me with a bad feeling. A feeling that my device has an “intelligence” of its own. An “intelligence” that is not designed to respect my choices. An “intelligence” that is shaping a scenario in which my personal choices within contracts don’t represent my personal opinion anymore.

Good defaults are important and convenient. Respecting divergence from, and different defaults is essential.