More things to add to the "chord progressions that aren't cliches-I-already-know-about nonetheless covertly appearing in multiple places" file ( Read more... )

Consider the chord motion in Lights's "Cactus In The Valley" that happens around 49s in:

v link goes here
| F G C C | F G C C | F G Am D7 | F G Csus C
| IV V I I | IV V I I | IV V vi II7 | IV V Isus I
wipe... show... if my... tell...
There's something about that sudden dropping by a fifth after a three-chord ( Read more... )

Cute little synth widget playground: https://blokdust.com/

Rntz told me about the notion of "Double Tonic" which is certainly a thing I've used before compositionally, but somehow I never knew the name of it, or that it was a definite Thing in medieval european music, as well as other world music traditions at various times. Searching for some of the tunes wikipedia mentioned led me to Asonance's recording ( Read more... )

Dinner at K's parents place; they grilled up some steak and veggies. Quite nice.

Listening to some The Comet Is Coming tunes since I saw them mentioned in the Economist. Clearly the Economist is the new Pitchfork.

K and I walked down from midtown to Veselka after work; I had some French Toast, she some pierogi. On the way back home, Melissa Elledge was playing accordion at 2nd avenue. It makes me feel just a tiny bit like a Real New Yorker (which, assuredly, I am not) to be like "oh, right, *that* accordion player, that I've seen play at this particular ( Read more... )

Still feeling super stressed from chronic low-sleep from apartment noise but dang if playing the piano doesn't feel surprisingly good and relaxing sometimes.

What I like best about the pair of Radiohead tunes that just landed today and yesterday is it really shows off what I like best about Radiohead as a band: the language of harmonies and harmonic progressions they use is just completely one-of-a-kind. Sophisticated but deeply weird. Major is happy and minor is sad and dominant 7 is tense, but ( Read more... )

Randomly came across this album of electronic music by former RHCP guitarist John Frusciante and it sounds like a love letter to 90s acid house and I'm kind of digging it. Even though I was never particularly into early acid house.

Very slow, somnolent sort of day. Noodled around with music things some more, got this out of it, but it doesn't represent any huge amount of code change, just fiddling with parameters. Really need to wire up a better control interface, since "edit numerical constant, recompile and rerun go code" is not exactly an HCI dream come true.